Tracey Fudge has a full-time career in Marketing Operations. She also runs Atlanta’s most trusted lice removal service. And yes, she has been doing both at the same time for over a decade.
When Tracey first told people she was buying into a lice removal franchise to operate alongside her corporate career, the reactions ranged from confused to concerned. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she recalls. “They could not understand why someone with a career in marketing and IT would want anything to do with lice.”
But she had spotted something her skeptics had not: a wide-open market gap in a category nobody else wanted to touch. Head lice infestations affect millions of American families every year, and the experience of dealing with them — stressful, stigmatized, and largely unsupported by professional services — was universally terrible. Families were left to navigate a pharmacy aisle full of products that frequently failed them, with no professional, convenient alternative in sight. In metro Atlanta, that gap was glaring.
So she acquired the Atlanta territory, built out the operation, and got to work — all while maintaining her full-time Marketing Operations career. The dual path was not easy, but it turned out to be uniquely powerful. Her professional background gave her something most franchise operators lack: deep expertise in branding, customer experience, and market positioning. While other service businesses were invisible online and inconsistent in their messaging, Lice Happens GA was being built like a real brand from day one.
The results speak for themselves. Lice Happens GA now holds the #1 ranking on Yelp for lice services in Atlanta, carries a BBB A+ accreditation, and has served more than 10,000 Atlanta-area families over the course of its operation. It is the kind of growth that typically requires a founder’s full attention — which makes Fudge’s achievement running it as a side business all the more remarkable.
The service model itself was designed around the customer’s reality. Rather than requiring families to travel to a clinic or salon — adding logistics and public visibility to an already embarrassing situation — Lice Happens GA operates entirely in-home. Technicians come directly to the family, handle the treatment professionally and discreetly, and leave with the problem resolved. Every appointment includes a professional lice care package, giving households the tools to stay clear long after the technician has gone.
The business now covers 16 metro Atlanta communities including Alpharetta, Buckhead, Decatur, Johns Creek, Marietta, Roswell, Sandy Springs, and more. That geographic reach was built without a physical storefront — a mobile model that scales efficiently and keeps the focus squarely on serving families where they are, not where it is convenient for the business.
For Tracey, the story is less about lice and more about recognizing an opportunity that everyone else was too uncomfortable to see. “The stigma around lice is exactly what created the gap,” she says. “Nobody wanted to build a professional service around it. That was the whole point.”
As a female small business owner who built a thriving brand in one of the most overlooked service categories in Atlanta — without stepping away from her corporate career — Tracey Fudge has made a compelling case that the best opportunities are often hiding in plain sight, right where nobody else is looking.
