Podcasts about mosquito squad

Jason Henshaw is a seasoned professional in franchise development and operations, currently working as a Franchise Development Manager at Authority Brands for Mosquito Squad and Monster Tree Service.   Jason's career spans corporate training, leadership development, business consulting, project management, and earning accolades such as Franchisee Satisfaction Awards and Franchise 500 rankings.   His experience has ranged across various brands before landing at Authority Brands, he works with home service franchises like Mosquito Squad and Monster Tree Service.   Jason emphasizes the value of economies of scale within Authority Brands, helping franchises access the best pricing for services like insurance, equipment, and fleet management.   He emphasizes the importance of building long-term relationships with franchisees and providing them with the guidance they need for success. Linkedin: Jason Henshaw Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.  I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

Scaling franchise businesses is a challenge that many entrepreneurs face. Growth requires strong leadership, strategic planning, and the right systems to support expansion. But rapid growth can also create problems, especially if the culture that made the brand successful starts to break down. Without a strong foundation of leadership and support, franchisees may struggle, employee engagement can decline, and customer experience can suffer. The key to long-term success isn't just expansion—it's maintaining the values, systems, and operational excellence that drive sustainable growth. Scott Zide, CEO of Empower Brands, has spent his career building and scaling franchise businesses while ensuring that company culture remains a top priority. His journey began as a franchisee, owning multiple locations, before transitioning to the franchisor side. Now leading a multi-brand portfolio with over 1,200 franchise locations, Scott understands the challenges and opportunities that come with growth. His approach focuses on a people-first leadership style, ensuring that franchisees and employees are supported at every stage of the business. One of the biggest obstacles in scaling franchise businesses is ensuring that franchisees receive the right level of support before, during, and after rapid growth. Many brands wait until they experience growing pains to invest in infrastructure, marketing, and operational support. Scott emphasizes the importance of putting those systems in place early to avoid playing catch-up later. Franchisees who feel supported are more engaged, more likely to follow proven systems, and better positioned to succeed in their local markets. Building a strong company culture is another critical factor in franchise success. A franchise network is only as strong as the people who run it, from leadership teams to franchisees to frontline employees. A well-defined culture that prioritizes career development, leadership training, and clear communication helps retain top talent and keeps teams aligned with the brand's mission. Franchisees who take a proactive role in building their own local culture while staying connected to the larger brand values create businesses that thrive long-term. Marketing plays a major role in scaling franchise businesses, but the digital landscape is constantly changing. Scott highlights how marketing strategies that worked 18 months ago may not be as effective today, requiring brands to continuously innovate. With most franchise owners not having a background in marketing, franchisors must provide clear guidance and support to help them generate leads, convert customers, and remain competitive. Investing in technology, data-driven marketing, and customer engagement strategies ensures that franchisees have the tools needed to grow their businesses effectively. Customer expectations are evolving, and speed has become one of the most critical factors in business success. Franchise brands must adapt to the demand for faster response times, quicker service, and seamless customer experiences. Those who integrate technology while maintaining a personal touch will have a competitive edge. Whether it's optimizing scheduling, improving communication, or making transactions easier, businesses that prioritize customer experience will see greater retention and stronger word-of-mouth referrals. The labor market is another challenge that franchise brands must navigate. Attracting and retaining employees has become more difficult, requiring franchisees to rethink their approach to hiring and company culture. Being a great place to work is no longer optional—it's essential. Businesses that provide career growth opportunities, training programs, and a positive work environment are more likely to attract top talent and reduce turnover. Franchisees must adapt their leadership styles to meet the expectations of today's workforce, creating an environment where employees feel valued and motivated to contribute to the company's success. Scaling franchise businesses is about more than just adding locations. It requires a combination of leadership, operational excellence, and a commitment to culture. The most successful franchises are those that put people first, embrace innovation, and stay ahead of industry trends. Brands that focus on building strong relationships with franchisees, investing in support systems, and fostering a positive work culture are positioned for long-term growth. Join Fordify LIVE! Every Wednesday at 11 AM Central on your favorite social platforms and catch The Business Growth Show Podcast every Thursday for a weekly dose of business growth wisdom. About Scott Zide Scott Zide is a franchise industry leader with a career spanning over two decades in building, growing, and scaling franchise brands. His journey began in 2000 as a franchise owner with Outdoor Lighting Perspectives in St. Louis, where he gained firsthand experience in franchise operations. His success as a franchisee led to a consulting role with the brand, eventually transitioning into leadership positions, including Vice President of Franchise Support and later Chief Operating Officer of Outdoor Living Brands. In 2004, Scott co-founded Mosquito Squad, a pioneering brand in the outdoor pest control industry, which was later acquired by Outdoor Living Brands in 2009. His expertise in franchise development, operations, and strategic growth played a key role in expanding the OLB family of franchises. By 2022, Scott took the helm as CEO of Empower Brands, where he now oversees a multi-brand portfolio with over 1,200 locations across ten franchise brands. A true advocate for the franchisee-first mindset, Scott ensures that franchise owners remain at the center of every decision. His leadership is defined by a commitment to people-first culture, operational excellence, and long-term growth strategies that empower franchisees to succeed. A graduate of the University of Kansas with a degree in Business Management, Scott continues to drive innovation and expansion in the franchising industry. Learn more about Scott Zide and Empower Brands. About Ford Saeks Ford Saeks is a Business Growth Accelerator with a track record of driving over $1 billion in sales for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. As the President and CEO of Prime Concepts Group, Inc., he specializes in helping businesses increase brand visibility, attract loyal customers, and ignite innovation. With more than 20 years of experience, Ford has founded over ten companies, authored five books, and earned three U.S. patents, establishing himself as a leading authority in business growth, marketing strategy, and innovation. His expertise extends to AI prompt engineering, where he has gained recognition for training AI to craft compelling content that enhances engagement and drives results. Ford's insights have been showcased at industry-leading events, including the Unleash AI for Business Summit, where he discussed how ChatGPT is transforming operations, marketing, sales, and customer experience. A sought-after keynote speaker, consultant, and business strategist, Ford continues to help entrepreneurs and business leaders accelerate success and scale with confidence. Learn more about Ford Saeks at ProfitRichResults.com and watch his TV show at Fordify.tv.

This week on the podcast we welcome, Kenny Kaufman, who began his landscape lighting career in 2004 as an installer and opened his first OLP location in 2007 at age 23. Since then, he's built a network of 10 OLP franchises, 3 Conserva Irrigation franchises, a Mosquito Squad franchise, and consulted at Redwoods Landscape Lighting, a game-changing lighting manufacturing business.

Jef Flournoy, Brand President of Mosquito Squad, and Jason Henshaw, Franchise Development Manager talk about the power and support that comes along with being in a franchise system and how they got into a mosquito business. They talk about the characteristics of the top 10 most successful franchisees of Mosquito Squad and what they did prior to joining the brand. Jef talks about the marketing and support that Mosquito Squad provides to their franchisees to ensure they are successful. Mosquito Squad offers entrepreneurs and business owners a chance to grow their portfolio or add a revenue stream to an existing business.Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to stay updated with our latest episodes. Hit the bell icon to get notifications every time we upload a new podcast!*This video is sponsored by SEOSambaCheck out the video podcast on my Youtube channel and don't forget to like and subscribe!Link to Free Assessment: https://www.zorakle.net/assessment/welcome/ionfranchisingLink to Website: eyeonfranchising.comLink to Youtube: https://youtu.be/dKCZSRm6gZc?si=D48EANvqhSpyqsE

Join Scott Zide, the CEO of Empower Brands on The Art of Franchise Marketing, as he shares his remarkable journey through the world of franchising. With a career spanning from franchise ownership to leading a multi-branded franchisor, Scott brings a wealth of experience and insight to the table. From co-founding Mosquito Squad to spearheading the growth strategy of Empower Brands, Scott's story is a testament to dedication and innovation in the franchising industry. Delve into the intricacies of integrating acquired brands, fostering collaboration among diverse teams, and mitigating the risk of burnout as the organization experiences rapid growth.

Meet David Macchia from Mosquito Squad! College drop-out who followed his intuition and believed in himself! Tune in to find out the skills and tricks David Macchia discovered while on his entrepreneur journey. From minimum wage to making a million dollar business! FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY/APPLE PODCASTS: The Hustle Chronicles FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: @THEHUSTLECHRONICLESPODCAST

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing  Mary Anna Lewis joins us on this episode of The Franchise Woman Podcast. Mary Anna is a Mosquito Squad franchisee and a Business Advisor with the parent company as well as a Clothes Bin franchisee. Our conversation was about how she juggles all 3 roles and grows her businesses. This interview is power packed but I want to share at least 3 takeaways:  Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing. By applying the K.I.S.S principle and the 80/20 rule is required for business owners to stay focused and scale our businesses. We were created for more than we can ever imagine. Faith and a knowingness of our purpose will inspire and energize us to do what is necessary to express our divine purpose. Leave People with a Lift. We were created to be in fellowship and lifting others up lifts all of us. We all need encouragement and others to believe in us.  Listen to the whole interview here.

We have a great show. We are meeting with Chad Harrison, Franchise Development Representative at Authority Brands, and Michael Hutchins, Franchise Development Manager. Authority Brands is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and is the parent company of several leading home service companies. Over the years, Franchise Interviews has interviewed many of the franchises for Authority Brands. The brands include the following: America's Swimming Pool Company, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, The Cleaning Authority, Color World Painting, DoodyCalls, DRYmedic, Homewatch CareGivers, The Junkluggers, Mister Sparky, Mosquito Squad, Monster Tree Service, One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning, Screenmobile, and STOP Restoration. Combined, these brands have over 1,900 locations throughout the United States and the world.  We will also play a clip from our popular Great Quotes in Franchising podcast in Part Two. 

On this episode, Lee Hatcher shares his experience saying yes to Niger. Lee, a resident of Richmond, has two sons, and has recently gotten married. After an 18-year career in finance, he now owns three Mosquito Squad franchises in Richmond and Fredericksburg. During the conversation, Lee shares how he ended up going to Niger and how the experience has impacted his life. “It's amazing what He's done in my heart and where He leads me now that I have learned to follow Him to one of the most difficult places in the world… I know it will change your life in a way that you will never believe before you go.” Topics discussed in this episode include: Lee's personal journey to Niger and how the experience has impacted his life The impact of the people of Niger and the trip on Lee's overall perspective Defining moments from the trip The role of faith and God in the decision to go to Niger and how it has affected Lee's spiritual growth The culture and daily life in Niger Reflections on the importance of service and volunteer work and how it can positively impact both the people being served and the volunteers themselves Advice or encouragement for others considering getting involved in similar service work. Lee's future plans and desire to continue serving in Niger or other areas in need Learn more about LINK Missions and see upcoming mission opportunities

Hello Interactors,This week’s post is coming to you from Avon, Connecticut as we’re about to head north to Maine. We’ve experienced some unseasonably humid days (and nights), a waiter serving bug spray in Cape Cod, and a hot and sticky college campus visit in Rhode Island. I can hear the locals now, “Welcome to New England.”As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…WHATA WET SUMMAI’ve become a weather wimp. Or, maybe I always have been. Summers in my native Iowa were hot and humid. I remember nights when the temperature would actually increase as I lay in bed, spread eagle, staring at the ceiling waiting for just a single puff of air to waft through my window. I’m not sure I was ever dry during those Iowa summer months.Humidity makes me sweat more than most. I’m sweating just thinking about it. Perspiring makes me perspire. So you can imagine what I was thinking this week as I, with my family, were descending a long hill downtown Providence, Rhode Island, with air so thick and a sun so hot that it felt like I was walking on a treadmill in a steam bath with a heat lamp over my head. As we approached the banks of the Providence River, we read a sign on one of the buildings that that visitors of the Rhode Island School of Design should check-in at the admissions building. You guessed it, it was at the top of the hill we had just descended. Just two steps up the hill and I had sweat gushing from my head. Part way we encounter a fountain. I soaked the cooling towel I tucked in my backpack and draped if over my skull and was rewarded with a cool tingling sensation down my neck. The bliss was short lived as we trudged up the final steps of the admissions building featuring a sweeping view of Providence and a sign on the door that read, “Closed”.The Northeastern region of the United States is known for its humidity, but July has been unseasonably wet. This is good news for the one thing that everyone agrees is more dreaded during summer than humidity. Mosquitoes. Cape Cod has been hit hard, especially the small town of Wellfleet. The fleet of white vans marked with the name “Mosquito Squad” parked in a lot on the way in to town should be the first clue this area is prone to these ‘Swamp Angels’. The word mosquito is Spanish for ‘little gnat’. I prefer ‘mini-beast’. Bart Morris of the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project said, while spraying larvicide amidst clouds of mosquitoes, “This is about as bad as I've seen it…biblical in size.” Gabrielle Sakolsky has been with this organization since 1993 and she’s never seen a population boom like this. Dry air usually controls mosquito populations, but not this summer. It’s been a wild July in the Northeast. And it’s not over.Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center reports all but two days of the first half of July included a flashflood somewhere in the region. July kicked off with a tornado in Delaware and a week later New York subways were flooded. Then came two days of Tropical Storm Elsa with severe thunderstorms and torrents of rain. Connecticut, where we are now, and Maine, where we’re headed next, were hit with five inches of rain and flash flooding. The coasts were slammed with 67 mile per hour winds while New Jersey whipped up another two tornados as winds howled over 100 miles per hour. Then, on July 12th, 10 inches of rain dowsed southeastern Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey causing major flash flooding.  That’s a lot of extreme weather in less than two weeks. And a lot of moisture.In the first 15 days of July, portions of the Northeast have seen rainfall that is 300% above normal. The Cornell climate center tracks 35 weather sites that stretch from West Virginia to the south to northern tip of Maine in Caribou, which actually was only at 57% of their normal rainfall. Boston was another story. They were 574% above normal. You can see why the mosquitoes were doing a happy dance in Cape Cod. “Eight major climate sites experienced their wettest first half of July on record and another 17 of the sites ranked this July 1-15 period among their 20 wettest on record. In fact, for 12 of the major climate sites, it is already one of the 20 wettest Julys on record.”  ABNORMAL MEMORIES OF NORMALIt’s hard to know what normal is anymore. But the climate change explainers at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remind us their analysis includes previous normal weather patterns. They adjust for the effects of climate change periodically and the last time they adjusted was 2011. That’s when the baseline for normal had shifted from the period starting in 1971 and ended in 2000. They created a handy map that demonstrates what plants and animals already knew – the planting zones across the United States had shifted north in latitude and up in elevation as normal temperatures warmed over that 30 year period.The point of analyzing and reporting on weather normals is to reflect what is normal today, and not how the values have changed over time. So NOAA updates their models every decade or so to reflect the “new normal”. It turns out reporting and understanding temperature normals is easier than precipitation normals.NOAA has collected 10 sets of these U.S Climate Normals dating back to 1901. The map below shows how the United States has warmed over the course of these ten segments of time. The blue zones are areas where the temperature was cooler than the 20th century average and the red zones are those areas warmer than average.Looking at these maps tells the story anybody born between 1901-1940 will tell you – generally speaking, it used to be cooler. Though, unfortunately, they can’t really. It’s called generational amnesia and it inflicts all of us. As climate and energy writer David Roberts writes, reflecting the research from two researchers at Columbia: “”extremely hot summers” are 200 times more likely than 50 years ago. Did you know that? Can you feel it?” It’s also part of what is called shifting baseline syndrome. We can’t relate to the baselines of the past. That’s true for temperatures, plant and animal populations, and the more fickle baselines of precipitation. NOAA’s same 10 time segments for U.S. Climate Normals for precipitation don’t show the same gradual nation-wide pattern temperatures do. Even before climate change, precipitation patterns varied greatly across different regions of the U.S. Unlike temperature normals, where we can say its generally getting warmer, we can’t say it’s generally getting wetter or dryer over time. We’re stuck with the more unsatisfactory answer, “It depends.”Take the Southwest as an example. It’s easy to think it’s just been getting gradually drier, but it’s a mixed bag. For the first two sets, 1901-1930 and 1911-1940 it was wetter than the 20th Century average. And then the next four segments were dryer until the 1961-90 segment which shows a mix of wetter and dryer across a mix of zones. The two most recent periods, including 1981-2010, have been wetter than average. This regional precipitation variation is evident even in the Northeast precipitation numbers Cornell provided for the first half of July. Caribou, Maine was drier than usual while Boston blew the normal out of the proverbial water. Given how dry and hot the Southwest has been, recency bias – the tendency to favor recent events over historic ones – will probably will keep people from believing that is true; before, that is, generational amnesia and baseline syndrome take over. But some weather events leave a lasting impression. As it did for my father-in-law, John Pappalardo, who grew up in Winsted, Connecticut. In August of 1955, John’s sophomore year at the University of Connecticut on his way to becoming a dentist, the Mad River running through Winsted flooded. “There’s a reason we called it the Mad River”, John told me, as he recalled the images of the flood: “Our two story house was flooded with water as high as the thermostat on the wall. We stayed up all night on the second floor as water ran down our street. It took a full day before someone came by in a boat, rowed in our front door, and rescued us from the staircase. But we were lucky, my friend’s house was split in half. You could see the dishes sitting in the cupboard from the street, just as they had left it.”Two hurricanes in as many weeks had ripped through Southern New England. First came Hurricane Connie between August 11th to the 14th which dumped four to six inches in two days saturating the land with water. Then, three days later, on August 17th, came Hurricane Diane dumping nearly 20 inches of rain in two days. Both exceeded New England records. With the land already saturated with water from the first hurricane, the banks of the Mad River couldn’t contain the onslaught of water from the second. Thus began a cascade of flooding through Winsted, down the Mad River, and into the Farmington River – Connecticut’s largest tributary feeding into the Northeast’s largest river, the Connecticut River.EVAPORATION NATIONStretching 410 miles long, the Connecticut River Basin stretches through four New England states; it forms the border of Vermont and New Hampshire and divides Massachusetts and Connecticut. The river provides 70% of the water to New England; 41% of which comes from Vermont, 30% from New Hampshire and Connecticut, and the remainder from another six New England states. It collects water as far north as the Canadian border and spills it into the Atlantic Ocean to the south at Long Island, New York. Like much of the Northeast, a lush tree canopy covers 80% of the basin. It’s health is vital to the Northeast Region making it a target of study for the effects of climate change on the region.Laying awake at night here in Avon, Connecticut, tucked under a canopy of trees, saturated soil, and a mosquito dive-bombing my ears, the still presence of humidity surrounds my body and engulfs my mind. I contemplate animals like me sweating – perspiration; plants sweating – transpiration; and the soil sweating – evaporation. Just then, the rush of rustling leaves permeates the stagnant calm as buckets of rain come pouring down. Precipitation – the source of perspiration, transpiration, and evaporation. The trees, like me, struggle to transpire amidst the invisible gaseous vapors of humidity – the most abundant greenhouse gas there is. Humidity is the measure of the amount of water vapor in the air and is a primary player in the water cycle – and in cooling the planet. Just as sweat pulls heat from our body to be transported to the air, humid water vapors suck water and heat from animals, plants, soil, lakes, streams, and puddles and ferries it around the globe. Humidity is also invisible to the sun as radiation dances through the vapors and is absorbed by the earth. The soil in Avon is pregnant with fifteen days of record July rainfall and the sun’s stored energy radiates back into the atmosphere long after the sun has set; steaming me on the mattress like a plump white sticky bun. This nighttime reheating process explains why those hot Iowa nights would grow warmer as the night progressed. As the rich Iowa soil emanated stored heat, I wasn’t the only one sweating. So was the abundant Iowa corn. One acre of corn will transpire 3,000-4,000 gallons (11,400-15,100 liters) of water a day making significant contributions to the state’s humidity. Back here in Avon, the oak trees above me will contribute 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) of water a year to the atmosphere. And I thought I sweat a lot. Scientists will sometimes combine the measures, and the letters, of evaporation and transpiration to form the term: evapotranspiration. Global climate models tell us evapotranspiration increases 2% for every degree of warming. Given global precipitation amounts must be balanced by evapotranspiration under a warming planet, it follows that the world should be seeing less frequent and shorter durations of precipitation. That is, we should also be seeing more and longer periods of dry days so that the atmosphere can be replenished with water vapors from evapotranspiration. But this is why it’s important to not just study the whole with aggregated data, but the highly variable parts as well with contextual data. Measures of specific regions can deviate significantly from a global mean. A 2014 study, quotes researchers from 2008 who “noted that over the period of 1895–1999, annual precipitation averaged over New England increased by 3.7% while the change of annual precipitation for individual states in New England varied between −12% and 29.5%.” This same study compared various sections of the Connecticut River Basin for each season. They analyzed the evapotranspiration, surface runoff, baseflow (stream flow between precipitation events), and soil moisture and found data to “support the theory that extreme precipitation events are becoming more common in a warming world.” Their “results show a clear increase in precipitation intensity for the Connecticut River Basin in the latter half of the 20th Century and early 21st Century.” While being careful to note it’s not always the case, they also find it “interesting to note” that “as precipitation intensity increases, frequency of precipitation is likely to decrease.”Another thing that kept me awake on that humid night in Connecticut was smoke. A good example of the nuanced and variable climate conditions regions can bring. Smoke from fires in drier areas of the Midwest United States, and parts of Canada and Pennsylvania drifted over the Northeast in a toxic smog that created an atmospheric red filter to the moon. A grim reminder of what may greet us in our return west to Seattle next week, through August, and well into October. Meanwhile, sorry Northeast, NOAA predicts “above normal precipitation is likely for the central and eastern Gulf Coast region and from the Appalachians to the Atlantic Coast” for August through October. Sounds like those mosquitoes will continue to do their happy dance.But before we head home, we stop in Maine to visit my sister and a couple more schools. Then back to water logged Boston to board a giant jet-fueled mosquito headed back against the prevailing easterly winds to the dry west coast. I’ll be ready to dry out in the mosquito-free air of Kirkland, Washington. Minus the smoke, of course. I also need to water the soil around the baby native ferns, firs, and vine maples I’m nursing to health in my nearby Kirkland park. Water that will start a cycle of evapotranspiration that, when combined with my perspiration, will form water vapors headed for the sky joining clouds drifting in from the Pacific Ocean headed east for more record setting precipitation in New England. Perhaps next year, they’ll be joined by my kids too. Subscribe at interplace.io

Sharee Ashford - Army Reserve Veteran, Mosquito Squad Franchisee in East Atlanta Sharee Ashford was born with an entrepreneurial spirit. Even in her youth, she was always looking for ways to earn extra money, from selling on E-bay to being the candy girl at school. So it's not surprising that after serving in the Army Reserves she is now an owner of a Mosquito Squad franchise in East Atlanta. Her time in the Army helped build resilience and leadership skills that have been essential to her success in launching her Mosquito Squad business. Sharee enjoys building relationships with her customers in East Atlanta and looks forward to continuing to grow her client base. Mosquito Squad Started in 2005, Mosquito Squad is the leading franchise in the mosquito control industry. All are locally owned and operated. Their mission to “provide the locals of the immediate and surrounding areas with the mosquito and tick control services needed”. From regular treatments to be able to enjoy your backyard or just for a big event they have you covered. Learn More Website:  www.mosquitosquad.com/eastatlanta Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MoSquadofEastATL The VeteranCrowd Network Our "forever promise" is to build the veteran and military spouse community, a place to connect and engage. VeteranCrowd is simply a national network of veterans, veteran led businesses and the resources they need to prosper. Subscribe to stay in touch, or consider if Individual or Corporate Membership in the Network is a fit for you. About Your Host Bob Louthan is a VMI Graduate, Army veteran, and executive with over 25 years of experience in mergers, acquisitions and private capital formation. He founded the VeteranCrowd Network to bring veterans and veteran-led businesses together with each other and the resources they need to prosper.                        

Dean Ives, Franchise Owner - Mosquito Squad of Hampton Roads, discusses franchise ownership, lessons learned, building & knowing your value, and services provided in Hampton Roads.

There's mosquito treatments and then there's Mosquito Squad. We talked with Entomologist (aka insect expert) Joshua Jones about the differences in treatments as well as practical tips to reclaim your backyard - because spraying isn't always enough.

Eating out in restaurants during Covid 19, Pip’s ancestry, and Chuck Woolery the Covid 19 expert

Mosquito Squad is spotlighted and Lisa Bohannan talks about their contact free business that allows people to receive an estimate and service for outdoor pest control with little or no in-person interaction.

What is buyer intent data and how are marketers using content-level buyer intent data to get incredible inbound marketing results? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Intentdata.io Chief Revenue Officer Ed Marsh breaks down the topic of buyer intent data, and specifically talks about how contact-level buyer intent data works, and how marketers can use it to get better marketing and sales results. Highlights from my conversation with Ed include: Ed defines intent data as "the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service." While it is a relatively new term, we all have intent data available to us. There are three kinds of intent data. First party data is what we have through the analytics software we use (ex. HubSpot). Second party comes from companies that sell data they gather through their own platforms. Third party data is collected from throughout the internet. Most intent data providers give you company-level data. Intentdata.io provides contact-level data which specifies exactly which individuals are taking high intent actions and what their contact information is. Company-level data can be used by sales teams to determine which accounts to target, whereas contact-level data can be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns. With Google banning third party cookies, many intent data providers (particularly those who offer second-party data, will no longer be able to offer their data. One way to use intent data is in paid ad campaigns, and specifically for the creation of custom audiences. Another way is to trigger targeted email marketing drip campaigns or sales outreach sequences. Regardless of how you're using the data, the key is to have a way to unify all of that information and clean it up so it can be used correctly in your campaigns. That is where having some sort of customer data platform (CDP) can be useful. Ed says that the best way to get started with intent data is to focus on existing customers (for upsells and cross sells) and then on opportunities already in the pipeline, to see if you can close them faster.  Resources from this episode: Visit the intentdata.io website Email Ed at ed@intentdata.io Listen to the podcast to learn more about contact-level buyer intent data and how you can begin to use it now to get better marketing and sales results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Ed Marsh who is the chief revenue officer of intentdata.io. Welcome, Ed. Ed Marsh (Guest): Thank you very much, Kathleen. Great to be back with you. Kathleen: You’re one of the very, very few people who has been on this podcast twice. Ed: Well, it's a pleasure and an honor. Kathleen: It's less than five. I don't know the exact number, but it's definitely less than five. It's a small and exclusive club. Ed: As successful as your podcast has been, you're north of 100 episodes now, right? Kathleen: Oh yeah, it's like ... I think I'm around 130+ episodes. Ed: That's really neat. Kathleen: I have surprised myself. Yeah, it's great. I feel like now I'm one of those people who's competitive enough with my own self that now I can't stop. Ed: Both ... Kathleen: It's great. No, I'm excited to have to back, and you are back here really representing a completely different company, intentdata.io, which I don't think existed. Either that or it was like the kernel of a company when we first spoke, the first time I interviewed you. Ed: Right. About Ed Marsh and Intentdata.io Kathleen: Let's start with kind of a re-introduction to my audience. For those who either didn't hear you the first time around or heard you the first time around but aren't familiar with what you're working on now, could you talk a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what intentdata.io is? Ed: Sure, absolutely. We know each other, obviously, from the HubSpot community, the Inbound community, and have been kind of colleagues as agencies in that world for a number of years. In the context that we originally spoke, I was really working in that agency role but not as an agency consulting for middle market industrial manufacturers. But of course in the context of all of this inbound marketing work, inbound has evolved. It's not a binary world where outbound is evil like they used to say. No, the marketing takes all of these pieces. It takes inbound, it takes outbound, it takes paid, it takes great sales enablement, it takes all this stuff rolled together. And one of the pieces that I began to roll into it several years ago was intent data, and it was very immature at the time. It's evolved quite a bit, but it's really through the realization that marketing needs to be approached holistically for most businesses in this hyper-competitive, hyper-content saturated world that we're in, every company needs every tool, and they need to use it really effectively and intelligently both strategically and tactically. So against that background, I began working with a classmate of mine, actually from our mutual alma mater from Johns Hopkins that had worked on substantially developing and improving an algorithm for a very different approach to intent data than much of what was out there. Through that work I then began selling it and experimenting with it, and it's been substantially refined over the last several years. That algorithm is at the core of the intentdata.io business, and we've also incorporated some other elements like platform CDP in order to help companies fully exploit their full data stack and other stuff. That's kind of how I got to where I am today and why we're talking in this role. What is buyer intent data? Kathleen: That's so cool. I suspect that while most listeners of the podcast are pretty advanced, intent data's still a pretty new topic. I don't want to assume anything, and therefore can you just start by two to three sentences, I know this is going to be tough, can you explain what intent data is? Not necessarily what you guys do but what intent data is. Ed: Sure. So what's really interesting about intent data is that most companies already have it and they don't realize it. Because there's this new term that we've put on it. Intent data is the collection of signals that indicate that somebody may be in market ready to buy your product or service. So that could be visiting with you at an event or a trade show. It could be agreeing to have a meeting with you. In the common lexicon or parlance, it often is online activities like engaging with content, engaging with a competitor, social follows, and stuff like that. How intentdata.io is different Kathleen: Great. And there are a whole host of companies that have sprung up really in the last, I would say, two years that are calling themselves intent data companies. You mentioned that your algorithm and your approach is a little bit different. Can you explain what you mean by that? Ed: Sure. There's a broad spectrum of companies that say intent data, some of which are really static databases. Some are visitor identification. So if an unknown visitor comes to your site, you can use reverse IP lookup to figure out what the company is. Some are selling account level data that's sourced through different means including DSP or bid stream data from programmatic advertising. Some through publishing co-ops. There's first party data which is what companies have themselves that you collect through HubSpot. Second party data is like TechTarget sell which is based on their own publishing platform. And third party data, which is collected, supposedly or theoretically, everywhere else on the internet, although it's often from a small collection of sites. Kathleen: Now, I have a lot of questions. So in your case, what makes intentdata.io special, different, unique? Ed: So intentdata.io intent data is contact level intent data which is quite unique. There's a lot of companies out there that sell account level data. In other words, we can't tell you who the person is. We just can tell you there's been a bunch of people from IBM that are taking such-and-such a kind of action. There are companies that take account level data and then append to it their best guess of who the contacts might be based on who you tell them you'd love to talk to. You know, if you want to sell to CMOs and they see somebody that meets your ideal customer profile from a firmographic perspective taking action, then guess what? They're going to append the CMO's name, and you're going to get all excited, and you're going to think, "This is exactly what I want." What we do is we actually tell you who the person was that was taking action, and we give you their contact details, and we give you contextual information around the action they took. So not just engagement with some kind of an opaque topic, the taxonomy of which is completely mysterious, but rather we say, "They took action with an article online that had, at its core, this key term that we know is important to you." And because of that, then you can gauge where people are in the buying journey, the problem they're trying to solve, the outcome they're trying to achieve that competitors are talking to. You pair that with the information embedded in the job title like seniority and function with the firmographic details, and suddenly you have this really rich understanding of what's going on for the individual. And then of course when there's multiple people from the same company for the account and for that 10.2 person buying team that challenger talks about. Kathleen: Yeah, you're hitting on something that I think is really interesting. Because I started really looking at intent data probably a year and a half ago, and that's the kind of cool thing about the podcast is I get to talk to a lot of different people, I learn about a lot of different vendors, and specifically marketing technology vendors. Now I'm in a role as VP of marketing at Attila Security where I'm looking at, "What should my tech stack be?" And I've done this in a couple of different places now, looked at, reviewed intent data vendors. And I would say my perception, coming at this as an outsider, is that the big names that you hear most often are the ones that supply the account level data, as you described. I'm not going to name names, but that's basically what it is. Company x, lots of activity, they're looking at things. But you don't really know who in company x it is, and they market it as an account based marketing tool. So you're already doing account based marketing, you're already targeting companies. We are going to tell you which companies are showing the most interest. Which I can see the value of, but I'm actually really interested in this contact level stuff. Because yes, I think ABM has a lot of value, and it's something that I'm going to be working on, but I just can't help but think nothing beats knowing who the exact person is. You know, because at the end of the day that's the person who's either going to champion you or make the decision to buy. So, it's interesting to me that more companies haven't gone contact level data, and I'm curious if you can comment onto why that is. Why most intent data providers don't offer content-level buyer intent data Ed: Yeah, so there's a bunch of different reasons. Some of the big name companies started out unable to deliver contact level data and explained that as a technical impossibility or an illegality. And so there's some perception in the market that that's the case, neither of which are correct. A lot of the large name data is now sold just as an embed in other software, like with ABM software and/or with a contact database. And so it's just really easy for somebody to pay an extra 30 or 40 or 60 grand a year and get the data that just kind of flows. Of course- Kathleen: It's a lot of money, too, like, some of those add ons that you're talking about. Ed: Right. I think the other issue with intent data, of course if we have contact level intent data, it's easy to look, just on a pivot table for instance, at how many contacts from the same company are taking action. So you still get the account level insight, but it's a twofer. Not only are you getting that, but you're also getting the contact level insight. I think that one of the places that some companies have struggled with it is to just say, "Okay, I want to take this list of contacts, and I want to start blasting emails at them using, you know, SalesLoft or Outreach sequences”. And that's not all that effective. The companies that are really effective with it are the ones that take a more thoughtful approach whether it's in marketing, in sales, or both. So when you look at account level data, the reason that often succeeds with a sales team is because the sales team says, "Wow, there's something happening. I got to figure it out," and they start working contacts until they figure out where it is. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether they created the project through their diligence or uncovered it, nevertheless it's associated with intent data. On the other hand, marketing departments can take that contact level intent data, create custom audiences with it, for instance, and then do really remarkably focused and tailored paid ads to very specific audiences, again drawing on all of the contextual detail of stage and buying, journey, problem to be solved, etc. with a really tight sort of a messaging matrix. So to answer your question, from a marketing perspective, contact level data can mean more work. It's not as easy as just having Triblio tell you, "Okay, focus on these accounts." I mean, it takes additional work, particularly if you're going to use it for other use cases like event marketing in addition to demand gen. Market research is a great application for it. So you know, I think part of its awareness. Part of it is the initial perception that there was some impediment to using it, and part of it is the fact that there's more work to make it effective. How will Google's ban of third party cookies impact intent data? Kathleen: Now, I'm going to ask what might be a dumb question, but I've been reading in the news lately about how Google is going to ban and/or phase out the ability for people to use third party cookies. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that means. But it seems to me, this is where it might be a dumb question, that it's going to affect some of these intent data providers, particularly the ones that are looking at leveraging data coming in through ad platforms. Is that correct? Ed: Yeah, I think it's not a dumb question at all, and it's very perceptive of you. That's precisely correct. If you look at one of the very common methods of collection of intent data, it's based on programmatic advertising platforms. It's bid stream data, it's collected through a DSP, and what's interest is that- Kathleen: What's a DSP? Ed: Honestly, I don't even know what the acronym stands for. I'm going to embarrass myself. Kathleen: No, I mean I have no idea either. I was like, "Oh my god, am I just the only one who doesn't know?" Ed: What's interesting is that many of these providers have actually, going to set up a DSP without the intention of brokering and placing ads. But so they have the insight into what's happening into the market. Kathleen: Interesting. Ed: Who has space available, what kinds of topics, and who wants to put ads onto those pages. So it gives them some insight they've been able to build their intent data collection on, but that's predicated, to a large extent, on third party cookies, which of course Apple and Firefox did away with a while ago, but Google has announced a couple weeks ago they'll do on Chrome as well. Kathleen: Ah oh, by the way, I'm going to confess I did just Google DSP. It's a demand side platform. Ed: There you go. Kathleen: "Buyers of digital advertising use to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts." I had to look that one up, so you learn something new every day. Ed: Perfect. There are some alternative methods that companies in that space use. They try to call it fingerprinting and some other things, but they're just not effective. And so you're absolutely right. Although the sunset deadline I think is two years off, there are, in this crazy intent industry, there are companies demanding three year contracts right now including some that are selling DSPs. So how'd you like to be a company that signed a three year contact for that about a month ago? Kathleen: Yeah, and your provider's going to basically become obsolete, or they're going to have to figure out a different way to do it. So okay. Well, thank you for clarifying that. I didn't want to take us on too much of a tangent, but it's been on my mind. Understanding third party cookies is ... it's complicated. Ed: It is, for sure. Kathleen: So I probably need to do a whole separate episode just on that so that people can understand it, including myself. But in the meantime, so we're talking about contact level intent data, which in your case is not going to be affected if I understand correctly by Google's ban of third party cookies. Ed: That's correct. How are marketers using content-level buyer intent data? Kathleen: So now I'd like to shift gears and really talk about, "What does this look like in action?" Like, how are marketers using this information to improve their inbound marketing results? Do you have some examples you can talk us through? Ed: Sure, absolutely. I think that there's really three phases. One is building a full data stack. The second is doing proper analysis and segmentation, and then the third is doing orchestration. And if you look at kind of the maturity of the market right now, there's very few that are at the orchestration stage. There's not all that many that are doing the analysis and segmentation correctly, just because the limits of the existing martech stack that they have. But let's kind of, if you're up for it, let's work through those three kind of quickly. Kathleen: Let's do it. Ed: Chunk each one out. All right, so first you've got to have ... I shouldn't say it that way. It is beneficial, and as the process matures more companies will have a full data stack. So that means first party data, not just what you're observing of known users on your site, you know people that convert forms and come back and look at the pages, but anonymous first party data, who from companies is visiting your site that you don't know who they are, and then first party data from elsewhere in the organization. For instance, information on in-app usage and transactional information. There's all kinds of first party data that companies just partition. They think, "Well, that's customer service," or, "That's operations," or whatever but really is important to understand that entire customer life cycle. I think it's also important for companies to think of intent data across the customer life cycle, not just as a prospecting and demand gen sort of tool. Because it's got use cases across. But also in that full data stack, you might want some second party data from a couple publishers that are particularly strong in your industry that own those relationships. They have opted in readers and subscribers that have some really important insights into what's happening on their platform in that space and that subject domain that's important to you. And then third party data. And typically a couple sources of third party data. A great example in the martech space is G2 Crowd which doesn't give you a lot of signal but certainly gives you some important signal. You mesh that with something like our intentdata.io data, and now you've got a really interesting perspective. Those then, you've got to roll them up, properly unify them, cleanse them, and then you start to enrich it. And you enrich perhaps the technographic information or firmographic information. Or you understand about parent companies, and child companies, and how all of that's fitting together, you do some validation: validate email addresses, validate physical addresses because there's more marketing being done B to B with direct mail again, now. So all of this stuff has to kind of be rolled up into a very accurate, single customer view. That's one of the places that current marketing technology tends to fall a little bit short. Although there's great synchronization in many cases, there's not a lot of great unification of the data, and so that becomes a barrier sometimes for companies. They've got a great stack with Salesforce and Marketo and Drift and all these important pieces that fit together, but they're just not quite able to get it all rolled up into one very accurate, properly enriched, properly unified view. So then that sometimes is a barrier to the second step which is the analysis and segmentation. So think about it, for instance, if you had ... You talk a lot about ABM so you probably know Kerry Cunningham from Sirius and now Forrester that talks about second lead disease. You know, Kerry makes the point that we all get really excited about the first lead from a new logo, and that's great. The second lead from that same logo comes in, and people say, "Oh, that's cool. That's interesting, but we already have one. We're already working it." His point is that second one is the one that ought to get people excited because now you know that there's something more going on. It's not just some person, a crackpot, doing research on their own, but there's some sort of organizational activity. Kathleen: Right. There's water cooler talk happening at that company. Ed: Exactly. So let's extend that. Let's say that you have one or two people that convert on your site, known people in your first party data. Let's say that one of them has a demo, you know gets the freemium version of it and uses a lot of it, and one of them gets the freemium version and doesn't use it much. Let's say that there's two or three people from the same company that hit your site a number of times but don't identify themselves. So you know there's additional activity in the company. Now, let's say in third party data you see some of those same people plus other members that you know would be part of that buying team, in other words the right roles and functions are in place so you know there's a project, and you see them engaging with competitors, engaging with industry news. You can see where each of them is in the buying journey. And so now you've got a really interesting understanding of what's happening across that whole company. You've kind of validated the fact there is a project. You understand the roles that you see engaged. You understand the roles that aren't engaged or that you don't see and what your sales people need to focus, etc. But if you think about it, if you try to do that in a lot of the marketing automation software, you can't do it. I mean, even stepping from the contact level to the account level in many cases is a little bit tricky. It's not really a relational database the way you need it to be with most of the marketing automation platforms in order to do that sort of thing. There's two pieces. One is the technology piece, and the other is kind of the intellectual rigor and curiosity that's necessary to go through and say, "Let's build scenarios that really would tell us it's likely, it's sure," however you want to chunk them — MQL, SQL, whatever the case may be, and that's that analysis and segmentation then that gets really, really interesting and where companies, I think, in general are not yet hitting that point. They're kind of taking the list and saying, "Let's see who's on our target account list, and let's follow up with them," as opposed to using that list as a way to inform the target account vessel. Then the third piece, once you've done that, if you've got it all properly segmented, including micro segmentation so that the messaging is appropriate for the function, the seniority, the stage in the buying journey, competitors they've talked to, pages they've been on your site, all of that kind of stuff. Then you want to orchestrate, and you want to pull in your entire martech stack. So you want to automatically launch sequences from Outreach if that's what you're doing. You want to automatically add people to the right custom audience for a social advertising. You want to automatically add people to the right segment and address so when they come, they have exactly the right customized chatbot experience when they come. And you want all this stuff to happen automatically and at scale. And then further, you also want the automation to push the dots close enough together for the sales team. You want to suggest to the BDR, "Here's what we've observed. Here's what we infer from that. Therefore here's the template we think you should use and the enablement content we think you should use." You want to let the sales person or the AE know if they're in the midst of an opportunity and you see engagement with a competitor, then you want to make sure that they're clear not only that it happened but give them some context of the role and whether that person is also part of their deal or a new person. Just help them understand how to react to it. Because there's so much information flowing at people, it's really important to give them that context so they can seize it and action it. So I've been rambling, but I think those are kind of the three key areas to fully put intent data to work. Who is having success using intent data? Kathleen: It's incredibly clear to me that this holds amazing potential for marketers from so many different standpoints, and you covered a lot of them. You know, in terms of ad targeting, in terms of key account selection, helping your sales team, your BDR, your SDR, etc. do their job better, but it also sounds really complicated. So is there anybody out there that you've seen in the wild who's really doing this well? Like, who's really using this information well and getting results with it? Ed: There are some companies that are doing it, and it's places where they've had one person that kind of really seized it, applied creative energy to it, saw the opportunity, and grew with it. I understand absolutely your point about it sounding complicated. On the other hand, if we were to talk about doing digital marketing really well, that's really complicated too. And so there's always layers. I mean, you can start easy and then gradually progress into it as the organizational maturity and resources satisfy that. Kathleen: Yeah. Have you seen any success stories like where somebody's really been able to point to intent data and say, "That was the thing that helped me double my results or land that key customer"? Ed: Yeah, so we're not at liberty to discuss any of our client data and success stories because of nondisclosures. There's a lady named Amanda Bone who spoke at the B2B Marketing Exchange in Boston actually in conjunction with TechTarget talking about what they've done with a very robust intent data program, and I think the story that she told really illustrates the way you have to move into it progressively, you have to be very clear that you've got these cascading goals that you want to achieve. You're not going to try to do everything immediately, but also she understood the importance of having some platform that would help to integrate the data from different sources so that it wasn't just, you know, I got to look here, and then look there, and then look there, and hope that I remember it but rather pulled it together into some sort of a single view that made it actionable both for marketing and for sales. Unifying your intent data for use in marketing campaigns Kathleen: And what kinds of platforms do that? Ed: A couple of the intent data companies have very limited platforms that they may integrate anonymous first party data. In other words put some sort of an IP address lookup tool on your site in conjunction with third party data and provide a roll up of that, but the right answer I believe, and the direction that we're headed with clients, is to use a full blown CDP, to have the full capability of unification and the full capability of orchestration. Getting started with contact-level buyer intent data Kathleen: And so if you were somebody listening and you're thinking, "This sounds really cool. I would love to dip my toe in the water," but they're maybe intimidated by the full blown picture of, "Here's what it takes to really knock it out of the park," how would you suggest a marketer get started with this? What are some smaller things they could do to maybe have some initial wins and demonstrate success to, of course, as every marketer needs to think about like get that organizational buy in. Ed: Sure, absolutely. One of the really cool things about intent data is if marketers use it well, they can foster the alignment that seems so elusive between departments. So I look for quick wins with your partners on the success team, and that means feeding them signal from current customers and providing some training so that they understand how to interpret that signal. But if you see a current customer that's taking action with competitors or researching stuff, it's also a good upsell cross sell opportunity. So turn reduction, upsell, cross sell. So you can win with a success team pretty easily that way. With the sales team, I would discourage you from trying to start pushing them a bunch of new leads. I would focus on pending opportunities and target accounts and push them that signal. Now, you're going to have to provide a little bit more coaching and training in that case. And so you might want to phase it in gradually because nothing would be worse than a clumsy salesperson calling up and saying, "I thought you said you were going to buy from us. Why are you talking to the competitor?" That's not the way to use the data. So you want to make sure you train to avoid that. In terms of the marketing function itself, two easy places to start. If you're running pay ads, then develop some parallel paid ad programs with custom audiences, very tailored messaging. That's a relatively easy lift if you already have a paid ads program in place. If you're not doing any paid ads then that's going to feel like a project. So that's a judgment call. The second is to monitor events. If you're in an industry where a competitor of yours sponsors an event, what a fabulous opportunity to understand who the people are engaging with that event and target them with outbound sales. If you have industry wide events then do the same sort of a thing, but it's not specifically for targeting customers. It's obviously to create a base of leads for paid ads, for salespeople outreach, and maybe even in some cases if you're going to have a salesperson at an event and you're not investing a ton of money in exhibiting there. Use that to help them schedule appointments before they go. So those are a couple easy marketing use cases as well as a couple easy ways to incorporate it with sales, and success, and build alignment and buy in. Kathleen: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned events because I've thought about that. Even if you are exhibiting, if you're going to spend the money to have a booth at an event, most events these days don't give out their attendee lists. Ed: Right. Kathleen: And so, you know, marketers are left kind of scrambling with, "Well, how are we going to drive people to the booth?" Because you can send out a big blast, but you don't know that the people getting it are actually planning on attending, but if you can use intent data to narrow down your marketings to people who are going to be going to the event, then you can use a combination of advertising. You could ... there's all kinds of things you can do to really get in front of them before that event. Ed: Absolutely. For sure. And that investment is huge. That's where a lot of companies' marketing investment is going, but there's applications for the intent data before the event, during, and after. And of course there's also applications for event organizers for companies th at are organizing their own event and then opening it up to kind of parallel players. That intent data gives you ability as an event organizer to monetize for your other exhibitors. Because you can then say, "Hey, look. You're in such a such a space. We will, as part of the event package if you buy this add on, we will provide informational people that we see engaging that we believe are going to be attending the event that are particularly interested in what you're doing." So there's additional value as an organizer to monetize when you're exhibiting. Is buyer intent data GDPR compliant? Kathleen: Now, I'm sure that there are some marketers who are listening, and one of the questions that they'll have is, "What implications does GDPR have for all of this?" Because we're talking about contact level data, both data that you might be harvesting as the marketer using intent data, but you also just mentioned like event organizers sharing that data with others. So can you just talk about that for a moment? Ed: Show me two attorneys that will give you the same answer about any GDPR topic. I mean, we can certainly talk about it. There is no definitive answer. Every company has to have its own philosophy. I can tell you that we have clients in the EU that run our data the way we normally provide it. We also have clients in the EU and in the US that request that we mask certain fields in the data. So they get the job title, for instance, from which they can discern a lot of information, but they don't get the name and email address, and they still get most of the value out of it. So those are things that each company has to decide. The bottom line, we believe based on our understanding, is the data is entirely GDPR compliant as it. And because of how we harvest, what we're doing is we're watching people take action publicly online. So it's very much akin if you saw somebody comment on a blog post, on an article on Forbes or on a conversation on LinkedIn and you're a salesperson in the EU, there's nothing that prohibits you from figuring out who that person is, and reaching out, and contacting them saying, "It looks to me like this is of interest to you." So I mean, that's the closest analogy to commonly accepted sales practice that describes the data and why it's acceptable. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You're right, it's a total gray area, but I appreciate you trying to clarify that. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So shifting gears, I have two questions I ask all of my guests. You've been down this road before, but we're going to do it again because some time has passed. So we'll see if your answers have changed. Who do you think, either company or individual, is really kind of setting the example for what it means to do great inbound marketing these days? Ed: And I can guarantee you my answer isn't changed because I don't remember what my answers were. So I would say to that, a company called Mosquito Squad. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. Kathleen: Oh, yeah. Ed: Where I live in New England, the mosquitoes are horrible in the summer, and I get tired of ... Basically, you can't go outside for part of the year. So I got really fed up in hunting around, and they popped up, kind of typical inbound playbook, but then they have so fully integrated a helpful, and informative, and consultative approach throughout the process that made it easy to understand why to use them or what was involved and we ought to select them. Then it made it really easy to understand once we did what the process was going to be. Then they're really good about letting you know, "Okay, we're going to be there in 20 minutes. Okay, we're done. Here's what we did. Here's the invoice." I mean, it's so well integrated that not only did it make it easy to find them and learn about the service, but it makes working with them really easy too. Kathleen: Yeah, you're right about those mosquitoes in New England because I grew up in New Hampshire, and my mother used to go out to do yard work, and she literally would wear a hat that had a net that came down and like tucked into her shirt. It'd be like 90 degrees, and she'd be in long sleeves and long pants, and the pants would be tucked into her socks. It was just crazy. Ed: Right. Kathleen: So second question, getting off the mosquito topic, things change so quickly. This is a great example of that. Intent data, DSPs, most marketers really have trouble keeping up with all of it. So how do you personally keep up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing? Ed: Well, what I do specifically is not focus on inbound and digital marketing. I try to watch business more broadly. With general business resources, about trends in the economy, I mean there's certainly some kind of advertising and marketing related blogs that I follow and newsletters that I get from Ad Age through some others. I use a lot of Google Alerts around very specific kinds of terms because that way I'm not limited in hearing from the sources that I know about, but I'm discovering new sources as information becomes, and different perspectives become, available. I think like most people, this is a pitch for yours, podcasts are a great way to just kind of parachute in, get some ideas, see where there's an interesting episode, listen to it. You can do it while you're doing other things. So those are a great tool. Then the other thing that I do is follow a couple people, not so much because I'm so excited about the ideas they talk about but because I really love watching the way they create content and practice their craft. So I learn from seeing how folks balance all the media, and produce a lot of content, and build social following, and I just appreciate the way they do it whether or not I agree with the message that they're espousing. Kathleen: Can you name some names? Ed: Well, having said that I may not agree with the message they're espousing I got to be careful, but I mean there's some prominent marketers in the Boston area that have very large followings, that have a loudly proclaimed opinion about a lot of different things, that I think sometimes it's a little bit superficial or vapid, but they do create a lot of great content across a lot of channels. Kathleen: All right. With that caveat, come on I'm going to keep plugging. Who you got? Who you got? Ed: I think Dave Gerhardt is really interesting to watch. Kathleen: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you agree or disagree with anything he says, it's you can't disagree with the fact that he has successfully built a tremendous audience. Ed: Right. Kathleen: There's no two ways about it. Ed: Right. Kathleen: He actually gets mentioned a lot as a response to that first question I asked you. Yeah. Cool. Well, that's all interesting, and any particular podcasts that you are really a fan of? Ed: More general business ones. I love Business Wars. I like listening to The Knowledge Project from Shane Parrish. I like listening to some of the same ones that other people talk about, Joe Rogan where you get interesting perspectives from people of in depth interviews, history things. You know, Bonsai and all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of great podcasts out there. Kathleen: Yeah. I always love hearing what other people are listening to because there are so many out there, and I wish I had 48 hours in every day to listen to podcasts. It's a great way to learn. Ed: Like the numbers, if you compare the number of blogs to the number of podcasts, I don't remember what the numbers are, but there's like 3% the number of podcasts. So people that say that podcasting is already over the hill, I don't think that's the case. Kathleen: No. Well, it better not be. Because I'm on episode 130+ and I plan to keep going, so. Ed: You've got many more to go. Perfect. How to connect with Ed Kathleen: But then again, maybe that makes me an OG. I have no idea. This has been fun, Ed. I appreciate it, and if somebody is listening and they want to reach out to you and ask a question about intent data, or they want to learn more about intentdata.io, what's the best way for them to do that? Ed: They can email me at ed@intentdata.io, or they can go to the website intentdata.io. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. All right, I'll put those links in the show notes. And if you are listening and you have not yet taken a moment and gone to Apple Podcasts and left the podcast a review, I'm going to ask you to do that today. It's how we get found by new people. We're 130+ episodes in as we talked about, and I would really appreciate it. So if you're a regular listener in particular, take a minute and leave a review, and if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I'm always looking for new inbound marketers to interview. Kathleen: That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Ed. This has been a lot of fun having you back for a second time. Ed: Well thank you very much, Kathleen. I enjoyed it as well.

We really enjoyed this conversation with Chris Grandpre, the Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, which is a multi franchise brand platform. Chris walked us through an update since he was last on the podcast in early 2018, which included: the process of divesting Mosquito Squad to Authority Brands and simultaneously executing a leveraged buyout for the control position in one of his other portfolio brands, along with consolidating ownership in Conservation Irrigation. If you are looking to learn about how to prepare your brand to work with private equity or an investment bank, you will want to listen to this episode! We also got into other topics like how OLB is leveraging technology to gain an edge and much more. SPONSORS: SCORPION INTERNET MARKETING www.Scorpion.co/mb Named the #1 franchise marketing company in America by Entrepreneur Magazine, Scorpion delivers all-in-one solutions for franchise brands looking to defeat disjointed marketing and increase revenue. As a marketing partner, Scorpion assists franchises in the management of branding, website design, online listings, paid advertising, and more, eliminating the need for multiple vendors. To learn more, visit www.Scorpion.co/mb FRANCHISE HELP: www.franchisehelp.com/ FranchiseHelp is the industry's largest source of online franchise leads, the #1 lead generator for many of franchising's biggest brands, and has been ranked 4 years running as one of the country's fastest-growing private companies by Inc Magazine. Millions of people visit FranchiseHelp.com to find and research franchise opportunities. We want to introduce the most motivated of these prospects to your concept. Let FranchiseHelp's lead generation experts customize a powerful FranDev marketing program that will keep your franchise's development pipeline filled with a steady stream of fresh leads. RALLO: www.rallio.com Rallio is a powerful combination of social media technology and local agency The easy-to-use technology enables franchisors and their franchisees to manage their entire social media presence, online reputation, and online directory listings in one dashboard for all locations. The mobile app provides a simple way for franchisees to engage The advocacy system turns net promoters into REAL promoters and incentives employees to share content that portrays your brand as a "best place to work" Voted as the #1 social media technology platform and #6 marketing partner overall in the entrepreneur magazine's franchise supplier listing, Rallio will help you RALLY your employees and customers around your brand. To learn more, visit Rallio.com Follow Us On Facebook and LinkedIn: @MODRNbusiness @Zjfishman (insta too) @RyanThomasHicks (insta too) Title Sponsor of the Summer Tour: Franchisors.com Audio Engineer: Ben Kliever

This Grandpre is all about slow and steady... No race here!  Chris Grandpre is the Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, the franchisors of multiple brands:  Archadeck, the world's leading designer and builder of custom decks, porches, sun rooms, patios and outdoor living spaces; Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, whose name is self explanatory, Renew Crew, a cleaning and protection company caring for a wide variety of exterior surfaces at residential and commercial properties; and Conserva-Irrigation, focused on the service and maintenance of sprinkler systems in a water-efficient manner. Outdoor Living Brands is also formerly the franchisor of Mosquito Squad, which they recently sold to Authority Brands, in December, 2018. Chris Grandpre sets the strategic direction for the company, across 250 existing franchisees, is the scout for future acquisitions, and proudly fosters a corporate culture of innovation and service, both internally and throughout the multiple franchise communities of their brands.    

Episode 98: Stories from the Woods - Original Children Stories The Wilson's are having an outdoor party on a nice warm summer evening when the Mosquito Squad arrive for a feast of their own. These mosquitos are known for their ability to avoid being slapped. Listen to see who they bite and if they can all survive the Wilson's party. Links: Website: https://stories-from-the-woods.mn.co/ Email: storiesfromthewoods@outlook.com Episode Music: A Dinner and a Rabbit by Mutestare is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stories-from-the-woods/support

 :arrow: :arrow: Marcia Mead with Outdoor Living Brands: Archadeck, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, Mosquito Squad, Renew Crew, and Conserva Irrigation on Franchise Business Radio Marcia Mead, VP of Franchise Recruiting Outdoor Living Brands Marcia Mead serves as Vice President of Franchise Recruiting of Outdoor Living Brands, a multi-brand franchise company dedicated to products and services within the outdoor living market, which currently includes leading brands Archadeck, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, Mosquito Squad, Renew Crew, and Conserva Irrigation since January 2018. As Vice President, Ms. Mead is responsible for the leadership of the franchise recruiting team that builds franchise growth across all five brands. While Ms. Mead may be new to Outdoor Living Brands, she is not new to franchising as she brings over 17 years of experience in franchising to this role. Ms. Mead served as a member of the executive team of PuroClean as Vice President of Franchise Development, where she led a team of 6 and PuroClean's franchise development efforts for three years. Prior to this role, Ms. Mead served First Service Corporation with Floor Coverings International as Director of Franchise Development from October 2011 to December 2014 and as Operations Manager from February 2009 to October 2011 and with CertaPro Painters as National Accounts Manager from October 2007 to October 2008 and as Franchise Recruiter from October 2004 to October 2007. Ms. Mead began her franchising career as a CertaPro Painters franchisee in Kansas City at the age of 25 rapidly growing her business to nearly $1 million in annual revenue. Ms. Mead has a bachelor's degree in business with an emphasis in marketing and management from Baker University in Baldwin City, KS. She resides in Atlanta, GA. List Any Topics You Would Like to Discuss: How did Outdoor Living Brands get started? Tell us more about Archadeck. Tell us more about Outdoor Lighting Perspectives. Tell us more about Mosquito Squad. Tell us more about Renew Crew. Tell us more about Conserva Irrigation. What should someone know in researching to become a franchise owner? If someone wants to learn about becoming a franchisee what should they do? Connect with Marcia Mead: linkedin.com/in/marcia-duld-mead-601abb1 Web Site / Social Media Links: http://www.archadeckfranchise.com http://www.outdoorlightingfranchise.com https://mosquitosquadfranchise.com http://www.renewcrewfranchise.com https://www.irrigationfranchise.com The Franchise Business Radio show is a platform to bring together franchise professionals and resources to connect, educate, and collaborate to serve the franchise community and the franchise consumer. Spotlighting Leaders in the Franchise Industry Experts in funding, legal, marketing and consulting. Franchise Business Radio hosted by: Pam Currie, Founder Franchise Intellect Ken Douglas, Co-Host Social Joey Made possible in part by: Franchise Intellect, visit: www.FranchiseIntellect.com Social Joey, visit: www.SocialJoey.com To nominate or submit a guest request visit: www.FranchiseBusinessRadio.com To view guest photos from this show, visit: www.ProBusinessPictures.com ‹ › × × Previous Next jQuery(function() { // Set blueimp gallery options jQuery.extend(blueimp.Gallery.prototype.options, { useBootstrapModal: false, hidePageScrollbars: false }); });

Marcia Mead with Outdoor Living Brands: Archadeck, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, Mosquito Squad, Renew Crew, and Conserva Irrigation on Franchise Business RadioMarcia Mead, VP of Franchise Recruiting Outdoor Living Brands Marcia Mead BIO:Marcia Mead serves as Vice President of Franchise Recruiting of Outdoor Living Brands, a multi-brand franchise company dedicated to products and services within the outdoor living market, which currently includes leading brands Archadeck, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives, Mosquito Squad, Renew Crew, and Conserva Irrigation since January 2018. As Vice President, Ms. Mead is responsible for the leadership of the franchise recruiting team that builds franchise growth across all five brands.While Ms. Mead may be new to Outdoor Living Brands, she is not new to franchising as she brings over 17 years of experience in franchising to this role. Ms. Mead served as a member of the executive team of PuroClean as Vice President of Franchise Development, where she led a team of 6 and PuroClean's franchise development efforts for three years.Prior to this role, Ms. Mead served First Service Corporation with Floor Coverings International as Director of Franchise Development from October 2011 to December 2014 and as Operations Manager from February 2009 to October 2011 and with CertaPro Painters as National Accounts Manager from October 2007 to October 2008 and as Franchise Recruiter from October 2004 to October 2007.Ms. Mead began her franchising career as a CertaPro Painters franchisee in Kansas City at the age of 25 rapidly growing her business to nearly $1 million in annual revenue.Ms. Mead has a bachelor's degree in business with an emphasis in marketing and management from Baker University in Baldwin City, KS. She resides in Atlanta, GA.List Any Topics You Would Like to Discuss: How did Outdoor Living Brands get started?Tell us more about Archadeck.Tell us more about Outdoor Lighting Perspectives.Tell us more about Mosquito Squad.Tell us more about Renew Crew.Tell us more about Conserva Irrigation.What should someone know in researching to become a franchise owner?If someone wants to learn about becoming a franchisee what should they do?Web Site / Social Media Links: http://www.archadeckfranchise.comhttp://www.outdoorlightingfranchise.comhttps://mosquitosquadfranchise.comhttp://www.renewcrewfranchise.comhttps://www.irrigationfranchise.comlinkedin.com/in/marcia-duld-mead-601abb1The Franchise Business Radio show is a platform to bring together franchise professionals and resources to connect, educate, and collaborate to serve the franchise community and the franchise consumer. Spotlighting Leaders in the Franchise IndustryExperts in funding, legal, marketing and consulting.Franchise Business Radio hosted by:Pam Currie, FounderFranchise IntellectKen Douglas, Co-HostSocial JoeyMade possible in part by:Franchise Intellect, visit: www.FranchiseIntellect.comSocial Joey, visit: www.SocialJoey.comTo nominate or submit a guest request visit:www.FranchiseBusinessRadio.comTo view guest photos from this show, visit:www.ProBusinessPictures.com

Chris Grandpre is the Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, which operates 5 great franchise brands under its umbrella: Archadeck, Conserva Irrigation, Mosquito Squad, Renew Crew, and Outdoor Lighting Perspectives. Some things I really enjoyed in this interview: -The story and lesson learned from his mentor -How to pick a brand that is "trend proof" -His approach to Modern Technology and "business as a game" -Biggest challenge he faced when transitioning in his career -The forklifts in the background :) -And his parting words of advice Thanks to: -Fish Consulting for arranging this meeting (Ashley and Andie!) -And as always: Ben Kliever "the Great" - Audio Engineer

Show Notes: This is the first interview we have done on the podcast, and we had an absolute blast talking with our friend, and contractor, Jason Cameron.  We talked about everything from how he got his start on TV, to some of his best practice advice when taking on your own projects.  And...after 300+ episodes of Man Caves Jason is giving us a tour of his own Man Cave that he is currently building. Here are links to all of Jason's socials and website: http://jasoncamerononline.com https://www.instagram.com/jcamerontv/ https://twitter.com/jcamerontv https://www.facebook.com/jcamerontv/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoRldO6LCHg6z18B7zMnYGQ and if mosquitos are an issue at your yard, here is a link to Mosquito Squad: https://www.mosquitosquad.com Download: Document Templates & Example Docs: https://www.homewiththecousins.com/s/HomeWithTheCousins-Working-Files.zip Fieldlens: www.fieldlens.com Questions/Comments/Criticism hit us on Twitter: @CarrinoAnthony | @ColaneriJohn | #HOMEwTh

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SmbUAh. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Chris Grandpre, Chairman and CEO of Outdoor Living Brands, has a few words of advice for social entrepreneurs. Grandpre earned his chops in consulting and investment banking before leading the formation of Outdoor Living Brands in 2008 with its four franchise concepts, including Mosquito Squad, an outdoor pest control business. For years, Mosquito Squad has partnered with Malaria No More, a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit working to eradicate malaria. Martin Edlund is co-founder and CEO of the $14.4 million 2014 revenue nonprofit, Malaria No More. With just 35 people in half a dozen offices scattered around the world, he says, ”Despite our small size, we help to mobilize billions of dollars in global financing for malaria from the US, UK, other global donors, and endemic country sources.” Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1SmbUAh. Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

John Warrillow is the creator of The Value Builder System, a statistically proven methodology for improving a company's value by up to 71%.  He is also the author of The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry and Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You.   As any business knows the lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret—no matter what industry you’re in—is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before. Far beyond Spotify, Netflix, and New York Times subscriptions, you can sign up for weekly or monthly supplies of everything from groceries (AmazonFresh) to cosmetics (Birchbox) to razor blades (Dollar Shave Club). According to John Warrillow, this emerging subscription economy offers huge opportunities to companies that know how to turn customers into subscribers. Automatic customers are the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth, and boosting the value of your company. Consider Whatsapp, the internet-based messaging service that was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. While other services bombarded users with invasive ads in order to fund a free messaging platform, Whatsapp offered a refreshingly private tool on a subscription platform, charging just $1 per year. Their business model enabled the kind of service that customers wanted and ensured automatic customers for years to come. As Warrillow shows, subscriptions aren’t limited to technology or media businesses. Companies in nearly any industry, from start-ups to the Fortune 500, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Warrillow provides the essential blueprint for winning automatic customers with one of the nine subscription business models, including: The Membership Website Model: Companies like The Wood Whisperer Guild, ContractorSelling.com, and DanceStudioOwner.com offer access to highly specialized, high quality information, recognizing that people will pay for good content. This model can work for any business with a tightly defined niche market and insider information. The Simplifier Model: Companies like Mosquito Squad (pest control) and Hassle Free Homes (home maintenance) take a recurring task off your to-do list. Any business serving busy consumers can adopt this model not only to create a recurring revenue stream, but also to take advantage of the opportunity to cross-sell or bundle their services. The Surprise Box Model: Companies like BarkBox (dog treats) and Standard Cocoa (craft chocolate) send their subscribers curated packages of goodies each month. If you can handle the logistics of shipping, giving customers joy in something new can translate to sales on your larger e-commerce site. This book also shows you how to master the psychology of selling subscriptions and how to reduce churn and provides a road map for the essential statistics you need to measure the health of your subscription business. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra 5 percent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon.

Jeannie Moreira/Mosquito Squad of Duluth-Lawrenceville Mosquito Squad, known as The Squad", was recently recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top franchises in the country and the only outdoor pest control organization to make the list. With more than 160 franchise locations nationwide, Mosquito Squad specializes in eliminating mosquitoes and adult ticks and fleas […] The post OPEN FOR BUSINESS: Jeannie Moreira with Mosquito Squad of Duluth-Lawrenceville, Mark Butler with the UGA Small Business Development Center, Dawn Poplawski with PCC Innovative Solutions, and Michael Ehmke with Heritage Golf Links appeared first on Business RadioX ®.