Brent Agee on Building AXN Growth Partners and Paying More for Growth

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host, Dan Leibrandt, and today I'm with Brent Agee, CEO of AXN Growth Partners. Brent started his career as a pest control technician. He grew his family's company, ACTION Termite and Pest Control, into a private equity-backed platform that has completed 14 acquisitions in just over two years. AXN has made the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row, and five of its brands have been named to PCT's top 25 best places to work. We're going to talk about partnering with private equity, how AXN integrates with the companies it acquires, and what founders need to know before they sell. Now without further ado, Brent, welcome to the show.

00:43 Brent Agee

Appreciate it, Dan. Thanks for having me.

00:43 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, of course, man. So Brent, walk me back to the very beginning. How did you get into pest control?

00:49 Brent Agee

So I'm second generation, so it's kinda born into the industry. Parents had a pest control company before I was born. As soon as my dad figured out I was strong enough to dig a termite trench, he had me out there helping the guys at a very early age, digging trenches. And, you know, kinda stayed stayed in it forever. You know, it definitely wasn't something that I, you know, wanted to do. The one time I wanna pursue an MMA career, but at the time the pest control was just a more lucrative option for me. So back in twenty thirteen I actually branched out, started my own company. And then in two thousand sixteen my dad wanted to retire, stepped down and actually acquired my company in two thousand sixteen. We blended them together. That was ACTION Termite and Pest Control. And then it wasn't shortly after that, you know, we doubled the size of the business and then was approached by private equity.

01:38 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, awesome. Yeah, I think you just mentioned jiu-jitsu, I think. I was doing some research on you. Are you a black belt?

01:44 Brent Agee

Yes, that's correct. Yeah. So I got my black belt I think back in twenty twenty two. So I've been I've been doing it since seven. Big passion of mine. Had had the whole family doing it. Still still coach, still compete.

01:57 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, that's awesome. Cool. Okay, so you served at your dad's company. Also I understand that you worked at like some some of the competitors' companies in your area as well.

02:09 Brent Agee

Yeah, I know that's correct. Good research. Yeah, actually before when I was transparently got got kicked out of high school er early age and my dad in instead of letting me come work for him in the family business, my dad made me go work for a lot of competitors. Looked you know, I worked for companies that all we did was apartment complexes. That was miserable. Like I said, I worked for probably multiple competitors for about two years until my dad got busy enough with termite work where he needed another strung back to come out and dig trenches for and more and he kinda brought me back into the company, shortly after that. So that was probably back in like two thousand ten.

02:49 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. So I th I find this so interesting. Like, how does someone like you who's a high school dropout or people see like, you know, high school dropout you're gonna amount to nothing to now you have this massively successful company and doing all these crazy things in the home service industry.

03:10 Brent Agee

Yeah, no, I think I'm always always been competitive, right? That's what got me into martial arts. That's what kept me in martial arts. And you know, a little bit about it, you know, I think too is like, you know, when certain things happen to you, I mean, you kind of develop a little bit of a chip on your shoulder, right? Wanting to prove everyone wrong. And I think that kind of feeds that hunger for growth that I have. I'm always looking to build, always looking to accomplish new things. You know, I took up horseback riding when in my thirties and now I'm competitive cowboy mounted shooter, right? So I think whether it whether it's hobbies, whether it's business, you know, I always you know, o always growth minded, always looking to learn, continue learning, talking to other individuals in our industry. And it's something that I'm just, you know, very passionate about and, you know, I think a lot of people could take, you know, situations that happen to them and, you know, be down and make excuses on why they can't achieve things where, you know, I'm very much the opposite way is, you know, if you know, when I when I show up I'm here to kinda prove everyone wrong, right?

04:09 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I c I can tell you're a very competitive person and it's clearly worked out well for you. So y okay, so you worked at your or some competitors' companies, then your dad's company, then what was what followed that? So you started your own company and then merged?

04:25 Brent Agee

Y yeah, so when I when when I got hired on back to the family business I was I was just a termite tech. Then I got into sales while I was there at ACTION and you know, was really good at sales and just like a lot of people who are in sales that wanna make that migration over to starting their own company, right? It's like, hey, if I could sell this then in a and I know how to do the work, you know, why don't I kinda go branch out on my own was kind of my thought process. I think it was it in my early twenties when when that was happening and that was back back around two thousand thirteen, had a kid on the way, first child and it was the time probably not the best time to take a life gamble like that, but I just went for it. I started a business called Master Tech Pest Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona. Within the first year kinda employed about four or four technicians, grew really fast, mainly you know, v very much just because of sales, right? It was those were back too if you remember those days, it was Angie's List and HomeAdvisor leads. I had a great rep that was able to get us a ton of business at the time and that really helped, launch that brand. Grew it to just over a million dollars in a couple of years, about three years. And then, you know, that's when my dad kind of approached me and said, Hey, you know, my company's bigger, I'm burned out of this pest control game. I'm gonna buy your company and then you're gonna run it. That merge the two together. So ACTION at the time, believe it or not, my parents' company was just termites. Termites are all we do. So it was ACTION Termite Control and then after being acqui after acquiring Master Tech Pest Solutions it became ACTION Termite and Pest Control.

06:02 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, awesome. So how did you grow to a million in three years? Because for most people, that's the dream. That many of the owners I talked to and some of the people in our program are, you know, maybe at 200k a year, 300k a year, 400k a year, maybe it's just them or maybe they it's just them an attack or two. So how do you get to that that million mark?

06:24 Brent Agee

Yeah, I think to do it fast, y y you have to gamble. You're gonna roll some dice. Like the hardest part from going like owner operator being one truck operation is how I started, is getting out of the truck as soon as you can. And I know you hear a lot of people who've who've been from one truck to you know scaled amazing companies is you know, I was probably a owner operator whereas like me selling and doing the services, answering all the phones for probably about three months. And then I said, not gonna do this. I'm gonna have someone take over the office work. So I made the commitment, paid someone. And then the same thing, I got a technician as soon as I could. I'll be honest, at that time I was making no money. But I knew I needed an office person and I need a technician just so I could focus on growing the business a little more. So, you know, every everyone's situations are different. I didn't have a lot of overhead at the time. Me and my wife, you know, we lived in a third story apartment building. And so we didn't have too much expenses and she was a bartender at the time and we just we just kinda rolled the dice and I did I did create a lot of good relationships. So there's no real secret recipe to like growing fast. Nothing I did was door to door sales. It was very much organic. It was it was figuring out how to at that time, the early days, how to figure out how to play the Angie's List, the HomeAdvisor, how to capitalize on leads. And then I was also good at, you know whether it was getting in with property management companies or creating relationships with other business owners to kinda get the work flow. And that's what I would contribute a lot of that growth to in the early days is building the relationships with the right people to get the leads.

08:02 Dan Leibrandt

How do you build relationships effectively?

08:05 Brent Agee

I think that that's great question. I for me it's I'm a very transparent, direct person. I think a lot of pre people appreciate that. When we you know, when we're when we're thinking about depending on what it is, right? So one thing that we started doing was we got th two thousand thirteen is when I started the business and there was still a lot of HUD properties at that time from the recession. For an example, you know, HUD, Fannie Mae homes all these houses that were getting listed on the market in Arizona had to have a termite inspection and had to be treated for termites. Most of them, pretty much ninety percent of them had termites at the time, because a lot of them had been vacant for quite a while. I saw that as an opportunity, found out who the decisions maker were, like, you know, took them to dinner, t told them a little bit about myself. You really gotta like put yourself out there if you see, you know, some sort of you know, avenue or revenue stream and you need to get you need to get to the people who are gonna make the decisions and don't just try to send them, you know, flyers and advertising is a lot of time if you could have a conversation like this and they could really get to know your story, you know, that that's so important in the early stages of growing your business.

09:18 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, I totally agree. Also, you mentioned that your parents' business was mainly termite, and I assume you have a lot of experience and a lot of thoughts on termite. How does termite compare to pest? And I know most owners that I talk to are just pest. Should they consider termite? 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.

10:15 Brent Agee

So absolutely. One thing I love about termite is termite pays the bills, right? So like you could so for example, the what I love about termite business is that y if you spend ten thousand dollars in a month advertising for termite, like you can make fifty, sixty thousand dollars that month, right? Where if you take that same amount and you spend on pest control, a lot of times those initials is like maybe, you know, a hundred bucks, maybe it's, one tenth of the annual contract value that's falling to the bottom line. So with termite work, I love to think about termite work as to feed the marketing machine because you the customer acquisition cost is pretty much the same. But what you actually collect from the customer is much higher dollar value, less much money falls to the bottom line. And that just kinda continues you to feeds your P&L so you can continue turning that. And like what we did, especially when we first blown those two companies together, we only advertised on Google or social media for termite control and then we just cross-sold everyone the pest control. Because you know there wasn't as many people bidding on termite control as, you know, every pest control company does pest control. Not every pest control company does termite work. So we figured out that at the time it's you know, times have changed, but at the time it was actually less expensive to advertise for termite control as was pest. So we would spend money, we had a way better, ROI on our advertising spend and then we just turned around and cross sold them all pest control or while w the salesperson was at the house, they added pest control to every contract.

11:51 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, yeah, totally makes sense. And yeah, you're right. Like most owners are usually looking to just break even on that that initial service. But if you can get those high-ticket termite jobs and then now you can push marketing and grow like I mean a multiple times faster, two or three times faster, then it seems like a good pairing. But I is there any downsides to it?

12:18 Brent Agee

Not I know I know there there are some downsides depending on what states you operate on and kinda what they allow you to do to warranties and insurance, right? In the in the Phoenix market, there's little to no downside. Obviously there's liability when you when you get into real estate transactions. Certain products do have to be registered with the state. There's tarfene. There is a little bit more you know, crossing your T's, dotting your I's when you get into termite control with the license. But for the most part, like I'm a termite guy, was born, into the termite industry and, I love it. It's one of the things we do when we you know, partner with new brands. If they're not offering termite services, that's one of the first things we do is say, Okay, we're buying you a termite truck, we're gonna train you guys on how to do this. We're gonna train you guys on how to sell it. And instantly, you know, we see like cash flow goes up, EBITDA goes up and it's a great addition to every brand, you know, that we add.

13:13 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, fascinating. Okay, now I want to jump ahead and to where you started AXN. So did you just start it a little over two years ago?

13:24 Brent Agee

Yeah, correct. So Ac ACTION Termite and Pest Control was the platform company, right? But we knew we were gonna be, you know, multi state. We knew we were gonna be somewhat of a house of brands, right? And so just like, you know, a lot of other, you know, PE roll up companies, we needed like kind of like the platform company name. And at the time we had, you know, we acquired that first year, we did like six transactions in the first year, so as we were looking through our financials, we had ACTION, affordable, friendly, and all these brands. And then when we did the consol consolidated revenue, we always identified it as AXN, which was just an abbreviation for ACTION. But we want to differentiate the platform from that. Well, when it came down to it, we were brainstorming on, you know, hey, what are we gonna call our our platform? And we had all these creative names and you know, during the meeting I drew this logo that's on my hat on a napkin. And I was like, why don't we just stick with AXN? It's that's it's ACTION, kinda pay homage obviously to the company that me and my family built. And then we just added kind of growth partners to it, which is kinda more of the culture here. We want to make sure everyone knows that kind of signs up to partner with us that it you know it's all about growth. You know, there's different ways to go about private equity, you know, and how to win. A lot a lot of people might, try to cut their way to grow EBITDA where we actually invest money and resources into a brand in order to get it to grow and then kinda in all ties raise. So...

14:51 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, yeah. No, I think it's a great brand. It's a great idea. Talk to me more about that. You said like the brand and EBITDA that some some people will do everything for EBITDA. Like j just go deeper on that.

15:08 Brent Agee

Yeah, so for example, like, you know, what is private equity at at the end of the day, right? And I always try to ex explain this is, you know, sometimes private equity gets a bad name. Like we just saw, you know, what all the Salad and Gos, you know, in Arizona and in Texas all go out of business, it was private equity back, they ran it into the ground. You know, and then there's also some really good ones, that go on to be, you know, really great and astonishing companies. So I try to simplify private equity sometimes, like think of it like restaurants, right? There's good ones and bad ones. If you go to a bad one, you don't stop going to restaurants, right? At the end of the day, private equity is just another form of business, just like pest control. And it's made up, you know, whether you know, it's made up of like people and processes. If the people suck, the processes suck, the outcome's gonna suck, right? So, you know, I always try to make sure everyone first understands like what is it and how does it work and understand that. I there's different variables and different ways to do PE, just how there's different ways to do restaurants or are our pest control companies. Concepts are the same, but it comes down to the people in the process. So going back to your question, EBITDA, after understanding that, is, you know, at the end of the day, to private equity, we're we're we're cash flow investors, right? So EBITDA is technically like the cash flow of the business. And that's like the simple way to just explain EBITDA is cash flow. So what we're acquiring is cash flow and what we want to try to do is continue to grow cash flow and a lot of times depending on the backer there's gonna be another future exit down the road or some might inspire to try to take it public. There's a lot of different things that you could do. But when we so when we look at a company, we look at a partnership and we're doing an underwriting on a deal, you know, we find out what the cash flow of the business is and then we say, Okay, what can we do?

16:59 Brent Agee

With this business? What is our expectation? How can we continue to grow? Where do we see, risks, where do we see opportunities? And a lot of times, typically with most, you know, partners with you know, say sub five million dollar companies, that's kind of been like a really good sweet spot for AXN, because they're j they're at that level where a lot of times founders are stuck and they just don't know the right levers to pull to continue to scale their business. And that's where we kind of come in and provide additional resources. Say, hey, you know does this company have dedicated sales reps? No. Okay, let's we know that if we put dedicated sales reps in a company and you have people that wake up every morning hungry to go sell and grow, then the business is you know is gonna grow. So that that's kind of how we look at it. So we basically invest into the business. So maybe EBITDA, maybe cash flow drops a little bit, but the outcome once that machine starts cranking is, you know, it's kind of up and to the right.

17:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're right. Private equity does get a really bad rep in this space. I th I hear many people complain about it. I'm curious to your thoughts on what do you think like makes a private equity company bad? What do the bad ones do that maybe you guys don't?

18:13 Brent Agee

I th I think it's you know, a lot of w what I've seen is when a private equity company doesn't have like true operators in it. So private equity at the end of the day, a lot of and a lot of people who get into private equity come from investment banking backgrounds. But they're not people who ever actually ran a business and maybe they're not they're probably not as close to the people side as they need to be, right? We have a formula at AXN, it's people, culture, and results. That is that is that is the three, focus points and people's first for a reason, right? You know, we need to hire good people, we need to retain good people. And at the end of the day, like if you especially as you continue to grow, you know, as this thing continues to scale and we need to promote leadership, people is probably one of the most important things and I think that some of the time when you see the bad side of private equity they're they're concerned more with the financials and less about the people side of the business. And it shows, right? You know, they're either they're trying to bring in people to lead that is aren't people focused or they look at every individual as just a number and, you know, they could go into a business really quick after acquiring it and completely turn the culture upside down. Because they're just not taking the time to learn the culture or the people of the business.

19:36 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. For you though, how do you manage that as you scale up? Because you guys have done fourteen acquisitions in the past two years. I'm guessing you're gonna do many more. So I mean th that gets more difficult at scale, right?

19:48 Brent Agee

Yeah, so one thing that we do and we've been blessed to do is a lot of founders have opted to stay in the business and continue to grow with us and alongside of us, right? We're only buying companies because we're gonna make more money off it eventually, right? Like we're gonna make more money off that brand we acquired. So we allow certain founders to roll equity and take part of that upside down the road. So going back to your question, how do we maintain it to scale, is like as long as we have, if I buy Dan's pest control company and everyone's loyal to Dan, well, if I keep Dan involved and I keep Dan happy, well then I don't have to worry about the employees leaving, the customers leaving and that whole waterfall that kinda happens afterwards, right? And obviously there's a lot of, you know, learning side to that and you know, Dan has to be the right guy and in you know and not not a bad actor. But that that's been our model. Obviously we offer people to ride off into the sunset, but we also just partner with good operators and they continue to grow with the platform. I mean we have right now we have people who've kind of became brand presidents and we've acquired other smaller companies into their business. And you know, now they're entering different markets and you know maybe they were only running a you know 2.5 million dollar company, now they're running a ten million dollar P&L. And they've been able to grow with us as a as a partner and not so much as an employee. So that's how it's scalable is just having the right people and people that are operators who've who've ran a business before and then just if th if they're coachable and if they're if they're willing to learn more on how this all works kind of behind the curtain on the PE side and you know, it's kinda where we step in, we coach We take off all the hats they don't wanna wear if they're like I never wanna look at payroll again or I don't wanna, worry about COIs with insurance companies. That's where we kinda step in, we handle all that beh back of office and we just let them focus on the people, the culture and obviously the results.

21:57 Dan Leibrandt

That's so good. Yeah, that what one of the big problems I hear around people acquiring other companies is like, well, you acquire them and now half the people leave because they were loyal to Dan or Brent or whoever the key operator was. So if that person stays and it's more or less the same business, but now it's maybe you're just kind of getting the right systems and operations in place, it's like, well...

22:20 Brent Agee

Yeah. Exactly. And a lot of times we come in, you know, depending on the size of the business, you know, we offer benefits, 401(k), like you get the big business with still like that depending on that brand, that s same kind of you know, feel to it. So we don't change too much of that.

22:38 Dan Leibrandt

I got this question recently from a bigger company. I think they might have been a franchise. I'm curious, for you guys, do you have one call center that handles all the calls for everyone or is it is it different for each business?

22:53 Brent Agee

In Arizona right now there is kind of like what you would you would c call like a contact center, right? We actually blended we had three three brands that were all a mile apart from each other. This is kinda how this started, by the way, there's actually a story to it. They were all like within a mile from each other and like we were all kinda like outgrowing our spaces and we were all like to that point where it was like there needs to be new offices, right? Like we're growing twenty percent year over year, we just need more space. Well, we're either like we're like, hey, instead of getting three separate offices, why don't we just, you know, put all this together and get one like really, you know, big facility. And that's what we did. We got a like an eighteen thousand square foot facility kind of in Scottsdale, Arizona. And just because of that space, obviously we blended three offices together and that was kind of like the birth of having like somewhat of a centralized contact center. Obviously all brands still have some of their people in their office, so satellites like people that are brand specific. But from a support side of it, what AXN kinda brings to these brands is like say a brand only has two CSRs and one calls in sick, it's like the rollover could go to the contact center for additional support. That way, calls aren't being missed. Inside sales training, there's a lot of value that contact center brings. But contact centers could also be really bad ideas. It's just how you how you manage it, right? And you gotta you gotta make sure you're you're listening to the operators who who know their brand and who know their customers. Because that that's where things could go wrong for sure.

24:33 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. Also I wanted to ask about brand consolidation. Are are you guys doing anything with brand or d does it ever make sense to put people under the same name?

24:43 Brent Agee

Yeah, so for example, we did probably eleven transactions in eleven, twelve transactions in Arizona. And at the end of this year we'll only actually have four standalone brands. Maybe more f you know, a few of that kind of currently in pipeline. But what that is what is the value of the brand, right? And at the end of the day we're playing a game to obviously eventually, make more money off all this eventually. So and then if founders want to step out, you know, then it's more like an asset purchase and we just acquire the assets and bring it into a different brand. So it really depends on the brand. I saw something interesting the other day about you know I think it was like Rollins, Rollins stock, Orkin. I'm not sure if you saw it. About how AI searches are favoring the family brands, local brands, over the big competitors. And I was like, that's why it's powerful a little bit to have a house of brands. I know in the Phoenix market when you search best pest control company, two two of the five brands that show up are our brands, right? So, it's pretty cool to have that and that's not something, that that's valuable. You y you could lose a lot of potential organic growth. If you kinda just make everything one brand opposed to having multiple spaces of real estate on Google. So...

26:06 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that makes sense. It this reminds me of a another I don't know, situation where like for example, there's all kinds of different liquor brands or I think it was specifically whiskey brands, but actually ever it's the same supplier making all the same whiskey and it's just different brands.

26:19 Brent Agee

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like f five distilleries make like a thousand different brands of whiskey. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

26:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Exactly. So that that's kinda the very the high level play.

26:34 Brent Agee

I mean there there's pros and cons to best, right? Obviously the more you could synergize, more you could get route density, there's so much value to that. And really we take every single deal. There's not a cookie cutter, we don't do anything cookie cutter and say, Hey, this is how we're doing it, and I don't care XYZ, this is how it's done. We approach every single deal differently and we value each, you know, deal differently. Like, you know, what is the brand equity in this market? What is the current density of you know that this brand has? And we take we literally go through, you know, a list of things that are integration or even in our diligence, you know, while we're talking to the founder. And a lot of it two is just a discussion with the founder of that company on what's best for them. Some of maybe they're burned out, and they don't want to they don't want to be the acting, you know, president or the CEO of the company anymore. They want to take, you know, we have some that opted in just doing sales. We have some that opted into just doing inventory where they're like, hey, like I could retire right now, but I don't want to be bored, so just give me a job, right? So, you know, if they don't you know in and they say they don't value the brand too much and they're they were gonna sell it anyways and it was gonna be tucked in to anyone else. So di different situations cause for, different different outcomes.

27:56 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. Something else I wanna ask you. So I think the dream for most pest control owners is grow to about, you know, maybe one to five million and then sell for like maybe five to fifteen million. And I know that you guys are doing a lot of acquisitions, and I wanted to ask for these people that are looking to sell their companies like around that range, what are some of the red flags that you see in the companies that you buy? Like you're you're looking at the markets, maybe you're making different offers, and you're like, this company has this. We're never gonna buy them.

28:36 Brent Agee

Yeah. And I'm surprised like more requires aren't super transparent on this. I mean we all say the same things. It's like reoccurring revenue, right? Is it above seventy percent? You know, get a gold star, you know, what's your retention look like? You know, industry benchmarks that everyone knows, right? We all kind of follow the same. They're all within a percentage of each other, whether you know, whether it's PCT magazine or PCO or a fraction, like we all follow like so are you hitting the green on a lot of those industry benchmarks? I would say the one thing that's not talked about enough when it t comes to valuation, how does a potential seller going to market get the highest multiple? Really it comes down to organic growth, right? I ca because and I'll and I'll just share this, it's not shared that often, but if a company's growing at twenty percent, I know and it and it's pretty like they're they're consistently like they got a CAGR, like it's continuing to grow at a high level. I could pay more money for the same company that's growing at 20% than if the same company was growing at 5% or 8%. Even if it has a little less EBITDA, right? Even if it has a little bit of cash flow, but it's showing that it's investing that cash flow into growth, I'll pay higher for that company. And the reason is because if it continues to grow by 20% after we partner with this founder. It's going to buy down the multiple in which I paid, right? A million dollar company growing at twenty percent. Next year they're gonna do one point two, right? So if you think about that, if it can continue to proceed that way, whatever closing multiple we paid at time of close is gonna go down pretty quickly. And this is this is the how the investment game works. So we're typically, definitely gonna be very bullish on companies that are showing strong organic growth. Not that it's you know, there's a ton of factors.

30:32 Brent Agee

That go into valuations. We have a scorecard that's, very long, very complex, you know, and but I would say the one that's kinda overlooked all the time, we see a lot of people, you know, they actually stop spending money on marketing and they try to get their EBITDA as high as possible. And I always tell people like, Don't do that, please. Like we know that if this business needs to invest into new trucks, it th needs to invest like we try to coach people a little bit like don't don't sacrifice your growth just for a little bit more EBITDA because it actually it's a more attractive asset if it's growing.

31:10 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Got it. Yeah, I d I don't hear many people talk about that. So that's a good point. What would you or Yeah.

31:14 Brent Agee

Yeah. Help you out too from the market. I you I know you do the marketing, right? So I think that that's useful information for you to know too, is like don't don't shut off the marketing. Don't kill the marketing.

31:26 Brent Agee

Keep it growing 'cause that that's attractive.

31:26 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. And I wanted to ask, curious, everyone has kind of around similar range, but curious where you land on this. What percent of your revenue should go into marketing?

31:41 Brent Agee

Is as much as it as it takes. No, just kidding.

31:42 Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha.

31:43 Brent Agee

We average anywhere from I would say the low end is probably six percent, a high end is probably ten percent. Six to pr like on every single one of my brand P&Ls, it's somewhere between six and ten percent. I know that's kind of a little buffer, but it really depends on what it comes down to is what can you capitalize on, right? So you don't be buying more leads than you could close. Right? If you're if you're bleeding, if things are starting to fall through the crack, like you gotta turn that dial down because your ROI is not not that profitable. And we experiment sometimes where we'll we'll maybe we'll throw like maybe we'll acquire a partnership and we'll double it like right off the back. Hey, they were spending five percent, we're gonna crank it up to ten, and we're gonna that way we'll identify like within a week where the where it starts to leak, right? Or is it the response times on the leads? Is it how we're communicating back to these leads? There there's so many different tranches on where something could break. And sometimes when you just crank it up really fast, you'll really start to see how many fall through or how many don't get closed and the percentages. And then then we'll dial it back and be like, okay, this is where we need to train the people who respond to the leads here. This is how we need to train the people at the door. Their closing ratio at the door is a little off. And then we train everyone and then we say, Okay, let's crank it back up, right? Because you could spend ten percent on marketing all the day if you're growing, twenty percent. It's definitely like that's the name of the game. And if you think about it, some of the fastest growing businesses are the door-to-door sales companies, and they're spending a lot more than than ten percent right on on those door to door sales. So I think it's you know, got you gotta find out where things break and don't just spend eight percent because someone told you to spend eight percent. Make sure you actually have the ability.

33:36 Brent Agee

To handle what that potentially brings. Otherwise scale it back down, train everyone and then scale it back up.

33:42 Dan Leibrandt

For sure. Yeah, that that totally makes sense. And something you mentioned before the call is that it hopefully it's all right if I'm sharing, that across your portfolio you're around 20% growth, and even some of the companies are at like 40% growth. So how are you growing so fast and consistently?

34:01 Brent Agee

Yeah, so one of the beautiful things about AXN right now is we partnered with a lot of growth like minded founders, right? People who who know the industry and everyone's brought a little something to the table. So when when we have our brand president meetings, you know, we share a lot of this. Like we have ACTION who crushes it on Google in the Phoenix market, and it's like how d how do they do that, right? We share that with some of the other brands. We have Urban Desert that, crushes it on Yelp, right? They're the number one pest control company in all the entire state of Arizona on Yelp. Have over a thousand five plus five star reviews, right? ACTION's been around forever. I think we have less than a hundred, right? So it just it just depends. But what there is, you know, there are there are ways and there are, you know, tricks and...

34:48 Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha.

34:57 Brent Agee

Technique I would say, right? It's it you know, we could like a lot of times it's not like that there's a secret formula, but I think there is like a secret on like ex execution, right? Like how how do you actually execute on some of these lead platforms, how do you actually execute to make sure you got the right people in the seat? And I think that's overlooked a lot of times and we spend a lot of time focused on execution. So for example I'll use Urban Desert, they're growing forty percent year over year. They're a five million dollar company growing at forty percent. That's just they're crushing it right now. So those founders, right? Really good people. I mean, they're all about their people. They stayed on husband and wife, Brad and Trista, amazing people. They really care about their team. You know, when we when we partnered with them, we identified a few things like opportunities. For one is they had no direct dedicated inside sales rep. And so this is a quick win for for any operators out there that are looking to grow their company fast. If you have your CSR also doing sales, the person who's doing the billing and the person who's doing the scheduling, stop that and get a dedicated salesperson in the office. And I'm big on this too because of like the psych psychology and personality types of like if I am not gonna be the best person to sell someone a new service if the call I just took was someone complaining that the technician left the gate open or the technician is late or no showed, right? Like the customer service people are are constantly like they're hearing about the fires, they're hearing about the day to day stuff that sometimes goes wrong and sometimes customers, you know, some of are gonna be calling, foaming out the mouth over who knows what it could be, right? So we try to separate our dedicated inside sales people from from all of that. We wanna make sure that they live in this world where they have a scoreboard and they're crushing it and there's their metrics and there's this entire culture in which these inside salespeople live in where they're being coached and they're being trained and they're ringing the bell and they're celebrating and it becomes this fun thing to do of being sales. And it's not this, you know, the culture of which it's hey, well, I don't really like to sell. I'm not comfortable selling, right? It's like you gotta get that personality of someone who actually enjoys doing sales. And that one thing that we've done, and this is how we're growing, is by just identifying that early on is who's gonna be the one answering the sales calls. And that once you get the right personality, you get the right person in that actually enjoys doing that, they're gonna start crushing it. I mean, we have inside sales reps that are c like closing over a hundred and seventy thousand dollars a month in a single month. Just on the phone. It like because it's the right we identify the right personality types and then they get the leads. And you continue to build on that as you go. But that is by far one of the first things we do to get these companies to scale and get them to grow is making sure that the calls and the leads are going to the right personality.

38:07 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's really good. So you mentioned personality types. Who is the right personality type?

38:14 Brent Agee

So I mean I could say this 'cause I was a sales guy. But like, you know, we actually do in like there's Predictive Index personality index kind of things you get to like if you have one really good salesperson, like have them take a personality test and then when you're hiring you could have other people take that and see kinda how they measure up. But what I was gonna say is like, you know, a lot of salespeople are could be kinda divas, right? And for anyone listening to this y they'll know and I could say that, but a good salesperson is typically gonna be someone who's confident, who who may or may not have a chip on their shoulder, right? They wanna win. They like seeing a scoreboard. They like the metrics be re being reported. They want everyone to know that, that they're winning, that they're crushing it. So I think when you start to develop a sales culture, there's gotta be a scoreboard. It's gotta show who's leading, who's losing and if they're the right individuals, they'll feed off that energy. I always I always give this analogy of like, imagine going to a basketball game, right? Like all the basketball players are there to win, right? They're they're there that I mean it's a job, but you know, they're there because they love it. They've d been doing it their whole life. Imagine what the energy of the players would be if there was no scoreboard in the stadium to see. If no one knew the score, do you think the players would be playing as hard? They wouldn't be. Right? So take that same analogy and put it in your office. Make sure the people in your office can see a scoreboard of hey, are we winning? And let that champion that that feeling as every day they kinda come to work, they there's a scoreboard. And don't get me wrong, your C players are not gonna like it. They're gonna think it as my they're they're gonna they're gonna think it's micromanaging, they're gonna think it's big brother. But like I always say like yeah, so when you hear someone complain about the scoreboard, just know the A players are always gonna wanna know the score, the C players are not gonna wanna know the score. And that's how you know, develop a nice culture.

39:58 Dan Leibrandt

Ha.

40:19 Dan Leibrandt

Such a great point. Yeah, I've never heard it put quite like that, but I can imagine that, especially d as maybe a company starts to ski scale and maybe there's like five or so sales guys. Now they're all competing against each other and it's like, well I got more sales than you today and...

40:33 Brent Agee

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well yeah, and like what we do too, like we compare we compete brands against each other, right? So we even have some brands in the same market and they'll always stay separate brands and they'll get competitive against against each other. And so will the presidents, you know, like they'll help each other out. I mean, gosh, a truck breaks down, these guys share trucks, they share employees. Hey, we got a big, you know, rodent abatement job. Can we get an extra pair of hands? Has anyone got any and like we'll share but at the same time, man, when we post that scoreboard, I'll be lying if there I would say there's not a lot of competitive shit talking, right? Ev everyone wants to be the best and if and if the team that's usually always in second place ever gets an opportunity to be on that that first place podium spot, like th they want everyone to know it, right? So I think I think for us it's definitely a contributor of like why AXN is having the success we're having is because we definitely have this culture for growth.

41:28 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's awesome. And then do you guys have any bonuses around that as well? Like certain milestones they hit.

41:35 Brent Agee

Yep, yeah, no, absolutely. At multiple different levels, right? Too. So e even the for the for the presidents, there there's growth opportunities for the sales individuals, kind of all the way down. You know, I think incentives is always gonna be, you know, very important for for people who who want that, who want that growth and even understanding like what's next, I think is important for employees. You know, some companies are really good at mapping out like career paths. And opportunities and some are good at like kind of you know, whether it's gift cards or what kind of recognition can you give a team member that's con consistently like, you know, outperforming.

42:14 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. Yeah, something else I wanted to ask you mo more generally is, you know, now you're at this place where you're kind of you're above all these companies managing them, maybe talking to the leaders. I'm curious, what on like on a regular day, what are you thinking about and where does your time go?

42:37 Brent Agee

Man, depends on the week, right? High level though, I am very involved right now in the M&A side of the business. So I'm here in Houston right now. We just closed a deal here in Houston, Texas this morning. You know, after this call, I'm gonna head out to meet you know, meet all the employees, meet the team members for a town hall. I'm very passionate about this part of the business is you know finding new opportunities, finding new founders to kinda partner with and, build relationships with. So that's, very high level, I've been able to recruit some amazing talent around me. A chief sales officer, a CEO, my chief chief finance officer, right? Really strong leaders that, you know, need very little of my time. Like they the like they're all executors and, you know, we have our weekly meetings and we have our one on ones. You know, they need my advice, they need me to help make a decision sometimes, but for the most part I've done a really good job of recreating the right talent to where, you know, they're doing their things and I've been able to focus a little bit more on the vision, the strategy and the overall growth. You know, obviously mentioning you know, I'm big on scoreboards, so we utilize, you know, like Databricks and Power BI so I have an app on my phone that I could see all the numbers instantly, right? I think it's really important for fast decision making and if I see anything, if I wanna look into something, I used to do it more. I don't do it as much anymore. You know, I we have like our weekly meetings now where I look at the KPIs and honestly that's about the only time that I really look at it. Because I you know, I've been able to grow it to a point where we have a team of people that are in the day to day that are are that wanting to execute. So hopefully that kinda answers the question. But definitely high level the relationships and the you know, continuing the continue to grow this through through acquisitions and partnerships.

44:32 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. All the all the super high level stuff or high leverage stuff. For KPIs, which ones are you looking at?

44:42 Brent Agee

Honestly so PE, so we say organic growth, right? Yeah, so year over year growth is like that's like the like on my on my list, like that's the top one. So it's month to date, it's quarter, it's year over year, but then we also look at first budget, right? So we build a budget every year. I recommend, a lot of founders to build a budget to keep their their teams accountable. But we build a budget of like, you know, what w what did we budget to grow, what did we budget for our expenses. So I like to look at how are we performing against that budget very high high level also. Lead closure is very important to me. Like I mentioned before, like I'm a sales guy. So understanding, you know, how many leads we're getting, what's the lead closure percentage. I also look at proposal cl pro conversion also, right? So like for when I say proposal it's like to like specifically for like termite, if we're going on site and giving some a proposal, like what is our closing percentage at the door, right? Like I have a very high expectation, like minimum fifty percent. Teams right now I think the platform closes closer to like high sixty, seventy percent at the door. So those are are metrics that I like to look at. That's a leading your lead closure is a great leading indicator on, how much you're you're gonna grow at the end the day. But then there's a lot of financial obviously I have to look at, EBITDA v versus budget and a lot of the P&L type data. But those those are the main ones that I look at. Other ones fluctuate pretty good, are more important depending on like certain brands. Like certain brands we know that might had a an issue with density.

46:32 Brent Agee

Were like route route value. Maybe when we partnered with them we knew route value was kind of below an industry benchmark. So that one might be like a little bit higher up on the scoreboard because that's like one we know we need to work on like the average route for this company is only nine hundred dollars. Most of them you know are higher up fifteen hundred dollars a day. So what could we do to get it kind of closer up there to everyone else? Those are kind of things that we look at and depending on the brand we could kinda move those KPIs higher or lower depending on priority.

47:06 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, gotcha. You mentioned on the door. So you guys are doing door to door sales?

47:12 Brent Agee

I meant so no, an inspection is needed in order to close a sale. So in Arizona we physically have to go out to a on site and write a proposal, right? Like you can't just like give a price over the phone. I mean you can but it's you're not supposed to, right? So we do on on site inspections where we kinda like draw a graph of the property and we do that also too for like rodent abatement, obviously with with rodent control or any type of wildlife. You really need to get eyes on the property. So when an inspector is going out to a property and physically having to r do an inspection and write a proposal, we track the percentages of h at what rate does this inspector close at the door. Right? So...

47:59 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, I just asked because I've interviewed a lot of pest control owners from five to fifty million or so, and maybe seventy to eighty percent of them are doing door to door sales. So are you guys not doing any door to door? Wow.

48:14 Brent Agee

So we don't do any door to door sales. Yeah, it's it we just I mean we're we're I mean we're going at twenty percent. We're like for for what we're looking to accomplish, we just we don't need it. It's not always the most attractive type of revenue as you know. The attrition is, you know, typically not not as good as when you acquire the doors, you know, through traditional marketing. Not saying like we have acquired some brands that had maybe a little bit of door knocking, right? So we're not like allergic to the door knocking. Will we acquire a business that's door knocking? Like yeah, like for the right if it's the right founder and if there's the right strategy and the right s you know, cost structure. But it's not like something like we AXN doesn't want to be known for like a being like a door to door growth company.

49:01 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, gotcha. Cool. A general question I want to ask you too was where do you see the industry going in the next five years? What's gonna change and what should people prepare for?

49:13 Brent Agee

Man, I know it's changing a lot, right? Obviously the biggest, disruptor to office and training is like AI, but it's also been such an amazing tool for for a lot of us. I mean the fact that AI could do so much from an auditing standpoint and a training, even coaching standpoint, like listening to your calls and like giving giving feedback or helping with your overflow to like keep costs down, those are bit s you know, some big big things that are coming out that it's just getting better and better. Where it was six months ago where versus where it's at today, I'm I can't even imagine what's happening five years down the road. Obviously there's a lot happening with the consolidation space. You know, I'm one of many acquirers, active acquirers, in the pest control space. So I think more and more stuff is going to be consolidated over the years and that might may or may not change, you know, how we look at valuations in multiples. So but yeah man, there's there there's a lot going on. I don't I don't have a crystal ball. I try not to think too much about all of it. You know, I'm kinda still we're just kinda focused on this year right now, but it's definitely a lot of a lot of things are coming. I mean gosh, even you see what's happening with like the AI search w which we mentioned earlier where like that wasn't even a thing, you know, two years ago and now it's probably gonna be one of the most used things for searching for pest control companies. I think like the at the rate that people are searching for home services via AI is growing in the high double digit percentages every month, right? I think I think last time I talked it forty or fifty percent is how much it's growing. Like more and more people are adapting it. And so a matter of time I think it's gonna be, you know, one of the number one search engines for trying to find a home service.

51:00 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, it's huge. No, and you're you're right, it's hard to predict because things are changing so fast. It AI's growing exponentially and it's like if you've heard of the concept of RSI, recursive self improvement, that well the AI starts training the AI and now it's like now it can just continue training forever. It's hard to even wrap your mind around.

51:18 Brent Agee

Who knows we might we might have Tesla robots out there soon doing it's crazy.

51:24 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I yeah, I guess we'll we'll see where that goes. I don't know. Like, we know a lot of white collar work is like just getting taken away, but you know, ChatGPT released Astra for Law and I'm sure lawyers and, you know, other people, accountants are gonna be struggling a little bit. But home services we seem safe for at least the next ten years or so, I'd say.

51:42 Brent Agee

Yeah. Yeah, I think I think yeah, I agree. I think I think if I was anybody who's looking about basically starting a business right now, I think I think any type of home service is a pretty safe bet for a while. And it's lucrative, I mean Yep, go ahead. No, I'm good, go ahead.

51:59 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, for sure. And also I wanted to ask you go ahead, go ahead. Okay. Well I had a different question. So since you guys are doing a lot of acquisition and maybe you don't want to reveal your secret here, but I know as well that a lot of companies are out there trying to acquire. So how do you compete against these other people that are acquiring? How do you win these deals?

52:25 Brent Agee

Yeah. I think one way we're acquired obviously once people get to know me, get to know AXN, get to know our culture, I think that's a that's a huge, huge part of it. Valuation obviously is good. You know, we do a great job valuating business, we're fair, we ha we help people with their financials, get them the most for their money. So we'll actually kinda like hold our hand, if you will say, like through the process to make sure that we're we're actually trying to get them as much EBITA and be as transparent about the process. So that's been really well. I mean, every single founder we've done a deal with, like, I give anyone I'm talking to, like, basically their name, their email address, their phone number, and say, hey, like, feel free, like I don't hide anything. You could call every single person I've ever done a transaction with them and just ask for feedback or what it's been like working with me through the process and what it's been like after, right? So that's a big part of it. Another thing, Dan, that like a lot of people listeners might not know is, what like when you think about selling your business, you have to fully understand what your options are. So w with us, we're a newer PE backed company. We're still at the founder share price. We haven't raised our share price yet. We probably will early 2027. But we're allowing people to take part in that equity. And Shore Capital, for example, who is our our financial backer on average they return six and a half times their money, MOIC. So if you do the math like that, if you roll over one million dollars, you could potentially get six point five million dollars back. So like we're letting people take part in this investment thesis and this is why a lot of big businesses, you know, invest into these portfolio companies and into these, you know, private equity funds, is because they're all gonna get a return on their money. So with us, say a company top TEV is five million dollars, for example. Companies so they do even if they do a broker process, the highest bid comes in at five million dollars and say that's say that's us, right? Well, then if I'm gonna pay you five million dollars, what I'll say is like, Okay, well how about you take a million dollars of that and you roll it into equity and it's tax deferred, so you're not gonna pay that million dollars on so that's gonna save you, a couple hundred thousand dollars already, not paying taxes on the on that million. And then with it sitting in to this, when we go to have a future transaction or liqu liquidation event, they're gonna get a multiple on that. And if we hit what's I think it's over seventy percent of Shore's portfolio companies have over a five times return, right? So unless you're a bad operator, you should be striking to get a higher than a five times return. So say they turn that million dollars into another five million dollars, it's like where they could have just sold and got f maybe five million dollars in cash. Well now, you know, with us, they could be making nine to twelve million dollars instead of five million dollars. And that's like the multi generation machine of what private equity is all about, right? It's the wealth generation and you know, there there could be like not only so you don't just get like the first bite or the second bite, there could potentially be like, hey so you turn that one million into four million dollars or five million dollars, well, take a three million dollar payday, leave two million in, and maybe that two million could become four million, right? So it could continue to stay on as long as this, continues to stay with with private equity, there's gonna be a transaction about, I think the average is, four to seven years. So every four four to six, four to seven years, there's gonna be another event where, you know founders are gonna be able to continue to double and triple, et cetera, their money down the road. And that is, you know, we won't always offer this. You know, at at some point we're gonna get big and we're just it's just gonna be better for us to start buying all companies with cash. But for a short period of time, when a platform company is early enough, there is an opportunity to roll equity. And I think that's what anybody, you know, thinking about considering selling their business, they need to understand that. They need to do the research on the PE firms.

56:38 Brent Agee

Find out what their return is, what's their average, kinda look at look at all that, consider all that. Don't just don't just look at, you know, one company's offers you five million, maybe the other company offered you four point eight, but the four point eight might be an actual better opportunity. You just gotta do your diligence and know exactly, you know, what the offer is.

56:59 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, as you as you start to grow and get these opportunities, the numbers get really interesting and how how far you can you can take a business. Cause some people might just have a million dollar business and like, well, you know, I can sell for like a million.

57:12 Brent Agee

Yeah. Exactly. You know, and like it's say you say it's hey, it's only a million dollar business, it's you know, maybe it sells for you know one point five, whatever it might be, but with that rolled equity, they could potentially make another million. And if they stay on board to be like, you know, like a founder president, help, you know, grow the business, then they're also getting a salary. They're also getting paid, you know, they're also getting benefits. So instead of having to start completely over or, you know, you know open up a sports bar down the down the road. I joke about that 'cause that's what my dad ended up doing. But you know, th like there's options but you could you know, could stay involved if you if you're passionate about your business, you think you wanna sell it, or you just want like someone to partner for growth, that's kind of the value side of, you know, getting in early to PE and getting the rewards down the road as well.

58:02 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. Now before we wrap up here, I'd also like to ask you, I'm curious because I can tell how ambitious and smart you are. What is your vision for this company? Where do you want to take it?

58:15 Brent Agee

So I wanna be so I'm very, very competitive. I wanna be known in this pest control as a as a pest control operator, you know, what I would love is, you know, when people think of AXN they think about it as being like a group of pest control operators that are being very successful doing doing private equity and doing deals and partnerships the right way, right? Like I wanna be the platform of choice to partner with, right? And I say partner instead of just to sell with because I think what we do is we allow individuals the true partnership opportunity to stay on. So like definitely partnership of choice. But you know, I'll tell you also that it's not just that. It's, you know, I look at all of the other PE companies and all of the even even at Shore Capital, I wanna be known as the case study. I wanna be known as as the company is like, hey, we took this five million dollar business and look what it became over just a short period of time. You know, they ten Xed in a little just a couple of years and here's how they did it and eventually be, you know, a resource to other founders, you know, even if they're not looking to sell, like, you know, I would love the opportunity just you know free advice, free coaching, whatever it might be, something that AXN's gonna start doing is I'll take this moment to put a little bit of a plug in for anyone who's interested can reach out. But on in January, about January twenty second in Scottsdale, Arizona, we're gonna host an event called like a day with AXN where we're gonna have different segments. One's gonna be on sales and marketing, one's gonna be about just like P&L literacy, like understanding gross margin, understanding how to like strategically, you know, build your P&L.

59:34 Dan Leibrandt

Go ahead.

59:54 Brent Agee

To make it look more attractive when you do good look to exit. We're gonna we're gonna share a lot of that stuff with people. We're gonna have a seller panel. We'll have a case study on Urban Desert, the five million dollar company that's growing by forty percent. We're gonna share everything, no secrets. Hey, this is what we changed, this is what they were doing prior, this is what we did afterwards. So Dan, I mean you're more than welcome to attend also. I think it'd it'd be good for anybody who just wants to learn on, you know, some of the success we're having. So and honestly that's what I'm passionate about. Like the day, like jiu-jitsu, I coach, right? I don't get paid to coach. It's passion. I love sharing knowledge. I always tell people that there there's n there's not a lot of secrets and in knowing the jiu-jitsu moves or knowing how to scale the business. It really comes down to execution and the person leading to make the commitment to do what needs to be done.

1:00:44 Dan Leibrandt

Sure. No, that's super exciting with the event and I think I mentioned to you that we're planning for Pest Control Millionaires to host an event in January. So I'll make sure that the dates don't overlap. Yeah.

1:00:52 Brent Agee

Awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let let me know. Don't please don't do it January twenty second 'cause I'd love to attend, but mine mine's I've already sent invites out and we've already we've already got that train moving, so yeah.

1:01:04 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, no, no, all good. Cool. And then the last question I've got for you, Brent, is what is your message for the pest control owners out there? What do you want to tell them? What do you think they need to know?

1:01:15 Brent Agee

Yeah, honestly, like I it depends on which stage stage they're at, right? If they're looking to exit, you know, obviously, you know, do your research. If you're looking to grow, I think that kind of what we talked about earlier, like dedicated salespeople, right? If you're if your t pest control tech is doing the estimates or your termite you know, like get as soon as you could get dedicated sales individuals that their full focus is selling. You'll you'll see the growth come through. Obviously you gotta do a good job hiring, but anytime someone wakes up and th and their sole purpose is the sale, like they're typically gonna sell a lot more than someone just y does it part time. And that's something that we've been able to do really good at and that's why, you know, we're having the success we're have is, you know, just taking the time to train people and have dedicated sales folks if you're looking to grow.

1:02:04 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Well sweet. Brent, this been an honor having you on the show. I've learned so much from you. And where can people find you online and connect with you?

1:02:15 Brent Agee

Yeah, so obvious I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on on Facebook, Instagram, you know, it's just look at my name, Brent Agee. I think there's an underscore somewhere in there. But you know, yeah, typically yeah, man, reach out to me, find find me on Facebook, find me on Instagram, you're even LinkedIn, shoot me a message. Always happy to connect, always help with a coach, you know, free advice. At the end of the day, you know, that that's what I'm here to do is kinda build relationships and continue to scale this thing. So...

1:02:43 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So everyone go make sure to follow Brent. All those links will be in the description. And you mentioned the event is January second. Anything else you'd like to plug or promote?

1:02:53 Brent Agee

January twenty second. January twenty second, yeah, that's the event and no, I think appreciate it. That that's it. That's all I got from me. So thank you, Dan.

1:03:05 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Of course. Well, thanks again so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time and I hope we stay in touch.

1:03:11 Brent Agee

Awesome. Thanks for having me.

1:03:12 Dan Leibrandt

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