Brandon Adams, CEO of Pure Maintenance, on How His Sports Background Helped Him Achieve Success in Business

Parents and educators believe that engaging in sports allows young people to build positive character traits, such as perseverance, discipline, teamwork, ability to perform under pressure, and a goal-oriented mindset. These qualities often stick with people for life and will benefit them in their future pursuits, such as career and business.

Brandon Adams, CEO of the mold remediation company Pure Maintenance, says he learned many things from playing sports in his youth, which has also helped him hone his competitive nature and grow his company to where it is today.

A multi-sport athlete in high school, Brandon was named to national and regional teams for basketball and football. However, this didn’t come easy, as he spent long hours practicing and working out after school.

“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 becoming better than not just the competition, but also the past version of me,” Brandon says.

While he was in college, Brandon joined Pure Maintenance, a company founded by his father, Mike, for a part-time job. They worked together to develop the VaPure system, which efficiently and quickly treats mold spores in residential and commercial properties, and is highly effective in eliminating mold on hard surfaces. This allows Pure Maintenance to solve building owners’ mold problems without resorting to costly and risky demolition.

Brandon later presented a unique business 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 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, 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. Territories were sold fast, and Pure Maintenance’s revenue had grown by 1,800% in the first 12 months of the new model.

Brandon and Pure Maintenance spent the next few years strengthening the company’s intellectual property portfolio. 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 able to solve the mold problem without having to tear the buildings down, resulting in more than a million dollars in savings.

In 2021, Pure Maintenance began selling international licenses, 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 authored a book, titled From Rims to Riches, which contains the various lessons he learned from his time in sports.

“My book contains 10 business lessons I learned through playing and coaching sports, and how sports has molded me as a person and translated into my business,” Brandon says. “I show how implementing these principles can take your business to the next level.”

“Today, people are becoming increasingly aware of how the indoor environment affects their health and personal safety,” Brandon says. “Aside from mold remediation, we hope 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.”

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