It’s funny how things happen. I had worked in retail and as a personal trainer but wanted more control over my career. Lorissa had been working as a hairdresser for six years but wanted more. So we started to look around for a business opportunity that we could get our teeth into, and started talking to friends about how to get into franchising.
We went to a Franchise Expo to get some ideas and met Katherine Sampson of
Healthy Habits for the first time. I was attracted by the colours, the name and the fresh look of the brand.
I knew the Healthy Habit concept of the
food and beverage franchise fitted in with the kind of people we are, and where the healthy living market was heading. After speaking with Katherine, I started to build confidence in the brand, and a lot of excitement about our future.
We had no food industry or business experience, but with Healthy Habits’ support, we started to believe we could make it work. The structure and confidence they showed in us is what convinced us we were doing the right thing in
buying a franchise.
In my life I have always gone into things at a million miles an hour. Now we’ve been in franchising for two years, and it’s been an incredible ride. Of course it wasn’t always an easy ride.
When we started out we were young – only 21 and 24 years old so, naturally we encountered several problems. To begin with it seemed the only person taking us seriously was Katherine. The banks didn’t want to know us; we had no business experience, not enough equity and we were too young. It seemed like our aspirations were coming to a halt.
But we had come this far and we weren’t stopping there. We believed in ourselves and the brand. We knew that we could make this work but we needed the banks to believe that too. We went from bank to bank stating our case, showing our business plan, selling ourselves until finally, through sheer persistence, a bank gave us our chance.
We knew it was going to be hard work getting ourselves and the brand established. We were right! It took many hours, days, weeks, months and now years of sacrifice from us. But, we’ve now increased our business to where it is today, through blood sweat and tears. And that is no exaggeration!
It has been an amazing journey, of which we are both incredibly proud. There have been a lot of ups and downs, but we’re experiencing more of the ups now, and we really enjoy our lifestyle these days. Eight months ago we had our first-born child, Ella. Because we control our own hours, we’re able to spend quality time with her, which is very important to us.
Lorissa is now a full time mum doing all the administrative things required in the business while I work in the shop. We feed off one another and help the other out where we can.
We believe that finding the right staff and building an effective team is very rewarding. It’s so important to find the right staff and treat them well. We’ve built a fantastic team and one we trust. We truly see each of them as a major asset to us.
We also genuinely love our customers. It’s a good feeling to be able to provide them with great service and an awesome healthy product. When our customers walk away, we know they are feeling better and happier within themselves, because they’re eating something healthy. There’s no way we could have done this by ourselves, and it took both of us to make our business a success. We’ve now got a great understanding of Healthy Habits and we will continue to build our business and the brand. We are also looking at becoming multi-site franchise owners in the future.
Michael Jamieson & Lorissa Bowyer’s Healthy Habits franchise is located inside Westfield Fountain Gate in Fountain Gate, Victoria.
19-Jun-2007