Pat Brown had industry experience, but he’d never owned a business or even worked as a drain cleaner. He served as national sales representative for the Roto-Rooter Corporation in the 1990s, then spent two years with Vermeer before deciding it was time to buy his own Roto-Rooter franchise.Brown graduated college in 1990 with a degree in mass communications, but quickly realized he preferred plumbing to broadcasting. He went to work at the Roto-Rooter headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1995, and four years later moved on to Vermeer, where his responsibilities included training technicians how to use new industry technology.In
