Why Boring Businesses Build Generational Wealth

Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Andy Fuller, Founder & CEO of Pest Hunters Mosquito Hunters

Hello everyone and welcome to or welcome back to the Free Agent Podcast. My name is Meg Chmitz. I am your host and this discussion is all about free agency and taking control over your financial future.

The mission of my show is to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, franchising and freedom. From corporate refugees and executives tired of the desk job, to entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey.

My podcast aims a spotlight light on real people who stepped into the unknown, took control over their destiny and became their own boss.

And today I have the epitome of the free agent profile right here. Andy Fuller is the founder and CEO of I Just Happen to have the Best Mosquito Hunters franchise. He is. His corporate office is right down the road from my Illinois tall grass restoration business. And so I’ve stopped in at your offices.

And it was great to spend time with you. I don’t. It was what, maybe a year and a half, two years ago already? But to really see now where your company has grown to. That’s really the important reason for having you here today. So thank you for spending the time with me.

Andy:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Meg.

Meg:
Well, Andy, so you, you were a, a corporate guy, right? And when I went to look at your profile on LinkedIn, you’re long past that. That’s not even anywhere on your, in your history anymore. But start there and talk about.

Because you, you have a different trajectory than most. So leaving corporate America, starting this business. Which came first, chicken or the egg? Build. Build up the timeline for me.

Andy:
Okay, sure, sure. I guess I’ll go back to college. I’m from Michigan, and I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to major in, but I started a college painting business just as a means to an end because I needed tuition money.

And I accidentally fell in love with entrepreneurship in the process. I just loved the idea of how you could be, you know, in Michigan, six inches of snow on the ground, January, walking around on a weekend, knocking on doors, getting people to talk about painting their house during a time of the year when that’s the last thing on their mind to setting up an appointment, sitting at the kitchen table, getting the down payment check, building a team, training the team.

Next thing you know, it’s June, you’re at the customer’s house, you’ve given their home this nice facelift, and everybody wins. The homeowner wins because their home is now in better condition.

The employees win because now they’re able to make a living. And then if you do the job well as the owner, then there’s something left over for you, and that’s the profit. And everybody wins. And it’s a beautiful thing.

And it’s kind of a fair deal for everybody. And I just love that, is seeing those jobs happen and just realize if this wouldn’t have happened unless I decided to sort of poke the box and make something happen.

And I just, I loved it. It was the most creative thing I imagined anybody could ever do, is pure creation.

Andy:
Anyway, I did that for a few years and I accidentally fell in love with entrepreneurship. I finally got my degree and at the end of four years, and I thought, well, I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do. I’m going to use this degree.

So moved to Chicago, got a job working downtown Chicago. There was another job that I was trying to get as well while I did that. So it took me about two years of jumping through hoops to get this big Fortune 500 job, right?

A friend was in the industry and you know, help open some doors. But it was still a two year process of just jumping through hoops to get this job, right? So I finally get approved, I get in, I get hired, I get this job.

And I’m thinking, okay, this is interesting. This is interesting because this is a multi billion dollar industry and this is a multi billion dollar company actually. And you know, I get really good pay and I get to travel and I get a car allowance and there’s room to grow.

Like this is it, like I have made it. This is probably going to be my career because it’s going to be kind of like it was with the painting business. But it’s going to be with just unlimited potential because all these resources and all these talented people.

It sounds so naive to say it right now, you know, because you know better. You know, we both know better. I’m sure anybody listening knows better. You know, of course it’s not like that at all at a company that size. It’s corporate America.

I was in the job for a year and I took a look around. I realized I hate this. I hate every part of this. You know, it’s. It’s not at all about building things. It’s not at all about teamwork or, you know, going into uncharted waters.

The things that are really exciting to me. It was about do as little work as possible. Make sure you don’t get blamed for anything. Don’t take any risks, don’t make any mistakes. Make sure that you are good at pointing the finger at other people.

Make sure you get your quarterly bonus. And that’s about it. And I did not want to spend the rest of my career doing that. I wanted to go back to doing my own thing. I wanted to build something. I wanted to work with people who wanted to, to build things.

And so that led to a lot of soul searching. It was painting before, in college. I wanted to go back into home services, but I. I was kind of done with painting. I didn’t see a lot of room to grow.

The thing that I really didn’t like about painting was that it’s not renewable, it’s not recurring. So if I do a great job painting your house, you don’t need me again for a decade.

I wanted something where I could build a relationship with you as the customer, but then continue that relationship throughout the year and the next year and the year after that and year after that.

And then that led me to that. Then originally it was just mosquito control. And I got into mosquito control because it kind of checked all my boxes better than anything else could.

Is an emerging space, opportunity to innovate. It was really good timing for getting into an innovative space like that. It was home services. It was recurring revenue.

I could learn enough to be dangerous in a reasonably short period of time without having to get a job working for somebody else or go back to school or, you know, be an apprentice. I was at a point where I didn’t have that kind of patience anymore. I was like, I gotta get up.

So, you know. And then also, it was something that. It was interesting to me. It was something that, know, I could talk to somebody about this work and I. I wouldn’t get bored the way that I did working in corporate America, because I was actually building.

And it was providing value to the community as well. Like, it was reducing exposure to illness. And all of that seemed interesting to me.

So that led to me keeping the job still, like moonlighting originally, for about two years. Have no clue what I was doing. No clue how to market this business. No clue how to get customers, no clients.

I had no clue how to even perform the treatments, you know. So I went through a lot of a learning curve, a pretty steep learning curve, just to learn all those things.

Starting with just going in North Brick, Illinois, you know, where that is, just knocking on doors, offering the service for free, just to see if anybody would take this. I was literally giving treatments away.

Most people said no, because, like, there has to be some catch, right? Come to realize it’s not a great way to get started. But it was a start, you know? You know, and then we started to really gain traction after a few weeks.

The value proposition was catching on. The brand was really catching on. I had two buddies back from Michigan that I went to high school with that were living in Chicago at the time. They started working as my original technicians.

And we just started going, you know, it was a side hustle very early on, and then it quickly developed into something much more.

I knew I wanted to get into something way bigger than me. I never wanted this to just be, you know, Andy’s pest control company.

I wanted. I wanted to be something really large. I love entrepreneurship. I love business owners. I know what entrepreneurship had meant to me and still means to me up to that point.

And so I just knew I wanted to work with other small business owners. And that led me to franchising. So I knew I wanted to. I didn’t know anything about franchising other than that, other than it’s a good way to work with other business owners, other small business owners.

Meg:
So what was interesting to me is you weren’t afraid of seasonality. You came from Michigan where you cold weather, we’re in Chicago where we’ve got same thing.

But back to your point on the recurring revenue is now you’re talking about an annual service versus once every 10 year kind of a service, right? Yeah.

So the, the value proposition only for yourself, the entrepreneur, but also for your client is they get to know you and right. To know them.

Andy:
Right. And the seasonality, you know, for the first many years in the business I saw it really as a competitive advantage because it was scaring away potential competitors.

Meg:
Okay.

Andy:
So. And it served us well. And some parts of the country now, you know, fast forward to today, I’m kind of jumping around but you know, we’ve got, you know, 140 plus locations, some of them in markets where there are mosquitoes 12 months out of the year.

Still here in Chicago we’re talking at most, you know, seven months and eight months out of the year where you’re going to have mosquito problems and where there’s actually need for your services.

So that leads to kind of, you know, where we’re at now. Over time we realized, okay, we’re doing this mosquito thing really well. You know, what else can we do?

And really it’s a, it’s a credit to our franchisees more than anything. This is the beauty of franchising is all of the great innovations that happen in franchising come from franchisees.

The Big Mac came from a franchisee. The $5 footlong, the drive thru window came from a franchisee. Like it’s.

So where we’re at today is we’re offering a lot more service lines. We have no seasonality anymore and that’s because of our franchise.

Meg:
Yeah, the, over the years I have either been a customer of or, or with Franchoice representing the brand. There are a lot of people who say hang on a second, this is not, this is not a good business for me because I want to be busy all the time seven months out of the year, I’m twiddling my thumbs the rest of the time.

And I said, you know, that gives you a great lifestyle during the holidays where you’re marketing. And no, no, no, I still don’t. People can’t get comfortable with, with that.

If you’re further south to your point, you’ve got now 10, 11, 12 months out of the year. Well, you’ve solved for that with a diversification of revenue models.

And that’s what, yeah, really became interesting to me when I was visiting with you at your corporate office about your, your future view of how to solve for X for those franchisees who wanted the continuous revenue.

Andy:
And it, it does work, if that’s what you want. If you want the kind of business where you can do it for seven, eight months, we, we have franchisees that kind of, I guess you could say they’re sort of grandfathered now, where they came in five years ago.

And that’s the kind of business they want to run. They don’t want to build a big business, they want a lifestyle.

You know, we just found that the franchisees who were happiest with the results were the ones who wanted to build something big. You know, they wanted to create generational wealth. They wanted to build an empire.

And I think there was a time where you could build a mosquito empire where you could just say, I just do mosquitoes, maybe some fleas and ticks, and I’m going to build a big empire here in my community that doesn’t really exist anymore. That has changed.

You know, I would say that to, to anybody and I. The way that you build an empire and that you create opportunities for generational wealth is be in the pest control business and be in the holiday lighting business because, you know, all in, it’s 15 times the size of just the mosquito control business alone as an industry.

Meg:
And of course for me, owning tall grass restoration out of Schaumburg and also up here. One of the questions that I had had for you when I visited is what about the pollinators?

What about what, what do you use for product in your applications? So that homeowners who are concerned about the monarchs and other other sensitive species could still feel good about the mosquito and pest control that you’re doing.

Andy:
Right? So it’s really important that everybody is trained properly and it’s really important to set expectations with customers up front too, because without proper education or just simple communication, a simple conversation, it’s easy for someone to maybe assume that the way that you make an effective treatment is just spray, you know, so we don’t even call it a spray. We don’t do a spray.

There is a part of a treatment that is involving applying a product, but it starts with reducing the conditions that would allow mosquitoes or other pests to breed.

So just like any other organism, like, it starts with harborage, shelter and food and water. And so if you can eliminate harborage and food and water, you’re not going to have the mosquitoes or other pests that you’re trying to get rid of.

Same thing with, you know, rodents or, you know, ants, things like that. So you just need to know what does that look like?

What does the food, the water, what does the harborage look like for the particular pest that you’re talking about? There’s mechanical controls that are involved. There’s, you know, even natural controls like bug on bug.

There’s certain bugs that you can use, there’s certain plants that you can use that will keep certain pests away. And then another part of the equation is the products that you use.

But it’s not just about showing up and just blanketing a property with products. That’s not integrated pest management. That’s not a good way to do it.

Meg:
Just yesterday here at Tallgrass, we had the start of our annual prescribed burn. To your point, you know what that is, right?

So they’re dropping fire and the wind is pushing the fire through the prairie. And, and to your point, what we can see now, all of the skeletons of the rabbits and the, we can have snakes and turtles and et cetera, but we’ve got the coyote dones and that’s what is.

So our prescribed burn really functions. I think to some extent what you’re talking about is if you take away the food water source, then you’re, you’ve eliminated a big part of the, of the problem with, with mosquitoes.

They’re airborne. So. Versus on the ground. How. Look at everything that you’ve learned. You know, how many years has this been since you started knocking on doors in Northbrook?

Andy:
11 years. Yeah.

Meg:
You had, or do you still have your corporate territories?

Andy:
I still own those. There are a few suburbs out in the west that I sold off about five years ago.

So. Hinsdale, Naperville. Anybody in Chicago, if you care. But, but yeah, otherwise I still have the north and northwest suburbs and I have a team that manages the business.

Actually just got a new GM in place last September, so I’ve been a little more hands on over the last few months, but otherwise I’m not really involved with that business. My, my day job is franchisor.

Meg:
Yeah. So what I, what I like about the fact that you didn’t end up selling all of your locations, you’ve got your finger on the pulse.

Your team has, your corporate team is running the business just as any franchisee. Yes. That is where a lot of the greatest ideas come from is from the field and different parts of the country, but you’re still operating the business.

So you were trying doing testing then in house with the pest control and then Humbug holiday lighting. Was it an immediate uptake for your clientele with those two other revenue streams?

Andy:
When we had the right conversations and when we actually had the team that was having those conversations, yes, we had more taking us up on it.

The issue is you have to have people on the team that are willing to sell. And this is part of the reinvention that’s been happening with the Chicago office is we have a new GM in place who started, like I said, last September, and the culture is shifting a bit where everybody on the team feels a need and an incentive to sell.

That traditionally hasn’t been the case with the, with that particular office. So I’m really pleased with the changes that the new GM has rolled out.

You know, not every Mosquito Hunters customer is going to be a Humbug holiday lighting customer. But it’s such an easy conversation to have because you already, you already have that relationship.

They know you, they like you, they trust you. Not everybody is going to get holiday lighting services done professionally anyway. But it’s a very easy conversation to have.

Pest control, on the other hand, I mean, there is just such a larger addressable market. You know, when you’re talking about pest control right now, this just gives you a sense of the opportunity that we have.

Now that I have a new manager in this business, I’m just, I’m just keeping it real with you here, Meg. Same with, you know, your listeners.

Five out of six of our customers in Chicago are only receiving mosquito control services. They are, they are not getting pest control services from us.

And yet the industry, if we want to compare pest control versus just mosquito control alone, pest control excluding mosquito control, is 12 times the size of mosquito control.

So what that tells us is we’ve got a lot of customers, they’re getting pest control services from somebody, it’s just not us.

And so we’ve got a big opportunity and this is our new GM’s work to do, you know, this year is get a lot of these customers who are already getting mosquito control services to switch over and bring their pest control services over to us.

Meg:
That’s a mammoth opportunity.

Andy:
And some of these customers have been with us for 10 years and they probably just don’t know any better. That’s what’s so exciting about this.

Meg:
Yeah, well, focus your energy on positivity, not, not the other way around. Like, when you’re saying that, be pretty bummed out that you’ve got these other revenue streams and your customers aren’t taking advantage of as many of the, of the services as what you’ve got to offer.

But this is a huge opportunity, growth opportunity. Do you have franchisees out in other locations, other states, who are also funneling their ideas back to you from boots on the ground? What they’re hearing.

Andy:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, this probably is a good place to tee up the thing that I was hoping to talk about here. Is it okay if we.

Meg:
Absolutely.

Andy:
So this is pretty cool. We just had our franchise conference, our annual franchise conference, just a couple weeks ago, and I officially made this announcement.

So we are no longer known as Mosquito Hunters. We are now known as Pest Hunters Mosquito Hunters.

And so this is part of the issue, this whole five out of six customers. Mosquito control. We’ve actually been doing pest control for a few years now.

It’s just our customers don’t know any better. And so at first, our approach was like, hey, Cheesecake Factory offers more than cheesecake, and Footlocker offers more than just shoes, and Jiffy Lube does just more than oil changes, and Bass Pro Shops does more than fishing equipment.

So we can be Mosquito Hunters and we can sell pest control. But realized it just wasn’t that obvious. It wasn’t obvious enough for customers, and so they were just confused.

And then our name, for as beautiful and lovely as it was, as much as it has a soft place in my heart, our name, Mosquito Hunters, was actually holding us back.

And so by now, rebranding to Pest Hunters Mosquito Hunters, we’re sending a message to the entire world, starting with our existing customers, that we don’t just do mosquitoes.

We do ants and spiders, and we take care of rodents and cockroaches and all of these wonderful critters that you don’t want coming inside of your house.

Meg:
That’s great. I’m so glad. So this is officially launched. You’ve got your marketing branding campaign is out there, and I can come and get a new, a new vest.

Andy:
I got a new patch with your name on it. Yeah, we can hook you up with a new vest, the whole thing. So Mosquito Hunters isn’t going anywhere. It’s not a dirty word, you know, it’s not like when you hear the Washington Commanders change their name and you don’t say the old name because it’s a bad word.

Like, it’s not like that. You can still say Mosquito Hunters. It’s just that we are going to be deliberate, you know, on our website and on our collateral moving forward and also with all of our existing customers, just to let them know, we do pest too.

We’re Pest Hunters Mosquito Hunters.

Meg:
Well, you’ve got how many franchisees across how many states already?

Andy:
We’ve got 80 franchisees, about 140 locations at across 27 states. So we, I’m looking at my map right here. We are mostly in the eastern and central time zones.

We’ve got Colorado, we’ve got Utah and that’s it. But that’s the thing, with a name like Mosquito Hunters, you can only have so much of a footprint on the west coast.

We’re going to change that. We actually just brought on a director of operations with the company. It’s a position that didn’t exist before.

And this is actually somebody who spent 20 years, the last 20 years of his career working at Orkin. And so he brings so much intellectual capital over to us so we can take an even bigger leap into pest control and take advantage of this industry.

Meg:
Awesome. Come on over. You can imagine out here because of all of our, all the equipment that we’ve got related to environmental restoration.

So we do prairie, wetland, woodland restoration. We have this divide with our employees about what kind of pest control we’re going to implement because it’s counter in a way to the, the nature of our business.

So let living things live. Well, I’m sorry but in nature you’ve got invasive, non invasive, you’ve got native and non native. And you probably look at it the same way.

We, we want to get rid of the invasive non native thing.

Living organisms that there are impeding the natural landscape environment.

Andy:
Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And so like I said, it doesn’t just have to be. And it’s almost never just pest control projects, products.

It’s biological controls and physical and mechanical controls. Even just human behavior changes can make a big difference.

You know, just simplifying the environment around you, decluttering, you know, things like that can keep those pests out.

You know, it’s really simple in some cases, but that’s what a good pest control company can do.

Meg:
We. I won’t name my husband by name. He doesn’t listen to my podcast.

Andy:
You won’t name him by name?

Meg:
We have just to your point, it’s so not sexy, but it’s so necessary to take a look at your garage. And like we’ve got a pole barn right next door and he’s been using that for not only our John Deere’s and our.

We’ve got some 1947 tractors as well. But the more you don’t tend to the crap, the easier it is for the mice.

And the whatever is going to come in and make it their home and they’re going to eat it up and they’re going to get into everything and it turns into a disgusting mess.

So homeowners, take care of your stuff.

Andy:
Yeah. The. The rule is anything that is the size of your pinky, any sort of crevice, anywhere a mouse can fit through, and then your thumb, a rat could fit through.

So I hope no one’s eating, but while they’re listening to this, but hope I’m not ruining anybody’s lunch.

Meg:
But it’s sexy. Totally. It’s absolutely. When I look at Andy, I only work with referrals.

99 of the people I’m working with have been referred to me, and they want to know what’s hot in franchising.

And so I rattle through my top 10 list. And home services is always on there because homeowners don’t always know what to do.

They don’t know how to evaluate and identify what the problem is and make those corrective measures. So this is not sexy, but it’s necessary, right?

Andy:
It is. I am proud to say this is a boring business, but boring is very steady and reliable and it’s not going anywhere.

And there’s a reason why it’s such a large industry. If we’re talking about pest control, altogether $26 billion, then add on 5 billion for holiday lighting is a $31 billion industry all combined across pest, mosquito, holiday lighting.

Meg:
I would think that your franchisees are pretty excited about this shift to pests.

And just with those metrics that you were talking about a little while ago, the financial upside with these additional revenue streams, and we don’t talk numbers, we’re not going to specifically profit margins or whatnot.

But I’m sure that you, as the founder and CEO of this company, are looking at the financial ramifications of adding these additional revenue streams.

You’re not doing it to make more work, you’re doing it to make more profitability.

Andy:
No, exactly. And this is. I. I love our franchisees so much. I mean, this wouldn’t have happened without our franchisees, you know, pushing and saying, I want more.

I want more opportunities to upsell, I want more service lines, I want to create more wealth. I want to create generational wealth for my family.

And so this led to, you know, many years of iterative work to really define something new within this space where we’re now the only three in one home and commercial services concept in franchising.

And now, you know, the part of the inspiration was how you have like Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts under the same roof or maybe like KFC and Taco Bell.

No one’s done this before in home services and commercial services until now. And this is thanks to franchisees helping to innovate.

So I’m, I’m really proud that we’re a part of this rich history within franchising. You got the Big Mac, the $5 footlong, the stuffed crust pizza, the drive thru window.

These are all franchisee led innovations. And now three in one home services. Mosquito, pest and holiday lighting thanks to franchisees.

Meg:
And Gunther is going to remain on with you as your. What do you call a mascot.

Andy:
Gunther’s not going anywhere. We still love Gunther, but Gunther’s got a buddy now.

Meg:
Oh.

Andy:
I love it.

Meg:
Scrooge.

Andy:
Scrooge. So Humbug Holiday Lighting is the, the name of the service line where we do the holiday lighting design and install.

So we’ve got a lot of good photos and videos online of. We had a lot of fun with it when we did our training. We had franchisees put on the, the mascot and like we’ve got really cool mascots.

They’re like skipping around. So, so Gunther and Gunther and Scrooge are like locked arms like the Wizard of Oz, you know, as they’re skipping down the yellow brick road, they’re just skipping through a field together, you know, showing how complimentary the businesses are to each other.

Meg:
And so that is an amazing sweater. I think for anyone who’s watching this, you’re going to get just a ridiculous amount of orders for people want to have.

Andy:
Can I, can I have my QVC moment right here?

Meg:
Absolutely.

Andy:
So this is the, the winter version, Meg, that I’m wearing here. So this is, this keeps me warm in a place like Chicago.

However, for those of you in the southern states, you think, well, what about me? It just, it doesn’t get that cold in the, in the winter. Well, we have a fishing shirt that looks just like an ugly sweater.

So it’s actually very thin, breathable moisture. Nice. This is the Humbug, like nice cool trucker cap. Right?

But if you’re in a particularly cold market, you got this guy. Come on. Come on, Meg.

Meg:
Andy Fuller. You know, my nickname is the franchise fashionista, but I gotta, I, I’m gonna have to hand over the baton at least temporarily to you today for showing off your beautiful wares. That’s awesome.

Andy:
Well, next time you come out to Hoffman Estates, you know, we’ll make sure we get you some of these. I don’t want you feeling left out.

I mean, the vest is still awesome, but we got to get you some extra swag.

Meg:
It is funny when. So up here in Wisconsin. I’m near Janesville. That’s our big city. I’m technically in Milton, but I have worn this into Janesville.

I’m not sure if you’ve got franchisees here. Is it Madison? Somebody recognized the logo.

Andy:
We have Eau Claire, so not quite close.

Meg:
Okay, well, then it had to have been just one of those random occurrences because I’m only in a couple of places up here.

We spend 95% of our time up here. And I still have my apartment down in the Glenview area, and we come down to visit Tallgrass that’s right around the corner from you. So I will absolutely stop in.

Anything else that we haven’t covered that is important for the listener to know because I think they’ve got their own head trash about, oh, mosquitoes and pests. And it’s not sexy. It’s so seasonal.

Which we’ve addressed that. We’ve addressed those. The typical head trashy things. Are there other things that are objections that come your way? You were like, no, no.

Andy:
Well, I’d say, you know, I said it’s a boring business, and, you know, it is. And I kind of say that with pride. It’s pretty steady and reliable.

Referring to pest control. What is pretty exciting is actually the holiday lighting business for a few reasons.

I mean, first there’s. There’s the emotional component. Like, it is very fun. It is. It is not a need, it is a want.

It always stems back to kids, whether it’s parents getting it for their kids or grandparents getting it for their grandkids. It’s normally it’s because an adult wants to impress some kids.

And so it’s just really fun to be on a job site and installing these lights and see, like, when it comes time for the sun to go down, you plug in the lights and you see them light up, have that Clark Griswold moment.

Like, it’s just really, really fun.

But what’s also fun are the margins. And I guess we won’t get into the specifics here. I say, you know, candidates can talk to franchisees who’ve, who’ve been operating this model for the last couple years.

We’ve got some very, very exciting stories. We’ll get into those numbers but, but yeah, it’s. It’s been really helpful to allow franchisees to get started with holiday lighting.

Last year. So we have a whole subset of franchisees who came on board in training in, let’s say, Q2 and Q3. So just call it, you know, around March, all the way through, I think, wait, the last train would have been August.

And so they didn’t start with pest control, they didn’t start with mosquito control. Right. They came in through training and then they were just laser focused on holiday lighting.

So I’m going to get my customer list as big as possible. I’m going to do some commercial accounts, I’m going to do residential accounts, I’m going to do holiday lighting.

I was blown away. Again, we won’t get into the specific numbers here, but the records were shattered. The revenue that was generated at margins that are much higher than you’d see in normal home service businesses.

So. And we’ve got. So we’ve got a lot of great stories we can tell if that’s interesting to you, listening to this, ask to speak to some of our owners and they can tell you exactly what their experience is like.

So now it’s 2025 and we’ve got everybody, you know, either. Either in the middle of their season right now or they’re, they’re just getting started, you know, depending on where they’re at in the country.

They’re just in a really great position to invest into this business because things went so well for them with holiday lighting.

And so. And then what’s also great, too, is you keep your best employees year round, too. This was something that used to drive me nuts with the business in Chicago.

I’m sure you can relate. I can. You know. You know, this is what the joys of business ownership, right. Especially when you’re seasonal, is.

It’s almost like you’re like a farm team for the most talented people. And so you, you build up this talent, you build relationships. Somebody grows, and it’s like you’re polishing a diamond.

And then they’re like, well, I guess it’s not that hard for me to get a job somewhere else where I can get paid 12 months out of the year. Why don’t I do that?

And it’s just like, oh, you know, you have to reinvent the wheel over and over. We don’t have to do that anymore. Our best and brightest employees stay with us.

And they’re, they’re either doing pest control or mosquito control or they’re doing holiday lighting and they like mixing it up, they like, you know, hey, I can do pest control, which is super reliable.

And then when we get to Q4 and, you know, early part of Q1, I’m doing holiday lights and I’m putting smiles on people’s faces.

Meg:
The other thing that the listener might not really be thinking about is that the separation of mosquitoes from pests.

Pests start to move in as soon as the weather gets colder, and if you don’t give them a reason to go, they’re going to stay.

Mosquitoes are obviously the warm weather months when you’ve got accumulation of water, et cetera.

But pests. The beautiful thing about this shift for the listener to understand is this income opportunity, the revenue opportunity.

If it used to be if you didn’t sign your franchise agreement by what, October, November, you were too late for the mosquito season.

And so it was a terrible mess for people who would have been a good fit just because of timing, of when I could have presented it as an opportunity for them.

You know, I don’t want to sign in for something and then sit around for the next seven months.

Now you’ve got pest and lighting, and they can really launch any time of year.

Are some of your most pro… I’m not, not profitable. But your biggest revenue producers. It’s not all the corporate locations. You’ve got some really good…

Andy:
Yeah, no, it’s. It’s really interesting. I. I just had this conversation with somebody else earlier today.

It’s really not even about the town that you would think. It’s about the owner more than anything.

And so I’ve had owners go into markets where I think, oh, my gosh, so much opportunity. This person’s going to tear the cover off the ball.

And they do okay, but they don’t. They’re not like an amazing, top performer. They’re, you know, by definition, just looking at the numbers average.

And then I have other owners sometimes where it’s like, I actually don’t know where that exists. I’ve never… I’ll pick… I’ll call out a guy in particular because I say this so many times.

He had such a great year last year, Robert Hoffman and his wife Karen Hoffman in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Amazing franchisees. I literally didn’t know where Sioux Falls was on the map. I didn’t.

Meg:
But we just had a hiccup there for probably, yeah, I’m getting an Internet connection. My Internet connection is unstable.

So you were talking about markets where you don’t even know where they are, but the important thing is the owner.

Andy:
The owner. Okay, so I’ve got one owner in particular that comes to mind, like Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Didn’t know where. I literally didn’t know where it existed on the map. I just never been to South Dakota. Didn’t know that.

Owner Robert Hoffman, his wife, Karen Hoffman, they did a fantastic job last year. It was their first year.

They started. They were one of the franchisees who started with Humbug first. They had an amazing year.

And it’s in a small market, and there’s a lot of stories like that where the market doesn’t necessarily correlate so much as it’s the owner and the skill set and the focus and the execution skills of that owner is really what makes the big difference.

But, man, Florida is a great market for holiday lighting.

If you’re from the northern part of the country, you might think, okay, well, holiday lights, cold winter, it has nothing to do with.

That’s the other thing I love about holiday lighting. It’s tied to the holidays. It’s not tied to a season.

So it could be a cold year, it could be a warm year. It doesn’t matter. Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever. They all come on time.

They come on time every year, no matter where you are in the country. So that’s really cool.

Yeah. Texas was also fantastic. Chicago is great. Mark. I mean, honestly, I can’t leave. I’m looking at my map right now. We’ve got too many pins.

We’re mostly in the central and eastern time zones. And I can’t say that there’s like any stronger correlation with one over the other.

It’s really. It just comes down to. It just comes down to the owner and how well they’re able to execute.

We had a guy. Here’s another one that was kind of surprising to me. He just won rookie of the year and he’s in Queens, New York. Really.

Yeah. Yeah. He did an amazing job. Huge pest control opportunity in his territory. Jose Alvarado, I should mention his name. Great guy.

He was the ground game champion as well. So he executed more local marketing among his class than anybody else.

And lo and behold, no coincidence, he ended up having more program customers than anybody else in his class, and that’s why he got that rookie of the year award.

But yeah, Queens, New York, go figure. It’s just big town, small towns, just… yeah. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nashville. Denver, Colorado. Salt Lake City.

We’ve got a great owner there. Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, my gosh. Dallas, Fort Worth and… oh, man.

Meg:
I remember being in your office and looking at that wall. What a great visual for you to be able to turn on and turn around and look at that.

You’ve migrated through entrepreneurship so beautifully into franchisor, the franchisor relationship with your franchisees.

What are your three favorite things about being the franchisor?

Andy:
Oh, that’s a great question.

Number one, I just, I get to work with small business owners first and foremost. And this is my tribe. Like, these are my people, or small business owners.

I love anytime I talk to any small business. I mean, you and I have had great conversations in the past. We’re in different businesses, but you’re on this journey.

Like, we are of the same tribe. You are. You’re doing this thing, you know, for yourself and you’re just figuring out.

It’s a really special thing. And I get to work with small business owners every single day.

And a lot of times it’s because they’re. They’re not happy with where they were before and they’re upgrading in their quality of life and in their career by doing this.

They’ve, they’ve always wanted to own a business and they didn’t know what it was going to be.

You know, nobody ever dreams of being a mosquito hunter or a pest hunter or whatever. They’re like, I don’t know what it’s going to be.

I just, I want to be in control of my destiny and I want to be my own boss.

And, and I know exactly what that feels like because that was me, you know, that was me 11 years ago.

And I, I didn’t want to work in corporate America my whole career and just wait for retirement. I wanted to enjoy my work.

And now my work is so meaningful. It gives me so much joy, truly. Like, it’s my family and my work. My work really means so much to me because it makes an impact with all these business owners and they’re on this journey.

So I’ll say that that’s number one.

Number two is seeing the aha moment with franchisees, with owners as they go from thinking, I guess first it’s, you know, I guess that kind of at the front end where you get involved, it’s like, what is this? I don’t know.

What, what is a franchise? Is it a burger chain? What… they think, okay, home services, you know, maybe that makes sense, but mosquito pests, I don’t.

Okay, so there’s that piece. Then they say, okay, well, I understand. Mosquito, pest. Humbug holiday lighting. Okay, that’s good.

Then they think about, no, this is a vehicle where you can create generational wealth.

You’re not thinking about putting on the backpack. You’re not thinking about… I don’t actually think about pests that often. Like, I think about people.

I think about people. And how do we get the right people in the right seats all the time and give everybody the right tools so that way they can build their businesses?

When franchisees start thinking about checklists and systems and processes and putting the right people in the right seats, it’s a shift.

It’s not about the widget anymore. It’s about creating the empire.

And there’s a certain moment that happens. It’s normally for most franchisees, it’s about 12 months in this sort of this aha moment where they say, no, I get it now.

Like, I’m locked in. I’m not overwhelmed by the. Just all the newness of it all. Like, I’m laser focused on creating the… I’m building the… the value of this asset, you know, with as much focus as possible.

So that way I can have this lucrative exit. Like, that feels like a really good moment.

And then I’ll say the third thing is, you know, when we start seeing franchisees actually measuring towards their exit and they start approaching their exit because, you know, this is what we talk about very early on.

We talk about it at Discovery Day a lot. Is, this is what life is. This is what business is. None of us get to stay here forever, and so we need to think about what our exit is before we even get started.

So what is your exit? You don’t need to know exactly what it is, but you should be thinking about it before you even get on board.

And so build those goals. Really, really visualize that exit. What does it look like? Is it involving and monetizing it on the market?

Are you reselling to somebody else? Is it getting family involved? Is it getting the next generation involved?

There really is no right answer. There’s your answer because it’s your business. So you decide what that’s going to look like.

We want to know what that is so we can help you make that a reality and not just a vision in your head.

So seeing that happen for owners is very, very exciting as well. So those are my three.

Meg:
It really was. Those were three perfect things.

And as an entrepreneur, another thing that I do, I own Image Studios, so I’ve got a salon studio concept where I’m launching yet another generation of entrepreneurs who are beauty professionals.

So as you’re naming your three favorite points, those are very much my three favorite points as well.

Because for some of them, they’ve never, a lot of them have never done this before. They’re moving into a studio where they have their LLC.

They’re now self employed. They dictate their pricing, their hours. Their work ethic is all theirs.

And some of them have come to me or my team and said with love in their hearts, this is the best thing that ever happened to them.

Was it hard work? Yes, it is hard work. It continues to be hard work. But now they’re monetizing and keeping more of that business for themselves versus where they were in a salon, a shared space previously.

So your three answers were right in line. As you were saying, I’m like, yep, that’s perfect.

So Andy, thank you so much for spending time with me today. We’re just coming into spring and it’s a very exciting season.

I will be coming by the office sometime soon. I’ll let you know when that is. I don’t know how often you’re traveling or out, but you’re right on the way to get to our location on Gulf Road.

Andy:
Yeah, do it. Do it.

Meg:
Thank you so much for coming and talking about what’s going on. It’s always so refreshing with these unsexy, boring businesses to have you come on and go, oh, yeah, why isn’t this top of mind?

So thank you for putting it top of mind for me today.

Andy:
Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. It’s always a good time talking with you, Meg.

Meg:
Thanks. Take care. We’ll see you soon.

Andy:
You too.