Work life balance through franchising

Silviu Bompa was looking for a way to use his expertise, but have more time to spend with his young family.

Having managed a pub for several years, he knew a fair bit about management and cleaning so he looked around at various options. He found the award-winning ethical cleaning franchise Bright & Beautiful.

Silviu came to the UK from Romania after graduating from university with his girlfriend – now his wife.  They were initially in London to learn English and to find out more about British culture.

Their English course included a four-month work placement for which they were sent to Tarporley near Chester to work in a pub. Silviu was behind the bar and his girlfriend did cleaning and waitressing. They liked the place so much they decided to stay on.

Over the next seven years, Silviu was promoted up the ranks until he eventually became general manager. Then his first daughter was born. He and his wife had been living above the pub and moved out before their daughter was born. Silviu’s wife was on maternity leave, feeling isolated, and he was working long hours, from 7am to 11pm. It was stressful for both of them and eventually his wife returned part time, but became pregnant again last year.

“When she got pregnant again, I started to think that I need to change something. I felt I was missing out on family time,” says Silviu.

Ethical cleaning

He wanted something that was more nine to five, but he also liked being his own boss. Franchises seemed to offer a good solution so he started researching cleaning franchises, given he had experience in management and cleaning in the pub. “I knew how that worked,” he says.

He hit on Bright & Beautiful. “I was drawn by the branding of Bright and Beautiful, loved the head office team and the more I was finding out about it the more I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do. I thought the company offered great support and loved the ethics behind it,” he says. There weren’t any franchise areas available near where he lived, though, and Silviu needed to take over an established patch since he needed to earn straight away and didn’t have time to build the business from scratch.

Fortuitously, not long after the Chester area came up for sale. It had been established for five years and so Silviu took over an existing staff and customer base which covered Chester, Tattenhall, Farndon, Christleton, Waverton, Malpas, Aldford, Churton and surrounds.

Support and motivation

Using some savings and a bank loan, he started worked in 2016 just two weeks after his second daughter was born. He has been struck by the high level of support offered by the franchise. He says: “You get support all the time. You have your own franchise consultant to help and guide along the way with regular meetings, but I must say the thing I most love are the reunions when all the franchisees get together for a few days to get inspired and motivated to drive their businesses forward.”

Silviu says his average day involves working on the business, looking after his team and clients and retaining and gaining new clients to try and expand the business. He works Monday to Friday between 8am and 4pm, but he has the flexibility to work around family needs.

That flexibility is a major draw of running his own business, alongside learning new things, making connections and being his own boss.

He says of his decision to go into franchising: “There is hardly any work life balance in the hospitality industry and I wanted to do something for myself and be my own boss too. Franchising seemed the way to go as I was looking for something risk free and I wasn’t confident about building a business from scratch, especially not having many savings to tide me over until I got to see any profits coming in. I didn’t want to have that stress on my shoulders with having to pay the mortgage and bills!”

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