Four years ago, Skip Kelley was featured in INC. as an up-andcoming entrepreneur working out of Newbury, a town north of Boston, Massachusetts. He had just converted his business — Kustom House Co. — into a franchise of Mr. Build International. Mr. Build offered management expertise and marketing clout, and in Kelley's first year with Mr. Build, his sales rose 50 percent. But in 1985, Kelley liquidated his business. He had lost his marriage, his house, and his company car in the process. What went wrong? When Kelley dissolved his business, Mr. Build was operating on projected earnings of $1.2 million. This figure was based on annualizing the dollar volume that Kelley was getting in sales at the time — but it bore little
