Jesse Sunquest, welcome back to Acquiring Minds. Thanks, Will. Thanks for having me back. Jesse, you came on the podcast last fall, 2022. You had been searching for a business to buy for a year, but didn't yet have your deal. And you wrote an essay reflecting on your psychology after a year of searching full-time, uh your process, and kind of the evolution of your search and your process. And you posted this essay on Search Funder. It got a lot of attention, and I invited you on to walk us through these reflections. It was really a great episode, a great essay. Um so, of course, I will be linking to that in the show notes. But happily, some months after that, you did find a business to buy, and that's what we're going to talk about today. The end of your search story and the beginning of your story as the owner-operator of a business. But please start us off, Jesse, with a reminder of who you are and why you decided to buy a business in the first place. Yeah, certainly. So, you know, my my story really starts in the pandemic, where um you know, we all got sent home, we're working remotely. Uh I had two small kids at the time. My wife and I were trying to work at home and uh manage the kids, and uh it was just a disaster, right? Like it was super stressful. We were watching the kids during the day, staying up till midnight or later to catch up on our corporate jobs, and you know, it just wasn't the lifestyle that we wanted. And um you know, during that time, I had found out about uh ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisition. Sounded really interesting, so I started, you know, devouring books and podcasts, and I was introduced to Search Funder and started going on there, and you know, uh was just thinking about it more and more, and thinking like, hey, I think this is a viable path for for me and my family in the future, right? To own an asset that we have, you know, control over, you know, how hard we work dictates how, you know, the output, um how much money we can make, um but also like give me some flexibility as well, uh because that's really what we were struggling with was not having enough flexibility to be with our family with two parents that were working like pretty intense corporate jobs. So, I was a uh tire-kicker for a long time, probably like 9 to 12 months was just, you know, doing a little networking, reading things, you know, filling out lead forms on BizBuySell, maybe getting a reply. Like every time I got a CIM, I was so excited and I would dig into it, but I would never call the broker, and you know, didn't really take much action. But um you know, became more and more disillusioned with my corporate job, and um just becoming more and more convinced about ETA being a viable path, that um I decided, hey, if I was going to really take this seriously, like I needed to pursue it on a full-time basis, and and not do it sort of like part-time with my job. It wasn't really allowing me um much time to search during the day. Uh in the evenings, I was watching kids, so I couldn't really do it in the evenings. Um so, you know, my wife and I had a conversation. We um looked at our personal finances and our situation. We were living with our in-laws at the time, um which, you know, helped financially. And uh we decided that I was going to quit my job and pursue search uh full-time for at least a year, um and give it a really a fair chance, and then we'd sort of like reassess at the 1-year mark if I was making enough progress, if I was still interested, if I thought I could get a deal done. Um and if, you know, if worst-case scenario was I could always go back and get another corporate job, but I wanted to give search at least a year uh to give it a fair chance. And um And uh two quick follow-ups to that, Jesse. The first is what in what capacity was your corporate job? What was your background, your your your field? Yeah, I mean, I I started out my career as an auditor. I worked at Ernst & Young for 5 years, um and then I sort of worked my way out of the back office, and I kept on getting I kept on getting closer to the front office, right? So, I went into finance and accounting uh from there, then I went into operations. I managed a small team of client managers. Uh then my last role was at a small software company, uh where I was doing uh sort of like deal desk um contract negotiation work for large software contracts. Okay. And so, it sounds like your motivation to buy a business was more about flexibility than it was about building wealth. Yeah. Respond to that. Is that accurate? absolutely correct. Um you know, something that I've uh reflected on a lot when I started my search was just how, you know, personal it is. Like everybody's motivations are different. Um everybody's, you know, why as to why they're doing this is different, and you know, it gets very easy to, you know, compare you know, play the comparison game with other people or other success stories, but, you know, they have a different reason for doing things. They may have a different um you know, yeah, different sort of like end game. I was actually listening to an episode this morning that you did recently where a guy was talking about IPOing his company that he bought, right? Mhm. Um which is which is awesome. It's it's incredible. Um but you know, that wasn't my motivation, right? It was more around um flexibility, and yes, yes, wealth building in the long term, but at least in the short term, having um you know, one parent be more flexible, um with with the with the ultimate end goal goal of, you know, 3 to 5 years from now, having enough sort of like financial uh mobility where the other parent can sort of like back away from their intense corporate job, and you know, spend their time differently, and not be not have as much stress to be forced to make a certain level of income to, you know, uh maintain a lifestyle. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm jumping ahead a a little bit here, Jesse, but I'm struck that you keep talking about kind of your wife as the one with the intense corporate job, as if jumping into a small business is not going to be intense, as if you're going to have this, you know, this breezy professional life that gives you all this flexibility. We'll we'll get there. Well, I yeah, we will definitely get there, but like, you know, she made, you know, sacrifices for over a year while I was searching, and then, you know, she had to make more sacrifices, um you know, uh in my first year of ownership, because, you're right, it's not a walk in the park when you you step into being a new business owner. But uh we're figuring it out, and she's super supportive, and I couldn't do it without her. Great. Great. And she's, of course, still working really hard herself in whatever her job is, yeah. Yep. Okay, Jesse. So, so returning to the plot. So, you uh you guys together decide that this will be your path, and you get serious, you go full-time on your search, you quit your W-2, and give us just real quick, like take us up to the moment that you wrote that essay. Yeah, it was a the first year was a slog. Um you know, it's every bit as difficult as people make it describe, or you know, people describe it, and um you know, I I forget if I mentioned this in my essay or not, but um I was actually under LOI within probably like 2 months for my first deal. Uh and I was like over the moon. Hey, this isn't supposed to happen this quickly. Like so excited. Um it fell apart within the first 2 weeks of diligence, um but it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me, because, you know, getting under LOI and doing some preliminary diligence, talking to a bunch of bankers about an SBA loan, um I just learned so much from that first experience, and it really prepared me for, you know, the next uh you know, 12 to 16 months of my search before I closed. Um you know, my I think my my first year to 14 months was a little atypical, cuz I actually had my third kid um during that time, and, you know, after after we had our third kid, um I like I didn't do anything for probably 6 weeks, right? I I was just exhausted. Um and so, I uh uh yeah, I just I was just trying to keep up with the family, and um once I sort of got myself out of uh out of a hole of, you know, changing diapers and stuff like that, I kicked it into gear again a couple months later, and that's sort of like phase two of my uh of my search, because phase one was getting this deal under LOI, having it fall through. Um the the deal that fell through was a remote bookkeeping uh company. Mhm. And um it was a great little business. Uh and after that, you know, I was like, man, like this this is so good. Like, why don't I just like build this from scratch, right? As opposed to like buying one. And so, I I, you know, went down the rabbit hole of probably 6 weeks uh about like thinking about and potentially launching my own, you know, bookkeeping company instead. And I got to the finish line, and I just I couldn't pull the trigger. There was something about doing a solo effort by myself um to launch something new that just didn't feel right. And once again, back to my why, like I didn't quit my job to like start something from scratch. I'm not really like a zero to one type of guy. I'm like a I'm more of an optimizer. And uh I think I knew that about myself, which was really holding me back from from going going about something uh by myself. Um so, I put that aside, had my third kid, took some time off, and then you know, I was sort of rejuvenated to kickstart my search again after that. Mhm. And and so, where where are we now? What month are we in now? Um calendar month. Uh probably like February. So, I quit my job in August of 2021. We're now in February 2022. Okay. All right. And then the the essay comes out what? Probably July? Yeah, probably July. I was I was coming up on that 12-month mark. Um and at that point, I had, you know, one LOI fell fall through. I had, you know, three offers that were not accepted. Um and I had a fourth offer that um I was down the path of um you know, negotiating the LOI. Felt really good about the seller, about the broker. You know, I was very excited about it, but then um as we're negotiating the LOI, the seller's accountant finds out about the sale, and uh he's like, whoa. He's like, you're not going to make enough money from this to retire. He's like, you got to work for another couple years. And uh and so, the broker pulled the listing. And um you know, an unfortunate outcome. It's happened to a lot of other people before, and uh I think the broker was actually like this this broker was was really good. Um you could tell he felt like a little embarrassed by it, because he's a experienced broker, and he probably should have, you know, known better. Yeah. yeah, it happened, and so, I had to pick myself up and and keep looking at the next deal. Mhm. Um I I should I should clarify that, you know, a big thing that was different about my search than others was geography was my number one criteria. Um you know, my wife and I had bought a house, my kids were in the school system, you know, I was not looking across the country to for any good deal. I was going to pick up and move. And so, I started with a 2-hour radius from my house, and um after a one-site visit 2 hours away, I reduced it to a 1-hour uh radius from my house. Yeah. And um you know, so that was that was the biggest sort of constraint in my search. Um, which was good cuz it helped me focus, but it was also super frustrating cuz I felt like anything above half a million of of SDEs, like I had looked at three times, right? Yeah. And uh and then it ended up being me trying to like force fit deals that I should have passed on into my criteria because it was within an hour of my house, right? Uh and that's that's sort of the uh the wrong the wrong reason. Um and so I had to sort of change my criteria and so I I reduced the floor from 500k to 300k SDEs. And uh I found out there's a lot more deals in the 300k space. Um and so that was that was super helpful, but it became I had to be a little more critical in my thought to think, okay, it's 300k now, are you buying a job or is this something that you think you can really like, you know, grow in the future? Mhm. Well, but I suspect that you were comfortable with buying a job at least in the in the immediate term. So yes, buying a job, but then you could see a path to growing it to something where Correct. Am I buying a job in person or can this actually grow and scale to be something where I can, you know, work my way out of a job and and make it be something bigger? And you were in Jersey uh but geographically like a good two hours from New York sort of thing. I'm I'm like an hour south of New York City. I'm in Monmouth County. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But still like for people who maybe don't know that region super well, it's you're not in a super urban area even though you're only an hour from New New York. So the deal flow is pretty light. Yep. Yep. So a year comes and goes, you're feeling frustrated, your wife is probably like dude we said it we agreed to a year. You know, what what what what now? She actually wasn't she actually wasn't pushing me to stop at all. She was still very supportive. Um I was pretty frustrated um after the first year cuz I realized just how hard it is to get any deal done, like how many things have to come together um to successfully close a deal. Um I actually went through and went very far along the process of applying for another W-2 job which um that job I think would have been good um but after the final round of interviews, they were like, hey, sorry, we're doing a hiring freeze, like not going to work out. And so, you know, I was disappointed about not getting a job that I thought I could actually do well. Um I looked at a bunch of other corporate jobs and just, you know, wasn't excited about any of them. Um and I had a conversation with uh um an older guy. I wouldn't call him a mentor, but an older guy who had some perspective. He's just like, look, quitting your corporate job was a really big step. Like I would just encourage you to remind yourself why you did it. And if all those reasons are still valid, like just give it a little more time. Um and then that was the exact advice that I needed at the time because I was like, yeah, like all those reasons why I quit, they're still valid. Like why would I go back to a corporate job that I wasn't excited about? Um and it was it was literally a matter of weeks after that conversation where I got an email from a broker or just one of their regular email blasts and they had a franchise pest control company um included on it. And you know, I had never considered franchises before. Um so I decided to be a little more open-minded and it looked it looked too good to be true, right? Like the multiple they were talking about and the purchase price based upon the earnings, it looked too good to be true. So I was like, this can't be real. Something's wrong with it, but whatever, I'll just go, you know, inquire about it. Um so I, you know, gave them a call, requested more information. And um you know, every every conversation I had sort of like checked out. Eventually got to meet with the seller. Um he was a, you know, the perfect seller profile. This guy in his mid-60s who was looking to retire and, you know, uh pass on his legacy to a capable pair of hands. So I checked the box there. And um yeah, everything sort of checked out. And um you know, despite the fact that um it was franchised, um it wasn't really a deterrent cuz I had many conversations with the franchisor. I had many conversations with other owners in the network. And uh every other owner that I spoke with, you know, I asked them the same the same question at the end of the call, like, hey, would you recommend, you know, me doing this? Uh and they were all like, yes. Um you know, they nobody had any regrets about, you know, the franchisor. They had some, you know, cautions and concerns, but uh you know, nobody really, you know, tried to talk me out of it. Um And were these franchisees that the franchisor had introduced you to? You you always wonder if the franchisor is going to cherry-pick the references that they put you in touch with. Uh only one was. Uh the nice thing about franchises is there's they're super transparent. Like there's a thing called an FDD, franchise disclosure document, which is almost always public. You know, there's some state um websites you can go to get them if they operate in them states. And uh in the back of every FDD is every single owner along with their contact information. So it's super easy just to pick up the phone and, you know, cherry-pick and start calling people. Uh even if you don't know anything about them, I can know that like, hey, this person in Maryland owns five territories, like I'm going to give them a call cuz they probably have a pretty big business. And and you did that. You'd cold call them and say, hey, I'm looking at this territory in New Jersey. I'm sorry, I could be joining this network. Kind of what do you think? Yeah, absolutely. Right. And how many of those calls did you have? How many franchisees did you talk to? I probably talked to like four or five on my own and then um they recommended one or two other ones. Mhm. So. That is so valuable. I mean there there that's one of like three or four things about being in a franchise network that is just so incredibly valuable. And let's let's dwell on this, Jesse. Why it's a theme that's come up many times on this podcast. People um being kind of closed to doing a franchise and not even really considering it. And then either an a franchise opportunity comes their way, a resale opportunity comes their way and they look at just like you, they look at it and they're like, huh, well, what's not to like about this? Um or something else opens their mind. They they they hear an interview with somebody who's done who's bought a franchise resale or something else and they just kind of take a second look at the entire concept and almost always warm to it. So that that kind of opening of the mind I find really interesting. Why do you think that you were not considering or not open to franchise buying a franchise resale initially? Yeah, I mean I didn't have a good reason to be honest. It was really just the the sort of like stigma and stereotypes around franchises. Like, oh, like you're paying a royalty for what? Like what is a franchisor providing? Like are you really running your own business? They're telling you exactly what to do. Like you don't have control over the brand. Like it was all pretty stereotypical like nonsense. Like none of them are really good reasons, you know, why not to consider a franchise. Um but the real opening of the mind, you know, came for me was, you know, I just I met so many people in my in my search process and uh I just happened to meet so many multi-unit franchise owners that were running wildly successful businesses in a franchise network. Like some of them are doing seven-figure EBITDA like in a franchise, not in the food space. And I was like, that's like serious. Like these are these are businesses searchers would like kill for, you know, those earnings. Yeah. And um so I was like, man, if if they can do that in a franchise network, like maybe I shouldn't ignore them, you know? Um you know, the number one thing with franchises is that you have to pick the right franchisor. And so like and that's been written about a lot, but like it's so so true. And you know, there's a lot you can get into around like do you want to buy into a small and emerging brand? Do you want to buy a mature brand? Somewhere in the middle. Like once again, that becomes a sort of personal um a personal life decision. But at least for me, you know, Mosquito So that the franchise I bought is a Mosquito Joe's. And Mosquito Joe has probably like 350 plus territories. Um so they're, you know, not in the thousands, but they're clearly mature. They've been doing it for a while. Mosquito Joe like three or four years ago was acquired by um Neighborly, which is a private equity-backed franchise holdco of 20 plus home service brands. So, you know, they they make they've become successful on their own right. They were acquired by a private equity firm and now they're under this private equity umbrella. And um you know, so there's there's credibility there, right? Yeah. Um so that really, you know, um that would really was sort of comforting comforting for me, right? I think in a different life stage, I would potentially consider buying into a emerging brand, buying five territories and then rolling up the sleeves and building from scratch cuz you can build, you know, you can have a lot of like it's a grind, but you can have a lot of success doing that with very little debt or or much less debt than doing a full business acquisition. But um you know, I was very clear that I needed, you know, cash flow or some sort of like income from day one and so a franchise resale was really the only thing that I was considering. Yeah. And and just the flip side of that is that, okay, you're you're not taking on a lot of risk in terms of not needing to take a lot of debt. But where the risk is is that you don't know that an emerging brand is necessarily going to be successful. It could sputter out. You just I mean you're the the early Orange Theory franchisees couldn't predict the phenomenon that it would become. So lucky them and good on them. Um but that that's where the risk is. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean I think my uh my seller had owned this for six or seven years. I think he was like the second territory in New Jersey. So like Mosquito Joe was not popular, you know, or even like successful in New Jersey by the time he bought in, but he bought in at a really good time, right? Um and I think yeah, he bought in at a really good time and it worked out well for him. Jesse, let's just return a little bit to your your loosening of your criteria around SDE, which you were basically forced to do based on the lack of deal flow cuz you were geographically constrained. This is something that comes up again and again and again, what size of business to buy. Your criteria had been what? 5 600,000 SDE and above? Yep. And it was just not happening. You you kept returning to the same deals. I mean it was a really really light deal flow trickle. And then so just kind of give us a little bit more detail on that process of of going down to 300 and what changed and how you got comfortable with it. Yeah, I mean I had to, right? Like if I wanted to get a deal done, like I I I was approaching the year mark and you know, with that actually I think I changed to 300 before the year mark, but I got to a certain point where I felt like I had seen everything and I was just waiting for new deals to, you know, come on the market and I was like, well, this doesn't make sense. It's not a good use of time. I don't have like an infinite sort of like waiting time. So, I decided to look smaller, um which unlocked a lot of new deals that I hadn't really considered. But, I think, you know, like I was mentioning before, you really have to think through is this going to stay 300-ish in perpetuity or can you actually like grow it, right? Um or do you think it is there the potential for it to become bigger? And, you know, in some cases it's no. Uh and so then that's the sort of like hard pass. But, um I think in a lot of cases it could be yes, right? Because there are People have talked about this on Twitter and search funder all the time, right? There's a sort of like to cross a million bucks in revenue is a um is an accomplishment, right? And then it's like one to five or one to three, I forget what it is, is like another sort of like zone and a lot of businesses can't get out of that zone, right? So, you have to have confidence in yourself as an operator, but also look at the business model and how they're operating today and say like, okay, do I think I could get it out of this dead zone that they're in into the next level. Yeah. And and so when you came down to 300, 350 SDE and saw a lot more the deal that kind of unlocked deal flow and you started looking at a lot of um seeing more Sims and into more businesses, some of those you'd say to yourself, this thing really can't grow beyond this or it can't break, you know, it the the million dollar ceiling or the three million dollar ceiling. And others you'd say, yeah, it could. Uh I could definitely see this getting to you know, one, three, five million and beyond. And the Mosquito Joe territory checked that box. What what what it What was its revenue at? Let's tie this in now to the business that that you bought. What Where was revenue for it and why did you see a path uh to growth in this business and not in some of the others that you looked at? Yeah, so, you know, I I didn't want just one territory, right? Like I was like, man, like just one territory, that's, you know, with a franchise model, you're only given a certain territory that you can operate in, right? Which is good because you're not competing with the other Mosquito Joe franchise, you know, 50 miles away, but it's bad because you're limited to like in Mosquito Joe they call them targeted households, right? You're limited to a certain number of targeted households and you're only going to have enough penetration, right? So, like, can I grow 5 to 10% a year? Yeah, but I'm not going to grow 40, 50% for three years cuz it's going to get saturated, you know? So, the play with a franchise is always that um you know, it's so easy to do a roll-up in a franchise because everybody's using the same systems, CRMs, like processes. And so, the play there is really like get in with a good territory that's providing you with enough sort of like SDEs, you know, your minimum amount of SDEs and then see how you can um grow within the network by acquiring other territories. So, it was a little bit of a calculated bet, but once to your point earlier about franchises having a lot of transparency, you know, in the diligence process, I can see some of the weekly leaderboards that are published. And you know, I can see like, wow, this territory in New Jersey is a top 10% individual territory in all of the Mosquito Joe's network, right? Mhm. And in the FDD, you can say like, here here's what the average revenue is per territory. I can see at the revenue, you know, that this guy is bringing in. I'm like, wow, it's significantly higher. This is a good territory, right? So, I knew it was a well-performing territory and and that was um that would give me a good sort of like foundation to operate from. And then it was a little bit of a calculated bet on, okay, in this um not Uber mature brand, but in this more mature brand, there's likely going to be other owners that are looking to retire in the next, you know, three to five years and there's a good chance that once I'm in network, I'm a, you know, a known quantity, um I could be a very um, you know, attractive buyer to another owner. Yeah. Well, Jesse, this is just this is just hitting on so many of the themes uh of the franchise buying a franchise resale with the intent to roll up, basically. So, Brian Beers talks about this a lot. He's been on the podcast with the Midas. He's the guy who's bought so many Midas Midas locations around the Philly metropolitan area and beyond. Yep. And to your earlier point, which I I meant to plug an episode of two weeks ago when you were talking about like once you've opened your mind to franchises and you think you want to buy a resale of a territory or a handful of territories or locations to then do programmatic acquisition and expand far beyond that, devoted a whole episode to that where we with uh AJ Wasserstein, uh Michael Horowitz and Peter Mastretta, who are AJ being a professor, the other two being actual exemplars of this uh of this model. And the 10 questions you should ask yourself as you're like the framework to very systematically think through um what franchise or to go with. So, hard plug for that uh that episode. It's a it's a really solid one and really, really helpful. Those guys crushed it. Um So, here you are. You you are doing exactly that. You are going to buy a territory. You're looking at the potential of, you know, buying more territories in the future. You're looking at the age, you know, the demographics of existing owners and seeing that they're kind of boomerish uh and that there there you'll be waiting for them when when when it's time for them to retire or pass on pass the torch. I I'm I'm jumping around here a little bit, but one of the things you said was really interesting how a a Mosquito Joe territory is is it's basically every territory has what What did you say? A targeted number of households? Is that what it Targeted households is what the phrase was? So, you can really you can really see what the ceiling is here. So, say the targeted households is 100,000 and, you know, the the monthly fee to a household is, I don't even know what it costs, $100, let's call it. So, that's what, $10 million potential in the territory. And you say, well, I'm not you know, that's the kind of total addressable market and then you say, I'm only ever going to get 5% or 25% of the market. You could do some really quick napkin math to see kind of what the potential is of that uh territory. But, then of course, you can say, okay, well, that times five if I were able to get to five territories or that times 15, 15 territories. It's also interesting is that you can this is so I mean, you could just really you can really dissect this. It's very interesting. So, you can not only look at, you know, kind of look at the territory that you're contemplating buying and seeing the targeted households there, but look at the immediate neighboring territories and see what those targeted households are. So, you can almost not only just play the game of like, well, if I get to five and 10 and 50 territories, but you can actually look at like, well, if I do a contiguous play where I'm just getting the territories right around me. I mean, you can see right there in the FDD, right? What I guess what their revenue is, maybe not what their targeted households is. So, I mean, are you doing all this analysis or am I am I Is this like more than most, you know, am I overdoing it here? Um no, you're you're not off the mark. I think I did a lot more of that once I was in network and understood it a little bit better. Yeah. But, yeah, you can absolutely absolutely do math like that. I I don't think they post, you know, in the FDD, every every franchisor is going to post different levels of information. Some post a lot, some post a little. Uh-huh. I think Mosquito Joe is, you know, they post an okay amount. They're not going to say like, I mean, I think they say they may say the average rev they have like quartiles and average revenue per the top quartiles or whatever. So, you're never going to see like how much revenue each owner is doing, but they'll give you sort of like averages. But, if you know that an owner has five territories, like and the and you can say what the average territory revenue is, like, oh, well, then you can sort of like guess at to approximately what their revenue is. Um you know, back of the envelope type stuff. Yeah. But, uh but yeah, I mean, I think I think they try to um they try to make the targeted households pretty consistent. So, if you're paying a franchise development fee of a certain amount of money, they want to make sure that the playing field is level. And so, one person is not getting 100,000, you know, targeted households for that cost and somebody else is getting 20,000 households for that cost, right? So, they try to make it a little bit level level playing field. Now, I don't know how that was, you know, six or six or eight years ago. But, at least now, you you know that if you have a territory, there's probably a similar number of targeted households. Yeah. Yeah, you can do all sorts of math around like penetration rate, average cost per spray, stuff like that to say like, what is the potential of this? Is there anything more to say about why you like this business? Uh and any of the parameters of the business? Yeah, I mean, it it's it's Look, it's a simple business, right? It's not an easy business, but it's a simple business. You have you have guys in trucks that complete a spray, right? Like um we don't go inside the houses. There's a couple other like auxiliary services, but our bread and butter uh service is outdoor mosquito barrier sprays. And so, um you, you know, you come up with dense routes, you set the guys up with materials, you send them out. Um they complete the sprays and they come back, right? It's it's not rocket science, you know what I mean? Like it's very easy to learn. Um you have you provide a service that um customers are very happy with. Like Mosquito Joe's whole thing is like make outside fun again, right? And like I've done the spray in my house. Like it works, you know? And so, like we can actually go outside and not be bit by mosquitoes. And when people are happy with that, like they they come back year after year, right? And so, like we have very high retention rates. It's not recurring per se, like a like a SaaS product, but like um you know, people are coming back year after year. We have very high retention rates. Um referrals are our number one acquisition source. And so, when people are happy, they tell their friends about it. So, um you know, it it's nice to get a referral versus having to pay hundreds of dollars for uh you know, a paper click ad, uh even though we do that, obviously, but, you know, referrals is our number one lead source, which is really encouraging. And uh yeah, it's just not a hard business. Uh so, that was attractive, super high uh gross margins, um also attractive. And um yeah, I think there's a lot of potential for, you know, roll-up as well. And so, like it it it has a lot of the characteristics that most searchers are looking for. Um and so, it sort of like, you know, fit the bill for me. And I think I got to a point in time in my diligence process and I was like, if I can't pull the trigger on this, like I'm never going to buy a deal, right? Like did I want to be into like outdoor pest control? Like not necessarily, but I think there's enough like um there's enough attractive attractive areas of the industry and of the business itself that it's like it's a great business to own. Yeah. Couple of follow-ups there Jesse. You said it's actually not technically recurring. So I I as you know, I talked to Neil Finneran. I've already I've already recorded that interview. It'll be airing around the same time as this one. Neil bought a territory in Massachusetts, I guess. I characterized his business as a recurring one, but it's actually so it's actually not you don't have them on automatic billing your customers or you only go when they call or what's it like what's that look like? So we we have a 21-day cycle that we come out and treat, but we don't have any contracts. And so like, you know, most people will sign up and set it and forget it. We come out every 21 days and they're happy, but you have some people that are like, oh like I'm on a vacation for 2 weeks like, you know, skip this one or like I'll just call you when you when I want you to come out and like those customers are are more annoying, but like you're not going to say no to them, right? But because we are non-contractual, people can start and stop whenever they want. I have a hard time calling it recurring, but for the most part, you know, most people sign up for the regular berry spray. We come out every 21 days and treat your property until you tell us to stop or the season ends. Great. Okay. Yeah, that's that's kind of right on the edge of of recurring. I guess it's kind of recurring, but your your customers have the option of having having it not be recurring. Yeah. Yeah, and and most of our customers are on auto pay with their credit card. So after we do the service, card gets charged like boom like it's it's easy. But yeah, you know. You said that there's super high gross margins, but this is also a bit one of the things not to like about pest control is that the barriers to entry are pretty low. So you know, anybody with you know, some spray equipment, some chemicals and a truck is in business. So you'd think that there like a lot of that margin would be competed away. So square that circle for me. Yeah, I mean it's barriers to entries are low. Like you do have to be licensed to be able to buy the product that you need, but then also apply the product as well. So you know, you have to go through a licensing process to be able to do this, but it's not that difficult, right? And so like anybody can get licensed and then buy a truck and a blower and like be up in business. And so you know, the competitive pressure does increase year after year, which will probably you know, push down gross margin over time. But like I said, at least you know, with with referrals being the number one lead source, if you have a good customer base to work from, that just sort of like um perpetuates the flywheel, right? Of existing customers referring other customers and then you're able to you know, you have a little bit of a moat that way versus somebody who's starting out with guy in a truck and is like I'm just going to undercut Mosquito Joe and you know, get some market share and then they're really sort of like hustling. It's going to take them years to really like sort of like eat away at us, but like we do see it in certain areas, you know. One guy in a truck goes out there and you know, tries to get make a name for itself and undercuts our price and you know, we do lose some customers. Like Mosquito Joe is will never claim to be the lowest cost provider nor will we ever be lowest cost provider. But you know, we stand by our services and we do a good job and like I said, having a having a a good solid customer base to work from really perpetuates the acquisition flywheel. Yeah. Excellent. And tell us a little bit with a little bit more detail about what the business actually does. When you spray, what are you spraying? How does it work? Does it kill mosquitoes or is it just kind of kind of something that keeps them away that they don't like the smell of or whatever? What's it Give us a picture. Yeah, so you know, we have a couple different options, right? Our standard our standard spray is what they call a synthetic pesticide, which is you know, a man-made pesticide. We'll come out and treat the perimeter of your property and all your foliage. And any mosquito that lands on an area that's been treated, it will die. And so that's sort of like one aspect of it. We'll always treat any sort of like standing water that we see. And so if a mosquito lays eggs there, then the eggs won't be able to like hatch and grow into a full-grown mosquito. We're we're moving more towards what they call a botanical treatment, which is all all natural all organic products. But because you have a bunch of all natural products that are mixed together, they can't be called organic anymore. They have to call it botanical, but essentially it's essential oils and and soaps, which also will kill mosquitoes as well. Um And so we're trying to move more in that direction to be more eco-friendly. And then the third sort of you know, treatment option that we have is is a just a repellent, right? And so you spray it. It's it's these different types of essential oils, which emits a aroma that will actually just drive the mosquitoes away, but won't kill them. And I assume the repellent is the least effective unhappily. Yeah, I mean the repellent we have to actually come out every 2 weeks instead of every 3 weeks because it doesn't last as long. But I think it's important to note especially in certain areas of the country that our our treatment is effective for mosquitoes, ticks and fleas. And in New Jersey and in further north in New England, ticks are a major concern. And so a lot of our business at the start of the season and at the end of the season is because ticks are active anytime the weather is greater than 55°. And so we have some customers our best customers they're like spray me the last week of March because I know it's going to be 50° and don't stop until the end of October, right? Because I have dogs and I live you know, on the edge of the woods and I don't want them getting any ticks. Well, Jesse, this is a seasonal business as you as you keep alluding to and we're kind of right at the end of the season here. I guess October. So you haven't yet experienced a cycle of going through an off-season. So you probably can't speak to it with with experience, but you're certainly you were certainly thinking about that as part of your as part of your decision-making process for whether or not to get into a seasonal business. How did you think about it? How are you thinking about it now? Yeah, so I mean my thinking has evolved, right? I mean I think the the most important thing is that it's doing you know, 12-month revenue numbers in a 7 to 8-month period, right? And so it's like it's it becomes a cash flow management exercise for me in the off-season more than anything else because you know, I'm doing the full year cash flow in a more condensed time period. I think before I got started, I was you know, I literally had a file on my phone. I was thinking about like what are some other businesses I can do in the off-season to you know, retain some employees, make some money and you know, really like grind it out for those four or five months. I got to about the midway point of the season and I'm like, I'm not doing any of that this year. In the future maybe, but at least for now like I'm I'm so looking forward to the opportunity to to work a little bit less, you know, spend some more time with my kids. And and really like it becomes a planning exercise for what I want to do next season. I I think the unique aspect of this business is that I'll have three or four months where I can reflect on what what went well last season, what didn't go well and what do I want to do differently. And then when I start up again next year, you know, I'm going to hire probably 50 to 60% of my workforce is going to be new in first year to Mosquito Joe. And so I can launch some things with them next year that they're just going to think is business as usual, but is actually like new and different for you know, the 2024 season than how we operated in 2023. That I feel like is a kind of profound difference between seasonal businesses and and not that the change management is less because you sneak in change and if you're hiring new people every season, then they don't have to adjust your changes or resist your changes. Now Jesse, why are 50 to 60% of them going to be new? Is that just the nature How are you projecting that number? Because I have to lay off on my entire workforce at the end of the year. And it's unfortunate, but like I can't you know, if I'm not making money in the off-season, I can't retain them on payroll. And so I have a couple of guys that they just go on unemployment in the off-season and then they'll come back you know, next year. Um Some guys I have a I have a few college guys that I'm pretty bullish will come back next year because they've you know, enjoyed their themselves this season. But yeah, I mean I can I had at peak I was probably at like 12 technicians this year. Four of them actually five of them came back from last year to this year. And so I'm just assuming that you know, similar a similar number. I think now Jesse, we can get into the how it's gone basically. So so once you bought the business, why I before we do that, was there anything to say about the actual closing or deal negotiation? Actually tell us tell us what the business was give us them some numbers around the business. I don't think you've done that yet. Yeah. So the territory that I bought was doing just under a million dollars of revenue and um I'll say that you know, I lowered my floor to 300k and it exceeded that you know, from an SDE basis. So that gives you a you can back into that math. Yep. The closing you know, the closing was interesting because the seller really didn't want to run it again for another year. And because I had to get licensed in the off-season, like you can buy the business without being licensed, but you can't operate until you have your license, right? So we all knew that the season was going to close at the end of October. So we didn't want to close for the end of the season. But I needed to have enough time to buy the business and get licensed before I had to hire people and buy product next March, right? So that gave me a sort of like 5-month window. Well, we didn't close until the we got delayed. We didn't close till the end of December like after Christmas between Christmas and New Year's we closed, which that gave me about like 3 months to go through my Mosquito Joe training, get licensed, hire technicians, transfer all the trucks with the DMV and do a whole bunch of other transition stuff so that I'd be ready to launch on day one. Now, I was fortunate in that like I didn't have a business to operate during that time. So I had a lot of time to focus on passing my exams, waiting in line at the DMV and you know, doing some of those other things that would have been hugely distracting if I was trying to run a business at the same time. But it was sort of like you know, a little bit of a race against the clock like I didn't spend nearly as much time on season opening procedures this year because I was spending all my time on like licensing procedures and transition procedures. So you know, I have a lot of ideas for things I can do differently to make me more efficient next year that I can do in you know, January, February, March. But I didn't have didn't have the opportunity to this past year. But but the one thing I did want to add was my thesis around rolling up Mosquito Joe's territories um started to prove itself very quickly. Like I said, I closed it at the end of December. I got access like they didn't give me a new email account. I got access to the owner's email account so I could see all the history. So of course I'm going through and like trying to learn as much as I can and reading things. And I came across an owner in Pennsylvania whose territory is right across the river from mine. My office is right outside Trenton. So this guy was in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and he actually reached out to my seller and he owned the owned his territory for probably 6 years. He reached out to my seller and was like, "Hey, like I'm super frustrated. I want out. Do you want to buy my territory?" And of course my seller was like in the process of selling his territory so the conversations never went anywhere but I followed the email thread and I figured out that like this guy is so frustrated he's at the point of just returning the territory to Mosquito Joe and walking away with nothing. So I call him up and I said, "Hey, like I'm the new owner. Took over from this guy. You know, I'm right next to you. Like are you still thinking about getting rid of your territory?" And he was overjoyed and he was like, "Yes, like I would love to get rid of it. I don't want to give it back to Mosquito Joe. Like I can sell it to you." blah blah blah. And so long story short we you know, he sent me some information. I was able to look at it. Like the amount of revenue he was doing was irrelevant because this guy was a essentially an absentee owner. He hired some people to manage it. They did it really poorly. He didn't really oversee it. It was a really mismanaged territory but I knew I could see like what his target population was. I could see the density of where the households were and I could see that the majority of his customers or the majority of his custom target households was a 20-minute drive from where my office was. So I was like, I could run this out of the same you know, I can run the trucks out of the same garage. I can run the office out of the same office. Like boom, this is a slam dunk. So him and I negotiated a deal pretty quickly where instead of walking away with nothing he's going to walk away with something. We had a seller finance deal and um yeah, so I was able to acquire my second territory 6 weeks to 2 months after after I bought the first one. That that's God, what a stroke of luck. That's awesome, Jesse. And and so just to be clear it was doing you said kind of like a negligible amount of revenue. Like 150k or something like that. Okay. But that's still more appealing to buy those customers generating 150k than having it kind of go back to Mosquito Joe and then you being granted the territory or whatever. Like it's still there's still enough of a business there that it was that it's a head start into that territory. Yeah, no definitely. And I think like I said, what it was doing before was kind of irrelevant because he wasn't actually working in the business but the fact that like I could take all of the overhead and like run it out of the same office was like it was a no-brainer. And it really was about the potential of the territory versus what they were doing beforehand. And I think the interesting thing is like that territory, that neglected territory would make no sense for a new buyer to sort of like buy. There wasn't enough there but as a sort of like add-on to an existing territory we can just like fill in it's a slam dunk. And not to mention you got it for a song. So it was fully seller financed? Yeah. Fully seller financed and a low price presumably. Presumably. That's great. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And and so and did it all work did it all work out? So you said this happened right at the beginning of your tenure. So you've now had a season in both territories. Did it work out? Is the integration as easy as you'd hoped? Are you running it all out of the office that I see behind your you know, over your shoulder there? I mean the thesis definitely panned out. I think the most challenging part was because it was in Pennsylvania and not New Jersey that's a separate licensing district and so now I have to go through the Pennsylvania licensing process, the New Jersey licensing process. I have to understand the differences between the two. Can I use the same technicians? Do I have to use you know, do I have to get technicians duly licensed? There's a whole bunch of stuff like that I had to figure out and you know, Mosquito Joe helps you out with it but it's still just like a lot to sort of like keep that separate in your mind. And you know, fortunately even though the territory was poorly managed they did have one technician that came over with the sale and this guy is a is a rockstar. He's been a total stud. And really you know, really helpful during the first year because you know going from a much smaller base but that's the territory has performed really really well this year in its first year. And so do you envision if you bought a third territory that the you kind of just get better at it? It would be easier. You kind of know you've been through it once. You've got one rep under your belt? Yeah, 100%. I mean I I have I had two returning office staff from last year which has been great and um I asked you know, one of the ladies recently. I was like, "Is has it been really difficult like having Pennsylvania and New Jersey? Like how you know, how much harder has it been this year versus last year?" And she's like "It's no different, right? Like it's the same CRM. Like I can look up the same like yeah, the notes are worse in the you know, in the Pennsylvania territory but like essentially to process a payment and to schedule them and do all that stuff like it's no different. So yeah, they they haven't felt overwhelmed by you know, having that those additional customers come over. You just mentioned how Mosquito Joe will help you with some of the licensing and educating you on differences between two territories in different states. What else have you found being a franchisee? So now now you know, being inside a franchise network and and can really see the benefits or not of being inside a franchise network. What would you tell people about your experience? So there's good and bad to it, right? I will say like I'll I don't want to spend too much time on the bad cuz that's not really the point but I think you know I came from the corporate world so I know that there's you know, I know how to smile and people want you to smile and you know, go attend things when you think that they're silly and yeah, like there's a lot of that that you have to sort of like hoops that you have to sort of like jump through because you know, like I said Mosquito Joe is owned by Neighborly. Neighborly is private equity backed. They're corporatizing a lot of things so there's a little bit of a corporate vibe around there but like I still feel like it's my business to run. I still have a lot of latitude and so yeah, there's some things that are a little bit annoying but like the the pros outweigh the cons big time. And I think you know, one there's two the two biggest benefits for me are um one is just the owner's network. Like I've we've mentioned this a little bit earlier but like I feel like the franchise owner's network is such a freaking cheat code. It's like it's almost I mean I have people that are doing the exact same business that I am who know exactly what I'm going through and that aren't competitors and they're happy to share anything, right? It's it's incredible. Like you know, Neil for example, you know, Neil bought the territory a few months after I did. We're both first year owners of franchise resales in Mosquito Joe. Him and I are texting all the time. You know, he picks up the phone to call me to be like, "Dude, terrible week. Listen to what my technician did." You know, and it's like awesome, right? Like I have like I said, I have them some friends on a WhatsApp group that I talk with all the time as well and you know, we have we can share war stories about our different businesses but they're very different, right? And so it's they can empathize but they can't fully understand just like I can't fully understand what they're going through but like the Mosquito Joe franchise owners have been amazing and and they come from all sort of like different walks of life as well. You know, there's younger guys in their you know, 20 20 late 20s, early 30s who are have a W-2 job and are launching a Mosquito Joe's territory and they're grinding. And then you have a bunch of owners that are sort of like second career type people like my old owner who worked a you know, corporate world for a long time and then like you know, not ready to retire yet but they wanted to do something else and so they they bought this seasonal company and so they have a very sort of like different perspective but it's just been incredible to have access to the owner group cuz everybody is super like you know, willing to talk and you know, share their best practices and their learnings. So that's been you know, that's been worth every hoop I have to jump through being in a franchise. The second is you know, Mosquito Joe is is they've demonstrated themselves to be a really good franchisor and and one example of that is we had a customer reach out. Um sort of they weren't accusing us of anything but they were just really confused. They're like, "Look look at my plants. Like I think your spray is killing my plants. Like I don't know what's happening but this is like thousands of dollars worth of horticulture and now it looks like it's all dying." And so like as a first year owner like I don't know enough about it. Like I don't think our like our spray is killing your plants but like you know, I needed some talking points and so I emailed the pictures and I forwarded this guy's note to Mosquito Joe corporate and like within 2 hours I had a response back from Mosquito Joe saying like this is not from our spray. We think it's X, Y, and Z. Like they can also do A, B, and C to sort of like follow up on that with this like horticulture group to like really identify what the species of I think it's like a grub or something like that that was like going after the plants. Boom, within 2 hours. And I was like, "That's amazing." You know, so I was able to sort of like send that over to the customer and he you know, felt better about things after that. But you know, they were able to support you with areas where you really need support like that which has been priceless. One of the things that you said about that why why people might not like franchises is are you are you really running your own business or you running somebody else's business or it's not kind of you don't feel like you're fully autonomous. Respond to that now. Yeah, no I do, right? I mean like yes, we're there's certain parameters that I don't have flexibility over but like I do feel like it's it's my business. I have you know, I have the opportunity to make operational changes and tweaks to fit my sort of like territory and my operating style and you know, that's been really fun and that's not like corporate driven, right? Like they'll give you a playbook for here's some best practices but you don't have to use it, right? You can also like modify it as well. And so yeah, I I definitely feel like I'm I'm running my own business. I think, you know, there's even within a franchise network, there's still so many decisions you have to make as a small business owner um, that it can be overwhelming, but I'm super thankful that I don't have to think about certain decisions like what CRM am I going to use, right? Like I'm told what CRM to use. And is it perfect? Like no, but I don't have to think about like should I change it? Like should I talk to a bunch of vendors about seeing if we can get a better CRM? Like I don't have to worry about that. I just have to work. I just have to learn about the nuances of the existing CRM and how to sort of like best manage it, you know? Yeah. Um, so I I appreciate that there are certain decisions that have just been like, you know, um, given to you and like this is what you do, right? Like they have a whole bunch of like print vendors that um, I don't have to use, but like they have all the Mosquito Joe templates and everything. So it's really easy to like, you know, order with three clicks online with them or I can go through and like engage a bunch of other print vendors and like share with them the copies and go back and forth on approvals and stuff like that. I could do that, but like it's not worth the time for me. Yeah. Well, in our pre-call you had actually talked about some of the improvements that you have made that, you know, you took advantage of your autonomy and made them. And so let's get into a few of those. Uh, one was about was actually about the the kind of nightly routine of printing the routes for the next day. So talk about what you did there. Yeah, so so routing is is super important like cuz you have to have tight routes. Um, so your technicians aren't like wasting a bunch of time, they call it windshield time, driving around between services. You want them to have as little driving as possible. Um, the challenge is I can set the route at 10:00 a.m. in the morning, but we send notifications to the customer the day before. And so we're getting responses all throughout the day into the evening about like, "Hey, tomorrow's not good for me. I have my landscapers coming." Or like, "I'm on vacation this week. Can you skip?" Or, you know, things like that. And so there's constantly changes happening to the routing. So, you know, routing can't really be locked down until as late as possible. Well, what was happening in the beginning of the season was I had an office staff who was in the office and she would print the routes at like 6:00, you know, um, but then I was at home and I would see a bunch of changes come through over email. And so there's sort of like one of two things that can happen. We can stay with the old routes and then have to sort of like coordinate in the morning about like this person's a skip or like this person needs service, you know, between uh, 12:00 and 2:00 instead of 9:00 and 10:00 or, you know, something like that, which is logistically kind of complicated. Or we can just print the routes in the morning once we've gotten through all the changes. And so, um, you know, and also I didn't want my office staff just have to stay till the office till 7:00 at night because she was printing routes and going through them, right? It wasn't a good use of time. And so I discovered a way where I could do all the routes at night at home and then I would upload a file to a printer in the office and then my head technician would come in in the morning and he will print out the routes um, in the morning, which is the, you know, which is the final basically. And then there's no more changes and he gives them to the technicians and they're out on the road. So, it was a small sort of like operational tweak, but like it saved a ton of time and sort of like, you know, headache and sort of like potential for miscommunication uh, between, you know, a change being made between 6:00 p.m. and, you know, 6:00 a.m. Um, when uh, when the routes were printed the night before. And was that something that you came up with or was that something that your you know, the somebody in the franchise network shared with you as their technique? Uh, no, I came up with that one on my own. And have you shared it with the other owners? Giving back to the network? I haven't yet. I think, you know, my situation is a little different because the um, the garage is about an hour from my house. So it's not close. Um, so I'm not in every day actually. Uh, I have somebody in the office every day, but it's not always me. Um, and so I think a lot of the other owners, they just like take it upon themselves or like they'll like they'll stay until 8:00 at night and print routes or they'll show up at 6:30 in the morning before um, you know, the other guys get there and they'll print the routes, but like I don't have that luxury. Um, and so like I was sort of like forced by necessity to come up with a a solution that worked for me. Um, and so I think this works really well. Yeah. Great. Good for you, Jesse. And what about the outsourced call answering, another operational improvement you put in place? So, um, yes. So it's actually this this idea came from another business owner friend of mine who owns a like a like a swim club and a and a squash club um, nearby. And I was having breakfast with him one day and I was just explaining how um, you know, I had a couple of resources that um, you know, we were getting a lot of calls certain times a day, but I had a person there just to to be able to answer the phone. It was like kind of expensive and you know, he was sharing with me that he has an outsourced call center that um, is like answers 100% of his calls. Now, he's got much less sort of like call volume, but basically this outsourced call center is US based um, experts on the phones that they support um, other they they support a bunch of of different businesses. And uh, they're just like really good on the phone. And um, so he's like you should like have a conversation with them. So, um, before I had a conversation with them, I actually posted a position to try to hire somebody in my office to be there to answer phones and follow ups on leads. And uh, just the candidate pool was like really poor and uh, I was getting no showed a lot on my, you know, office staff job. So finally I was like, you know what? Uh, well, I had two things happen. One I was frustrated by uh, the candidate pool and two, one of my office staff was going on vacation for a month. Uh, she had this big vacation plan, so I was going to be down a person. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to try this outsourced call center and uh, and see how it goes. And um, it's gone really really well. So basically my phone in the office rings uh, three times and then after that it gets forwarded to the call center and they're able to pick up. Um, we worked on a script that they can that so they know how to answer the phones. They have access to our CRM system so they can do basic things. Um, but the biggest, you know, thing that they do is they'll just take messages and then they send it to us on Slack and then we're able to sort of like follow up on things. Um, so for for year one, at least I'm calling this year one, I have somebody who will always answer the phone during business hours so it never goes to voicemail, which is super important. And uh, they're able to do sort of like basic tasks like take updated credit card numbers and do things like that, but I think for year two there's a potential where I can train them to actually follow up on leads um, and do some other sort of follow up on leads, but also do do some outbound calls around um, reschedules, season opening, uh, things like that. And uh, which will be hugely beneficial because, you know, I've I've done the math 100 different ways and I think they're actually cheaper than having another sort of like full-time resource in the office. Well, it reminds me of the kind of one of the tropes you hear about small business ownership and how uncompetitive it is because as long as you just like return calls, you're, you know, in the top 90th percentile of of small businesses. I think that of course is not very accurate and an overstatement of the reality, but it's probably something to it. There's definitely something there. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of an overstatement, but there's there's definitely something there and I think, you know, answering the phone is is uh, is super important. So I feel like the other thing about this call center is there's like five different people that could pick up the phone, right? So it's not like if I miss it in my office, there's only one person and if she's on another line, then she misses it. Like there's five different people that can pick up. And so I'm basically guaranteed that I'm going to it's going to get answered. Yeah. Yeah. Jesse, one of the kind of interesting observations that you had about the nature of this business when we talked in the pre-call was in a if you're going to be in a B2C business, a consumer business, you either are, if you're in home services, you're probably having your crews go into people's yards in your case or homes. Or if you were something else, a gym, a salon, a restaurant or any anything where there's an office and consumers come to you, you can control your environment more. And but then the general public is, you know, walking into your home as it were. So both of those have cons to them, but what what are what is life like when you're sending out your crews into people's yards and, you know, there's just constant interaction between your your team and the public in, you know, the very spaces that they're most protective of, their homes. Well, I'm I'm really glad that we don't go into homes, let's put it that way. Um, cuz I have enough problems with only being outside the home. Um, I was like I don't have a Ring Cam myself, but I was shocked at the percentage of our customers that have a Ring Cam um, because our technicians are constantly being watched. And um, I get it, right? But it it this is the reality. And we tell technicians on day one like assume that everybody's watching you. Assume that everybody has a cam camera. Um, cuz they likely do, you know? Um, but I think, you know, even on the outside of people's homes, some people have elaborate gardens. Some people have very particular landscaping. And um, you know, we have some really detailed notes on how how to treat some people's houses. Um, which becomes, you know, um, I have to be able to trust my technicians to actually be able to read notes and follow instructions, right? Like I've had a couple of very angry phone calls from people who had things sprayed that shouldn't have been sprayed, right? And it was in the notes and the guy missed it and you have to sort of like, you know, just apologize and and do the best you can, you know? Um, I think on the flip side there are some people's yards that um, are an absolute disaster and even though you come out to treat it, they still call you and they're angry cuz they still have mosquitoes. And it's like, well, you have like six um, you know, old tires that all have water in it and we can't empty them out every time. Like you have to cut your grass, you know, things like that. Um, and so it's it becomes really challenging, you know? Um, the one thing that I didn't anticipate or, you know, think about asking during the diligence process was, you know, how often is your service actually like disputed, you know? Because I would say at least every week I get a phone call or an email or our office gets a phone call or email saying like, "Why did I get this invoice? You guys were never here." Or like, like how do I know you were there? Like the guys are supposed to put a door tag on the door, they're supposed to put a flag in the ground to show they've done it. Um, sometimes they just don't do it. Or sometimes like they put the door tag on and it blows off, right? And they can't find it. But like if you're not home and the technician doesn't um make contact with you, like people will actually dispute the service cuz they're like you were never here. Um, there's been a couple of uh, you know, and if they have a ring camera, that becomes a little bit easier like because they don't show up on the cameras. If they don't have a camera, but there was nothing left, it's like yeah, like we can check the GPS, you know, we have GPS's in our truck so we can sort of like see where the truck was, how long they were there and and use that as evidence. But um, you know, more times than I than I care to admit, we've had conversations with customers around like were you guys even here? How would I how am I supposed to know if you actually did the spray? Yeah. And so that's been that's been challenging. Um, we've we've thought about, you know, potentially taking a picture of the house every time or you know, something like that, like something like Amazon does when they deliver your packages to ensure that like yep, I was here. Here's timestamp. Um, I don't know if we'll actually do anything with that, but um, you know, disputing the service was something I didn't anticipate uh would have happened. That happens, you know, unfortunately too often. Jesse, one of the themes from my conversation with Neil Finneran was kind of what a dramatic pivot this was in his career to buy a Mosquito Joe franchise territory. He had worked in hedge funds and other kind of highfalutin high finance roles in his career and now it it it has a territory and sometimes because he bought relatively small, he's actually the one out spraying. And so and he he signed up for that, but it's it's of course always interesting to hear somebody contrast uh their their now life with their previous life when when there is such a dramatic contrast. So what about you? You come from corporate and you're now doing the same thing. So uh are you ever out spraying? And then also just generally talk about what life feels like now. Yeah, I mean I've definitely done my uh done my stint in the truck. Um you know, usually it's when somebody calls off day of or has to go home sick midday or you know, something like that and you know, there's just a immediate need and so if I'm in the office, I'm I can fill it. Um, it's not, you know, it's not my preferred, but I think it's also like super important for me to understand what these guys are going through and um also important for me to understand like hey, if I'm putting this many stops on your route and I think it should take you this amount of time, like I should feel comfortable that I'm not asking them to do it too quickly or I'm not putting enough on their plate, right? So the times that I've gone out and I've probably been out four or five times. Um it's been helpful for me to sort of like see the pace that I can work when I'm like I'm textbook following exactly what they're supposed to do and I can tell you how long a spray is going to take. So if anything, it's been like a really good learning experience for me, but it's not certainly like certainly not something I'm I look forward to, right? There was a couple instances where I knew the guys had like really big days. I was in the office, I had some bandwidth and so I was like hey guys, like I'm available to spray with you for a few hours. Like let me know if you want me to help out. And guess what? There's no takers because nobody wants to work with the boss. Um but that's normal. I don't take it personally. Um, yeah, so I think, you know, there's there's the actual spraying treating job, right? Which I've had to step up and do. There's the you know, actually answering the phones and responding to customers doing lead follow up like I do more of that, but um I still try to to only be like the escalation point on the phone and not the primary one picking up the phones and um I've done that pretty successfully, which has been which has been good. I think that, you know, the most value that I add right now is around the routing because that logistical component is um is you know, super important around making sure that the routes are dense and the guys aren't wasting their time driving around and honestly that feels kind of like corporate cuz I sit at home remotely and and do it all, right? So there's not a whole lot different from there. Um yeah, it's I mean it's sure, it's it's hugely different, but like I'm enjoying the learning. Um I've just I've learned so much this year and um I'm thankful that there's been no like catastrophes, right? Knock on wood, I still have six weeks left, but there's been no real catastrophes and I've learned a ton and the business performed me well. So I'm just, you know, I'm having a good time. It it has given me a lot of flexibility and um I'm just, you know, I'm really happy with how things have worked out so far. Great. Uh so you're basically feeling you're feeling pretty solid about life and about this decision. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn't regret it for anything. And how do you feel about the SDE number that you acquired, Jesse? Cuz you you did lower your SDE threshold of what you were willing to uh to buy from the 5 6 700 that we're all advised we should down into the threes and that in fact is the size of business that you bought. How has that felt? Um it's felt fine, right? Like if I think if if anything else, it's more of like a uh not like a shame thing, but it's like like oh like I don't want to be the guy that said like I bought a super small company or it's like it was embarrassing because I my friends have bought like $700,000 SDE companies, you know, and I just bought this like little one. Um, if anything that I have like a mental block about it. Um but like it's it's felt fine and once again, my wife is still working. She's still making like she's still primary breadwinner. I've taken very little salary, you know, this year. Um, so her and I are are more thinking about the next couple of years about like okay, how much can Mosquito Joe grow? Um should I focus on paying down debt or pay myself a higher salary? What's our sort of like immediate needs? Like I have some flexibility, which is good. Like I'm purposely not taking much of a salary to sort of figure out like if I want to plow it back into um you know, or or keep it in the business and use it to pay down debt or if I want to, you know, if we have some immediate needs for our family, I can take a higher salary or something like that. So trying to figure some of that out, but like I have levers, I have flexibility and I I do see a path. If I don't acquire any other territories, I do see a a path for growth in the next couple of years, but if I can acquire a couple more territories in the next 3 years, then I think I'll have a a good good enough size business where my wife could possibly quit her job and or take another job that um you know, she would earn significantly less, but that she would have a lot more time flexibility um with. Mhm. And actually Jesse, to your point about kind of being in your head about the size of business that you bought. That was one of the themes in your reflections uh essay circling back to that that search is so personal, don't waste your time comparing yourself to others. So just talk a little bit about the hazard of comparing yourself to others. That was actually a theme that was brought up on the the episode that aired today with Shane Ursom. So let's let's hear your perspective on that, please. Yeah, I I I just think it's not it's not I mean look, everybody's going to do it. Everybody's human, but it's just not healthy and it's not a good use of your time and I think you'll you'll drive yourself crazy and get super depressed if you just look at other sort of like success stories or other people that are doing things that are, you know, uh different or quote unquote better than you, you know? And uh it's easy to get yourself like beat up and super down about it. So I mean look, I fall into the same trap, right? Like I don't I don't go around broadcasting like oh, I bought something in the in the mid 300s SDEs, you know, like yeah, like that's, you know, once you pay down debt and stuff like that, I probably was probably earning more in the corporate world, you know? Um, so that doesn't feel good, but I do think that, you know, this is not a a one or two year decision, right? This is a literal lifestyle and career change for me. And so I think, you know, over the next decade, um I have a lot more earning potential and we'll walk away with you know, I'll have an asset that's worth a lot more than anything that I would have had you know, continuing my W-2 job and and that's the most important thing to focus on. Um and because like I said, it's personal. This is, you know, my wife and I's situation and what's what works for us. Yeah. Um and you know, thinking about going public or you know, something like really big, like it just is not a good use of mind share. I have enough things that um you know, I have to think about and consider. Yeah, yeah. Well, and also just reminding oneself of like, you know, what your your own why was, which was flexibility before wealth. And and if that was your goal, you've like you're well on your way to achieving that already. And so that's that's a huge accomplishment. Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm going to um you know, I'm going to pick up my kids from the bus stop. Like I actually already have been picking them up from the bus stop since I've been back in school and I'll do that. Um probably for the rest of the year, um which is like super important for me. We don't have to have an after school babysitter because it's me and I can spend more time with them. And um you know, right now when they're really young, that's super important because they're excited to see me when they get off the bus, right? Like that's not always going to happen, but at least for now I want to, you know, take advantage of that. Excellent, Jesse. Well, anything that I didn't ask you that you wanted to make sure was said? Yeah, I mean I think we we had we mentioned this in the pre-call. I don't know how relevant or how apparent it came out now, but like I never had one of those like on the floor of the bathroom moments so far this year, right? Like I haven't Yeah, fetal position. Never had one of those, but it is tough. It it is really tough and it's not for the faint of heart and I think it's really hard to get a deal done, but it's also really hard to operate after the fact and I think, you know, if there's anybody who's sitting there thinking about ETA or buying a business, like I would I would probably say if you've never managed people before, um I probably wouldn't want owning a small business to be your first experience managing people, right? Because people are by far the most difficult part of this, right? Like the operational stuff, the system stuff is like it's all easy in the grand scheme of things, but like it requires people to sort of like execute. And uh if you're not a good coach, if you're not a good um you know, yeah, if you're not a good coach, if you're not a good leader on, you know, how to motivate them to to do that, then like it's going to be an absolute disaster. And um it's difficult. It is difficult. It does take an emotional toll on you and there's like as a business owner, there's high stress. Like the buck stops with you and you can never turn your brain off, right? Um even in the seasonal business, I know I'm going to be thinking about mosquitoes and Mosquito Joe in December, right? Even though I'm not operating, I know I'll still be thinking about it. And it's not bad per se, it's just different and you have to sort of like be you know, be ready for that. Jesse, let Let me follow up that uh thought with Can you give us an example of any of the kind of people episodes that you've had? To get to really give some color to this this warning. Yeah, I mean I won't I won't um I won't get into specifics, but I would say like before you buy a business with blue-collar workers you should expect every single one of them to ask you for money. Um like I had to come up with sort of like principles for um you know uh principles for lending money, you know, very quickly. Personally. Personally. And so whether it's like and more of it happened to be like hey like you know uh can I get paid weekly instead of bi-weekly? I have an expense coming up or you know something like that. Like one guy was like hey like I need this money today. Can I pay it back over three paychecks, you know, something like that. So you have to sort of like deal with them on a on a one-off basis, but like you should expect everybody is going to ask you for money, right? And you need to have come up with principles for how you're going to handle that. Like I had one guy say like hey uh my cell phone's going to get turned off. Can I use my uh can I use my fuel card, you know, to pay for my cell phone bill and I'll pay you back next paycheck. You know, like you need to prepare prepare for those, right? Like I didn't think about that before, but like that's the reality. And so um I was able to sort of like talk with other people and then come up with some like principles for that, but like yeah, like those are tough, you know, those are tough conversations. Um And Jesse, what what are the principles? I mean we don't need to do a deep dive, but just give cuz I'm I'm just wondering like I have no idea. So directionally give us a sense of how this is dealt with. I think for me like it depends on one the caliber of the employee and their sort of like integrity, right? I think where I've what I've felt comfortable doing is if somebody has a need for money, I don't lend money. Um like if you're like I need a thousand dollars, like I'm sorry I won't do that, but like if you need an advance on your paycheck and I know you're not going to run away next paycheck, like I'm open to doing that for the right people um in the right circumstances, right? So like if you need more than three paychecks to pay me back, like sorry, like that's that's too much exposure for me, you know. Um there was one guy who asked for a loan who um I said no to, but I said look your your midseason bonus is coming up um you know, three weeks from now. I'm willing to give you that now as long as you don't leave and uh you know will that help? And he was like very appreciative and it was a calculated risk on my part to know that like or to trust that this guy wasn't going to leave me in three weeks before he was eligible for his bonus and he didn't. Yeah. So it worked out. But I think that built some loyalty with him that I was able to do that because in my mind it was money he'd already earned or already would earn and I'm happy to sort of like front that for you. But I'm not going to get get give you a loan and and work on like a uh you know, a two-year long pre-repayment or anything like that. Yeah. It's interesting. I I might have guessed that the the guidance here is just it's a hard no every time. But I guess no. I guess you should be prepared to have some nuance and say yes sometimes and no others and set up conditions cuz that that means every time you get the request you really have to devote mental energy to thinking about how you're going to treat it. True. And it's I'm a little bit like being a hypocrite here, but every every time this has come up with somebody I said look, I'm willing to do this, but like do not talk about this. Like do not tell anybody else. Like this is between me and you, right? Um now I'm saying this on a podcast, so it's public. But uh you know, I I tried to make sure that they were at least discreet with it. And if they're not, then like it's only going to go back and you know, that'll do damage to them and their reputation if they are broadcasting it. Um but I've I've handled it tried to handle it quietly with you know, the limited number of times it's come up, but like it's been limited number of times, but like three or four different people, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's really that's I think a lot of people wouldn't expect that cuz that does not happen in the corporate world at all. Exactly. Exactly. Or even like take a situation like this. We had a customer call in and uh he said hey like your guy was here like way too fast. There's no way he could have completed the service. Um and so our office staff was like hey like no problem. We'll just like you know, we'll send the guy back and he can go, you know, spend some more time in your property. And so office called the technician and said hey can you go back to this guy's house? Like he said you weren't there long enough. Can you just like do another touch-up so he feels better about it? And the guy said no, I was there long enough. What do you do? Right? Like real situation that happened and um we had to handle that separately, but like things like that will happen because yeah like this is not the corporate world like where people generally say yes and will you know, do what they're asked. Sometimes they'll just say no and not do what they're asked and then you have to be forced to handle it. And how did you handle that one, Jesse? Uh we pulled him aside and just basically said look like when the office asks you to do something like it's it's not optional. Like this is what you do. And if you can't listen and follow instructions, then like you don't have a place here. It's pretty simple. What else did you want to make sure that we touched on, Jesse? Yeah, I think you know, the the last thing um I think one of my biggest learnings and and something I'm still sort of reflecting on now was I do feel like I gave up a little bit too much during the transition due to fear. Uh and what I mean by that is you know, I had some returning people that were coming back. And um there's a lot that I don't know and so I feel like I can I need to leverage them a lot for my learning. And you know everybody's asking for a raise, right? Which is like the biggest thing. And um a raise or like a separate sort of like arrangement and you know there was one guy in particular who was super vocal about it or or super pushy about it and um you know, I wanted to say no, but I felt like I was so dependent on this person that ultimately before I ever worked a day with this guy, I caved and gave into his request. And um because I felt like I couldn't like he would walk if I didn't and um it feels like that was the wrong call now now that we've worked together for long enough and it's been fine um but I feel like I was a little like I should have pushed back more but saying like dude you can ask me that, but like I've never worked with you, so like no, like I can't give in to this request, you know, but um I didn't feel like I was in the position where I could have done that, but hindsight's 20/20. I probably should have pushed back more and say like look I totally get it and happy to reassess after X Y and Z time or you know, something like that. But um you know, that was a call that I made which I probably would have done differently if I could do it again. Well, the question here is like is that generalizable advice? Maybe you have found out in retrospect that this guy, whatever his request was ultimately wasn't worth conceding. But I wonder if it it could have turned out the other way that it was a good call. I'm trying to understand if that is something that you would generalize to people in the transition you know, have confidence in yourself and say no a lot more or just happened to be this way in this case. So there's another instance like I mean they asked for something different, but I did cave and it's worked out really well. Um and so like I I just think that you do need to have um you should feel comfortable to go with your gut. Right? In the beginning and and don't feel like just because like you're going to get asked a thousand different things as a new owner and like you don't have to say yes to everything. I think is the biggest way that I could sort of like summarize it. Um it's okay to say like I need some time to think this over before I make any changes um and that's and that's fine. And that's you should feel comfortable doing that. One technique I've heard is when you come in on your day one speech, you basically just announce like no changes for six months, no raises for six months. Maybe it's not six months, maybe it's less, but you just kind of nip all of that in the bud. Now I'm I'm not actually advocating this technique and I'm and I couldn't even point you to interviews where guests have mentioned doing that, but um I do recall it. And so does that how does that land on you? Does that feel like something that you could have done or that wouldn't have flown? So I didn't have a day one speech because when I closed on the business, uh I had no employees. Right? So everybody was laid off. So um you know, I I I don't think that's bad advice by any means. Like I think that's fair to sort of like be transparent and and say that to everybody so everybody can hear. Um I think my situation was a little different because I had no employees and you know, in the off season before they were employed by me, I had a couple meetings with people and so I could sort of like meet them and you know I I know that they were they were checking me out as much as I was checking them out, you know what I mean? Um and that was fine. Um and uh yeah, I probably in those sort of like one-off meetings should have should have had something like that prepared where I talked about like hey like you know, no changes for the first 90 days or something like that. Like it's hard to say six months cuz that's half that's like more than half my season, you know. Um but uh yeah, that's something I probably should have handled a little bit differently. Well, this has been great. You're thoughtful as always uh really packed episode. Thanks a lot for coming back on, Jesse, to share with us about your experience with Mosquito Joe. How can how do you prefer people reach out? Um uh two ways. I'm on Twitter. I think I'm at J Sunquist. I'm not as active now as I used to be, but they can find me on Twitter. Um and then also you can just email me at jesse@mountsophia.capital which was the LLC that I created when I started. And um now I'm kind of stuck with because I I created it and I acquired with it and now uh has nothing to do with mosquitoes which is confusing for some people, but it's what I'm using. So. Great. Thanks a lot, Jesse Sunquist. All right, thanks, Will. I hope you enjoyed that interview. Make sure you subscribe to the Acquiring Minds channel below. We are now publishing twice a week. So tons of new interviews and stories to come. Stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business.