“Make Sure You Only Hire People You Like” The 5 Lessons I Learned Being a 20-Something Founder

I had the pleasure of interviewing Carmelo Marsala.

Carmelo Marsala is the founder and president of Spray-Net; a home improvement franchise with 43 locations.

Carmelo is a double patent holder, was named the 2015 Air Miles Young entrepreneur of the year as well as the 2016 top young franchisor in the world at the International Franchise Association’s NextGen in Franchising Global Competition. Spray-Net ranked 34th on the 2016 annual PROFIT 500, the definitive ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies, with five-year revenue growth of 2,355% and became the fastest growing consumer services company in Canada in 2017.

Jean: Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory” of how you become a founder?

Thank you! Well to be honest I wasn’t really able to ever keep a job very long and I did the minimum required to succeed in University (reflected by my grades haha) so it seemed like my options were limited. I was always very opinionated and fascinated with finding ways to do things “better” and marveled at when businesses just “got it right”. I thought then if I could just “get it right” it would work and that gave me the confidence to start. I realized later that the reason why only so few get…