Gotcha Covered : Karena Durnell Chose Gotcha Covered for Quality of Life and Support
How to use this video
This video features insights from a current franchisee sharing their experience with the Gotcha Covered franchise. As you watch, listen for details about daily involvement, support, and challenges as well as successes. If this perspective resonates, the next step is to request more information and speak directly with the franchisor.
About This Video
Hear Gotcha Covered franchisee Karena Durnell of Burlington, Ontario, walk through her two-and-a-half-year journey from corporate retail at TJ Maxx into Gotcha Covered ownership—driven by quality-of-life priorities, anchored by a structured franchise evaluation, and supported by corporate and vendor partners she trusts. Durnell's prior career involved long hours and frequent travel. As she got older, the airline schedule that worked in her younger years became misaligned with the life she wanted—lunches with girlfriends, more presence at home, control over her own days. The conviction crystallized: own her own business and control her own destiny. She works with a franchise broker, runs structured testing, and evaluates four franchises in parallel. Gotcha Covered consistently ranks first across each weekly evaluation pass—the people on the corporate side and the conviction that they would actually be there to support her are what differentiate the brand from the alternatives. The cost model also drove the decision. Gotcha Covered required no inventory and no brick-and-mortar footprint—she could run the business on her own from a home base, which kept startup capital and operating overhead low. The income upside was open-ended, and Durnell appreciated that her earnings would land in her pocket rather than flow upstream to corporate management. On the operational side, Durnell emphasizes that she knew nothing about window coverings before joining the franchise—except that she had shutters in her own home. The technical aspects are easy to learn; the more important skill is walking into a customer's home, building rapport, and earning the sale through relationship rather than pushy product pitching. Customers tell her they chose her even at higher price points because they wanted to work with her specifically. This watch page surfaces the career-change-and-quality-of-life case for Gotcha Covered prospects evaluating window-treatment franchise ownership.