How to Expand a Home Service Business Into a New Market: Brendan Quinlan's Playbook

By Sam Taggart

CEO and Founder

Door to Door Sales•October 19, 2026

Most owners think about growth in one direction: more reps, more leads, more volume in the market they already know. Brendan Quinlan has spent nearly two decades doing the harder version. He took door-to-door pest control into places where the big companies told him it would not work, first in Canada and later in Australia.

On The D2D Podcast, host Hunter Lee sat down with Brendan to talk through that journey. The episode was recorded in 2025, so the numbers and plans below are as Brendan described them at the time. The lessons, though, apply to any home service owner thinking about opening a new territory, a new country or a new service line.

The Market Everyone Said Was Closed

Brendan got into door-to-door when Tom Karen, whom Brendan called a door-to-door Hall of Famer, recruited him at a job fair at the University of Regina to go sell pest control in Florida. After years of knocking in the US, he wanted to start knocking doors in Canada. The industry's answer was no.

Orkin eventually gave him a shot in 2012, but only on its own terms. Recurring pest control did not exist in Canada at the time, so the program sold one-time services. Brendan said Orkin "hated the program" and cut it after the first year because, in his words, "they just didn't see the vision."

Brendan went back to the US for a while. In 2016, his team talked Terminix into trying Toronto. This time it worked. Brendan explained that it started with just him, his brother and his wife, because nobody else wanted to knock with them. They went to Vancouver next, started recruiting, and kept building.

What owners should take from the first attempt

The first try in Canada did not fail because the reps could not sell. It failed because the partner doing the fulfillment did not believe in the model. If the company delivering your service does not buy into how you sell it, your growth depends on someone else's patience.

Owning Fulfillment Changed the Business

The turning point in Brendan's story is not a sales tactic. It is a structural decision.

Brendan said the company has become the largest residential pest control company in Canada, and that they have only been operating it since 2020.

For a home service owner, this is the key move. When you only sell, you are exposed. Brendan described the hard years plainly: "we got stiffed on a back end from a company that we marketed for." He also talked about years where visas fell through and trucks sat ready to service with no reps to fill them. "Technically we failed, like miserably, like lost money, worked all year, lost money."

Owning the brand and the service put the whole customer experience, and the economics behind it, inside one company. That is the difference between a sales organization and a business you control. If you are weighing a similar step, our guide to the unit economics of scaling a home service business is a good place to pressure-test the numbers.

When No Partner Will Say Yes, Build Your Own

Brendan used the same playbook when he looked at Australia. He called the pest control companies there, and none of them wanted in.

His honest answer to that question is the useful part. "It was a bit of a nightmare getting the pest control company started, but the sales were flying."

He listed what made it hard: "Different product names, different bank accounts, different insurance practices. Like it really was an undertaking, but we've built the foundation and we're kind of excited to expand it from here."

The operational checklist hidden in that quote

Brendan's list is a practical starting point for any owner entering a new region:

• Product and licensing: What you sell and what it is called may change. Confirm the products, labels and licenses before reps arrive.
• Banking and payments: New entities often need new accounts, new processors and new ways of collecting recurring revenue.
• Insurance: Coverage that works in your home market may not transfer. Price it early.
• Customer expectations: Brendan noted that Australia, like Canada before it, ran on a non-recurring pest model, where customers buy one or two services a year.

That last point is the one owners underestimate most.

You May Have to Change the Market's Mind, Twice

In a new territory you are often selling two ideas at once: the way you sell and the thing you sell.

Brendan explained that in Australia people already had pest control, "they just have it one or two times a year," so his team worked to move customers toward "more of a monthly bill, subscription, quarterly type program." He also said the first month was a struggle while the team learned the neighborhoods and how services like termites and lawn care fit in. "But in the second month we started cranking," he said, and they were only over there knocking for two months.

He also pointed to a lever owners can use: seasonality. Because the seasons are flipped, Brendan said Australia "just allows them to extend their season." Reps who would normally knock for four to six months can keep working when it is winter back home. At the time of the episode, he said they had about a dozen reps in Australia and were expecting 50 or 60 the following year.

If you are deciding whether a new market is worth it, compare it against the alternative of fighting for share where you already are. We break that down in how to win in a saturated home service market.

Quality Control Is the Price of Entry

This is the part of the conversation every growing owner should read twice. Brendan described a regulatory environment where one bad interaction can become a news story, and where the response from government can be blunt.

He explained the reasoning: "if there are issues, the government track record is just to ban it outright." He also said they have dealt with negative news stories about door-to-door in both Canada and Australia.

Then he did the math that any owner with a large team has to face.

Turning that into a system

You do not need 500 reps for this to matter. The principle is that complaints scale with volume, so your response has to be a process, not a mood. A few ways owners can build that in:

• Define a non-compliant sale in writing, so reps and managers know exactly where the line is.
• Set a complaint response standard, such as who owns it and how fast someone reaches the customer.
• Track complaints on the weekly scorecard next to revenue, so quality is reviewed with the same weight as growth. Our post on the scorecard every home-service owner needs shows how to set one up.

Brendan framed the pressure as a positive: "it keeps us honest out there and it makes sure that again, we're selling high quality sales and we have a good, uh, system to do that."

Diversify Carefully, and Be Honest About the Results

Brendan was open about experiments that did not land the way pest control did. In the episode, he said his team tried alarms through a contract with Telus in Quebec and "did moderately okay." Solar went worse.

He added that it is something he anticipates trying again. The lesson for owners is not to avoid diversifying. It is that a new service line is its own business. The sales cycle, ticket size and training are different, and the team that wins one may not win the other on the first try. Before adding a vertical, ask the questions in start, switch, or restructure? an owner's decision framework.

Find the Mentor Who Will Pick Up the Phone

Asked who helped him most early on, Brendan named Shannon Cole, the owner of the company. When he heard the owner was coming through, he showed up four hours early just to talk with him.

Brendan said that from that day forward, Shannon Cole "has 100% like always picked up and always spent as much time as needed."

If you are expanding into unfamiliar territory, find someone who has already built what you are building and use their time well. Then look at your own calendar: an owner who is generous with time can shape the next generation of leaders.

Battle-Proven Leaders Make the Best Year Possible

When Hunter asked for his favorite season, Brendan passed on his rookie year and picked the year of the recording, his 19th in the business. His reason was the team.

He named David Turner, Quinn Pauls and Jordan Earl, and described them as "battle proven. They've been around a long time." He also credited "the reps that we've been able to recruit and train and retain."

He gave a concrete example of what that bench was producing. At the time, he said two second-season reps were on pace for Golden Doors while selling pest control "in the French language" in Quebec, which he expected to be a first.

For owners, this is the real expansion engine. New markets need leaders who can run them without you. If you are not there yet, start with how to build a leadership team so you can step back.

Staying in the Game Long Enough to Win

Brendan closed with advice he gives every new rep, borrowed from Winston Churchill: "the definition of success is moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

It applies to owners too. His path included a cancelled program, money-losing years and markets that told him no. "If you don't quit, you're going to ultimately win in door-to-door," he said. "And so it's just about staying in it long enough to win."

Key Takeaways for Owners Planning an Expansion

• Control fulfillment when you can. Owning the brand and the service moved Brendan's company from marketing for others to running its own business.
• List the operational differences early. Products, bank accounts and insurance practices all changed in Australia.
• Budget time to change perceptions. You may need to sell the channel and the service model at the same time.
• Make quality control a system. At scale, some interactions will go poorly. Decide in advance how you respond.
• Build the bench before you expand. Brendan's best year came from battle-proven leaders and reps the company recruited, trained and retained.