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The Mosquito Shield Playbook: Strategies for Growing a Thriving Franchise

August 18, 2025 by angishields

FMR-Brad-Sutliffe-Feature
Franchise Marketing Radio
The Mosquito Shield Playbook: Strategies for Growing a Thriving Franchise
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In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee Kantor talks with Brad Sutliffe, franchise owner of Mosquito Shield of Southern Delaware. Brad shares his transition from a 20-year insurance career to entrepreneurship, detailing how he and his wife researched franchising and chose Mosquito Shield for its recurring revenue, seasonality, and growth potential. He discusses building brand awareness, scaling operations, and leveraging franchise support, as well as expanding into additional franchises. Brad highlights the rewards and challenges of business ownership, the importance of community engagement, and involving his family in the business, offering practical insights for aspiring franchisees.

Mosquito-Shield

Brad SutliffeBrad Sutliffe is from Lewes, DE, where he lives with his wife and business partner, Kristi as well as their three children – Nate, Emme and William.

He has spent over 20 years in the corporate insurance world. Over the past 4 years he has become an entrepreneur in the franchise world owning local territories for Mosquito Shield, DonutNV and Frios Pops.

Follow Mosquito Shield on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Episode Highlights

  • Transition from a long career in commercial insurance to franchising.
  • Reasons for choosing franchising over independent business or continuing in insurance.
  • The process of selecting a franchise with the help of a consultant.
  • Operational aspects of running Mosquito Shield, including initial roles and responsibilities.
  • Benefits of the franchise model, including support, training, and infrastructure.
  • Marketing strategies and customer acquisition methods, including SEO and community engagement.
  • Importance of understanding the seasonality of the business and planning accordingly.
  • Balancing multiple franchise businesses and managing growth effectively.
  • Personal commitment and hard work required for franchise success.
  • Involvement of family in the business and the personal rewards of entrepreneurship.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Brad Sutliffe. He is a franchisee with Mosquito Shield of Southern Delaware. Welcome.

Brad Sutliffe: Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. For folks who aren’t familiar. Tell us a little bit about Mosquito Shield.

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. So Mosquito Shield is a residential mosquito control company. So primarily, you know, when I don’t know your age, Lee, but when I grow up. Right? Certainly, people. This wasn’t an industry that was around, right? I always joke your parents sent you outside, you got bit, or you sprayed the off, and you put the lotion on and you went about your day, you know. So this is an industry that’s really taken off, I would say, in the last 15 or 20 years, 95% of what we do is residential mosquito control, and the whole goal is really to just allow people to enjoy their their out their lawn and their outdoor space for the season.

Lee Kantor: So now let’s talk about kind of your journey into franchising. What were you doing prior to franchising?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. So historically, I’ve always been in the commercial insurance business close to 20 years. The funny story on that is, you know, I worked for one of the top 3 or 4 insurance agencies in the company or in the world. Excuse me. And, you know, my wife had been a stay at home mom for close to ten years. We have three kids that are now 15, 12 and nine. As she said, once our youngest was starting to get into the school world, I think I’m ready to start to talk to adults. Right. And then that conversation kind of led to we were being truly honest with ourselves. Lee, in terms of, you know, if we put everything on the board, you’re kind of starting over in a profession. Do you know what you want to get to? She wasn’t sure at that point. We said, hey, you know, honestly, the salary that you’re probably going to make, you were probably going to make this much money, you know, but now you’re going to have two weeks vacation. We’re going to have to put kids maybe into daycare or summer camps. And when you really looked at that on paper and we were kind of like, you know, man, this may be causing more problems than it’s worth. Not that we didn’t want to do it, but, you know, again, just throwing everything.

Brad Sutliffe: I’m kind of a planner. She’s more of a free goer by nature. And then we kind of said, well, hey, we’re in her early 40s. Let’s start a business. That should be fun, right? You know, we’ve never thought of doing that again. I was always a traditional W-2 employee for close to 20 years. And then the next conversation is certainly like, okay, well, what business are we going to start? You know, we didn’t have anything that we organically built or some creative marketing idea or anything like that. And that casually led. I knew nothing about the franchise world, and I think if there’s anything I can encourage people to do, it’s, you know, just learn and take 30 minutes to educate yourself about franchise. I always use the term I always thought the franchise world was, you know, the chick fil A models of the world, right? But you needed $2 million of cash. You needed a lot of liquid liquidity to be able to put down in a transition to that. I had no idea the plethora of business available out there in the market. And, you know, those newer businesses that are on the forefront, hopefully, of kind of breaking through and being household names, so to speak.

Brad Sutliffe: So we ended up just doing a little bit of research. We met with a consultant, educated us, as I said, hey, this could go a 30 minute conversation or we could have further conversations into this. But you know, you know, the beauty of franchising, if you can find the right brand, it’s that really it’s diving into that turnkey process. Right? So my wife and I, we did not want to, you know, pick a color for our brand. We did not want to pick a logo. We wanted something that was super turnkey, um, and ready to go. Right. Because I’ve always been a salesman by nature. So I said, hey, if we can find a good product and something that we both love and can kind of get into. Um, you know, finding that key with the franchising space is, is, was was awesome. And we kind of hit a home run. Um, moving forward with that. I do joke, though, and that could probably lead you in a further conversation. What about mosquito shield? You know, I always laugh with people. I said four years ago, if you had told me I was in a residential mosquito control industry, I would have said, what are you talking about on that end?

Lee Kantor: Now, why did you choose franchising when you were in insurance? A lot of folks just would have organically just said, oh, I’m going to just open my own insurance office up. I got my wife here. We’ll make flexible hours. I’m already know everything about the ins and outs of this. How come you didn’t take that path?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. So I have gone a little bit out in that route and kind of now that I’ve gotten into the entrepreneurial stage, as I say in my life, I have gone out of my own. So I do dabble a little bit in that with a small handful of clients. In all honesty, if I’m being completely honest and I think a lot of people at my age Kind of go through the same kind of concepts, right? You’ve been in the same industry. You do pretty well. Start doing pretty well financially. You start to have kids. As somebody explained to me, then you add the more valves on, right? So the more payments of, you know, starting to save for college, bigger mortgage, uh, second car, all the additional kids expenses and you kind of sit there saying, I’m making probably too much money to kind of step away or to start something completely new because I can’t go from, you know, a six figure income to $25,000 because I want to be a baker. Um, and I and frankly, I was very good at my job, and I still think I am, but, um, you know, you get bored over the years of constantly ringing the bell, um, doing the same thing over and over.

Brad Sutliffe: So my wife would probably tell you if she was on this call, you know, over the 4 or 5 years before this, she could tell I was kind of bored. I was still good, still very productive in my job. But, you know, I’d kind of come to her saying, man, I’d love, you know, to do something else. And and again, financially, that’s always the tough conversation. But if there’s one thing I’ve always learned for that and will certainly preach my kids, it’s, you know, I think everyone should have a side hustle, business, side hustle, passion, something that they can. You know, again, if you got to have the, the, the W-2 salary, the benefits for a period of time, but try to find something that you can build on your own. The rewarding and gratifying gratification of that. What I didn’t want to do is to be 70 years old, stay in insurance at a W2 job for 4050 years, and then say, hey man, I never took a shot or a risk. And I you finally got to a point where you said, what is the worst thing that happens if the worst thing that happens is we hate the business and we want to sell it, or we don’t do well in it, and we’ve lost a little bit of money.

Brad Sutliffe: Hey, at the end of the day, we can at least look at each other and we always felt, hey, we can go out and get a job if we needed to down the line. But, you know, we were in a position and now I kicked myself for just saying I should have started this process ten years ago. And again, that’s where it gets back to, you know, a lot of people that I talk to. Or younger professionals, I’m always in their ear just saying, hey, you got anything on the side that you want to start to build? You know, especially before you start to have kids and the responsibilities and the other stuff. Because again, I always look at to these people, if the worst thing that happens is that side hustle is so, um, it takes off right, and becomes so successful that you now have to make a decision, oh my gosh, I can’t stay in my W2 because my time involved and my side hustle, um, is taking off and I need to devote more energy to that. And I always look at people and say, that is a great problem to have. And I think you’d agree.

Lee Kantor: Now when you were going through the okay, so now you’re getting a little burnt out in insurance, you’re kind of curious about franchising. Uh, you talk to, I would assume, a franchise broker or some consultant of some sort, and they show you a variety. Um, they probably make you do some sort of an assessment to see what you like. Don’t like things like that, and you kind of narrow it down. Were you going all in where you’re like, okay, here’s my two weeks notice and now I’m doing this thing? Or did you kind of ease into it, like you were saying, as a side hustle and then kind of work your way? And then when it was kind of financially stable, then you kind of pulled the ripcord.

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah, definitely. It was, uh, because again, I’ve been in sales, I’ve always been able to set my own schedule, make my own, um, on my end. Um, this was going to be 100% for a job for my wife in terms of, you know, especially in the business, she was going to be investing whatever the 40 hours of the week, so to speak. Um, I was going to be behind the scenes, obviously still looking to do my W-2 job. Um, as, as long as we possibly were able to do that, obviously fill in nights, weekends or as needed. Um, but she was totally invested from the start to be able to build, um, to devote that, you know, that 40 hours of, of time on that end and like you said, yes, we did use a consultant, um, one to just be truly educated on what is franchising, what is? When people talk about the franchise disclosure documents, the F9 team, all that kind of important stuff that again, as a newbie, you don’t know anything about. Um, and having that, um, using that consultant to obviously represent brands. Right. So again, we evaluated probably 12 to 15 brands. Um, we did a fun exercise where again, a lot of it does come down to financially, how much are you able or willing to kind of invest. Right. Uh, do you have any, uh, certain industries that you’re maybe kind of more passionate? So are you more artistic or are you more business, or are you more sales? Um, and so we did a fun exercise where I took we took all the information home. I picked my top three. Kristy, my wife picked her top three, and then our consultant picked what their top three was. Um, and on that end, it was funny because, uh, mosquito shield, both ranked in our top three. So, uh, we actually locked in on that pretty quickly to the point where I said, you know, are we going through this process too fast? Because, you know, it just seemed like it was checking so many boxes for each of us.

Lee Kantor: So what about mosquito shield was so attractive to all of the parties involved here? Was it, um, is it a hands on? I’m not that. I know I’m kind of seeing the brand, but I don’t know what the actual how you deliver the service. Um, what what part attracted you to it?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. So a couple things that were definitely for us were, uh, home runs. Um, so the seasonality business of it. So our season typically goes from, uh, April through October. So obviously you’re doing, um, planning throughout the winter months and developing your marketing budgets. So it’s not like there’s nothing to do but the true service or deliverables of having technicians, um, provide the services, uh, April through October. Um, so again, a seasonality business, we were kind of really excited to say, hey, 15, ten years from now, you know, we could be able to set this up where if we want to go to Florida or somewhere for 4 to 6 weeks a year, it’s okay to do it because we we have that business, um, on it, I my mentality in the insurance world. Um, I was a commissioned employee, so I was used to the guaranteed renewal ability. So I love the recurring revenue stream. Right? So I looked at us to say, okay, if we got 50 clients our first year, we can get a 150 year two. I understood the math that, hey, at the end of the day, if you’re putting on more clients than you’re losing every year and you’re delivering strong customer service, then at the end of the day, that that recurring revenue stream hits every single year. And, you know, you can kind of scale up and build this up as you possibly could. And then I did we did a little bit of market analysis. So we said, hey, where we live. And I know you don’t necessarily know our area in Delaware, but we were we’re about two hours from Philly, two hours from Baltimore and two hours from DC.

Brad Sutliffe: Um, it was right around post-Covid. Um, and we saw a mass exodus of folks from the cities move out to where we are in the coastal beaches of Delaware. So we saw mass construction, um, uh, boom, out here. We saw very limited competition in terms of we do have one residential mosquito control company out here. Um, and but a couple other pest control companies that we thought, hey, opportunity to be able to grow this. There wasn’t a ton of competition. So those are probably the three main drivers, um, that I would say when we really looked at it, we were like, yeah, we think we have some really good potential in this. And then certainly again, financially it was a fairly lower started compared to some of these franchises. On the end, you could base the business starting out of your house, right? So at the end of the day, you needed one truck, right? Uh, you didn’t need a huge space or a big, uh, rent to be able to pay in a, in a commercial space. So, um, as you go through this, you can scale it up. The goal is to get to that level where we need 4 or 5, six trucks. We need a bigger commercial space. Uh, but you could, you know, in your first year or two basis out of your home, um, and control some of those startup costs, um, that obviously come into play.

Lee Kantor: So now when you’re delivering the services is something that you and your wife had to be the deliverer of the service as well, or is this something you immediately hire somebody to do?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. So that that’s everybody’s different. Right. So it comes down to, um, um, you know, how you, how you kind of structured and build it out. So for us, year one, uh, I ended up doing the tech work. So I went out about two days a week, one week and three days the next week. So I tell people, uh, we finished our first season with 75 clients on the books. So I went out spring two days, one week, and three days the next week. So it was two, three, two, three kind of the schedule for the season. And again, I had the flexibility through through my work as a commissioned sales person to be able to do that. My wife handled all of the, uh, sales calls. Um, we do have access to a call center. They do a solid job, but we felt, hey, at the end of the day, nobody knows the area better than us. She was active in the PTO. Um, we were just. Her close rate we just saw was through the roof in terms of just being able to talk about the service, because, again, so many people weren’t aware of the service, um, that we provide.

Brad Sutliffe: Um, and then as we’ve grown out, you know, like this year, I have sprayed maybe under five times. Um, we now have a full time general manager who is a year round employee. We have a second full time technician. We have two vehicles. So again, back to my previous point about scaling this thing up. Um, you’ve got the ability. Uh, my goal this year was to start to work on the business and not in the business, so to speak. Um, so I want to do more of the high level stuff. So obviously the marketing, the budget planning, the the infrastructure, how do we build this up? Some of the training to get my GM to the level, um, you know, to be the lead technician to take, uh, some of the training aspects, some of the day to day stuff. Um, and leading all the tech work. But that’s how we’ve kind of grown and expanded, you know, over those first two years.

Lee Kantor: Now, is is the selling happen? Um, because they inquire from an ad or some marketing, and then your wife has to kind of explain it and close them. Is that the is that the marketing kind of flywheel or funnel you’re using?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. The biggest thing I would tell people in franchising is, is just getting your name out there. So, uh, again, SEO search engine optimization is great, right? Everyone runs to Google, but you also have to get out there. You gotta wee wee wee pound signs out the door. Uh, the biggest thing you have to do is to educate people on who, frankly, who is mosquito shield. And then what do you do? And then how do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace? Um, you know, when you’re, when you’re going against your competitors. So, yeah, our first year was to just brand ourselves and get people to understand that we’re one we’re out here and then to educate people on, on, on, uh, you know, what service that we can provide them. So that can include putting out 4 to 500 signs in our territory that will include going to home shows, um, and just educating people. But yeah. Typically a lead comes in. My wife would be reaching out to them pretty quickly. Same day, if not within 24 hours at the latest. Just giving them the education of how to how what is mosquito services? How does it work? Our biggest differentiator with mosquito shield is that we come out at a 14 day cadence. Industry standard is typically coming out closer to 21 days. So we’re never going to typically be the cheapest on the piece of paper. But we’re typically coming out about 50% more often over the course of the season. So competitors typically come out, you know, 7 to 8 times. And we’re more in the 12 to 13 because we just looked at the data as a company. Um, and uh, mosquitoes really start to start activity around day 14 to 21. And we just said, hey, we’ve got backpacks that are efficient, our routings efficient. Um, and we want to really start to come out and give a truly better experience by coming out more often, more regularly than competitors.

Lee Kantor: And when you deliver the service, you don’t need the resident to be there, right? Like, you can just walk around the yard front and back and then knock it out. Or do you need the the the homeowner to be there?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. The we try to say you almost kind of set it and forget it. Right. So we have a very great system in terms of we send out a text message the night before that says your scheduled service is scheduled for tomorrow. So again, that gives the client to some heads up of, hey, I’ve got a construction guy in the morning. Is there any way to move it? Or, you know, we have had situations where they said, hey, tomorrow really isn’t going to work for me because I’ve got, um, we’re we’re building a deck in our back. Is there any way to move it? So we try to give them the feedback of, hey, if you if you know, we can’t be there, um, then please let us know. We also send messages out about 15 minutes before they come. We typically want to meet the person on our first service just to say, hey, let’s walk the property together, right? If there’s any areas that you want to point out to us, let’s walk the property line. Because a very important thing, obviously in our business is, you know, adhering to our state regulations on, you know, adhering especially to property lines, right? So we can’t spray into the neighbor’s yard.

Brad Sutliffe: And, uh, but again, getting that feedback from the, uh, from the client of, hey, they’re really starting to come from under my deck that I’ve noticed, or in my back left corner so we can make the proper notes. But after that, you know, we we certainly have clients where we haven’t seen again, you know, so it’s it’s more of we can come out. You don’t have to be there if you’re there. Great. Uh, but if not, it’s no, no big deal. And then the beauty of our services, we tell people, you know, once we leave the truck, our average stop is about ten minutes on a property, you know, let it dry for about 15 to 20 minutes and that’s it. You can come right back out and start to enjoy your property. So that includes kids, animals on the property. Um, it’s a very quick process because if you know, Lee, if you’ve ever done, you know, yard work or they’ve sprayed your lawn, right, and they put the sign up and you got to stay off the lawn for 24 hours, our process is a lot faster, and it allows employees to come out a lot quicker on their property and enjoy it.

Lee Kantor: So how did Corporate Mosquito Shield do in terms of training you, or kind of managing your expectations of what to expect? You know, when it is your business now and and it’s no longer, you know, something that you hope will happen. It’s happening and you’re on a clock as soon as that check clears, right? Uh, you gotta you got to get clients now and it’s on you. So how did they do in terms of setting you up for success?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah, that’s a great question. And that’s I think some people, you know, need to understand. Hey, at the end of the day, it is your business, right. The franchise is there to support, provide the feedback, help you build this. But hey, at the end of the day, some people I think, think, you know, the franchise is directly supposed to send them leads. It’s a turnkey. I always tell people, hey, at the end of the day, if you’re not willing to put the blood, sweat and tears into build your business, um, you know, at the end of the day, that success does fall on the business owner. So sometimes, you know, you hear the term semi absenteeism, um, which consultants try to use. And I kind of hate that term in terms of at the end of the day, if you could work a business that you’re just starting out 5 to 10 hours a week, b semi absenteeism, everyone in America would own this type of business or getting the franchise right. So can you get there? Absolutely. I think if you build it right, you build the team. Um, you can get to that level if you want to as an owner, um, to be able to say, hey, I put in the five years to ten years to kind of build this out. I’ve got a great team. I can take a step back and allow my, my employees to kind of lead this charge. I’m there for support and training purposes. But those first couple of years, you got to be putting in the work to to kind of build that out on the corporate side.

Brad Sutliffe: Right. Um, because our business is seasonal, seasonally, uh, we signed papers in January, and my wife and I both looked at ourselves and said, you know, hey, I’m on around April 1st. Really? People start to really, you know, lock in and say, okay, the weather’s turning, I got to buy this. And we just said, hey, we’ve got a, uh, you know, uh, depending on the corporation, they may say, hey, it’s a 30 day training, a 60 day, 90 day. We said, we are going to try to onboard this and get this done as fast as we can, because basically we want it to be ready to go for April 1st. So second, we sign those papers. Uh, we started to have an onboarding portal of all the training that the corporate was able to provide to us and, you know, marketing 101. Right. Some people don’t have any idea about how to set a marketing budget. I certainly didn’t I didn’t know anything about starting a small business. Um, how do we differentiate ourselves? How is if Brad, you’re going to be the technician, here’s videos and here’s tech training. So I actually flew out to, uh, North Carolina for two days and did basic tech training with people across the country because I never put on a backpack, I didn’t know how to properly spray. And just in the 2 to 3 days, you get so much better with just getting a couple sprays under your belt and how to operate the backpack.

Brad Sutliffe: So yeah, any good franchise? You know, again, as the owner, you know, they may not be proactively reaching out saying, hey, do this, do that. Um, but any good franchise is going to have that infrastructure where the support that you need, you can take as much of it or as little of it. Um, so I looked at myself and said, hey, I’m pretty good in these areas, but I definitely don’t know anything about, you know, marketing how to properly build a marketing budget for mosquito residential mosquito control in year one. So I leaned heavily on the marketing team at corporate for the first year. Um, and then on the tech side, uh, for the first year, and then again, as you get a certain couple years in the business, you know, maybe I’m not leaning them as much, but you’re still having your monthly calls to hear, you know, what’s corporate doing, how how the numbers look on an industry. We also have local what they call f a c meeting financial hour, uh, uh, where we meet regionally, uh, once a month to talk about what’s going on, successes, Is, uh, what’s working maybe marketing wise, that people, um, have spent dollars on that are leading to sales, all that kind of stuff. Where, uh, again, you as a owner, you got to be willing to attend, put the put the meetings on your calendar and attend them. Uh, because the more you get out of it, the more you can get to that level to build the business up as fast as possible.

Brad Sutliffe: Because at the end of the day, you know, we’re all in business to hopefully build this out in the, to make money. Um, and it’s, it’s how quickly can can you, can you, can you get to that level where um, you as a business owner can say, hey, I know for us, Christy and I, we reinvested all of the money for the first couple years into marketing because we said, hey, our goal is how quickly can we build this up to 3 to 400, uh, clients? Um, so then we can, as the owner, start to take, you know, a decent salary, right? And then the goal is, okay, if it took us 3 to 4 years to get to 400, right. How do we get that to 800? Is now what we’re starting to think? Can we cut that time in half. So our goal is, hey, if it took us now four years. Or give or take four years to get to 350 to 400. Can we cut that time in half to get to 800? And that’s where you really can start to see the business kind of take off. And and the good thing is, you know, you can see that light at the end of that tunnel and then that growth trajectory, um, again, assuming you’re doing the right things and putting the work in to kind of build it up.

Lee Kantor: Now as part of your, uh, entrepreneurial evolution, you purchased two other franchises. What was kind of the thinking behind that and of doing that rather than kind of doubling down on, hey, let me just get more mosquito shield territories.

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah. It was kind of, um, interesting. Right? So some people would say, you’re crazy, right? I’m sure my mother probably looked at saying, well, you’re adding more different franchise and different businesses. Um, on the mosquito shield side, basically, in Delaware, we were a small state. We are a small state. Um, so we had, uh, our what we call northern Delaware was already acquired and purchased. So when we did the initial acquisition, we did purchase three territories and we wrapped up the rest of the state. Um, the reason we didn’t expand into other states, uh, was really, um, because that does open it up to more state licensing, more state tests. Um, and we thought we had the opportunity to just kind of build out our three territories as big as we possibly want. Right. So a lot of conversations people have is can I start with one territory? Do I need to buy two? Three. Expand it. I always tell people, hey, at the end of the day, you know, um, you can start with just one. If financially you’re just more on the conservative side to say, I just need to see how this goes. Um, and then you can obviously expand. You know, obviously the faster you do the acquisition, you’re just limiting, you know, people coming in from maybe acquiring those certain territories. Um, but then as we grew and looked at this, we just said we thought we had some other opportunities with some other businesses. Um, and, uh, And that led us to the line of, uh, you know, expanding kind of our portfolio, I guess, in entrepreneurship.

Brad Sutliffe: So, um, you know, over the last couple of years, we’ve also acquired donut envy of southern Delaware. So we do hot, fresh mini donuts, uh, uh, fresh squeezed lemonade. Um, and then we also added, uh, frijoles pops. So it’s gourmet popsicles. Um, so to give you some perspective on that, you know, the donuts is a year round business. Obviously, certain months in certain, uh, weathers dictate, uh, better months of the year, but that is a year round business. And then the popsicles is truly seasonal, similar to Mosquito Shield, where that’s really kind of for us, uh, you know, April through October with June, July and August really being, uh, the super heavy months in the popsicle space. Um, and again, because of where we live, we’re in a coastal community, a lot of beach people, um, we just saw the opportunity in that, getting into that food and beverage space that we thought, hey, we can kind of build this out to. And again, the key is not letting it impact our growth on mosquito shield. We didn’t take our eye off the prize. Right. So my wife and I, you know, we’ve got solid employees. Uh, like I said, we we invested in bringing in a general manager on the mosquito shield side. So we’re we’re very invested in all three of the businesses. Um, so our goal was to not just, hey, be content. We put on, you know, we’re at 200 mosquito shield clients.

Brad Sutliffe: We’re okay. We’ve built that out. It’s hey, we still want to grow each one of these accordingly and put the the time and the effort to. But we just saw the, the ability to kind of expand that way. And we really loved I can tell um, tell you just from personal experience, don’t get me wrong. You know, you’ve had the sleepless nights. You’re a business owner. I always say you’re the last one to get paid, right. Everyone kind of knows that if they’re in that small business world, but the the opportunity to kind of grow into build, um, your own business and your own, you know, legacy, so to speak, I guess, you know, so if this is something that our kids want to possibly get down. Get into. Down the line. What we’ve seen is, again, I mentioned my kids. They’re 15, 12 and nine. We have all three of them that work in some aspect in terms of attending an event here, helping us here. Um, and just the payout on that to see them start to develop work ethic, which is I think is so important in today’s world. You know, handing out pops, learning some customer service skills, counting money, all these kind of things that, you know, again, in that that age, I think are so important to see kind of them kind of build and mature, uh, through that process. We’ve really enjoyed that process of getting into that business ownership aspect.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Role modeling. Being an entrepreneur is a gift you’re giving your kids. I mean, that’s for sure, because that’s the gift that keeps on giving. Learning how to sell and interact with human beings in person, that that’s useful no matter what they do throughout their lives.

Brad Sutliffe: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about what you got going on and connect with you, is there a best way to do that? Is it through Google Shield or LinkedIn?

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way. So again, Brad Sutcliffe, um, obviously you can probably find us just doing a simple search and reach out through one of our emails, um, on any one of those businesses. But yeah, LinkedIn certainly is probably the easiest and quickest way to find us.

Lee Kantor: And if they need help with their mosquitoes, uh, mosquito shields website, and they can drill down to Delaware and find you.

Brad Sutliffe: Yeah, absolutely. So they can go to mosquito shield.com. Obviously they can put their zip code in and then that’ll link them to their nearest, uh, local franchisee.

Lee Kantor: Well, Brad, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Brad Sutliffe: Happy to help. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

 

Tagged With: Mosquito Shield

Michael Moorhouse With Mosquito Shield

September 13, 2023 by rgandley

Franchise Marketing Radio
Franchise Marketing Radio
Michael Moorhouse With Mosquito Shield
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Michael-Moorehouse-Mosquito-Shields-FranchiseMichael Moorhouse is President of Mosquito Shield, America’s trusted provider of effective residential mosquito and tick control service and one of the fastest-growing franchises in the United States.

With a proven track record in sales, marketing and business development, he was instrumental in transforming Mosquito Shield from an innovative local service provider to the leading mosquito and tick control franchise brand.

Michael’s expertise and extensive experience help him consistently build high-performance franchise teams through leadership, policies and procedures and accountability.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

Tagged With: Mosquito Shield

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