The Flying Locksmiths News

FORMER RESTAURANTEUR DETAILS HIS TRIP FROM LOST TO FOUND WITH THE FLYING LOCKSMITHS

It might as well have been yesterday, Michael recalls.

“I can still hear the deadbolt when I locked [my restaurant] for the last time and had to tell my employees we were closing,” he said. “It was hard. It was really hard. The look on their faces and the fact you’re putting them out of work. That was difficult for me. Really difficult. it took me a while to get over that.”

He wasn’t just locking the door on five-years of sweat, stress lines and sleepless nights—he was locking the door on a chapter in his life he would miss. The evenings his daughter Michaela spent waving at patrons as they walked in to get orders in his Austin Cajun restaurant, the parking lot parties, the crawfish boils—he was closing the door on that for himself and for his employees.

Now the owner of the South Tampa territory for The Flying Locksmiths, Michael l…

WHAT DOES THE FLYING LOCKSMITHS MEAN TO MARK AND HIS CUSTOMERS?

In the hare scramble, Mark Heidel was king. He was 9, weaving between trees on his motocross bike from start to finish knowing a wrong turn could mean more than a scraped knee. But still, he loved it. The wind at 50 MPH, darting around trees, the excitement like a bird in his chest ready to break out—he loved it all.

“My passion was how fast I could go in racing,” Mark said. And of course to “win at all costs.”It was the freedom of it, he says. The wind and the excitement and the danger was secondary to the freedom. As he aged, he would work multiple jobs to ensure his freedom and a stable source of pocket cash.

Decades later, Mark hasn’t changed much. At 58, he still rides motocross, he’s still working constantly—and he’s still focused on his freedom.

Now as the owner of The Flying Locksmiths’ Detroit market, Mark says he get…

THE FRANCHISE OUTLOOK FROM THE EYES OF CURRENT FRANCHISE OWNER, DOUG HAYDEN

Doug Hayden hasn’t always had the best run of things when it comes to business.

In 2013, shortly after his mother-in-law unfortunately passed of breast cancer, the pair attempted to take over the 70-year-old family business, where they manufactured equestrian gear and sold it wholesale to distributors.

“Nobody knew anything,” said Doug Hayden, current owner of The Flying Locksmiths Indianapolis market. “So the next day we tried to sit down and run this business that had been going for 70-years with no guidance or manuals or passwords, absolutely nothing. it was a rough couple of years to get our feet into the business and the business wasn't in good shape anyway.”

He says this experience was the impetus for his thought to own a franchise in the first place.

“I was trying to start something existing, in or around the service industry b…