Your First Year, Month by Month.
With the Franchise, and Without It.
Put in your own leads, close rate, ticket and overhead. See what you actually take home twelve months from now — once the franchise fee, the royalty, the ad fund and the mandated software have all come out — against the same year run on systems you own outright. Then push it out ten years, which is where the real number lives.
Free, nothing to sign up for, and every assumption is a slider you can argue with. We show you the cases where buying the franchise wins, too.
Your numbers
Your demand
Your demand
Compounds through year one. Years two onward use the annual rate below.
Reshapes the year without changing the annual total.
What it costs to run
What it costs to run
Share of every dollar of revenue that goes out the door on the job itself.
Trucks, insurance, phones, rent, admin.
Charged to both routes. A franchise ad fund buys national brand marketing — you still pay for your own local leads.
$300–800 is typical for the full stack. The franchise replaces this with its own mandated tech fee.
Money out before day one
You already have the trucks
Money out before day one
You already have the trucks
Trucks, tools, deposits. Charged to every route equally.
Signage, wraps, uniforms, mandated fit-out and systems migration — only the franchise route pays this.
The franchise deal
The franchise deal
$42,500 is typical at a national home-services brand.
Of gross revenue — not profit.
The honest case for a franchise. Set it high if you think the name really pulls.
Drag to 1 for 'never' — the brand advantage stays put forever.
Ten years is standard.
Growing it, and what you own at the end
Growing it, and what you own at the end
Revenue stops here. $1.5M is roughly four or five trucks.
At 70%, growing revenue 10% grows your overhead 7%.
Same multiple on both routes by default — we don't assume a franchise sells for less.
What the franchisor takes when you sell. Independent businesses pay nothing.
Our own fee grows too. We'd rather show it than hide it.
Building and running the stack yourself is real work. Off by default it isn't.
Two different numbers, and the gap between them is the point. What the business earned you is take-home before you count the cheque you wrote to get started. In the bank on day 366 counts it. A franchise can out-earn you and still leave you with less, so that second number is the one the cards are ranked on.
FlexLever
The business earned you
$134,171–139,171
On a $15,000–20,000/yr fee
In the bank, day 366
$134,171–139,171
After what you paid to get started
Buy the franchise
The business earned you
$164,955
On 25% more leads from the brand
In the bank, day 366
$87,455
After what you paid to get started
Build it yourself
The business earned you
$140,671
After charging 15 hrs/mo of your own time
In the bank, day 366
Most$140,671
After what you paid to get started
The bar the franchise has to clear
49.7% more leads
That's how much extra work the brand has to bring you in year one just to leave you level with FlexLever — because $77,500 left the account before you served a single customer.
The year, month by month
Same demand on every route. The only thing that changes is who gets paid out of it.
Cash in the bank through year one
Starts at whatever you paid to get going. The dotted line is the day you're square.
Year one is the franchise's best year.
The buy-in is paid once. The royalty is paid forever, and it grows every time you do. Over a full agreement that gap compounds into $649,114 — which is why a twelve-month view flatters the deal and a ten-year view doesn't.
What you hand to somebody else over 10 years
Franchise fee, royalties and ad fund
$946,727
FlexLever fees
$220,113
The royalty isn't a fee, it's a partner. In year one they take $48,758. By year 10 they're taking $132,000 — because it's a share of your top line, and you grew. Your best year is their best year.
Cash in the bank, year by year
Revenue grows 15% a year until it hits $1.5M, then flattens — a trade business is capped by how many trucks it runs.
Cash difference after 10 years
$149,807
in FlexLever's favour
Including what you'd sell it for
$317,528
At 3× final-year earnings, same multiple on both — less the 5% franchise transfer fee.
The whole decision, in one number
Over 10 years, the brand has to bring you 16.0% more work than you'd win on your own — every year, without fail — before the royalty pays for itself.
If a national name will always out-pull you by that much, buy the franchise. It's a fair price. If your own reviews, your own ranking and your own repeat customers close that gap inside a few years, the same royalty costs you $726,614. Closing that gap is the entire job we do.
Stress-test it
Everything above hangs on one assumption: how long the brand's lead advantage lasts. Here's the same 10-year model under five versions of it — including the ones where we lose.
| If the brand's pull… | Royalties paid | Better off by |
|---|---|---|
| The lift never decays | $968,450 | $356,815the franchise |
| A bigger lift, +40% fading to +15% | $919,292 | $105,822the franchise |
| +25% fading to +10% by year 5 | $869,227 | $149,807FlexLever |
| +25% fading to nothing by year 5 | $803,078 | $487,555FlexLever |
| The brand brings you no extra leads | $774,760 | $632,147FlexLever |
Get the full 12-month breakdown
Every line item, every month, every year, all three routes — plus a link that reopens this exact scenario. It unlocks right here on this page, so there's nothing to wait for in your inbox.
Every assumption, out in the open
A calculator that hides its workings isn't worth trusting. Here's all of ours.
Where the franchise numbers come from
A $42,500 franchise fee, a 6% royalty and a 2% ad fund on gross revenue, on a ten-year agreement, are typical of national home-services brands. They are starting points, not quotes. Every franchisor publishes its real figures in its Franchise Disclosure Document — Item 5 for the fee, Item 6 for ongoing royalties, Item 7 for the cost to open, and Item 19 for what existing franchisees actually earn. Read those before you sign anything, including this page.
Ad spend is charged to both routes
The 2% ad fund buys national brand marketing. It does not buy you local leads — most agreements still require franchisees to spend their own money on local advertising, often with a stated minimum. So the same ad budget is charged to every route here, and the franchise pays its ad fund on top. If anything that is generous to the franchise.
The brand lift is yours to set
A franchise really can bring you more work than you'd win alone, especially in year one when you have no reviews and no ranking. The model starts at 25% more leads, fading to 10% by year five as your own marketing matures. Drag the decay to 'never' if you think the advantage is permanent — the stress-test table shows you exactly what that does, including the cases where buying the franchise wins.
Growth is capped on purpose
Revenue grows 15% a year until it reaches $1.5M, then stops. A trade business is limited by how many trucks and techs it runs, and a model that compounds forever is a fantasy. Overhead grows at 70% of whatever growth you actually realise, so you get some operating leverage but not an infinite amount.
Our own fee is in here too, and it goes up
FlexLever is modelled at $15,000–$20,000 a year, rising 5% annually, plus your own software stack at whatever you set it to. That stack is real and it is not free — the cheatsheet puts it at $300–800 a month. We would rather show you our fee escalating than quietly hold it flat to win an argument.
What the model leaves out
No taxes, no financing costs, no interest on the capital you sank, no inflation on your ticket price, and no bad debt. Franchise renewal and any territory restrictions sit outside the term modelled here. It's a comparison of two fee structures over the same business, not a forecast of your business.
This is a comparison tool, not financial advice, and not an offer of a franchise. Figures are illustrative and change constantly. Check any franchisor's current Franchise Disclosure Document, and talk to your own accountant, before you commit to anything.
Wondering what that $500 a month actually buys?
The software line in this model is a real stack of real tools. We publish the whole list — 47 of them, with pricing and an honest take on each.
The royalty is only worth paying
if you never build your own demand.
That's the whole argument, and this page just put a number on it. Our job is to build the reviews, the ranking, the follow-up and the booking flow that close the gap — under your name, with no buy-in and no cut of what you earn. Book a free call and we'll go through your numbers on this page together, line by line.
Free. 30 minutes. Bring the scenario link and we'll pull it up.