Family Work Trips

Anthony Amos is a successful entrepreneur and franchisor. He started his career in the Gold Coast by playing professional rugby. He also started his first franchise HydroDog which cost him $1400 for a hydrobath and he used a trailer that he had in his backyard. He stuck an ad in the local paper and didn't realise how the company would explode. He landed up with 7 trailers but found employing people hard. If it rained they called in sick and they would often not work on a weekend as they were hungover.

Anthony franchised the business ten years later and HydroDog became the fastest growing franchise in Australia.

Anthony says: "Our mobile grooming salons were in the shape of a fibreglass Big Blue Dog, which was instantly recognisable. You may have seen them. We grew to 100 franchises over a four-year period ... and it was a brand-new product. That was record-breaking stuff! After we hit 100 franchises, we turned the business model into a master franchise, where we sold all the states and territories within an 18-month period."

"From there, in a very short period of time we grew the company to nearly 200 franchises. At that point we had hit the ceiling for growth in Australia, so we sold the company and shifted our focus to growing franchises in the much larger territory of America."

Anthony decided to pile his family into an RV to tour the US, grow HydroDog and give back by washing dogs and donating the profit to dog shelters across the US. He and his family did this for 18 months. The Tour was called the Bathe To Save tour.

Anthony adds: "The kids do what's called "School of the Air", so they're home- schooled via Australia, and they do the Australian curriculum. They're 14 hours ahead over there, so they've got to get their times right, and they do all that in between their jobs. They're helping out, and travelling across the country, and it's definitely not easy. I think having this relationship with everybody is a very, very special thing, and in years to come the kids are going to have plenty of amazing stories."

Family and business on the road
One of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in business is to spend every single day with my family. Admittedly, I worked hard to create this opportunity. It hasn't been easy, but for me it's about the reward of being around my kids. Obviously, I would love for the kids to become entrepreneurs, and they're learning things from my wife and me every day about how to be an entrepreneur, and the struggles, and the excitement, and everything that's packaged up in that.

It all goes so fast. They'll be adults in no time, and then they can go off and create their own lives. There's a lot of people stuck in the 9 to 5, and what they don't really appreciate is they might be pro- viding money for the family, but they're missing out on that contact and they're not recognising they could be around their family every day.

We've all become extremely close – you can really mould the kids in a great atmosphere by doing all these things together.

It is so important to me having the family involved in the business – and truly, without the kids we couldn't do this tour. We're an ecosystem: everybody puts in exactly what needs to be done. Everyone's got their own jobs and their own abilities for making things happen, and that's why this tour has been such a great success.