I’m Tony Sfreddo and I was co-owner of Triple S Pest Services in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

I can vividly remember my father starting the business and you know I was basically his, his helper. I could go in and drill the wall voids meaning the holes into the block. Sometimes some of those crawl spaces I’d have to go dig the trench around the interior perimeter on the footers. I would drill, he would treat, and I’d come behind him and repair and that’s how I learned the business.

They had started to diversify the business a few years before I had graduated and came and joined the company. They had a commercial division, that was growing but it was not growing — it had grown really fast, too fast. So he asked me to come in and do what I could do with the commercial division because he seriously was considering liquidating it, closing it, or seeing that somebody wanted to acquire it. I started doing you know my research and rolling up my sleeves and just implementing small common sense changes and trying to emulate other businesses in the industry that I knew were successful commercially.

My father didn’t think that we could get any government work. He thought there was an inside track and we weren’t on the inside, we could never get those contracts. So I made it my personal goal to get a government contract — to not prove him wrong but to say hey, look what we got, we did it, we achieved it, we did what you didn’t think we could do. First large government contract we got was the Pentagon. Won the account in 1997. I remember that. And then we kept it until we sold the business in 2018.

So we kept that account for over 20 years. It catapulted us to not only other government work and other government contracts but it led to some high profile commercial contracts. I was glad to get it when we did in ’97. My father unfortunately passed in 2000, but he was alive to see us get that significant account and then go on from there to really make inroads into that sector of business.

I think once we made the decision to see if it was the right time to sell — in other words take it to market — I decided I was ready. Once we made that decision to sell, my mindset switched over to okay, I want to get to the finish line and I want to move on to whatever’s next. What felt right in that time was we had met previously with Paul. Paul had put us on a path, some things to clean up, some directions to go in order to improve the efficiency and profitability of the business. Run your business like you’re going to own it forever but position it like you’re going to sell it tomorrow. Paul helps you with the positioning.

What we’ve achieved in selling the company, Paul played the largest role in making that happen. And I see it with his other clients, but he took the time to get to know me and my brother and really care about who we were as people, not just our business. He gets to know you and develops a very genuine friendship and I think it benefits both parties. It makes me feel comfortable and I think it enables Paul to do his best for me. Will be forever indebted to Paul.

My daughter’s married and has a son and she runs her own business, so she’s an entrepreneur too. My son works for one of the top five accounting firms in the country and is very successful. Since selling the business I’m now able to spend time with my grandson, visit them more frequently, go to dinner, get to talk a lot. We get to spend time together and it’s one of the benefits of having sold the business that I wasn’t counting on.

We’d spent three years doing the things that Paul had suggested we do to get healthier, and more attractive, and so when we decided to take it to market and see what would happen, it paid dividends. And again that’s to Paul’s credit. He just — he doesn’t just come in and sell your business and get you the maximum amount he can get you. If you start a relationship with him he will share with you how to prepare your business to go to market and he’ll be honest with you whether he thinks it’s ready to go or not, or where he should spend some time fixing some things, and then maximize the value of your business. So you know what makes him the best in M&A — I think that there makes him very attractive. I don’t know if anyone else will come in and evaluate your business and tell you the things you need to do to make it more profitable and more attractive.