Franchises Give Veterans A Break

USA Today:

On a typical weekday, Jason Dethier puts his 5-year-old daughter on the school bus and watches his 2 younger children at home, while his wife, Marka, leads fitness classes for bouncing toddlers at the Rolly Pollies gym franchise they opened three months ago.

At lunchtime, they switch roles.

Their lives might have taken a different course if not for a magazine story they ran across last summer when they were interviewing for corporate jobs ahead of their discharges from the Air Force. The story was about 2 Navy veterans who had left corporate life to start Rolly Pollies, a young company that was franchising gymnasiums and activity centers for young children.

John Mann and Joseph Dondero had started the first Rolly Pollies in Severna Park, Md., in 2002 and were looking for entrepreneurs to take their concept to other communities.

‘It looked like fun,’ Marka Dethier says. ‘We joked about how funny it would be if we did this.’ Read on…