“Redemption From Bad Advice” | Brandon Lunsford’s POTOMAC Experience

He’ll tell you like it is — like he won’t hold back. He’ll tell you exactly what he thinks about the acquirer, the good and the bad. We were just blown away with just his knowledge of the pest control industry, the M&A industry, and just business in general.

My brother and I got involved in this business because our dad was in the industry. You know, we were doing about $200,000 in revenue at the time. Fast forward, you know, 12, 13 years later, when we met Paul, we were doing a little over seven and a half million. Our goal was to exit the business because we wanted to be able to pursue other business interests, to take some of the risk off the table, and that’s where Paul came in. He was able to, you know, take that asset that we had, you know, built up over those 10, 12 years growing really, really fast, to monetize that for us.

You know, Brian and I, our conversations offline — we weren’t talking to Paul — we’re talking about, you know, Paul’s business acumen, the industry acumen he had, just his connections in the industry. When we sat down with an acquirer and they, you know, maybe presented an offer to us, he knew all the other acquirers, he knew what the other deals would be. Some of the deals he told us just to wait on because he knew that he could get better offers. Just having a 30-minute conversation with Paul, I think anybody would be pretty shocked about how well connected he is in the industry.

You know, we actually dabbled into the M&A market five years prior to selling, before we knew Paul. We talked to a broker at the time, really got some bad advice, you know. We were kind of pigeonholed into selling, and something just didn’t feel right. Really felt like they were working more for the acquirer than he was for us. We kind of got a bad taste in our mouth about M&A.

And really, you know, until we reached out — just out of a conversation, really didn’t have the intentions of selling at the time — and just started a dialogue. And this lasted, you know, more than a year by the time we sold. We realized that we did make the right decision. I mean, the questions he asked us along the way, the guidance that he gave us — he was more probably a counselor to us than anything else. I mean, we were both still young and naive and he was really able to kind of hold our hand through the process.

I wonder what an alternate ending would have looked like if you and Brian didn’t have Paul, and you realized, we’ve got to sell and we’re going to figure this out on our own. What would it look like today? I definitely think back about five years prior to meeting Paul. If we had sold to that acquirer and with that broker, you know, part of the deal was we were going to have to work full-time for that acquirer. We weren’t going to be able to run our home inspection business, so all that would have been dissolved. We grew the business in those five years 500 percent. Then the M&A market also went up for us.

Looking back, that was some of the best decisions we ever made was saying no back then. We just got that kind of feeling in our gut that we weren’t working with the right broker or the acquirer. I don’t think we would have ever netted the kind of money that we netted, because we had that sour taste in our mouth from that experience five years prior. We kind of actually had that conversation like, hey, we can just do this ourselves, we know who the big acquirers are. Thank God we didn’t.

Luckily for us, we held out for a few years. Luckily for us, we met Paul. And luckily for us, the M&A market was great. Found a great acquirer and everything worked out great for us.