What does it take to turn a hands-on service business into a scalable national franchise? In this episode of the Build It to Billions Podcast, Brett Swarts sits down with Lane Martin, Co-Founder and CEO of Modern PURAIR, to explore his journey of growing a service-based company into an expanding franchise organization.
Lane shares the systems, leadership strategies, and mindset shifts that helped Modern PURAIR scale while maintaining a strong culture and consistent customer experience. From building repeatable processes and developing great franchise partners to transitioning from working in the business to leading it, this conversation offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs who want to build a company that can grow beyond the founder.
Episode Highlights Here:
Intro
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward, scale to billions, and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
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Brett
Welcome to the Build to Billions podcast, where we guide successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth in life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goals have to be scale and compound your wealth in life, so you can give more all through to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swarts. Each and every episode, I have an opportunity to host some of the best entrepreneurs, millionaires or billionaires, where they share their secrets, wisdom, and insight with us. We can all live up, make a bigger impact. I’m excited about our new friend here today. He’s out of the northern part of he’s in Canada. He’s north of the U.S. He’s a co-founder of Modern Pure Air, one of the North America’s fastest-growing indoor air quality companies in franchise systems, and it’s headquartered again in British Columbia. He’s helped grow the business from a local service operation into a multi-location brand, expanded across Canada and the U.S. With franchise locations markets as small as 50,000, achieving over 1 million CAD in annual revenue. He’s a second-generation entrepreneur, and he grew up in the industry and has spent over two decades building businesses focused on service systems and long-term growth, and so much more. Please welcome the show with me, Mr. Lane Martin Lane. How are we doing?
Lane
Good, man. Thanks so much for having me, Brett. Appreciate it, man.
Brett
Excellent. Today we’re going to be talking about you know you know building world class businesses, but before we get into that, I’m curious a little bit more about Lane’s story and
current focus. If you could share with us,
Lane
yeah, for sure, man. Grew up in this industry, literally. My dad started in duct cleaning inlike 1970. We call him the Godfather of duct cleaning in in Canada, Calgary, Alberta. That’s
where I was.
Brett
What the duck father? Is that how you would say it? The duck father. I like that.
Lane
Nobody’s ever pulled that one up before. That’s epic. I love that. I’m gonna put that on the wall. So regardless, grew up in that. My dad grew that business in Calgary, sold that, and then started another one here in Kelowna. That’s where I live, Okanagan Valley. So, I literally grew up in that industry. Grade 12, I bought into that business with my dad
after I graduated from high school, and my dad was the old school way of doing it: yellow pages and a spit and a handshake, where it was you were the guy in the duck truck, you were the solopreneur, you bought yourself a job, right? And that’s how I thought of the industry. So, sold that business, had a five-year non-compete, went through a whole other journey with going into business with guys from high school, lost quarter million dollars in the furniture business. That’s a whole other story. Got some hardships and learned being in business with, yeah, people not in family and family business and whatever that might be. So, our five years non-compete came up, and I got a call from a good friend of mine that owns a large restoration company here. And restoration is a great vertical for us in this business. Anytime there’s a fire or a flood, HVAC systems need to be inspected. But he asked me, “Are you going to get back into the game? And I was a single dad, had two kids, just gone through a divorce, lost a business, quarter million in debt, owed some family members some money. I didn’t want to get back in the industry, but I did. And so, off we went. Bought a duct truck, and Lane was back in the truck and fought with my dad a tooth and nail for about two years. Finally, he allowed me to hire a technician, and after we hired a technician, we grew it to two trucks, then three, then four, then five, and the business started to scale. So fast forward to 2006, I’m reading an article in Profit Magazine, and on the front page of this article is a picture of a junk removal truck, and this guy named Brian Scudamore, and he took this small junk removal business called Rubbish Boys Trash Removal, and he rebranded it to One 800 Got Junk in 1999, and he started franchising it. And he’s based out of Vancouver, and it had blown up in ’06. Like they just sold out all of North América. They’re doing 150 million in system sales. And I was reading that magazine article, and I was like, in there, he said we set out to be the FedEx of junk removal. We literally took fragmented mom and pop industry, franchised it, made it cool, and away we went and built it on systems. I’m like nobody’s done that in indoor air quality, and so that really started this messaging for me. And six months later, I sat with Brian at a Starbucks in Vancouver, asked him what he did right in in franchising the first three or four years, what he did wrong, and I started to reverse engineer our journey and our roadmap. So, we we awarded our first franchise in ’09 here in a little city called Vernon, British Columbia, and continued to grow it. And over the past 20 years in franchising, had a lot of black eyes, did a lot of things great, a lot of things wrong, which is part of the entrepreneurial guide. But we are now proud to say, we’re Canada’s only national coast-to-coast service provider. Just passed 13,005-story Google reviews, which is killer, and now have expanded into the U.S. So, there’s the story, man. There you go. It’s an
Brett Swarts 04:50
amazing story, Lane Martin. Everybody, you can learn more by going to modernpureair.com and a pure spelled P-U-R, modern PureAir.com. You know. Maybe perhaps your dad is the duck father, and then the duck father part two. This has got to be duck father part two. I love it. This is it could be a marketing campaign, right? I love it, man. And oh my gosh! Okay, so keep going here.
Outro
So so you so if you like this little short clip of the interview I just did, click over hereto watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
Watch the episode here:
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About Lane Martin
Lane Martin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Modern PURAIR, an indoor air quality and service franchise specializing in air duct cleaning, furnace cleaning, and related services. With decades of experience in the industry, Lane has helped transform Modern PURAIR from a hands-on service business into a growing franchise organization with locations across Canada and expansion into the United States.
As an entrepreneur and franchise leader, Lane is passionate about building scalable systems, developing strong teams, and creating a culture that empowers franchise partners to succeed. His experience provides a practical perspective on transitioning from working in a service business to building an organization designed for sustainable growth and impact.
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