Brandon Sizemore on Leaving Accounting and Building Mint Pest Control to $7M

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. My name is Dan Leibrandt, and today I'm with Brandon Sizemore, who is the owner of Mint Pest Control. Brandon has one of the most unique backgrounds in the pest control industry. He's a licensed CPA who spent 12 years in accounting before making the jump into pest control. And he's since built Mint Pest Control into a $7 million company with four locations and growing fast using strategies like door to door, inside sales, SEO, and more. Today we're going to talk about Brandon's journey from accounting to pest control, how he scaled Mint to where it is today, the systems and financial principles behind the growth, and some of the biggest lessons he's learned along the way. Now, without further ado, Brandon, welcome to the show.

00:46 Brandon Sizemore

Hey, thanks Dan for having me.

00:46 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So where I wanna start is how did you get into pest control and how did you make the jump from being in accounting?

00:56 Brandon Sizemore

Well, I'll give you the short story. I went into more detail when I was talking with one of your colleagues and partners here, Jonas, a few weeks ago. But I wasn't really familiar with pest control or door to door until I first went to college and I had heard of people who sold door to door. And at the time that I was in college and in school, pest control wasn't like the most cool thing to sell. At that time as alarms was the forefront and all my friends were selling alarms. And so I tried that for three weeks, late in the summer, little training, little little effort and energy, and just got my teeth kicked in. And so I figured that door to door sales was not for me. And so instead I just committed all my time and effort into my accounting program. The a program that I was a part of was a pretty rigorous one. It's fairly prestigious within the accounting world. The school I went to is usually ranked in the top one or two or three. And so it just took all energy and effort to put my energy in that basket. In fact, I remember going to school and actually making fun of people who who did door to door and also, who who would start their own pest control company. These are the groups in the circles that I ran into. And looking back, I wish I had done things a little differently, but I still value my career. And so I was going to school in Utah. Eventually, my wife and I we moved to Arizona and it wasn't the first time it was the kind of the first time that we were introduced to service based businesses. Prior to my experience there, anything related to service based businesses like pool companies or cleaning ladies or cleaning services, pest control services, landscaping. All of those things were handled by myself growing up. We didn't we didn't have a lot of money. And so it wasn't until I lived there and I realized, man, this is awesome. You can you can take the spirit of true capitalism and exchange money for services, and they can take a lot of effort, a lot of things off your plate. And it wasn't until we did that for a while.

03:21 Brandon Sizemore

That we also realized there were some good and bad. And part of the bad was that there were certain deficiencies with some of the service providers that we had hired. For example, guys just not calling you back, poor communication, little response rate, things that would go wrong on the property that they weren't communicating to you. Just things like that, right? And it felt like as a consumer that you were almost unappreciated as though hey, do do you really want my business? Do you really care about me and my home as much as I do? And so it felt like there was a gap in that that world. And so I was hoping to get out of accounting at the time. I had worked, anybody that's familiar, they y they know that's long hours, right? There were times I would I would go into the office at seven in the morning. I would get home at eleven PM. I had a few nights where I slept under a desk. And work 36 hour shifts. My wife would call me at six in the morning and I'm, getting a thirty minute cat nap just before the next day. And there were some long seasons. Most of the time I wasn't able to even, make it to dinner with my kids and my family. And so I was looking for an escape plan. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I was starting to see hey, I'm not really going to ever do anything if I don't take some action. And I kinda shared this an emotional experience with Jonas, but there was a time I was reading a Grant Cardone book and remember sitting in my car just before I was about to get into work and I'd just been listening to this and I just remember thinking to myself, man, nobody's gonna come rescue me. Nobody's gonna come save me. And in order for me to change my circumstance, change my situation, I knew that I had to take some action.

05:21 Brandon Sizemore

And so I had some friends that were in the pool company pool business. I explored that for a little bit and just settled on like I had a few friends that did pest control. I reached out to them, asked them, if they would be interested in a partnership, and got rejected a f a few times. And it wasn't until my business partner today I messaged him on Facebook. At first, he wasn't interested and convinced him just with.

05:47 Brandon Sizemore

With perseverance and effort to just set sit him down and the rest is history, right? So honestly, I valued my career, I valued the things that I was doing. And I really appreciated the people I worked with particularly. But making this jump was a huge sacrifice. I even, at the time I had some equity in my home. I just took it all out. Got a line of credit and said, I'm gonna do this the right way. I tried other things before Amazon FBA. I tried rental properties. I tried all these little side hustles and they just never seemed to do too well. And I wouldn't call them exactly failures, but they're learning experiences, right? That's what you call them now when you don't when you're not successful. And so this time I was like this is gonna be different. I'm gonna put it all I'm gonna I'm gonna put all my energy and effort into this. And I was willing to bet the farm. And that's why I, took a mortgage on my house and just put it all on the on the altar, if you will, and thank goodness it seems it's seems to work for us. Super glad I did. At the time it was weird because a lot of the people that I told were white collar professionals in my accounting field, the people I worked with. And so when I mentioned I was gonna start a pest control business, I got a few raised eyebrows, some some weird looks, and there, to be honest with you, Dan, there were couple times I like, Am I doing the right thing? What am I doing? People not fully laughing at you, they're they're saying, hey, this exciting, good for you. But behind my back, I knew that they were like, What the heck is he even thinking? And so there were times I get to come back and the after the first season, a couple, more years, I'm like, hey, we're we're we hit 600k, now we're at a million and a half, and they're just like, wait, whoa, whoa, see what? And so that growth has been, pretty, pretty decent the last six years. It could have been more. It certainly could have been less, but we're proud.

08:15 Brandon Sizemore

Looking back at what we've built so far and it's just a great great thing to be a part of for us.

08:21 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Wow. No, it's an incredible story. And it's super impressive. You are you're so humble. It's like most people dream to be where you're at and you just seem like so nonchalant about it.

08:34 Brandon Sizemore

I don't know that it's definitely life changing for us, Dan. I can't lie to you about that. My biggest supporter for is my is been my wife, but obviously the person that I wanted to prove the most that this was gonna work was for f to her, right? And so it took, time after all those other failures or those things that didn't pan out to really convince that this was gonna be a viable option. And so when when you do hit a home run or you did hit a triple, it's nice to look back at the stadium and, just be like, thank goodness that worked out. But the reality is yeah, I'm probably, being a little over humble because I know how hard it is to get to this level and I know all the failures that it that it took to get to where we're at right now. That most of the time I do fail. Most of the most most days I fail more than I s succeed and so it feels like we've just failed our way to here, honestly. And most of the things we try they don't work out. Most of the things we do, they fall apart. Most of the people we try to build relationships with, they fizzle out. And honestly it sometimes looking looking at it, I'm just like, I can see why some of the people in my spot now where I was five or six years ago looking up to them, I could see why they also just felt like they were just in the same boat I was almost. They just kinda treated it like, Hey man, I just know just as much as as you. I may know a little bit more 'cause I've made these mistakes. And so most of the time it's like, hey, I've learned what not to do and still trying to figure out every day what to do to just take us to the next level.

10:33 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. And one thing that I'm noticing here is focus. This is what I've heard across a lot of top level entrepreneurs is like as an entrepreneur, you want to start 10 different businesses. You get sh shiny object syndrome all the time. And it seems like maybe the place you're placed in, or even you partially put yourself in this place yourself is like, look, I'm gonna go all in on this thing and I'm just gonna make it work. And I think that is so powerful because now you're not trying to do these other ventures. It's like, no, my house is on the line. My wife needs to eat. I need to provide for myself and my family. I think when you do that, I'm obviously it puts a lot of pressure on you, but I think, what is the expression that pression pressure forms diamonds or something.

11:27 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah. No, I it's true. I'm sure you have a lot of people who listen to this who are probably thinking that the limitation on resources they have is money, right? They're probably like, Hey, I can't do what this guy did 'cause he had money and I didn't. Hey, Brandon had had a had a mortgage I don't. I only have ten thousand to spend or twenty thousand to put into marketing or growth. But the reality is I think that a lot of our success has come more through effort than through financial resources, right? Focus and effort. So for example, when I before I left, I was at a company. I was I was the corporate controller of a identity theft protection company, and their name was InfoArmor. And before I left, there was about a year that they had just been purchased by Allstate Identity Theft Protection, right? They rebranded. Allstate came in and purchased them. And prior to that, we had a pretty young, scrappy leadership team that was educated, was talented, and they all had, things that they were bringing to the table. But I was the finance department of that that team. And so my whole goal was to go in, meet with each of them and actually manage a budget for. The vendors they were spending with, everything that they were doing was just for me to get to know what they're doing and also how much money they're gonna spend. Right. And of course, every conversation was just like how much how they're limited on resources and how they don't have certain finances to do things. And all of a sudden Allstate came in, purchased us. And Allstate has lots of resources, lots of finances. And they were able to just shove money down our throats in some cases where we just couldn't get things done quickly enough.

13:23 Brandon Sizemore

So much so that I would say that prior to Allstate and then after Allstate, we're probably getting the same amount done. And we would hire expensive consultants, expensive people to come in and tell us what to do. And we were probably spending five times, if not more, than that, just to try to grow. And we were probably growing at the same pace. And so sometimes it's not just about having financial resources, it's about putting the energy and effort and focus into what you're trying to accomplish. Cause I see some of these young guys, they're they're building these these companies and they're growing at at fast paces, it's because they have a focus of what they're doing, they stick to it and they put energy and effort into it. And it some t I've even seen it now, we have a little bit more financial resources and I could see ourselves, sometimes having that Allstate experience, if you will, where you're trying things out with with money, but if you don't have the effort to match it, you don't have the focus to match it's just sometimes get waste gets wasted.

14:31 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, definitely. Yeah, I think there's almost something psychological about that too. Is and I've seen this because I'm I don't know, I like history and looking into different countries and it you see with different countries throughout history, the less resources they have, the more they make of them.

14:41 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, same.

14:49 Dan Leibrandt

So it's actually not always a good thing to have lots of resources. You want to be almost in a desperate state where you're doing everything you can to make the most of what you have.

15:00 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, and I think that's I'm sure people use it as an excuse if they don't have those resources and they separate themselves and they don't see themselves and the people that they listen to on podcasts, or they say, Well, that's great for them, but they had this, I don't have that. And the reality is that there's some truth to recognize and that I'm not, a non-realist, but the reality is that I think if you just look at the resources that you have, the skill set that you have. You're still capable of doing a lot more than you give yourself credit for. It's just a matter of are you okay with putting a lot of energy and effort into something and getting slapped in the face constantly with rejection? Those are the people I've listened to and the ones that just don't care as much about getting rejected or failing. They seem to be the ones that pervert.

15:58 Brandon Sizemore

Persevere the most.

15:58 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. So I wanted to jump back to your story. Where you left off was that you met your partner. So s as in your your business partner. So I wanted to ask on that, why have a business partner instead of start by yourself? And was it the right choice or not? Hey guys, Dan Leibrandt here. Real quick, if you're a pest control owner looking to grow, I have two amazing resources for you. Number one is our free Pest Control Millionaires Facebook group. We have over 4,000 owners just like you in our community and would love for you to be a part of it. Go search Pest Control Millionaires on Facebook and request to join the group now. Number two is our book, Zip Code Kings. This was authored by me, Jonas Olson, and Jake Sheldon to be the ultimate guide to pest control marketing. We discuss everything from branding and traditional marketing to local SEO and Facebook ads. Go to Amazon and search Zip Code Kings to get your copy today. Now that being said, let's get back to the show.

16:54 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, that's a great question and it's definitely the right choice for me. I'm not sure that partnerships are always the best situation for everyone. Especially if you're if you're tough to work with, don't be in a partnership, right? The biggest risk to your business, I would say, is failed partnerships or cash flow, right? Those are the two things that you really need to manage at the beginning of your business. And most businesses that do fail are probably because of those two things. And so for me, why I got into it is, we did grow through door to door. And prior to that, I didn't have any door-to-door experience. I said, I knocked on doors for three weeks, got my face kicked in. And that was when I was like, 21 year old kid selling alarms. Had no experience. And so I knew that if we were gonna go grow through door to door, that I needed to know some I needed to partner with somebody that that could. I wasn't gonna be able to build it myself. I wasn't gonna be able to train people to do it. So I was willing to give up what I could bring to the table and sacrifice, a stake in that company so that they can bring that skill set to me, right? For me. And so I don't share this often because I don't want to undervalue my partner or make it seem like that's the case. But I had people in my camp, in my circle that would were saying hey, why are you why are you partnering with this person? Why are you giving so much equity away to what are they bringing to the table? If you're if you're the one leveraging your house, if you're doing this. And of course that person, they were doing they were in their eyes, they're making huge sacrifices as well, right? They're like, Hey, I'm leaving my career.

18:47 Brandon Sizemore

I'm sacrificing all these other things too. Like this, I'm putting all my eggs into one basket, all my chips on black. And fair enough, right? And the reality is we both recognize that neither one of us would be able to accomplish what we have without the other person. And that's probably been the most important thing for us, right? Is hey, making sure that our partnership is on the same page. I didn't realize this at the time, but this person is somebody that you're going to communicate with more sometimes than the person you're married to. Right. And, heck, I'm I just got a call from my business partner right now, right? I talk to this person every single day. We're on the same page. It's so that we can be on the same page and not be misaligned, right? And if we're on the same page, then the rest of the company can.

19:31 Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha.

19:44 Brandon Sizemore

Can marsh to that same same beat. Yeah and you realize he compare it to your marriage. There's probably things you wouldn't be able to accomplish or do raising kids, preparing certain things without that other person who's also contributing. And so I can see how it's such an important thing, but make sure that thing is gonna work out really well and make sure that's the right person. Cause I honestly, if I were to go back and I think about the mistake I made. I didn't know this person super well. And maybe that was a benefit. We weren't best friends. We didn't know each other. Now we're like best friends because we talk to each other all the time. But we came in and we said, hey, we're gonna put the business first, above an anything else, including our own selfish, our own self-desires, right? And that is what it's taken for our business to survive, is for us to constantly think about, hey, how can we make this other person happy? I only I didn't only partner with him, I partnered with his wife, So when his wife has and he partnered with my wife in some way. So when his wife has an issue, I have an issue now, right? And so it's really important to have that mindset going into partnerships is recognizing that that person is you better keep them happy because that's one of the biggest risks to you to your business not continuing is their dissatisfaction or how they feel going forward.

21:10 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah. Really good point. And that's an interesting observation. I've never heard that before. That not only do you heavily influence this other person, but your wife does, your family does, everything around you. And there's so many things that can go wrong with humans. Humans are very unpredictable. So you have to be prepared for that.

21:33 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, that's definitely the case. And so even in future partnerships, if that person is married, I think it's important to sit down and meet that that other significant per other, that the spouse, the partner, and recognize what their goals are. A lot of times in partnerships where you get a disconnection is in the goals that you have between each other. One partner might be more focused or concerned with capital appreciation, growing the business. Whereas another one might be more, hey, lifestyle, cash flow. And if those are misaligned any given year, you constantly have to be talking about that and hey, are we growing this year? Are we are we, taking some cash flow out? Are you trying to buy a house? Are you trying to, what are you trying to do with you and your family so that way you can keep them them happy? For me, I don't just think about myself. I think about them first and foremost because I know again the biggest risk is if I'm not easy to work with or they're unhappy, the partnership will will seem to crumble.

22:49 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, totally. Really great point. And something I want to ask you, which may steer the rest of the conversation, is you have a background in a totally different industry in accounting as a CPA. And most people that come into the industry, or rather, most people that start a pest control business, they were probably a tech before or maybe a door-to-door sales guy, that kind of thing. So I wanna first understand how do you look at pest control business different than other people. When you look at it, how do you think about it? And how do you think about it different than others do?

23:29 Brandon Sizemore

That's a really good question. I don't know that I think about it too differently. I certainly come from a different background or different lens simply because my path here is a little unconventional. When you when you are a CPA, I was in public accounting, you start to realize that a lot of businesses are pretty similar. Especially from a financial statement standpoint, you have different things in different industries. And so it was cool for me, right? I got to look at it a lot of different businesses and you get a peek under the curtain or under the y look at the beh behind the curtain, if you will, at some of how these companies are run. And so I audited a few of these, I audited Arizona Cardinals, Salvation Army. Completely different businesses and what they do. One's a nonprofit, one's a for-profit. Some companies that are going public may have different goals. But the reality is they have a face of financials, right? They have a profit and loss statement, they have a balance sheet, they have the cash flow or stockholders' equity. And it's important to be able to read those, I think, and have, I think that's benefited for me as a skill set. It was really common when I came in here a couple things, right? Everyone was like, hey, know your numbers. Know your numbers. That's a common common thing. And people are like, I don't even know if people know what knows what that means, right? What numbers do they need to know?

25:05 Brandon Sizemore

I don't even know what they're they're meaning that, right? But then you have some there was a little arrogance when I first came in and people just giving bad advice, possibly. Classification of where things go. And often they just wanted to argue with me. And I was like, hey, I don't I don't need to argue with some some technician, right? About about a accounting issue, right? And so I tried to come into the space with a lot of humility and saying, hey, I don't know in Jack about this industry. Let me learn. Right. And so it was more me asking questions rather than telling people how to operate or what to do. But the reality is when you think about this business, it's very much similar to any retention-based business, right? You want to acquire customers for as little as possible. You want to keep them for as long as possible. So that means you need to keep them as happy as possible. And that's pretty that's pretty much it. Now that's a lot harder to do than to say. And so what you do in the in the in the fine print for that is like how you guys do things different. That's how you differentiate yourself from from each other. You can say, hey, you can ask a question of how do you do something, and there could be probably four or five right different answers. They just do it differently. And some people make it work differently, and that's okay. But the reality is that what I think about is when I apply a strategy, if we're going to try something new. I think about what the financial consequences are going to be first and map that out before just, fully pulling the trigger and just ready, ready, fire, aim, thing. The other thing is, from my background, people when I tell them I'm accounting, they think I'm a numbers person. They say, Hey, you must be a numbers person. And the reality is in accounting, I would say when I think about a numbers person, I'm thinking a mechanical engineer, somebody that's doing really complic complicated calculus or something. I don't know I didn't have to do much more than algebra, right? But it's realizing what do those numbers mean. And taking that from financials and saying, hey, how what's a good business, what's a bad business, and applying that that way.

27:44 Brandon Sizemore

But I also felt like what I did a lot of was documentation. And maybe more compared to a legal field, where I would simply just take and document things that I did. If I audited some some company, I had to show a legitimate way for hey, here's what I did. And it almost was like documenting a process, which was awesome, right? People can use. And really benefit from having solid documentation in their business if they're using it, right? I think people can sometimes over document a little bit. But it's creating systems to where people are gonna follow it and recognize where bottlenecks are and it's almost just a way of thinking, if that makes any sense. More so than there's just some specific secret sauce. I think it's just more of how you approach Issues or problems.

28:44 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Okay. That's funny because I actually I just wrote down accounting secrets. I was gonna ask you about that. It's like with with pest control with a pest control business, are there any ways I don't know, you can save money. So you're you're saying there aren't really any?

29:00 Brandon Sizemore

Well, I think I think you can work backwards in a lot of a lot of cases. So here's an example. So take your financial statements for for example, right? There are people who will benchmark on their performance and say, Hey, well, why let's take gross profit, right? Somebody might say, Hey, I have a seventy percent gross profit, another guy has fifty five. He's like, dang. I'm like 15% lower than you. So what does that mean? Well, that could be for several reasons, right? One could be a door-to-door company who's gonna have a higher gross profit because their routes are much denser, but all of a sudden their their sales and marketing is through the roof because they have to pay these high acquisition costs, right? So you're not comparing apples to apples when you look at those two different companies, one who might be more spread out, but it costs them a lot less to acquire those customers. That's just very different. And so sometimes it's not just about benchmarking against other people, sometimes it's about benchmarking against yourself, right? And recognizing, okay, I'm at 55% this year. What can I get to next year? If I if I increase these routes, I increase the density. And so comparing yourself to others sometimes is isn't helpful. And if you do, sometimes you're comparing yourself to the wrong numbers, right? Some guys may be classifying some line items and some other, down below gross profit that he shouldn't be. And so you may think you have a lower gross margin, and that happened to me at the beginning, where I was like finding that that people were just classifying things way different than I think they should have. But then you start there, and then you say, Okay, well what are the numbers that don't show up on the financial statements that are going to impact my gross margin? And these are things I think you call more like leading indicators. There's leading indicators and lagging indicators. So it might be time on account. It might be number of callbacks that you that you do. It might be your drive time that you might look at and focus on. It might be your pricing. Maybe you're not charging high enough pricing. So all of these are things that you can go do something about.

31:20 Brandon Sizemore

And therefore that's going to have a lagging impact down the road. Right? And so there's really no you can go ask on a Facebook group and say, hey guys, what sort of indicators do you look at? And you're gonna get a handful of answers, right? And all those, hey, what kind of KPIs do you have? And they're pretty much a lot of people have the same ones. It might be a retention percentage. I don't know. You could probably name the same ones that I would name too. But they're the ones that you just say, hey, what are we going to do about? Which one are we going to focus on this year? Which one are we going try to modify? And that's the secret, right? Is you just pay attention, you track, and but none of that's going to help you hire better people, but none of that's going to change relationship with customers. You actually have to go put focus and effort into that to or in order to affect the leading indicator, which is eventually going to affect the lagging one.

32:20 Brandon Sizemore

So I don't think that's a secret. People are totally willing to share that on Facebook. It's just what do you do differently that's gonna affect those? That's where the secret comes in.

32:29 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. So maybe people know the KPI to track, but they're not so much focused on the things that actually improve that that KPI or th maybe you could say any given KPI, there's actually thirty things that impact it, not just five things that you do.

32:40 Brandon Sizemore

A hundred percent.

32:49 Brandon Sizemore

Yes, yeah. And it and it may be the tough decisions that you're not making in your business that you should, right? Maybe it's this you have a really bad person that takes your cancellation calls and you have to make a tough decision and fire a friend. It might be that you have some technicians that just aren't, living up to the KPIs that you have set. Right? Those are where you should put your focus and energy into. To get to a performance that you want to in order to affect those lagging indicators later.

33:26 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. You mentioned as an example, you might have to make a tough decision. Across your six or so beer years in business, have you had to make any tough decisions like that?

33:39 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, I have. I don't know if I w wanna go into too much detail. But yeah, I've had to make a lot of them. And there's some that I've waited too long to make. I'll say this, I'm really happy with the team that we have today. I love the guys that we're working working through. We've had to go through a number to kinda to get to this to where we are. And those tough decisions sometimes we might have to make more in the future, right? Because sometimes the person that got you to two million is not the same person that gets you to seven or ten or twenty million, right? And sometimes you have to bring in some of those those other people. And not I like to think that the relationships that we've left with have been better than when we where they started, but that's not always the case. And as you get bigger more problems just totally come, right? You're gonna have more technicians who do silly, stupid stuff, more car accidents, more maybe drug test failures and things like that. Problems don't necessarily go away, just how you're you're quick to react to them is what changes.

34:53 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. And I wanted to jump back to the journey. So you guys are, past seven million now. I wanna first touch on the first million. How did you get there?

35:05 Brandon Sizemore

So we came out in COVID season. So we started in 2020. And I had just left my job. And this was probably March. And I was like it was it was funny because I had done an Amazon FBA business before. And what I hated about Amazon was it was almost having a lemonade stand, and then somebody else would just come up with another lemonade stand and you'd have a ton of them and you're only way of differentiating yourself was through a picture. So nobody could tell that your lemonade tasted better or was a better product. And then you would fall down the rankings and Amazon would punish you for that. And I was like, dude, I would love to have some control. And that's partly why I love door to door. I was like, nothing's gonna stop us from being able to knock on a door until COVID, right? All of a sudden it's left the bit left my company. I had we had 15 sales reps and all of sudden, overnight, they just got cut in half, right? And we were told, you can't knock on any doors here. And so for a while we had to knock up in southern Indiana, outside of just it's still within our service area for as long as possible before they would open up. People just forget like how crazy it was for us. We got the cops called on us every single day. So we're just taking cop calls and they're upset with us. And I'm like, hey, we're not getting any sort of PPE, no ERC credits for us because we just started before this whole thing hit the fan. And so it was crazy. It was crazy. And so as crazy as it was, there were some some benefits, more people were home. But with our probably I wish I would have started four years earlier and had a team where we could get ERC credits for a bunch of guys. But we probably had seven or eight reps. We did probably six or seven hundred thousand that that first year of sales.

37:04 Brandon Sizemore

Charge very little. We were just discounting our pricing way I'm looking back and if people had just stuck around and grandfathered themselves in, if anybody canceled, they shouldn't. That's the silliest thing because we were just charging so little at the time. And so yeah, we just grinded it out. I started knocking doors. My po my business partner knocked some of those doors and then the seven or eight guys that we had that were rookies there's been a couple of them who've gone on and done huge things in the door to door space. Some of them have ten, fifteen million dollar teams that they manage and oversee. So I wish we would have kept those those guys. Another one was like the rookie of the year at Vivint. And so we had a great scrappy team. Like I said, wish we would have kept some of those guys. We'd probably be at a different position than we are today. But it nonetheless it was just great to be a part of their lives for a short period, even even if it was even if it was short.

38:09 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. Okay. So a lot of it was door to door and I know now you guys are doing a lot of revenue with inside sales. Talk to me more about that.

38:20 Brandon Sizemore

So a few years ago, we brought in a minority partner and he approached us, he was actually working for another pest control company, and I think he was very entrepreneurial as well, and convinced us that there was some something in this marketing space, right? And so he loved our brand. We have these these bright mint trucks and he's just like, hey, I think we can do something with this. And so his whole push was for SEO, LSA leads, and then some organic guerrilla marketing type stuff that we've just done more recently, but he kinda had a plan in place for us to start pushing this. And then also he started talking to us about an inspector program where you have a customer base, right? And by setting appointments and having inspectors that can go to these homes and find other other value that you can add to your customer base. And so we started that this past year. We started a little bit at the tail end of last year and then this year. And so it's gonna be a significant part of our business. And so we invested heavily in branding. Pretty early on. I don't know if I would suggest people do that. It has worked really well for us. And so much so that we get a ton of phone calls. We stick out really, it's hard to miss a mint truck driving down the down the street. And we've we're probab we're looking at doing, pretty close to, if not right at, two million in revenue for between our inspector program and just phone calls.

40:15 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. That's awesome. Yeah, I brings to mind I interviewed Dan Antonelli, who's one of the top guys in branding for home services. And so s so something that he told me that really stuck with me, which is relevant here, is that whenever they take on a new client and are doing the branding for these people in whatever area it might be, they are always looking at what the competitors are doing and making sure that it's different. So, if every like let's say every HVAC company usually has red and blue. So you wanna probably avoid that. Maybe every pest control company leans into the standard brighter green or a forest green, that kind of thing. So you wanna avoid that. But it depends on the market. So I think what's really smart here on on your guys' end is that I don't really know of any companies that are have a mint color. So it's super unique. And that's how you stand out. So I've just found that to be a really good core marketing principle. And it's like you can't mistake it. It's the mint truck. And not only is it the mint truck, but you don't have to guess the name, it's Mint Pest Control.

41:25 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, it's easy to memorize and remember. You're right. I noticed the same thing six years ago when I when I approached my business partner and all I had was this picture of, this truck and a and a smile trying to convince him to do this. And I think he just he loved the idea, right? I told him, hey, yes, we're gonna do door to door, but I wanna have a poll strategy to be able to get people to call us as well. And so the investment of doing that was pretty high, right? Wrapping a truck early on is an investment and it's a scary one to make. We made it's worked out for us. But what I noticed early on when we were trying to brand is that most if you were to have search pest control at the time, you would see normally a white truck with a lot of sometimes a lot of stuff on it. Phone numbers, website, you could see it I'm surprised people didn't put their business cards and operating agreement on there too. It's just so much stuff. So much so that you drive by it and you're just like, I can't even my brain can't even process that much information just driving by. So we kept it super simple, super clean. And then also we wanted to say green and eco without having to say greener eco.

42:38 Dan Leibrandt

Hm. Yeah.

42:49 Brandon Sizemore

And that's where Mint was born. It gives you a clean, fresh look and feel. And we also just want to emphasize the things that we're not. People put a big spider, that's gonna capture attention, but also we wanna emphasize the feeling that you have after we're there, right? After you have a clean, fresh home because Mint was here. There's other things we try to do to try to try to keep that. We have different scents and stuff that we can emanate and build into our brand and we're doing some of those things here this year, but one step at a time.

43:27 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, that would be really smart. Maybe you have some I don't know, a mint scent people can put in their cars and that kind of thing. That'd be really good.

43:35 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah.

43:41 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, that yeah, we're that's what we're doing. So...

43:41 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. No, that's great. Something else I want to ask you, because I'm sure you have a ne unique perspective on this. So you guys are are super deep into door to door, and obviously you're very familiar with numbers and accounting. So I want to ask you, because door to door is obviously a great, great way to grow, but sometimes the numbers don't make sense or they're tough. It's like it might be a really high acquisition cost or it might be a really high churn rate. So how do you navigate the numbers around door to door and make it make sense? And are you doing anything to make those KPIs work out?

44:18 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, so the way that we think about door to door today is much different than what we thought six years ago, right? So we use it as a tool, one either to penetrate markets, because you can get a lot of customers and very densely, or to give us more density in our existing markets, or recognizing that we need those customers to capture more of the referrals, get more trucks driving around. That sort and get just more direct mailers, it allows us to also use our inside sales as well. So switching people over and s and telling them about the new experience that they got, you have to have those other things in there rather than just hey, we're just gonna put a sticker on a truck and try to get door to door customers and if you cancel, it's not super helpful. Now there's some benefits of like being able to determine that that customer is gonna be sticky at least until a certain point before you even pay anything for them. You have to put that in your agreements. You have to negotiate of how long it's gonna take to pay some of that more expensive acquisition cost. So those are things I think that are important to think about with door-to-door. If I were to start from scratch and I had limited resources, I probably would think about doing things a little bit differently. Today but if I had resources, if I were, just reloading again, sold Mint and restarting, I'd probably have have door to door be a part of my initial startup strategy, right? And honestly, Dan, I've listened to some of the other podcasts too. I've listened to what's The Boardroom Buzz, right? And I really respect those guys. Prior to you had you had Paul Giannamore on there. And Paul sometimes would come across as though he was against door-to-door in a way. And he would have to clarify himself and say that he wasn't. And I think it probably upset some door-to-door guys when I remember listening to it. And the reality is that Paul, you have to think about he's he's looking at businesses at a different life cycle than starting, right? Paul's not starting pest control companies. He's selling them.

46:48 Brandon Sizemore

And selling a pest control company that's door to door looks very different than starting one from scratch. And so for me, when I think about penetrating a market, starting one with door to door makes a ton of sense. But I can understand Paul's experience too of why he would would have bad experiences with sometimes with kids that just start door to door companies and don't have any experience with running a company and that's a that's a mess. And then those who try to exit it and try to think that they are getting a much different valuation than than the what they really deserve. That's a mess. But I also can recognize the benefits of starting from scratch, starting a branch from from nothing, having that as a as a resource is kinda helpful.

47:34 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's so funny. A lot of people hate on door to door, but maybe eighty percent of the owners that I've interviewed that are over ten million dollars a year are in door to door in some fashion. So it's like you can hate on it all you want, but it works.

47:52 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, and there's sometimes I hate door to door, trust me. I and I think every owner that does door to door also can tell you that they hate they there are things that they don't like about it either.

48:03 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. One one other question I wanted to ask you, which already covered this earlier, but I wanted to get more clear on it, is like when you look at other owners in the space, or maybe you could even just speculate, what do you think they get wrong around accounting, numbers, or just business as a whole?

48:22 Brandon Sizemore

I guess are there particular s set of owners that you're describing? Would that be...

48:30 Dan Leibrandt

It usually pest control owners under a million dollars a year. Maybe they're solo, maybe they have one tech, two techs, three techs, they're looking to scale up. So those those smaller owners, I is there something you see or would think that they would get wrong?

48:51 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, I see it I see it in the Facebook groups all the time. But I also see what they get right. A lot of the time is they're really service focused, right? And I think having customer experience is really important. And a lot of times where they've they've grown is priorly through their their personal network. And I think that's a great way to grow, So it might be their their small community of people, maybe all of mom's friends and anybody that's family connected, they may have been in that area for a long time. But what are you gonna do after that, right? Once you've broken through your personal network, how do you how do you manage to grow beyond? And so one I would say you described that if what you're doing and your competitors doing is actually working. Instead of hating on it, why are you not just trying to understand it better first off? Right? So that's one. Two, I think trying to gain some experience in financial literacy is probably a benefit, even if it's YouTube or trying to educate themselves a little bit. They may have a fraction or one of these other companies, PCO Bookkeepers or something doing their books. But can they understand some of it, right? Why do certain lines go to certain areas of the P&L? Classification is a big one for for a lot of these guys. And so there's some disagreements about where trucks should be recorded or where merchant fees should be recorded or just like things like that and recognizing, hey, if I'm gonna get this right, and I wanna check my margins and I wanna improve those margins. First off, you guys gotta start from a good starting point. Most of the time I've noticed, and I don't and I don't want to offend any of the listeners here, but people are very proud of their branding and proud of their their images. And so the guys that I see post their trucks and just how great those look, maybe this is a personal preference for me, but yeah, I d I don't get it. And it's like if you say if you Yeah, and if nobody's gonna say...

51:22 Dan Leibrandt

I know what you're saying. No, I see many many people post that yeah.

51:32 Brandon Sizemore

Anything wrong mean to you. Nobody's gonna say anything wrong because it's your baby. It's like criticiz it's like telling you your baby looks ugly, right? Nobody's gonna tell you that. But really getting great feedback about where your brand is and spending too much money on a bad brand, I think just doesn't make a ton of sense. So that would be another, thing for some of these smaller smaller companies. Then I think where you get most like I don't interact with a ton of but it's just people who are not willing to let go, right? I'm the same way, right? I like to think that I can do things better sometimes and sometimes I'm frustrated when somebody's doesn't take it as seriously as I do, right? And I get that. I have to recognize that employees that I hire are are not gonna care about Mint as much as I do. And accepting that is a big leap and important to just acknowledge and recognize that. And so, more importantly, that you have to scale yourself by defining what it is that you care about and saying, Hey, I know you want to be a good employee. Here's what I care about. Here's what's going to make me happy. Here, if you do these five things right, I'm going to be you're gonna be excelling. You're gonna be doing awesome. Dumb it down to where it's just like, hey, if you do these five things, I'm gonna be really pissed off. If you do these five things, I'm gonna be really happy. And that's what they care more about. They may care less about your company, but they care about the relationship they have with you. And so I think that's super important. When you're trying to scale yourself, is recognizing that if you do this all by yourself, you're not gonna grow. If you don't get out of a truck, you will not grow. And then I would say you have to offload some of those things in order for you to have time to really think about your business and really contemplate if you're so involved in the business all the time, you just you just can't think about what is my highest and best use of my priorities. How do I really channel my energy and efforts to the best use of my capability, my time and what's gonna be the best return. And then once you get there, you get to my level or s maybe a little bit before or even after, sometimes you just can't get too comfortable, right? Once you get to that level and then you say, Hey, you know what, if you get that I arrived mentality, then you're also in danger.

54:23 Brandon Sizemore

Too. So that's what I'm trying to f I'm definitely trying to fight that myself. So I don't know. I don't know if that answers the question properly, but just some thoughts.

54:33 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. No, that's great advice. I appreciate you sharing. And I wanted to ask you, maybe we can end on this is around hiring. So I know you're you're very involved in operations and I'm sure you've learned a lot of lessons in the past six years of like the what you should do and what you shouldn't do regarding hiring. So just share some some lessons you've learned around hiring.

54:58 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think what becomes tougher with hiring is when you start scaling, helping other people recognize what you're looking to hire, right? So you may be able to hire the right guys and you're gonna look for those those things. And so putting putting into words what it is that you're looking for, I think is important. When I think about customers, I think that they want three things and I and there's a book that our team's reading called Excellence Wins that says the same thing. But customers want three things. They want a product or service that with doesn't have defects. They want to work with somebody that's just friendly, that's nice to them, and they want to have that product or service delivered timely. And so we built our core values, if you call them, an acronym. We try to keep it very simple, just a one-worded acronym and the acronym we use is called PRIME. And so when we look for s for somebody that we hire, we want somebody that's personable, reliable, immediate, meticulous, and ethical. Right? So personable, we want somebody who's gonna be able to connect with our our customers, that's gonna be able to build a relationship. They can communicate effectively. They're not gonna get too technical with them about insects or their service, but they're going to value the relationship over being right a lot of times. And so you need somebody who can connect properly, who can be personable. Do they show up with the right body language? They have a smile instead of a scowl thing. Those are all just really important things. And it's pretty huge with your customers, right? Reliable, that's a big one our branch managers care about. When you set that route and the next day you have to go text all your customers you're not showing up, you do that too many times, that's just becomes a problem. And so you need somebody who's gonna do what they say they're going to do. And so when you're interviewing, you want to make sure that that person you can count on them. And then immediate is some, it's a word we had to use to fit in there, but this is the timeliness com com aspect of what we're looking for. So, for example.

57:21 Brandon Sizemore

That was experience I experienced as a consumer was when you call someone they don't answer the phone. How many rings does it take for you to answer the phone? Do you get back to people quickly? If they have a problem, are you able to react or proactively resolve their issue? All of those are if you can do that in this business, that this industry, man, you're gonna you're gonna set yourself apart. You're gonna get credit for just that, right? In the meticulous, we try to pride ourselves with the white glove treatment. It's how people, it's about how you make people feel when you go perform that service. Do you cause more problems when you show up instead of solving all the problems? Are you letting gates open or tracking mud across the driveway? Dropping fuel on on their driveway as well, all these are things that we've done before and recognizing that, hey, we've got to give them a meticulous service, not leaving spider webs unswept, right? And just leaving the property a ton better than what we found it. And then ethical I think is pretty self-explanatory. If you're gonna be lie, cheat or steal, we just can't you're gonna be in people's homes, So you have to have an ethical background that you're going to be be trusted. Trust like what we're really sell is trust in this in this industry. And it's really about if people can trust that you're gonna care about their home as much as they do, you'll get a lot of customers. So we use PRIME. Those are the acronym that we gauge our new hires by and if we have a new hire I'll ask them now they are they PRIME, or how how did you measure against how did you define these and how'd you think about when you what were you thinking when you hired this person?

59:21 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, totally. That's really good. And I feel like some people may just hire on emotion or I kinda like this person, kinda don't. But when you have something to measure against, it's like, well, the they it seems like they're a great tech, have tons of experience, but they're not ethical. So they do not meet PRIME.

59:40 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah. Yeah, no, it definitely helps check some boxes and really define what it is that you're what you're what you're after.

59:48 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, for sure. Well, cool. We'll start to wrap up here, Brandon. I've got one more question for you. And that is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there? What do you want to tell them? What do you think they need to know?

1:00:02 Brandon Sizemore

Man, I j I just I love the guys, man. I love I love this industry. The stuff that you guys are building, Dan, like Jonas, Allan, those guys are building a great community of people. I've been to I'll probably go to the Pest Control Millionaire group conference this year. I'll be going to Bug Bux. A lot of cool guys. In this industry in this space. And so sometimes I feel like on these of probably preaching to the choir, I think they get a lot of it, but the fact that they're just listening to these podcasts just goes to show it's making me nervous, right? I'm gonna have to compete against these guys in places because they're just getting better than they were in this space. I feel like I got in here with a big gap, but now there's just a lot more talent. There's a lot more people are who are like, okay, I can see where there's the gaps that they're they're trying to fill. But there's also some that are, that I've that were I met that were just like, hey, I'm here at Bug Bux and I've only have thirteen accounts, and I'm like, Okay, they're they're putting in some so they're they're taking the effort to try to learn. Learn more. And so w I love what you guys are are offering, what you're creating for people. I thought it was knowledge that I could probably, keep behind closed doors, but it's fine. I'm glad that guys are not learning this, even on podcasts and whatever. I think it's great for them. So yeah, I d I don't know. I don't know what else I can I can really say, but it I think we have a great community of owners in this industry for sure.

1:01:57 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. I agree. Yeah, the pest control space definitely seems special. It seems tight knit because it's a smaller home service. It's a less sexy industry as as you've noted before, which attracts more like humble, modest people, I would say. It's not as sexy as building a software company or something. So I think there is something to be said about that as well.

1:02:22 Brandon Sizemore

Yeah. I agree.

1:02:25 Dan Leibrandt

Well sweet. Brandon, where can people find you and connect with you online?

1:02:31 Brandon Sizemore

You can connect with me on Instagram. I don't know what my handle's called. I think sizing it up or something, my last name. My email, [email address removed]. You can email me. I'm on Facebook. I'm in the in the community on the groups. That's where I mean any of those places. I'm on LinkedIn too, but any of those places people can can find and connect with me.

1:02:56 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So everyone go make sure to follow Brandon. All those links will be in the description. And thanks so much for coming on the show, Brandon. This has been great chatting with you.

1:03:05 Brandon Sizemore

Thanks, Dan. It's been great.

1:03:07 Dan Leibrandt

Course. YouTube has this crazy feature where its algorithm knows the perfect next episode you should watch. So click right here and watch it now. Just click it. Click, click, click.