For our Top CEOs in Franchising feature in the November/December issue, we identified notable leaders who are guiding their brands through periods of growth, change and, of course, challenges. Check out the complete lineup.
Since 2022, Empower Brands CEO Scott Zide has helped double the company’s portfolio to 10 brands.
Empower Brands has made a name for itself in home services since 2022, growing its portfolio to 10 brands including Jan-Pro, Conserva Irrigation and Superior Fence & Rail.
CEO Scott Zide has been there for all of it, making moves in the category for a quarter century and counting.
A 23-year-old Zide began his career as a sub sandwich shop franchisee alongside his friend in their hometown of St. Louis. Years later, he believes the experience taught him the fundamentals of franchising.
“I really learned a lot about owning your own business, building a business, growing a business. But most important in that first experience was how important the franchisee-franchisor relationship was,” Zide said. “My first experience as a franchisee was a very positive one and a very successful one, which is really why I stayed in the franchise space throughout my whole career.”
Zide became a multi-brand franchisee in 2000 with Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, where the founder asked him to take a support consultant and coaching role—the company’s first. He spent the next few years working his way up in the category: co-founding pest control concept Mosquito Squad in 2004, becoming Outdoor Lighting Perspectives’ president a year later and co-founding multi-brand platform Outdoor Living Brands in 2009.
After OLB merged with Lynx Franchising in 2021, Zide was appointed CEO in 2022 and played an integral role in the rebrand to Empower Brands.
“The word ‘empower’ was important to us,” said Zide, “because it really stands for empowering our franchisees to reach the goals they have in their life and empowering our team here at the franchisor to reach the goals they have in their career.”
Over the last four years, Zide has been guided by the company’s “north star”: strong unit-level economics and franchisee profitability.
This focus is accompanied by a discipline to scale appropriately. As CEO, Zide has been responsible for doubling the company’s portfolio from five brands in 2022 to 10.
“We’ve learned and we’ve stayed true to who we are even as we’ve scaled and grown our mission, the purpose, why we’re here and why we exist. We have not wavered from that,” he said. “Even as we’re much larger in size, we truly have stayed true to who we are.”
The strategy has paid off for Empower. Franchise Times Top 400 data showed commercial cleaner Jan-Pro, the group’s largest brand, did $705.6 million in sales last year, up 10 percent. Superior Fence & Rail made double-digit strides in sales and unit growth for 2024. The fence installation concept raked in $239 million in sales, a 14.1 percent increase, to go along with a net gain of 43 units, up 17.8 percent. The smaller Koala Insulation, which Empower bought in 2023, and Conserva Irrigation brands likewise reported strong growth.
Key to driving success across the portfolio, said Zide, are two things: technology investments and adapting to an evolving marketing landscape.
The company’s new data warehouse stores information across all its brands, providing better insight for analysis and informed decision making. To stay ahead of competition, technology automation is used to improve speed of response, proposal and service times across the portfolio.
On the marketing side, Empower appointed Felicia Reeves as chief marketing officer in early 2025, which Zide said has been one of multiple strategic hires to upskill the marketing team.
“As the consumers’ wants and needs change, we have to evolve with that,” he said. “There’s a lot of work being done here to continue to improve the customer experience through technology and grassroots efforts.”
Adaptability has been crucial in handling the generational changes of homeowners. Millennials have become a larger segment of Empower’s customer base, said Zide, who finds their needs and wants vastly differ from those of baby boomers.
Zide has a clear vision of where he wants to take the company over the next five years, he said. Growing the portfolio and its franchise system becomes attainable by preserving the company culture and developing leaders within the Empower network.
Zide shared his pride in looking back to look ahead, pulling from his franchise experiences all those years ago to drive the next phase of Empower’s growth and help franchisees achieve their goals—the most gratifying aspect of being CEO.
“I can always reflect back and, at the very least, put the franchisee hat back on. That allows me to have an understanding of what franchisees go through every day,” he said. “It allows me to have empathy because this is not easy. It’s very hard to start a business and grow … so being able to reflect back on the experiences I’ve had as a franchisee has served me incredibly well in this role because the relationship I have with our franchisees is incredibly strong.”