Clintar Owner Spotlight: Brent Giles

Check out our latest Clintar Owner Spotlight video featuring Brent Giles, co-owner of Clintar Hamilton and Niagara Region!

Hear firsthand how his unique entrepreneurial journey has led him to success, and how he uses collaboration with other franchise owners to stay successful.

Please introduce yourself and the market/ territory you serve

My name is Brent Giles, I’m the co-owner of Clintar Hamilton and Niagara Region.

My story’s a little unique probably than most franchisees. I started out in the landscape and turf grass industry years ago. I owned a residential landscape and snow removal company, subsequently sold it, and I actually spent a number of years at Clint corporate head office. So that’s how I kind of got involved with Clintar initially. I subsequently left there and pursued a couple other industry startups and ended up coming back and getting involved at a franchisee level in the last year.

What are some benefits that most people don’t know about Clintar?

I think the biggest thing is being a national organization. I think that Clintar being a national brand that spans across Canada a lot of people are unaware of that, I believe. The collaboration that we have with a number of different owners, province to province across the across the country for me is hugely important to be able to pick brains and have meetings and discuss direction. So I think that collaboration piece is huge and a lot of people probably don’t really realize what’s going on behind the scenes with those 20 or 25 owners cross Canada.

What do you find most satisfying about being a business owner?

I think I just touched on that a second ago. I think that collaboration with other franchise owners, I think that’s a huge thing for us. I mean, we’re only as good as the people around us, we definitely lean on each other and I think that’s unique to this industry. I think there’s a lot of landscape and snow companies across Canada especially here in Ontario. We don’t have the luxury of, of calling up our competition to pick brains and talk about pricing and clients. We have the opportunity to do that with our franchise system and be able to utilize that network for the better of all of us.

You can’t do it alone. What can you tell us about the people you work with?

We’ve grown substantially in the last couple of years. Our staff has expanded dramatically. We hire all sorts of people. We’re in both Hamilton and in the Niagara markets we’re in university towns, we do draw a lot of students, so we pride ourselves on being able to employ students for various parts of the year when they’re available. We do have a lot of university kids, we also have a number of retirees, ex construction workers, ex business owners within the industry. We’re able to attract all sorts of demographics in our business, we’ve got a nice, well-rounded team, I think and you’re only as good as the people around you.

What are your immediate goals over the next 2 years?

We’ve been active in Hamilton, this is our seventh year. My partner Todd will talk more about that, but we recently just purchased the rights to the Niagara franchise as well. Two to five year growth and further, we want to continue to, to grow that market. We’ve already seen a, a huge influx in sales and we’re going to of course over the next two years look to grow that market substantially. For us, that’s the main focus. Well, obviously continuing to, to grow our, our existing Hamilton market. We have a large footprint and you know, the next two years are gonna be crazy busy, so we’re looking forward to it. It’s just all about expansion and growing revenues in those areas.

Tell us about your family outside of Clintar.

Life for Brent outside of Clintar can be chaotic at times. I have three boys all under 15, hockey & basketball kind of consume our life in the wintertime. Summertime, same thing. Camping, outdoors, hunting, fishing, all the things that I’ve grown to love. And of course my kids are now involved with all those things too. So my wife and I are busy constantly year round with keeping these three boys working and fed and playing and all sorts of stuff.