Ohio Mosquito Hunters Franchisee Launches Strong With Multiple Revenue Streams

During a successful career in direct-to-consumer marketing and consumer insights, John Lewis, a Mosquito Hunters franchisee in Ohio, gained valuable experience with subscription-based business models. As he grew in his career, he began exploring the idea of opening his own business, always gravitating toward businesses that followed a similar subscription model to what he experienced in the corporate world. Now, Lewis is kicking off his first full season of pest management in his market and is already seeing great success.

“In my time at Scotts [Miracle-Gro], I helped launch the pest control business for their service division. I really just fell in love with the business model,” Lewis said. “It’s weird to say that I ‘fell in love’ with pest control, but there are really two components at play: the business model is fairly predictable, and it’s a service that really works. It’s something that I know adds value to the consumer.”

So, when Lewis began thinking about franchising, he started exploring home services brands and quickly settled in with Mosquito Hunters, the 140-plus-unit pest management franchise under the Happinest Brands umbrella. 

“It’s what I understand, which is direct-to-consumer marketing. It’s all about lead generation, lead nurturing and lead conversion,” Lewis said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into that. You treat every lead like the precious nugget of gold that it is, and when you convert that into a customer, the revenue is fairly predictable, recurring month after month, year after year.”

Lewis has leveraged his expertise alongside a team he has built to drive residential business at the start of the 2024 busy season, and he has funneled his own attention toward nurturing commercial leads.

While the backbone of the Mosquito Hunters business is residential pest control, Lewis recognized that he had built a powerful marketing machine to drive lead generation in this arena, and he was interested in adding his own personal touch to leverage those tools in a commercial context.

“I try to focus as much of my time as possible in the commercial area,” Lewis said. “I thought that, with my background, I could bring something to the table in the context of commercial spaces that could accelerate the business.”

Lewis has already begun working with country clubs, restaurants and homeowners associations, and he says he aims to turn the commercial side of his business into something that can build on itself year after year, much like the residential services.

With the addition of Humbug Holiday Lighting, Lewis will further diversify his business come the holiday season.

“We’re going to provide an awesome service for people, but another benefit of the holiday lighting is giving our employees work to do in the off-season,” he said. “In the central Ohio area, pest control and holiday lighting seasons are almost opposite of each other. We’re able to capture recurring revenue 11 months out of the year and provide work for our technicians 11 months out of the year.”

“It’s exciting to be working with and seeing a new type of owner executing our new three-in-one model,” said Happinest Director of Franchise Development Shirley Warrington. “Owners like John that are strategic, big-picture thinkers and are not afraid to step out into new opportunities like commercial accounts and Humbug Holiday Lighting are going to have tremendous success in their markets.”

Looking toward the future of his business, Lewis emphasized his commitment to providing a high level of service to every customer while remaining grateful for the opportunities he has been afforded to this point.

“I think gratitude is the secret to happiness, and I’m grateful for the opportunities that I have,” he said. “I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had throughout my life that have put me in a position to do what I’m doing now, and I'm grateful for every customer that picks up the phone and wants to explore Mosquito Hunters as a service option.”

To find out more information on costs to buy this franchise, please visit https://1851franchise.com/mosquitohunters/info.