Starting strong: how a new franchise owner started with the right HR foundation

From the ground up: building a business the right way

Andrew Leach didn’t inherit a business. He built one.

He launched AFK Restoration and Renovation LLC as an Ace Handyman Services franchisee in 2025 with a clear mission: to bring clear pricing and reliability for handyman services to homeowners and businesses across the state of Georgia.

Starting a franchise is demanding work. Every decision in those early months carries real weight, and the responsibilities only multiply. Andrew was wearing every hat: owner, operator, recruiter and, when payroll came due, accountant too. He had no corporate HR team to lean on. Each Ace Handyman franchise operates as its own independent business, which meant the responsibility for managing HR and payroll landed squarely on his shoulders.

For a brand-new employer, that is a significant undertaking, and it is precisely the stage when early gaps can become costly problems.

Turning early HR complexity into a foundation for growth

In the earliest days, before the right systems were in place, paying his team was a constant challenge.

“Before Insperity, there was a few payroll periods where I had to use Venmo or Zelle to pay my employees,” Andrew recalls. “And that was a headache. I was sitting there with spreadsheets trying to figure it all out, and it was kind of a nightmare.”

Payroll was only part of the picture. As a first-time employer, Andrew was navigating a long list of unknowns at once. “Hiring is always an issue, just like getting all the correct documentation, like legal stuff taken care of and having that all in a centralized place,” he says. “Not to mention payroll.”

The problem wasn’t a lack of effort. It was a lack of infrastructure. He had no single, reliable place to manage employee documentation, no streamlined process for paying people on time and no dedicated resource to help him navigate the HR-related challenges that often catch new business owners off guard. And the challenges never let up.

Andrew recognized something important early on: his time was his most valuable asset, and administrative work was steadily consuming it. “I brought in outside help because I needed it,” he says. “I just didn’t have the time to devote to what I was doing as far as payroll goes.”

With a growing team, now seven employees, the stakes only increased. As Andrew puts it: “When you’re trying to figure out a million different things when you’re opening your own business, payroll is one of the last things you want to spend a bunch of time on. You want it to be quick, easy, clean and onto the next thing. You’ve got to be worried about growing your business. You shouldn’t be worried about how your employees are going to get paid.”

Choosing to build it right from day one

Many business owners delay HR decisions until a problem demands their attention. Andrew addressed it before he hired his first employee.

That proactive mindset shaped everything that followed. Rather than defaulting to a bare-bones payroll tool or assembling a patchwork of systems, he made a deliberate choice to establish his HR foundation on solid ground. When a trusted contact recommended Insperity, he took the suggestion seriously. “Insperity was recommended to me, which was the main reason why I chose it,” he says.

A recommendation, however, only opens the door. What moved Andrew forward was the experience of working with people who made a complex decision feel manageable. “I spoke with a couple different people. Really liked the people I met. They made it easy to understand. They made me feel like I was not going to have any issues with Insperity, and that has for the vast majority been the case.”

For a first-time employer evaluating his options, that early confidence carried real weight. He wasn’t simply selecting software. He was choosing a long-term resource for his business.

A partnership built on technology and service

The Insperity HRCore™ solution is designed for exactly this kind of business owner: a leader who wants control and flexibility without the burden of managing every detail alone. It combines a comprehensive human capital management platform with guided onboarding, responsive service and clear pricing. For Andrew, those pillars came together to replace the uncertainty of his early days.

The first thing he noticed was how approachable the technology was. Rather than facing a steep learning curve, he found a system that was straightforward to navigate. “It’s a pretty simple, clean system to get to know and to understand and to execute tasks related to HR and payroll,” he says. “It’s very intuitive.” With payroll, employee documentation and HR tasks unified in one place, Andrew finally had the centralized system for his people operations that he had been missing. No more spreadsheets. No more payment-app workarounds. Instead, a clear, reliable platform he could trust.

The true measure of any working relationship emerges when something goes wrong. For Andrew, that moment arrived as a payroll entry error that could have had serious consequences. “I had a couple different pay periods where things were incorrectly entered by my office manager on accident, and there was going to be like $60,000 drawn out of my account for one pay period, which is a lot more than it was supposed to be,” he explains. The mistake amounted to someone being paid roughly 1,700 hours of work in a single week.

This is where responsive service support proved its value. “Insperity was able to help me put a stop to that payment, fix everything that we needed to do, and then still get payroll out on time to be in my employees’ bank accounts by Friday morning,” Andrew says. “They helped me out very, very much with that. It would’ve been not a good thing.” A responsive service team identified the issue, resolved it and still delivered on-time pay, turning a potential setback into a non-event.

The value was also easy to plan around. For a budget-conscious franchise owner, costs matter. “It’s reasonably priced,” Andrew says, noting that strong customer service and the platform itself were the main reasons he would recommend it.

Results that free him to focus on growth

The before-and-after for Andrew’s business is striking. Where payroll once meant late-night spreadsheets and improvised payment apps, it now runs cleanly and on time. Where HR-related questions once felt difficult to navigate, he has a knowledgeable team in his corner.

That shift is the outcome Andrew values most. “After getting a clear plan with Insperity, I was able to take my focus off things that were stopping me from focusing on the things that I needed to focus on to grow the business,” he says. “It opened up my ability to focus on the things that I need to focus on to make more money.”

For a new employer, that is the entire point. The administrative tasks that once required more manual follow-up became more organized and easier for Andrew’s team to track, freeing him to do the work only he can do: serving customers, leading his team and expanding his footprint across Georgia. His closing assessment is brief and direct: “Insperity’s done a great job.”

The road ahead: growing on solid ground

With a clean payroll process, intuitive technology and a responsive team behind him, Andrew has the foundation to keep building. The early decision to establish HR the right way has already paid off, and the relationship is positioned to scale right alongside his business.

For new franchise owners navigating the pressures of a start-up, Andrew’s story offers a clear takeaway: establishing HR from the start isn’t a luxury. It is the foundation everything else is built on, and having the right resource in your corner from day one makes all the difference.

If you’re launching your first location or simply ready to take some of the administrative weight off your plate, see what it looks like to manage your workforce your way. Schedule a complimentary consultation with an Insperity HRCore Business Solution Advisor, and let’s explore how we can support your next chapter of growth.