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Although Kelly Amundson loved her 16-year career as an occupational therapist, she realized in 2019 that the time had come to help husband Marty manage the family farm and his lawn care businesses, all located in Zumbrota, Minnesota.

It would allow her to spend more time working towards a common goal alongside her husband and also allowed her to run and operate one of the newest, hottest franchise concepts Pet Butler. All this and more time to spend her family in general.

This location services South Eastern Minnesota.

"I learned so much in my career working with teenagers and young adults in the areas of mental health experience and many lessons about teamwork, dealing with whole families and working towards a common goal.

It was all invaluable.

And now I am using those same skills to run my own business, and my husband's lawn care businesses."

Husband Marty has worked in lawn care for 19 years, initially starting his own lawn mowing business up years before with Kelly's brother. The team serviced residential and commercial properties. He began moving into providing fertilization and weed control programs for these local customers and realized there was so much more to a good lawn care business than mowing lawns.

When approached by top lawn care franchise Spring-Green Lawn Care, based in Plainfield, Illinois five years ago, Marty decided the time was right to add this proven concept to his already existing Green Edge Lawn Care. At one of Spring-Green's conventions he was introduced to a new concept the parent company had acquired, Pet Butler.

Pet Butler provides pet waste removal and other pet related services to homes and multi-family communities, also offering a variety of scheduling options.

The business model is also set up to add expanding services such as; pet sitting and pet shuttles. The franchise offers large, protected territories that foster scalable growth and strong recurring revenue.

Said Kelly,

"Marty has been blessed with the courage to take risks, to start business', and with the opportunity to hire good staff and delegate work.

Now we get to have a hands-on opportunity to start a new business together with Pet Butler, working off of Marty's experience, corporate's assistance, and my willingness to take on something out of my comfort zone.

This will be a chance to promote more personal growth, and an opportunity to provide jobs for more people as the business grows.

This will be another business we can begin as a legacy for our family.

We feel our children have a lot of great learning opportunities here at home."

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About Pet Butler

Pet Butler Franchise was acquired in 2017 by Spring-Green Enterprises, the parent company of +43 years old Spring-Green Lawn Care and SGE Marketing Services. They currently have 30 franchisees located in 25 states with long term plans to open 60 more within the next 5 years.

Pet Butler provides an opportunity for pet lovers to turn their passion for pets into a business. To learn more about how Pet Butler serves pets and their people, visit www.petbutler.com on Facebook and LinkedIn.

To inquire about a franchise call 844-777-8608 or go to www.petbutlerfranchise.com.

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With many people staying at home, but having no live sports to watch, advertisers are scrambling to get attention from the gaming community.

Ad Age's John Dioso and Verizon Media's Mike Brunick discuss how advertisers can reach the gaming community now.

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Several years ago, Joe Caruso, wrote a very well received story "ABC's Shark Tank Sushi Franchise Fiasco."

Now, we want to present a slightly different & more upbeat story -- How to Pitch to the Sharks. Stay tuned for the final in September.

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          No one would have blamed Sarah Gabbard if she had curled up in her house with her two young girls and done nothing for a very long time. In fact, most people would have expected it. Come to think of it, if they found themselves in the same situation as the now 39-year-old found herself in almost four years ago, most would have done the exact same thing. But they don't know Sarah Gabbard.

          Gabbard was leading a "very normal life" in her words on May 28, 2015. She was married to her high school sweetheart, Chad, who owned a thriving industrial cleaning company with two locations that he had started while in college with nothing more than a weed eater and a pressure washer. The couple had two girls, Olivia and Ava, and Sarah worked as a speech-language pathologist in the local school district. "It was crazy how successful Chad's business became," Gabbard said. "I always admired what he had done but I was too scared to do something like that for myself, so I chose the comfortable, safe 9-to-5 approach."

Chad had been traveling for business that May day and had stayed at a condo the couple owned in Lexington the previous night. Sarah was having trouble reaching Chad by phone and immediately felt a sense of foreboding. "I knew something was wrong. I could just feel it," she said. "I can't explain it, but I just felt like someone had punched me in the gut." Sarah jumped in her car and drove to the condo, where she found Chad had passed away from a congenital AVM (Arteriovenous Malformation), which is an abnormal connection between arteries and veins, usually in the brain or spine. If they rupture, they cause bleeding in the brain. Brain AVMs occur in less than one percent of the population. Chad was 36 years old in perfect health and had never experienced any symptoms.

          Looking back, Sarah has little memory of the weeks and events that followed Chad's death. "I feel like it was God protecting me from what had just taken place," Gabbard said. "The next few weeks were a whirlwind. I had to deal with not only the personal side of just losing my husband, but I also had to figure out what to do with a business that had 30 employees and two locations."

          Though she now faced the daunting task of having to make so many critical decisions on her own, Gabbard was steadfast on one matter. She was holding onto Chad's business no matter what, even though she had several offers to sell. "I can't explain why, but I just couldn't imagine not having this business in our lives anymore, and for my daughters, even though I had ZERO experience with industrial cleaning," Gabbard said. "Again, I can't explain it. It was just my gut feeling."

          However, Gabbard quickly discovered there was no such thing as hitting the "pause button" when faced with the daily challenges of running a small business in eastern Kentucky. For seasonal businesses such as Chad's, winters are notoriously slow. "Work just seemed to come to a screeching halt. I couldn't stand it and felt like we were losing so much money by just being idle," Gabbard said. "I knew we had to find something to occupy the guys over the winter."

          One of Gabbard's employees, Josh, was diligent in researching business opportunities, though she said with a grin, "many of his suggestions were terrible and we still laugh about it to this day." But Josh more than made up for all his misses when he came upon an online advertisement for Paul Davis Restoration, one of the most trusted brands in the insurance restoration industry and a company that has been at the forefront of innovation in the property damage, emergency services and restoration industry since 1966. "It looked like the perfect fit and work that we could easily handle," Gabbard said.

          While slow and steady might work for some, that's never been Gabbard's mindset. After contacting the corporate office, Gabbard and Josh were on a plane to Jacksonville, Fla., a week later to attend Discovery Day at Paul Davis. While there, Gabbard met other prospective franchisees, many of whom got a good chuckle when learning how much time she had spent doing her "homework" on the company. "They had researched this company for months, and here I was a week after hearing the Paul Davis name for the first time. It was hysterical to see their faces when they would ask me how long I had been looking at this franchise opportunity and I would reply, 'seven days.' I have no doubt they thought I was crazy," Gabbard said.

          But while some individuals might need the reassurance of reams of research to make an important decision, Gabbard once again relied on an instinct that has never failed her. "I loved what I saw when I was in Jacksonville. It felt like the perfect fit," Gabbard said. "I wanted to buy in that very day. I just knew."

When you are a big well respected company like Jacksonville, Florida based Paul Davis, lots of people come to you for your knowledge and expertise. The area of restoration and repairs, particulary after this awful spate of hurricanes, floods and now fires, is a busy one.

Unfortunately, most of the calls that the EMS division of Paul Davis (Emergency Services--damage evaluation) receive brings them to an unhappy scene.

A house severely damaged or even lost, a teary-eyed family searching through what belongings may be saved. One can't help but sympathize with the emotions and difficulties these victims experience.

A full Paul Davis Restoration team then moves in to clean up and repair the scenes after evaluation. Not a happy time but often it does end up with a happy ending.

Even without Mother Nature's huge events, common hazards of life can cause chaos. One is extreme cold; but surprisingly, there are easy and inexpensive things to do so you never have to deal with this particular problem.

On December 7th Paul Davis' "flood house", a demo home at their state-of-the-art training facility in Jacksonville, was used by consumer journalist Jeff Rossen to demonstrate all the ways in which one can avoid bursting pipes and other cold weather hazards.

We have shared here: https://www.today.com/home/how-avoid-bursting-pipes-costly-repairs-winter-t119612

Full segment: http://on.today.com/2zX7kTK