#FRANCHISESTARS
From Hospitality To Home Services, Memories Of His Father Helped Start A New Career With Pillar To Post Home Inspectors ®
by Rhonda Sanderson, CEO, Sanderson & Associates
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#FranchiseStars Rhonda Sanderson is a franchise expert who has owned and operated Sanderson & Associates and Sanderson PR, both specializing in, traditional, social media and crisis PR in the franchise space since 1986. She has authored many articles, helped grow numerous franchise chains and is considered one of the Top 30 Small Business Influencers (Fit Business) in the U.S. Find her at Rhonda@sandersonpr. com or on LinkedIn where she is the author of Franchise Stars at https://www.linkedin. com/in/rhondasanderson-a6b658/
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hoosing home inspection as a new career, look at these industry facts: The U.S. building inspector industry, measured by revenue, is estimated to have a market size of $4.9 billion by end of this year, according to global research firm IBISWorld. Launching operations in October, the 43-year-old Kevin Held’s road to becoming a small-business owner demonstrates that life isn’t lived on a straight continuum, but instead a fluid, everchanging one that takes us on paths unimagined. Like many before him, Held originally moved to Los Angeles to purse an acting career, which led him to working in the hospitality and foodservice industries to make ends meet. He had been the bar manager at a well-known fine-dining restaurant in Malibu when the pandemic hit. “The pandemic affected us all. For my part, my foodservice career, which had always been about being of service and providing a cheerful experience, became a string of crisis-management tasks,” Held said. “The job became unrecognizable to me, such
DECEMBER 2022 | WWW.FRANCHISEJOURNAL.COM
that I could no longer see the larger purpose in it for me.” As a result, Held left the foodservice industry in summer 2020 and became a FedEx driver. The change afforded him opportunities that were virtually impossible when he was in the restaurant business, such as being able to spend holidays and important events with his husband and their families and friends. But there was still something missing for Held. “At the end of the day it was a functionary job where you pick up a box, move it somewhere else and put it down again. While I was very happy to be able to enjoy my personal time more, the question of a larger purpose still nagged at me,” Held said. Whether fate or not, Held’s father had been a contractor and when Held was growing up in Texas, he would visit his father in Washington State on summer vacations and help him build houses. His father had even bought a run-down, old cabin on a river there, one that he planned to renovate and eventually retire to. “His happiest moments were fishing off the deck there,” Held said of his father.