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 looks back on that time with fond memories no less because his current situation mirrors when he owned the restaurant.
His oldest, Michaela, and daughter Paris currently work with him operating the five-year-old location. He says the fact he’s keeping the franchise in the family makes him incredibly proud.
“I really love it,” Michael said. “Actually, I got a text the other day from Michaela. At 2:15 in the afternoon, she says: ‘quick thing, I [really] love working for/with you’—and that makes everything better, right? It makes it so much better to have my daughter working with me, and to get a text like that? It makes everything better.”
But of course it wasn’t always like this. When he shuttered his restaurant, he and his wife, Tammy, moved to Florida so she could pursue a high-paying management position. During the next few months, Michael would work several positions, but generally felt like a ‘fish-out-of-water’ until he landed in a sales position at a global service company.
For the next 12 years, he toiled away, grinding away at metrics and sharpening his sales skills until he eventually moved up to management. It was in this role the stress overtook him.
“I was running ragged and the pressure to just perform at some point was so much that I said I just I couldn’t do this anymore,” Michael said.
Following that, it wouldn’t be until he approached a franchise coach, he had another chance at working for himself again. After narrowing down a list of franchise opportunities to just five, he said he ultimately went with The Flying Locksmiths due mainly to the support and culture.
“The Flying Locksmiths was catchy.” He said. “When we saw the marketing behind it and the buzz and the story behind it, that’s what we landed on.”
Working for himself with his family he says scratches that itch to break out from under the thumb of bosses before him and do what he loves.
Just like the support network as a whole, Michael’s branch is still growing and improving. With the help of his family and his passion though, there isn’t much he can’t overcome.
“I love sales, I really do,” Michael said. “What I’m doing now, I don’t have to worry about anyone else. I’m right here and what I’m doing matters today—and that’s why I love what I’m doing.