The Lice Place

Cody Bradstreet was a certified public accountant working at Dell in a business analyst role—well-paid but soul-crushing. When Dell began privatization talks, she watched the company conduct annual layoffs and realized she could be next. As an expensive resource with no revenue generation and no customer-facing responsibilities, she needed a Plan B. That Plan B came when her own children contracted lice. She tried the service of a small Houston-based business called Texas Lice Squad and was impressed by the experience.

Instead of building from scratch, Cody approached the Texas Lice Squad owner with a direct offer: "I want to buy you." Six months of conversations led to a pivot—they would rebrand to The Lice Place and Cody would become the first franchisee. In October 2012, she acquired the underperforming Austin corporate location for approximately one year's Dell salary (she notes she "probably paid more than I should have" but didn't want to reinvent the wheel with a full-time job already consuming her energy). The business model was simple: quarter-hour billing for manual lice removal without chemicals or pesticides—charged like a lawyer charges for time.

Cody started with an existing customer base from the original business and focused on improving operations rather than starting from zero. She negotiated a 5% royalty fee on gross revenue, standard for franchise models but something she views as a potential constraint on future growth. The key was that the business was already operating; she just needed to make it "very profitable."

While Cody kept her Dell job for two years (maintaining and exceeding her sales number), she grew the Lice Place aggressively. By 2015, just four years after acquisition, the North location had grown from $50k to $250k in annual revenue. She then opened a second location from scratch, a move that required finding a lease, building it out, and hiring staff—but still paying the 5% franchise royalty. The combined two-location operation now generates over $500k in annual revenue with 11 full-time or mostly full-time employees.

One notable thorn: Cody feels trapped by the franchise system and wants to break out to do her own thing. She also highlighted a critical lesson for other franchise buyers—carefully review what happens to royalty fees on renewals, as some franchisors can raise them arbitrarily.

Cody runs a profitable, growing franchise with two locations and is the first franchisee to expand beyond a single location in the system. She works eight hours of sleep per night while building the business and raising two daughters (ages 17 and 9). The franchise owner, Penny, has reportedly valued the entire business at $3 million, which Cody considers overvalued. She hasn't ruled out buying the whole franchise system someday but acknowledges the owner isn't ready to sell. The business demonstrates the power of solving a real, recurring problem (lice removal) with a service model that doesn't require high-touch selling—word-of-mouth and the quality experience drive growth.