When Jeff Hall took over a struggling Midas location in 2007, the business was generating about $650,000 in annual sales. Within his first year, Hall had grown that figure to $1 million. Nearly two decades later, he operates six Midas locations in Eastern Ontario generating approximately $18 million in annual revenue.

That growth has required Hall to evolve alongside the business—from changing the people and processes at his first location to learning how to relinquish control, empower managers and build systems that can be replicated across multiple stores. Training and role-playing have remained central to his approach, while newer technology, including AI-powered tools for handling incoming calls, has helped his operation scale without significantly expanding its back-office staff.

Hall’s approach to growth and leadership will be recognized Sept. 14-16, when the International Franchise Association names him a 2026 Franchisee of the Year at the IFA26 Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes franchise owners for excellence in areas including entrepreneurship, community outreach, workforce development and service to others.

We spoke with Hall about the lessons he’s learned scaling from one location to six, developing employees, maintaining culture across multiple stores and knowing when it’s time to take the next step.

RW: You took over a struggling Midas location in 2007. What were the first things you changed that helped take the business from $650,000 to $1 million in sales?

Jeff Hall: The easy answer is that we changed people. Yes, we also created a process and learned to promote the business through direct mail, radio, and TV. But we had the right people and really focused on lots of training and role playing to ensure that our customer service experience was best in class.

RW: Today, you operate six locations with about $18 million in annual revenue. What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned about growing from one shop to multiple locations?

Hall: The biggest challenge for me is to give up control. With two large shops, I wanted to touch absolutely everything in the business. I liked to always know what was going on. But in order to scale, I had to empower my managers by giving them the autonomy to make their own decisions, good or bad.

We also learned how to integrate AI technology into our back office to assist with incoming calls. AI gave us the capability to scale to six shops without having to add a bunch of people to our back office. That was key.

RW: What systems or processes have been most important to maintaining consistency across six locations?

Hall: The biggest thing we’ve done is invest back into our people through training, role playing, and providing vehicles for our staff to practice their skills.

We’ve also adopted a sports team mentality culture, where we are winning as a team, no matter which location you work on. When we’re all taking care of a customer, we’re winning that customer, winning the day, and winning the month.

A lot of shops, especially with multi-unit owners, hire someone and let them practice on the customer. We don’t do that. We have a very strict onboarding and training process before a new staff member ever gets to talk to a customer. They’re thoroughly trained and ready to go when they are finally able to actually take care of a customer.

RW: How has your approach to leadership changed as the business has grown?

Hall: As the business has grown, my approach to leadership has become much more intentional and proactive. When we had one or two stores, we could be more reactive and sometimes fly by the seat of our pants. But as we’ve grown to six locations, we’ve had to create a clear strategy for scaling both the business and our culture.

Today, there’s much more structure and discipline behind how we lead. We have monthly sales meetings, Tuesday morning role-play calls, and a deliberate approach to keeping our teams connected and aligned. We also plan much further ahead, architecting the entire year three or four months before it begins and looking two or three quarters ahead at promotions, priorities, and opportunities.

At the center of that strategy is making sure our people, processes, promotions, and profits are all working together. There has to be synergy between those four areas. We still remain flexible and make adjustments when the marketplace changes, but overall, our leadership has evolved from reacting to what’s happening today to building a thoughtful plan for where we want to go and also having the discipline to execute it.

RW: What have you learned about hiring and developing the people you need to support that growth?

Hall: Our hiring and training process comes down to having vehicles our team can practice on. Our best people are people that we grew from the ground up. We have had some success attracting other people from other brands, but some have come with bad habits.  

At this point, it used to take us 6 to 18 months to develop what I call a “hammer” or someone with really good customer service and sales skills. Now, we have it down to a science. It takes us about 6 weeks.

RW: You’ve made community involvement a significant part of your business. Why is that important to you, and what has it meant for your stores?

Hall: Honestly, I just feel so blessed to be where we are today and I’ve had so many good people that have helped us get where we are so for me giving it back is huge. The economy in Canada, with the tariffs has hit people hard and we have a lot of means to help. Midas’s Project Spark program has been an awesome fit for us, allowing us to provide vehicles for people that really need them.

I also have four children, so giving back to kids’ sports is a soft spot in my heart. I was always taught, and also taught my kids, to always do the right thing. Giving back to the community is the right thing to do, and it feels good.

RW: What’s one mistake you made while growing the business that you would caution other shop owners against?

Hall: One mistake I made was waiting too long to scale because I overthought it and doubted whether I could do what other successful multi-shop owners were doing. I looked at people with six, 10, or even 20 locations and thought they were unicorns and that somehow they had something I didn’t.

But what I’ve learned is that scaling is possible when you shift your focus from working in your business to working on your business. Looking back, I probably should have taken more calculated risks earlier. I opened my first shop in 2007, but it took me eight years to open my second location, and another six years to open our third. Once we opened that third shop, though, something changed. We gained confidence and started believing in our ability to grow.

So, my caution to other shop owners would be don’t let fear or overthinking hold you back from taking the next step. Growth doesn’t happen overnight, and you still need a solid plan, but if you have a strong business model and the right people and processes in place, don’t underestimate what you’re capable of building. If I knew then what I know now, I would have started scaling sooner.

RW: For an owner who’s running one successful location and considering a second, what should they figure out before they make that leap?

Hall: They need to make sure they have duplicatable systems, a training plan, and a plan to make sure their culture stays intact from store one to store two. This all comes from the right people, the right process, and then consistent promotion.