In some ways, Pam Bader was an early bloomer. She married and had a family at a young age. Having dated a boy for a number of months, they were encouraged to marry by both sets of parents when they were just 16. “My parents were petrified of unmarried mothers,” says Bader. “There’s no stigma now, but years ago that was a mortal sin.”
Though she was young, Bader took her vows seriously. “I did think it was for life and that it would be all wonderful. It really wasn’t, but at the time I was very happy with what I was doing,” she recalls.”
From 16 until she was 18, Bader had worked as a nanny. After taking some time out to bear the children – she had two in quick succession – she had a plethora of jobs that fitted around childcare. “When you were working back then you had to have jobs that worked around the childcare, there was no such thing as flexible working. So we’d do all sorts of things to earn money: like dishing up school meals, working in hotels, catering. And when the summer holidays came, we’d have to give up work because somebody had to look after the kids.”
Bader’s career played second fiddle to family life until her mid-30s when she began to think again about how she might earn a crust. “When I got to 35 or 36 my children were grown and opportunities began to come my way. Life is like this: opportunities open up for you and you have to move into them. I started off running a restaurant for somebody else, I had my own boutique and my second husband had a building company so I got involved in admin and running a small company,” she says. “It was all about life qualifications.””
But it was only after her second marriage ended that there was a substantive upswing in Bader’s fortunes. “I was on my own and a mutual friend said, ‘I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet’, and introduced me to a guy called Malcolm Tall, who’d just purchased the master franchise licence for Molly Maid, which provides a cleaning service, in the UK.”
As they embarked upon a romantic relationship, straight off the bat, Tall asked Bader if she’d like to run the franchise that he’d purchased in 1983. “I got involved when he’d had the pilot scheme running for a while. He just said: ‘would you be interested in part-time running this small company I’ve just bought?’ I didn’t have a clue about franchising at that point but I looked at Molly Maid and I said, ‘that sounds lovely’.” Bader’s formative months were spent absorbing all she could about the franchising industry – as well as the company itself – and she headed to Molly Maid HQ in Canada to train.”
Once she felt she was fully up to speed, the search for franchisees began in earnest. In those days, the 1980s, the business was marketed as a part-time business opportunity and a second income earner that could fit around taking care of a family. As a result, many of the first franchisees were women. “I’m still friends with our first franchisee. It was a lady called Pat Bryant from Essex who worked as a franchise owner for ten years and then came to work here as a business advisor for ten years. In franchising you build friendships with franchise owners you’ve known for many years.””
Bader said that she frequently had to persuade women that they were up to the job. “I would meet women and they’d say to me: ‘do you really think I can do this? I’m only a housewife.’ And I’d say to them, ‘only a housewife? You’ve brought up kids, run a home, managed money. Of course you can run this franchise.'”
But women with fundamental confidence issues were often reassured by a tried-and-tested franchise model, says Bader. “Molly Maid is a business format franchise: you follow the format, listen to the advice and you’ll be successful. That’s the way it operates – our franchise owners will tell you that.”
