Sarah Ross, a franchise owner with Fresh Coat Painters, the 190-plus-unit national painting franchise, initially made the leap to entrepreneurship in the early 20-teens in search of a more balanced, fulfilling career. However, leaving the world of corporate accounting brought her much more, including an opportunity and a platform through which she has changed the lives of others in her community.

“The biggest rewarding point that I didn't expect was the ability to employ others,” she said. “I knew that was the model with Fresh Coat, but I didn’t realize how much some painters struggle. My teams are thankful that I can keep them busy and they’re not out trying to sell the next project every time something winds down. They’re skilled at what they do, and they just want to be respected, be busy and do their trade.”

Through steady business growth, Ross has consistently scaled her operation, broadening her impact both in terms of the number of teams she’s been able to employ and the number of satisfied customers she has completed projects with.

Notably, though, Ross has also remained engaged with members of her community, consistently completing Fresh Coat Cares projects to support families and organizations in need throughout her community.

In recent years, Ross and the Fresh Coat Painters of Marble Falls, Southwest Austin and Hill Country teams have partnered with CC4C, an organization that supports families navigating the challenges of rare and undiagnosed diseases in children; Sharing the Harvest, a Kingsland, Texas, food bank; and, most recently, she and her teams played a role in helping local families recover from the devastating July 4th floods.

“We had the opportunity, through Fresh Coat Cares, to participate in a lot of that recovery effort,” Ross said. “Initially, it was just mucking out homes, which was going in and shoveling the mud out of these homes, which is hard to even fathom. We ended up mucking out several homes, and my team even came back to me and said, ‘Thank you for letting us have this day.’”

Through the process of the recovery effort, Ross and her team connected with others involved in the recovery process and neighbors whose homes were impacted.

Ross recalled a neighbor whose home had been carried by flood waters across the street. As teams were mucking out a home next door, this homeowner returned and placed a “For Rent” sign on the front door.

“This house floated away and was resting against another house, but that was like the heart of the community right then,” she said. “Everyone needed a good laugh, and it was fun to be there. It was sad to see what all these individuals had lost, but we had an opportunity to see the recovery effort all the way through.”

Though they originally planned to focus on mucking out homes in need of recovery, Ross and her team ended up being able to drywall and paint two separate homes, seeing the recovery effort through to completion.

“It was very rewarding,” she said. “I’m appreciative that the Fresh Coat Cares program is around, and I’m appreciative of the community that I live in… that they quickly responded and gave us the opportunity to do this.”

To find out more information on costs to buy this franchise, please visit https://1851franchise.com/freshcoat/info.