Merry Maids franchisee Leslie Johnson has built a family business across generations
By Alya Somar
Leslie Johnson has been a franchisee with Merry Maids since opening her first unit in 1998, and in that time she has built a legacy that she and her family can be proud of for generations. Merry Maids is a cleaning service franchise that works in homes, commercial settings, and everywhere in between to provide customers top tier cleaning with individual care. Leslie and her daughters, Ashley and Alexandra, work closely with their teams every day to meet the needs of their clients across southern Ontario.
“You have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. […] It’s just part of, innately, who I am,” says Leslie.
Building a legacy
Her drive to build something great was born out of necessity. When Leslie was sixteen, her father passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. This loss was hard for her family, but as a teenager, she was able to take the painful experience and mold herself into a driven business owner.
Later on, when Leslie’s youngest daughter started kindergarten, she signed on with Merry Maids as a franchisee because it enabled her to work flexible hours around her children’s needs. With both of her daughters in school, Leslie and her husband worked as a team to fulfil their parental duties, all while she launched her new business.
In those early days, Leslie could be found cleaning and building relationships with clients, providing quality service and exemplary care while learning firsthand what it takes to run a successful franchise. “Do we make mistakes? Absolutely,” she says, “because we’re human. We break things, we maybe don’t do the best job, but we own it. We don’t walk away and say it wasn’t us.”
After completing university and working in their respective fields of study for a number of years, both of Leslie’s daughters decided to follow in their mother’s footsteps and open their own Merry Maids franchises. Together, they expanded their Ontario territory tenfold. Ashley owns and operates locations in Guelph, Cambridge, and Kitchener-Waterloo; Alexandra and her husband Austin operate the Burlington and Mississauga regions. This career change helped them both achieve a favourable work-life balance once they had had children, just like it did for their mom. Now, mother and daughters work together across their individual franchises to support one another in their day-to-day routines.
The nitty gritty
The mother-daughter trio hits the ground running bright and early. At 6:30 a.m., Leslie’s day starts with text messages and phone calls coordinating between her and her daughters’ franchises to assist one another. If one of their employees is unable to make it to work that day, or if they’re having an issue with a company car, they can shuffle their staff members as needed before the workday begins.
By 7:30 a.m., their staff of cleaners are in the office, chatting and getting ready to face the day together. Once they are off to see their clients, Leslie can be found in her office doing the accounting and touching base one-on-one with customers and cleaners alike. By spending time and effort checking in with clientele—old and new—she’s been able to build a loyal client base that trusts her and her staff in their homes and professional spaces.
Leslie and her daughters are just as dedicated to taking care of their staff as they are their customers, and have a mid-day check-in with all of them to make sure their needs are being met. If cleaners need assistance at a job, the team is able to send in backup support when needed. Across the franchises, office staff and team members can step in on rare occasions to ensure clients continue to receive reliable service while cleaners feel supported in the field.
Leslie herself can be in the office until the evening hours some days, coordinating matters between her several franchises and taking the time to make sure her staff are well. At the end of a busy workday, the entire family can come together to enjoy life outside of work, thanks to their efforts as a team.
“We have a rule: no man left behind … If somebody falls behind in their day, somebody is going to go in and help, and that is a hard rule,” Leslie shares.
When the three franchisees are not in the office, they’re often at franchise seminars connecting with the entire Canadian Merry Maids team. At these summits, franchisees come together to share experiences and advice based on their firsthand experiences. This community-building is a big part of the Merry Maids culture and helps franchisees feel comfortable coming to each other and their higher ups for support. Their feedback helps leadership modify operations for the better, when necessary, and keeps them in the loop about the realities that their franchisees face on a day-to-day basis. This relationship of support is reciprocal, as Leslie, Ashley, and Alexandra know that they can go to their franchisors if they ever need a bit of support during a difficult chapter.
Leslie understands that as a franchise owner, she’s only as strong as her team. She wants her staff to feel comfortable coming to her if they need a bit of extra help to get their job done well. Leslie’s cleaners will even spend time in her office at the end of the workday, munching on a treat and catching up with one another, comfortable with their manager and each other.
Leslie knows firsthand just how hard her team works, and she values every member that shows up for her each day. Many of her cleaning staff have been with her for years—if not decades—and stuck by her during the COVID-19 pandemic when their client base shrunk dramatically and they had to adopt new, stricter safety protocols. Leslie has instilled this same respect in her daughters, as all of them truly understand that without their staff, their franchises would not be operational.
“The cleaning staff are the front line. They’re the ones that build the relationships, they’re the ones that do the hard work and that’s what the customers see.”
Built for generations
Leslie, Ashley, and Alexandra all find value in sharing their success with those around them. Through their franchises, they have been able to donate to various causes such as sponsoring local hockey teams and food banks within their own communities. All three of them are determined to hire local talent, invest in the people that work with them, and give back to the same communities that trust them to come into their homes time and time again. Being able to enrich the lives of their neighbours serves as a reminder for how rewarding franchise ownership is.
Leslie wants aspiring franchisees to know that being a business owner is deeply gratifying but requires hard work to receive those rewards. She understands how passionate and driven each individual franchise owner must be in order to run a successful location in the long term. She sometimes finds herself taking pause in her Merry Maids franchise to appreciate how far she has come, from the teenager who lost her father and had to support her mother and brother, to being able to provide for generations of her family.
Leslie’s goal of creating something to leave her daughters has not only been realized but is a resounding success, with both daughters having their own franchises to give their children stability and present parents. Leslie Johnson’s legacy of tenacity and franchise ownership is one that will continue to make herself, and her family, proud for even more generations to come.
Learn more about franchising with Merry Maids
