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 gets that opportunity every day. “I wanted to work for myself and thought it would be a franchise I went with because I didn’t want to start from scratch,” Mark said.
Worries about establishing a from-scratch business remain a common anxiety from those seeking franchise opportunities. Business establishment without any support is one of the most difficult and stressful tasks for anyone, let alone someone who has never done it before.
It was this hang-up about business ownership that caused him to reach out to a franchise coach in the first place and ultimately discover The Flying Locksmiths five-years ago.
Nowadays, despite the difficulties of COVID-19 and owning a business in general, Mark says he’d do it all again.
According to Mark, the direct-sales aspect is what he likes most owning a Flying Locksmiths franchise. He has spent his entire career working either in national sales or brand marketing.
Whether he was managing the CD buys for some of the largest retail stores in America or building out those retail stores, it was building and maintaining those relationships that appealed to him most.
“I enjoy it,” Mark said. “I enjoy the selling, the pushing the motivating the team, learning new products and solutions I can bring to my clients at some point, I like always growing and learning and never being stagnant. This allows us that because we’re constantly learning new technology. Five-years ago if you told me I could hang with an IT director at a large company, I’d have said no way.”
The Flying Locksmiths is a solid choice for people with Mark’s background. For one, TFL has a foothold in the profitable subcontracting industry for some of the largest property management and security companies in the world—so there’s immediate demand.
Ultimately, Mark said, he enjoys the franchise opportunity he took with TFL. The excitement of knowing every aspect of what he does reminds him of his childhood doing hare scrambles where watching potholes and curves was just a way of life.
“I know exactly where we’re headed,” Mark said. “It allows me to focus on that and be better educated and give a higher degree of selling on my side. It’s not just reading a marketing sheet on a website, I know how it works.”