“Look neat, right down to the hat and shoes,” advises Donald “Mac” MacDonald, owner and founder of Rooter Man, Billerica, Mass. “If you don't look the part, who is going to trust you? If you were a chef at a fancy restaurant but you wore a dirty sweatshirt, nobody would eat there. People expect professionalism.”
MacDonald started his drain cleaning business in 1970 and became so successful that he started to franchise it in 1981. Mac, along with his son Brian, now have 72 Rooter Man locations in the United States and Canada, and Fortune magazine has named Rooter Man one of the top 500 franchises and No.1 in the plumbing industry two years in a row.