Over the past 25 years, highly successful serial entrepreneur Carlton Scott Andrew founded and/or owned companies spanning multiple industries, including beverage manufacturing and wholesale, real estate development, multi-model franchising, construction, advertising, rodeo production, mass media, consulting, and internet marketing & distribution in retail and B2B.
In 2013, recognizing a need for disruptive distribution and retail changes in the 100 billion-dollar U.S. home furnishings industry, he brazenly established Retail Service Systems (RSS), serving as its President and CEO. Along with the company’s COO, Jerry Williams, and the entire passionate RSS team, he dramatically changed how franchise models scale by helping local business owners compete with the big regional and national power players. This endeavor not only led to RSS becoming what Inc. magazine has ranked and recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America—with a compounded annual growth rate of 816% in their 2019 edition—but it has trained and empowered hundreds of Rugged Entrepreneurs in the process. In that same year, Andrew and the RSS team had the vision to launch the franchise bioPURE Services in the microbial germ fighting space ahead of the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic.
Through vision, strategic asset acquisitions, applying advanced technology in operational and marketing systems, and developing proprietary methodologies, RSS has now positioned itself as a franchise market leader in services, specialized distribution, and retailing by building a national network of corporate-owned, independently licensed, and franchised locations in multiple industries.
Today, Andrew’s and RSS’s legacy of starting businesses in multiple countries continues with licensed and franchised businesses in 47 states, as well as with state-of the-art headquarters, customer service, and national training centers in Columbus, Ohio; Jacksonville, Florida; and Johnson City, Tennessee.
As a perennial student both of human nature and American free enterprise, Andrew has a lot to share about the attributes every entrepreneur needs to develop as they build their business, whether it is one they create from scratch or one they are launching from an established model. The Rugged Entrepreneur offers readers a blueprint for how to lay a sturdy foundation upon which to build that business. It also offers valuable insight into how to disrupt the marketplace with your most viable ideas.
As you read what is both a business memoir and business handbook, you will see how Andrew picked himself up from the inevitable early career stumbles and went on to create what is unquestionably an example of the great American Dream. Despite his inordinate hard work you will love and want to emulate the unique way he has established a wonderful work-life balance too!
