Franchisee Success: Sport Clips

Jeff Burroughs, franchisee of the year for Sport Clips*, insists that such a title is not a reflection of him, but of his stellar team.

“I’m only as good as the people underneath me. I promote from within. I train forward. I’m working to make everyone better,” says Burroughs, who owns nine Sport Clips in the Annapolis and Baltimore/D.C. area with his wife and business partner, Robyn Hanson. Burroughs has lived in southern Maryland his whole life and says he’s a “country guy” through and through.

He says the help he gets from the Sport Clips franchise makes a world of difference. The training tools at Sports Clips support faster growth, so much so that he is working on opening a 10^th store.

“We have a great performing series of stores,” he says.

Burroughs says he was looking for something different when he signed on with Sport Clips. He was working in the auto industry and “making a lot of money for someone else.”

He and his wife looked at several franchises and liked what Sport Clips had to offer. They opened their first shop in 2009. While they grew the business and added more shops, Burroughs kept working at his full-time auto job. He now is focused solely on Sport Clips and he and his wife recently were able to celebrate their 10^th anniversary with a trip to Aruba.

One of the things that the sports fan liked about the brand was the sports concept, naturally. Burroughs coaches Little League football and baseball and he used to race sports cars.

“I thought about trying something on my own, but where I wanted to go would take a long time. I liked the structure. Sports Clips’ key element was how it would help me accomplish what I wanted to do. I wanted to have my own business and to be one of the best at that. The system made sense,” he says.

He also liked the guy-friendly environment of Sports Clips and felt that such an atmosphere was missing from other “chop shops.”

“It’s an open, friendly place. Kids also love it here. People only have so much time to do things. We want to get them in, give them good service and get them on their way,” he says.

Every cutting station has a TV and there’s a large screen TV in the lobby. The hot, steamed towel is akin to something from an old school barber, but with a modern touch.

“People feel welcome here and we work hard to keep them coming back through that door,” he says.

The charitable work that Sport Clips champions also means a lot to him. Burroughs, a volunteer firefighter, says the company supports myriad causes and offers a reduction in franchise fees for military veterans looking to start their own business.

“They want people to succeed.”