How VP of House Doctors & The Grout Medic Paul Baluch is Establishing Both Brands as Clear Market Leaders

Premium Service Brands, the multi-brand home services franchisor, has been establishing itself as a key player in the home services and franchising industry over the past few years. Last year, the brand acquired several new brands, including handyman franchise House Doctors and tile and grout cleaning and restoration franchise The Grout Medic. Now, franchising industry veteran Paul Baluch has joined the PSB team as the vice president of both brands to help spearhead growth. 

Baluch has been in franchising and home services for 15 years, starting off as a franchisee of a painting business in western Canada. After five years, he moved on to a corporate role with the same brand and began coaching franchisees and growing the overall system. In 2016, he took on a role with O2E Brands, the multi-brand franchisor behind 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Shack Shine and Wow 1 Day Painting. Baluch led growth for Shack Shine, expanding the exterior home services concept from zero to 80 franchise units in just six years.

In January 2022, Baluch was introduced to Premium Service Brands through a coworker who knew CEO Paul Flick. “I met Paul, and we hit it off right away,” he said. “We’re both from Canada, and I actually had the privilege of working with one of his mentors a long time ago in Vancouver. At first, I was just impressed with what Paul was doing, and I thought PSB was an amazing idea. But after we had a couple of meetings together, it was clear that our visions really aligned and it was a journey I wanted to be a part of.” 

A few months later, Baluch officially joined the Premium Service Brands team as the vice president of House Doctors. In this role, Baluch says his goal is all about working with each department — sales, operations and marketing — to execute a day-to-day strategy that will help franchise owners scale properly. 

“We acquired House Doctors last year, and while it's a great brand, it was clear that it wasn’t getting the attention it deserved,” said Baluch. “There were several areas of the business that needed to be updated. For example, we needed more structure, which required putting a strategy and a vision in place. If we don’t know where we are going, how can we get there? We came up with a three year vision in terms of growth, and that dictated our strategy over the past few months.” 

Baluch says that strategy is divided into three parts: people, franchisees and customers. “The people side is focusing on expanding our footprint in North America to become a market leader,” he said. “The customer side is about making the customer experience as positive as possible so they come back to us time and time again. The franchisee side is about optimizing our operational processes to make it easy for franchisees to scale their businesses and profitability.” 

Within those three areas, Baluch says the team has implemented several new projects over the past few months, including a full website redesign, a peer-to-peer chat, a revamped pricing model for customers, better training resources and guides for franchisees, new packages for estimating, new franchisee coaches and much more.

More than ever, House Doctors provides franchisees with a clear recipe for growth in the remodeling, repair, replacement and home improvement space. Franchisees can tap into multiple revenue streams, in-depth support and training, a streamlined business model and low start-up costs to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. 

After seeing how much of a difference these systems and processes can make, Baluch is now turning his attention to The Grout Medic as the brand’s vice president. He says his goal is to add the same organization, initiative, vision and infrastructure to better position franchisees for growth in the tile and grout cleaning and restoration market.

In the year since the acquisitions, House Doctors and The Grout Medic have added dozens of new franchisees, Baluch says, and existing owners are already seeing the benefits of becoming part of the PSB system.

Now, Baluch says he has no plans of slowing down. His vision is for House Doctors to become a clear market leader in the handyman and home improvement space and for The Grout Medic to do the same in the tile cleaning space. By 2025, Baluch says his goal is to grow House Doctors to 120 units and $70 million in revenue and The Grout Medic to 100 units and $60 million in revenue.

“Premium Service Brands is really at the beginning of something amazing,” said Baluch. “Together, we are building something bigger and better than we ever could alone. Home services is a booming but fragmented industry in North America, and PSB takes these amazing brands and brings them under one roof to consolidate our efforts and bring our vision to life. When people think of handyman services, painting services, maid services, we want them to think of Premium Service Brands. We own the whole customer experience so we can be that number-one provider. That vision is really what sold me originally, and the journey is what makes me most excited looking ahead.”

More on franchising opportunities at: https://www.premiumservicebrands.com/.