Neighborly and Mr. Electric have a very positive past, leading many people to believe it’s a good opportunity. The new private equity owned Neighborly should be avoided at all costs.

There’s very little to like about the corporate Mr. Electric leadership team, and the private equity owned Neighborly corporation that runs it all. Six years ago, this franchisor provided support and a wonderful experience for business owners. However, as private equity has taken everything over, the franchisees have become less important and have become a necessary nuisance to drive top line growth.

The corporate leadership team cares more about driving profits so that they can get their bonuses versus helping the franchisees succeed. When you become a business owner, everything they teach you and push you to do helps drive top line revenue, but they could care less about your profits and the health of your business. Many business owners believe that corporate actually cares about them and is giving them good advice, but the advice they give is often very detrimental to the success of the individual business. If you’re interested in owning and operating a business, I strongly suggest you avoid Neighborly and all of its brands, like Mr. Electric. Find a business or a franchisor that cares about the health of your business. Not just the top line and their profits that ultimately feed a private equity machine. Avoid Neighborly at all costs. They are focused on the health of the private equity ownership, they don’t care about the individual franchisees. Even at the individual business level, they are pushing them to all be bought up by other private equity groups, creating large players that control everything. An individual business owner will suffer and ultimately die, and corporate will not care. It actually will help them because then they will push you to sell your business for pennies on the dollar to one of the larger private equity groups that is buying up individual shops.

The corporate office needs to go back about 10 years. They need to start operating with honesty and integrity and actually caring about the success of the franchisees, instead of solely focusing on what is best for them.