Sports has long been seen as a way to develop positive character traits, such as discipline, teamwork, perseverance, and many more. These are beneficial even outside of the sporting world, like in business. In fact, Brandon Adams, CEO of the mold remediation company Pure Maintenance, credits his background in sports with further developing his competitive nature, allowing him to grow the company to where it is today.
Brandon played basketball and football in his youth, and was named to national and regional teams for both sports. After school, he would always practice and work out, constantly seeking to be better at his craft.
“Every day, I’d work on a particular skill – shooting hoops, throwing passes, watching film and lifting weights – and I learned to never tolerate mediocrity. Even though my sports days are behind me, the drive to be better still remains, where I wake up each morning looking to win. Today, I define winning as finding a way to be better than the competition, as well as the past version of me,” Brandon says.
While he was in college, Brandon joined Pure Maintenance, which was founded by his father, Mike, as a part-time job. They developed the VaPure system, which efficiently and quickly treats mold spores within residential and commercial buildings and is highly effective in eliminating mold on hard surfaces. Using this patented technology, Pure Maintenance is able to solve building owners’ mold problems without resorting to costly and risky demolition.
Brandon later presented a unique franchising model to the company, which involved selling licenses to its proprietary technology. Instead of franchisees having to pay a royalty to Pure Maintenance for each job, they pay a fixed lease fee and pay an upfront license fee that gives them rights to the company’s patents and intellectual property within a given territory. Some of the company’s partners did not agree with this, which led to the Adams’ buying out the partners and Brandon taking over as CEO.
Despite the skepticism from others, Brandon’s model proved successful, as it gave entrepreneurs more control over their business and allowed them to choose their pricing, products, and marketing strategy without being locked into a corporate-designed business model. Within the first 12 months of the new model, Pure Maintenance had sold 100 territories, and the company’s revenue had grown by 1,800%.
In the following years, Pure Maintenance strengthened its intellectual property portfolio with additional patents. The US Army Corps of Engineers published a research paper on Pure Maintenance’s technology, and it was found suitable for use within military installations. According to Brandon, Pure Maintenance did a remediation project at an Army installation in Kentucky, where a barracks and mess hall were having mold problems and were scheduled to be demolished. The project was verified by third-party laboratories as having solved the mold problem without having to tear the buildings down, resulting in more than a million dollars in savings.
In 2021, Pure Maintenance sold its first international license, expanding to the UK, followed by Canada and Australia shortly after.
Brandon says that he would not have been able to achieve this level of success if not for his competitive nature, which drove him to continuously improve Pure Maintenance’s capabilities. He is currently writing a book, titled From Rims to Riches, which contains the business lessons he learned as a multi-sport youth athlete.
“I am writing about the various principles that I learned being part of a sports team, such as how to work hard and how to deal with high-pressure situations, and how these molded me as a person and translated into my business career,” Brandon says.
Moving forward, Brandon aspires to make Pure Maintenance a major player, not just in the mold remediation segment, but in the entire indoor air quality industry. This is especially important nowadays, after the COVID-19 pandemic showed how indoor air plays a major role in the spread of diseases.
“Today, people are becoming increasingly aware of how the indoor environment affects their health and personal safety,” Brandon says. “Aside from mold remediation, we want to be involved in various aspects, such as air filtration, air purification and sterilization, and HVAC systems. We will ensure that people are living and working in an environment that isn’t making them sick, because their wellbeing is important to us.”