Transcript of How David Royce Built a $500M Pest Control Empire From Door-to-Door Sales

A lot of people ask me, Well, how do you know if you have a scalable business? I'm like, Take a 30-day vacation. And if you come back and your business is still there, you're ready.

You've made an amazing, amazing empire. What are your tactics?

The first year, I almost bankrupt the business. Persistence is genius in disguise. It's just that if you really want something, how hard are you willing to work for it? Pest control. Right.

Not the sexy. Is?

No. I built four different... In the past, we were in pest control companies in the nation. The entire country was hearing about what we were doing in Corona, California. When we first started out, it's wild. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal this last year. It was called the Stealthy Wealthy. People who make $2. 3 million or more per year, 43% of all businesses are these guys.

Wow.

Lots and lots of opportunity.

What's up, everybody? I'm Back here with David Royce. What an amazing story. This gentleman built a pest control company to a massive exit of 500 mill. We started in college. His buddy had mentioned to him, he can go make some money in the summer going door to door. And he made an amazing career out of it. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you could probably see why he's one of the most handsome dude we've ever had sitting in our seat here in the studio of the Determined Society. So who's going to tell this face no? But hey, man, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

I'm super jack to meet you, man. You're out here from California, and you're flying back on me. I was hoping to take you to breakfast afterwards.

I know. It's a quick in and out. I love getting back home to see my kids at night before they go to bed.

See, so let's touch on that, man, because that is so important. I'm the same type of father. When I'm building out my schedule, I have to make sure that... I need to make sure I get a flight back at a certain time so I can put my kids down, at least. Yeah. Especially if I'm in the West Coast and I'm flying all the way back to Florida, I want to be able to see my kids. That's a blessing because there's a lot of parents that they'll go on the road trips, man. They're like, I'm going to say, gone as long as humanly possible so I don't have to go home. But I'm happy to hear that you're not just a successful entrepreneur. It sounds like you really, really care about your family.

Yeah, it's you. It's times and seasons, right? You can bust your ass for a bunch of years, but when you start to have your family, your priorities change. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And you just realize It's what's important to you and where you want to put your time.

Absolutely. How old are your kids?

So they are 13 and ten and a half.

Okay, wow. You got a teenager. I know.

It's starting to happen.

Is it two boys or girls? Two girls. Oh, gosh. I have a 12-year-old son, and then a nine-year-old daughter, and a six-year-old daughter. So you know exactly. I know exactly. Yeah, you're going to have to send me some ideas of what happens when they hit 13. Because sometimes my six-year-old, I feel like she's already starting. Great soul, but she I'll tell you what she thinks, but did you have an amazing story? So, of course, I did some research and reading up on you. You tried this thing for the summer, and it didn't start off very good for you, right?

No.

Walk the audience through that origin story because I think There's a major lesson here. But as you close it out, I want you to also tie in because a lot of people look down on people that go door to door. When they come into our neighborhood, our HOA is like, Get out. I'm like, No, I want these people at my door because I want to see how they're doing it. I just also want, if you can inspire the audience to not look down on certain types of careers because you've made an amazing empire from Starting from there. I'll let you roll into it now.

Yeah, so I had a friend in college. I'm working at a snowboard shop for a minimum wage, and it's hard going to college at the same time and trying to work part-time. It's hard to the best grades possible. And he just said, Hey, last summer, I made 25 grand going out to California, and we had a lot of fun on weekends, but I made 25 grand these three and a half months. And it's like doubling today's money. And I thought, okay, there's nothing else I can do that can make that much money. I'm going for it. Legally, at least. I have no idea.

I don't know exactly what that is, Pest Control.

I've never really heard of it, but I'll go try that. And so we get out there, and the first week, it's I'm miserable. I'm horrible at sales. I hadn't really studied up on sales, didn't know what I was selling. And everybody else around me selling one to four accounts per day. And I go, the first five days in a row was zero. It's just zero. And you don't get paid. It's a commission's only job. Okay. So that weekend, I'm questioning. I'm going, Gosh, am I cut out for this? What's the issue? And I said, okay, well, I'm going to go down to the bookstore and I'm going to buy some sales books and try to just start setting up. And by the end of that summer, what I And what I did is I'm going to commit myself to 90 minutes a day to reading. And I would sit up by the pool, read. A lot of my other friends were hanging out and playing or doing whatever they want to do. And I was the top sales rookie by the end of the year. And so I figured it out. It's just my personality.

It's just like I'm relentless when it comes to something I really am excited about and want to do. And then the next summer, I worked for a big company that first year. The next summer, I was recruited by a small company to go work as a sales manager and then to bring out some friends. And when I got there, There's no sales training manual. And I'm like, oh, crap. I want my friends to do good at this. So I asked the boss, can I write a training manual for you to train everybody? And he's like, yeah, that's amazing. They'd only been in business for a year. I didn't even realize that. It's probably one of the key questions I should have asked.

Exactly.

But he had worked for a much larger company previously, and he was one of the first guys to break away from a marketing company for door to door and go do his own thing. They were doing about maybe a million and a half when I first got there. They had one a year, and it was fairly successful. And then when I got there, we doubled what he had done the previous year. We were twice as successful as his other sales team. He had another sales team down in Austin to open two locations. And we were in Dallas, Texas. And so at the end of the summer, he said, look, I would love to pay you a commission off every single person that you recruit, and you can oversee the entire sales program. You can develop, do whatever you want to do. I I would love for you to multiply what you're doing. So the next two years, next two summers, like every summer in college, I'm going out and I'm doing this sales program. And by the end, I'm making 225 grand a summer.

Are you kidding me?

Right. And so that's almost a half a million in today's money.

That's insanity.

Making a ton of money. So I was recruiting like 100 people, training them, managing them over the summertime. And then I was going to go to get an investment into investment banking. I was studying finance, and I go to my boss and I'm like, Hey, I need you to write a letter of recommendation for this because pest control is probably not going to be very sexy to investment bankers. They probably will even look down on it. But if they understand what I've done, I think that's what will really sell them. And the idea of also having a sales background mixed with finance, I think would have been super helpful for M&A. And that was the point where he just looked at me and he's like, What are you doing? Wow. He's like, you're like the top 1% in sales in this industry, and you're going to go work for somebody else year round for 80, 100 hour weeks? He's like, I just don't get it. He's like, you should really go start your own company. So it was him that actually encouraged me. And when he first told me, I'm like, no, it's blue collar.

I have a college degree. I'm going to go to New York. That's sexy.

That's exciting. That's cool, man. I went to all this school. I'm going to make good of it right now. I'm going to go to New York. I'm going to do something big.

Yeah. So that's how I originally got into the industry. Ultimately, I took us advice. I'd save like 300 grand while I was in college. I was thinking I was going to go to MBA school. I needed to save money for that. The idea of door to door, for me, what was always exciting about it is it's not a glamorous job. It's hot outside. A lot of times you're working all the way through the day and even into the night until dark, until maybe 8: 30 at night. And tons of rejection, but it was damn good money. I bet. For me, I really enjoyed creating the best job possible for college students. And even today, it really is. There are some salespeople that will make up to a million dollars a year. In a four, maybe five month summer, they'll expand their summer a little bit so they can make even more.

A million dollars? That is wild, dude.

It's crazy. They're freaks of nature, but to make $100,000, it's not totally uncommon. There's a lot of sales people that make that, especially the sales managers. They're typically making $100,000 a month. A month? In a summer. In a summer. Three and a half months.

Wow, dude.

Most of them are college students. It's just like they're willing to grind and work really hard, they want to pay off their college debt while they're in school. Now, I have to think about it.

It's so funny. I'm thinking back to me because I was the baseball player, right? I was at LSU. Thank God I didn't have all that money back then. I don't know what I would have done with it. You're saying like, oh, yeah, these people want to pay off their college. I'm like, I would have blown that money. That would have been very irresponsible.

It's like all these football players in college. I cannot believe.

Could you imagine? Could You can really imagine like, oh, here's your NIL deal. It's 12 mil for three, four years. It's like, wait, what did you say? It's like a rookie contract, man. It's crazy to me. But anyway, I digress. It's interesting to me because I want to point something out. At the very beginning, you said the first week, I was terrible, didn't sell anything, and you started contemplating, Is this really for me? I think a lot of people will do that initially. I think I did that as well when I was selling payroll for paychecks. Sure. My first three months, I was god awful. I was terrible. Yeah. And then I ended up being one of the best sales reps in the company for many years. But I started working on things. I started picking Pointing out a process of mine. I have all these zip codes. So Monday, I'm going to be in this zip code. I'm going to write everything down. I'm going to take notes. I do the same thing every single day. And within three weeks, my business blew up. That's what you're saying. You took control of your struggle.

And I want you to dive more into that because there's a lot of people listening or watching the show that are sitting in that trouble right now. And in that thing that they're not very good at, and they want to either blame somebody else or this is just the way it is. It's not written for me to be successful. All these different low energy excuses. But you took control by reading books and spending that development time for 90 minutes a day, walk them, dive more into that, because I think there's something really big there.

So it sounds like you cut your teeth in sales.

Oh, my God. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So payroll, then medical. And then that was medical business was the last business I was And in 2024, I was like, no, I'm doing this full-time. I'm going for it.

Everything is hard before it's easy. The old phrase, Persistence is genius in disguise. It's just that if you really want something, how hard are you willing to work for it? And there's answers out there. For me, if I've seen somebody else do something, I know it's possible. That seeing is believing. If you could see it, you can be it. So, okay, well, it's just like, what do they do to get there? And so I just slowly start studying, trying to figure out what are those steps. So I went out and got the half a dozen sales books, started reading up on those. I looked at all the different rebuttals that a customer could Objections. I wrote down rebuttals for all of them. I just said, okay, here's how I would get over this. And I started wordsmithing it and making the vocabulary just right. Because I noticed these sales books, they were masters, they were like magicians of their wording and how they would say things. And then I'm going to take it to the next level where I started reading body language books. There it is. It's not just what you say, right? It's how you say it and how your body language communicates.

And also paraverbally, how you say it, your volume of your voice, the speed, the pitch, pausing, all those sorts of things. That was the next step to really develop it. But having lots of different rebuttals, multiple rebuttals for the same ejection, because sometimes they don't accept the first one. And then having, I call them aces. It was something else you were able to lay down to offer that maybe you hadn't told them yet about the service. And then having even a different close, so they didn't hear the same close and psychologically think, I've already heard that close, so I don't want to accept it again. There's a lot of psychology in sales. And the nice thing about commission jobs is you're incentivized to get better and to learn more. And it's like, gosh, if I can make another 10 grand, that was life changing at that point, right? In college? Absolutely, dude. But then it was like, if I can make another 100 grand, how would that change my life?

It's wild. The mark always moves, doesn't it? It does.

It sure does, man. We just kick the goalpost back a little bit further.

Yeah, we'll just move it. We'll move that goalpost this way. We'll just keep going. It's interesting to me because you talked about the body language. You talk about just even hearing somebody's voice. That's why I love speaking on the phone. If I'm talking to somebody, instead of just the texting, I like to hear their voice because I know what they really mean when they say it. Yeah, I'm good with that. Yeah, I can do that. Wait a second. I don't think you are. I'm hearing this. Am I wrong? No, you're actually right. I'm like, Okay, cool. Then let's just not do that. So it's super important. And with sales, I always thought, because it always asked me, what's your technique? What are your tactics? How are you selling so much? How are you so good? I'm like, I'm likable. I I have conversations with people. I don't beat them up with the brochure. I don't beat them up with the features and benefits. I ask them what their issue is, what their problem is. And I ask them, okay, so if we can find a way to solve this for you, you'd be interested in moving forward a solution.

Yes, absolutely. You already have them. You just preclosed them, and then you solve their problem. All right, when do you want to run your first payroll? Next week? Cool. Sounds good. But you're having this conversation, and you're dialed into the person. I think a lot of It tells people to think too much about the sale and the features and benefits. What are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that what you're talking about with dialing in to the customer, what's critical is to have that sensory acuity to know who is this individual, how do they need to be spoken to? In order for somebody to like you, people like people who are like them. And so if you can talk in a language that they can understand and that they can hear, great. So how do they stand at the door? That's what I'm thinking when I'm first there. Are they leaning up against the door or whatever else? I'd lean up against the door, too. I would start my body language-Mirroring. Yeah, you start mirroring, right? And then same thing, you start echoing with your voice almost in a similar way, the speed at which they talk, the type of slang they might be using. You can adopt things very quickly.

Here in the south, it's you all. Exactly. If you're in California, you guys. Absolutely. I mean, this is important stuff, man. Guys, this is why he was so good or is still good. He'll be doing something else soon. I'm pretty dang sure of it. I'm not going to keep this guy out for long. But this is important because if you're able, and I hate saying be a chameleon, right?

Because you don't want to go-I love Santa. I say it all the time.

Sometimes people take it a step further and they're different everywhere they go. But I think professionally, it's super important. The The one thing that I always pride myself on is, can I talk to a homeless person? The way I can speak to a doctor, the way I can speak to a psychologist, or a manager of a grocery store, or an owner of an HVAC company. If you can find ways to relate to all of them, you're going to be fed. I think that's what people are missing. That is what people are missing when they say, I'm struggling with sales, or I can't build my company. There's a big disconnect because you're thinking about one thing, and it's just yourself. So if you can get into what you're saying, mirroring language, mirroring body movements, everything. To me, that's everything with sales. The tactics, the skills, those aren't it.

I remember somebody once asked the question, if you could be an animal, what type of animal would you be? And some of the people in the room were like, I'd be a lion, or I'd be this or that. I'm like, all right. And I said, I'd actually be a chameleon because I love having the ability to talk to anybody. It It's the same thing when it comes to politics or whatever else. I don't want to pick aside. I want to hear, one, I don't want them to think or have bias against whatever my actual view may be. I was like, here, tell me more about that. I can listen and I can adapt and I can build a relationship of trust based on the things that I do believe in and that they believe in it the same way to be able to build a relationship. It's sensory acuity. Some people will say, oh, well, that sounds like manipulation. I'm like, no, it's just good sensory acuity. It's just good being a good neighbor, like socially being able to talk to somebody.

It's so funny when people say that, right? It's manipulation. I know it's emotional intelligence. Exactly. I mean, there's books about this thing. You don't have to be IQ smart, but if you're EQ smart, right? There's nothing you can't do because you're understanding people. If you understand people, you understand the psychology of people, you understand how things move and things work, and then how to infuse yourself in ways to benefit. There's their problem or in your gain as well, because it's business. We don't do things for free. We like to make money when we do them, too. But I think just the overall I would say, what is that word I'm looking for? Man, I'm looking for a word. I don't always get stuck, but sometimes I do. It's just your motive. What's your motive? What are your intentions? It's like, no, I'm going to be good for this person. I'm going to hear what they have to say. But ultimately, I think that's one piece a lot of young salespeople or even the ones that you get beat up in your email all the time. Hey, you know what I heard the other day? You know what I saw?

You're going to enjoy this one. I have to bring this up. My email gets bombarded constantly by alternative production, clips, marketing, coaches to scale my business to a million dollars in in 60 days, or I don't pay a dime. Dude, get out of my email with that. This guy said, Hey, long time no talk. I was just going to call you today, but I figured I would just write you to see if you had any availability tomorrow to talk about what we spoke about a few months ago. And I wrote back, I've literally never spoken to you before in my life. How are you going to call me? How are you going to call me when you don't have my number? I was like, I was like, You may have the best thing ever, but I'm going to tell you right now, I will never buy from you because you lied to me. There's a lot of that going on, too.

We're all in sales, right? You're an entrepreneur, you're in sales. And it's often those who are in sales admire other people's persuasiveness. Yes. Or their sales pitch or whatever else tells the most. It's like you're okay with someone knocking on your door. Yeah. I'm the same way. I'm like, if you can get past my no soliciting sign, all that, if you have to knock on my door. All right, I'll hear you out.

I'm with it.

I'll critique you. I'll tell you what you can do better.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I thought of you as a couple of weeks ago because we knew we were doing the show and I use a certain pest control company. I'm not very happy with them. And then somebody else knocked on my door and said, Hey, I was just over there servicing so and so.

Right.

And I wanted to come introduce myself. I said, I know they use the same company I use, so why don't we start over? Yeah, you got it. I was like, I know for a fact because I saw their little post on their... Right. It goes, So let's start over, man. I'm going to give you another opportunity to start. Hey, I'm just canvassing the area. I do have some homeowners in this neighborhood that I do service. I said, That is true because I see you. We had this great conversation, and I was like, I'm good, man. And he's like, You sure? I'm like, I have one problem, and if you can fix it, I'm all in. I go, My pool cage. My current pest control company says they can't spray for these spiders. He goes, Oh, we treat them. We go around like ghost birds. I'm like, Can you show me what you're talking about? Boom, hired them on the spot. But we had this conversation, and I was open. I was open to him because he knocked on my door and I answered. And I think there's a lot we can learn from that. Just be open people.

Just because they're knocking on your door doesn't mean they don't have any value. He had a solution for this problem that my wife is consistently upset about. I felt like I won the war that day. My wife got home. I was like, guess what I did for you today? Totally. I fixed your spider problem.

You know what's funny, too, is, man, if you're truly self-interested, never They're a lie because the relationships are long term. The way you get more business, not just from one individual, but it's from their neighbors by real referrals. Say, I see some people, and it's just like the early on in their sales and they think, Oh, I can just say this, and hopefully they'll believe it. It's like, well, if you're servicing other people in the neighborhood, why would you say this neighbor is doing it? Just say, hey, I've got about 10 other neighbors in the neighborhood that we're treating.

I'm trying to build my portfolio here in Westbrook. What's up? Let's do this. I want to get into the adversity side of things, man. This show, The Determined Society, is based on determination and discipline. Just showing up for yourself, even on the days you emotionally don't want to. At the end of the show, I'm going to ask you your definition of determination. But before we get there, I want you to talk to the audience and describe to me that building process, right? Because Because a year ago, you sold, right? But there was a lot in between there, and there was a lot of work. I'm sure there was a lot of adversity and a lot of things that you had to work through to stay steadfast in your mission in order to get the end result that you had. Why don't you walk the audience through some of the hardest parts of building this company, personally and professionally?

Yeah. So about a year ago, I sold my business and exited. It had been about 20 years, and I built four different of the fastest growing pest control companies in the nation during that time. This last one, I have an NDA, so I can't say how much it sold for, but we were doing about 500 million. That's public. And the average pest control company sells between one and three times revenues. Usually, the large you are, the higher a multiple you get. So it's a big company. We're in 34 states in 5,000 cities. Third largest residential pest control company in North America.

The audience is googling this stuff right now.

We started out with just one location. And what happened was my boss told me, by the way, I'm selling my business and I'm getting out. I'm selling it for $10 million. And I was like, wait a second. Okay, so I was here for three of the four years that you did this. You're only doing a million and a half. We took it up to about nine million. Now you're going to sell it for $10. That's actually good money. If I was to utilize that same model and I If I don't like pest control, then maybe I'll just go back to MBA school because that was my original plan. So he was the one who originally encouraged me, and there was a bunch of advantage. I had a finance degree, which most people don't have, and pest control. Most pest controllers are mom and pops. It's just like a one-man show. They probably worked for a big company, broke off and started their own thing. And they're very focused in the business as opposed to on the business. And so for me, I was excited about building something, becoming an entrepreneur and scaling. So the first company I When I started, it was very similar to me working in a lab and trying things out.

I'd knocked on 60,000 homes over four years, and I picked up a lot of information in terms of what customers were looking for on the residential side. We love working with people who had families and had pets. That was really our niche. And I never wanted to go knock a door again. I never wanted to go service a home myself. I wanted to study and implement, test different things out, different ideas to see what would work and how we could improve the business and how we could scale. In terms of struggle, the first year, I almost bankrupt the business. So you think you know a lot. You got your college degree or whatever, and we grew too fast. Oh, wow. So I actually convinced my old boss to invest in me, said, look, I don't want to do anything. I'll be a silent partner, but I'll invest into you. I'll match what you are putting in. And then that gave me the ability to grow even faster. And so I thought we might put on maybe four or 5,000 accounts. The first year, we put on almost 7,500. And the problem was cash flow. So when you're paying out the sales reps, they're commissions.

Although you pay it out over time, you're still paying out the money before all the revenue comes in. Because you're thinking, well, these customers might stay on for five years. I can pay out X amount. But if you're going to pay them out within three and a half, and even if you pay out some bonuses, like six months out or whatever, you just don't have enough money if you go too big. And so I actually had to convince them. They all had great summers. The entire country was hearing about what we were doing in Corona, California. We first started out. That's wild. And so, yeah, I just went to them and I said, look, we did way better than I thought we would. Are you okay if I pay you in two months from now? I'll pay you 10 % interest or whatever. But we need to get through this. And I had worked in the trenches with them, training the guys, and they were like, yeah, of course. They're all coming back the next year. They had a It's a great experience. So I learned from that. I said, okay, let's not go quite as big.

Let's do about the same amount the second year and make sure our cash is good. And then I'll have a better idea of how the cash flow is working and go from there. Someone once told me that revenue is vanity, profits are sanity, but cash flow is reality. So I learned that lesson very young.

It's so funny. You made me think of something to you, Dave. So I have another business, right? I have a partner, and we have a payroll company. And admittedly, I don't go hard on that payroll company. I get things here and there. But when we were building it, that's the first thing that I saw. I was like, Okay, we'll get these sales reps. And then I said, Hold on, because my partner was like, Yeah, we need to do that.

Sure.

And he's like, You come up with a comp plan. I go, I can't. He goes, You know this stuff. I'm like, Oh, no, I've got the comp plan already in my mind. I go, But if I execute this comp plan and we have two sales reps at this early juncture, and they get 10 grand in revenue each, we're cooked. I go, Because we're bootstrapping this thing. He goes, Well, how do the company's paychecks and ADP do? I go, Do you want to see their reserve accounts? They have a ton of money, so they pay net 30 on all of their sales. But I think that's That's an interesting point because you're the only other person I've spoken to that had that issue immediately. Like, Oh, this is a problem. A lot of people right now are thinking, Well, I'll just build it so quick, and then I'll pay people some commissions. You guys got to be careful because you may not have the cash flow to pay those individuals, and that would be a very bad thing.

Yeah, and as a business owner, you get paid last. Yeah, right. Unless you also have to think about yourself, which I couldn't do at the time, and I'm paying everybody else out. But even then, if you have a great business model that can grow too quickly, you can actually grow yourself out of business real quick.

That's wild, man. We're on the right track here. We've been slowly building the business side of it. It was just a good show before. We were doing great numbers. I'm like, This is just a hobby. We better fix this, man. We better fix it. But you never want to grow too quickly. You want to make sure you have everything in place. I think the growing, the scaling quickly is just the sexy thing people talk about on social media. You know what I mean? That's what gets clicks, right? Yeah. It damn clicks, man.

Everybody's an overnight success.

Everybody. It only took me 10 years to get here, right? Exactly. It's just crazy. So talk about some personal struggles because you talked about the professional struggle. Was there anything in your personal life that needed attention because you were spending so much time doing this over here?

I was very, very fortunate. And this is something I'd actually recommend to everybody, not necessarily how I did it, but You have to decide. The thing you're giving up is your time. I love working 16 hour days. I was crazy. I got married in college. I married my college sweetheart. That's awesome. And she wanted to be an attorney. And so the reason why it worked out so well was because she was working 78 hour weeks in law school. And then she got this insane job doing securities, fraud, litigation, working 78 hour weeks. And so we both had our Our dreams, and we were both set on, let's both help each other go achieve our dreams. And then on Saturday nights, we'll get together, we'll go to a great restaurant, enjoy ourselves, and then we'll spend the day with each other's Sundays. You guys are still married? We are. Yeah, 25 years later.

Well, I mean, When you see your wife maybe 10 times a month, I'm teasing. That's awesome, man. That's good because you both were in your grind. You both understood your own a journey.

Yeah. And absence makes the heart grow fond.

Absolutely. Saturday night date nights, man. Totally.

That's great. That's the key. It's making sure you have somebody that's on board with that, because if she hadn't been, it wouldn't have worked. It probably would end up divorce because we wouldn't have both said, yes, we're on the same page in terms of what we want. And we did that for about ten and a half years. Wow.

Before having kids. That point, though, Dave, is super interesting because you look at what could have been, what actually is and what could have been or what might not That have happened. Being on the same page as your partner is so important because I know a lot of dudes and a lot of women out there that are married to individuals that be like, When are you coming home? You're still working. Are you going to come home now? Imagine that heaviness when you're out there knocking door to door. Of course, my wife asked me, Hey, what's your ETA?

Yeah, and it's like that. You have kids. That's okay. It's like, Hey, I need some help at home. My schedule over time, once we It did start our family, that question became more common, more frequent. It's like, Hey, I realized I need to be helpful.

Yeah, that's cool, man. It's a really cool story because I can just get a vibe for your energy. I can just imagine you would bring the same energy to what you did out there in the field and then training your sales reps and then training the people within your companies to build this massive success. It's interesting to me because a lot of people are sitting there listening right now, I'm like, Pest control. Like, Pest control. That's not the sexiest.

No.

Right?

One of the least.

But, dang. That's really cool, man.

There is an article in the Wall Street Journal this last year, it was called the Stealthy Wealthy. And there's a professor out of Princeton that has labeled us the Stealthy Wealthy. So the top 0. 1% of income earners, not just the 1%, the top 0. 1%, people who make $2. 3 million or more per year, 43 % of all businesses are these guys. Wow. And so most people write like, it doesn't get a lot of clicks. It's not good click bait. But almost half of the business out there are these boring blue collar jobs that a lot of people don't think about or that just don't get the hype. And many of them are really great business margins because other people don't want to do them. And so it's a really fascinating thing to think, maybe I should be instead of just thinking about maybe AI, where it's insanely competitive or a lot of people say, I want to be passionate about what I do. I'm going to go look into Hollywood or I want to be a music artist or whatever else. Everybody's running into those industries because they think it'd be fun. But what about the smart way?

Looking at other industries where you don't have people, maybe that even have, typically have a college education or an MBA or just the drive to get out there and bust their ass and scale something with more of a white-collar approach. Lots and lots of opportunity.

So I like that, right? Because you're talking about a blue-collar business with a white-collar approach, right? And so I know there's somebody listening right now that's going, wait a second. That clicks, all this checks out to me. I need to not be worried about running to where everybody else is running to. I can run to an area that wants me, that is needed. How would you instruct those people to start? Because there might be a man or woman right now be like, Hey, it's time for me to make a move in my life. Where do I start?

Yeah. So today is such an amazing time. When I went to college, you went there because in theory, they had the knowledge. You could take a business program, go through a business program and graduate knowing business. The internet shows how old I am, but it's just getting started up.

I think we're the same age. How old are you?

I'm 48.

I'm 47. So we have the AOL, the dial up. So you get it? Yeah, I get it.

There were no podcasts to go listen to? No. I remember when Harvard and Stanford first started putting their lessons online back in maybe the late 2000s, and I'm like, Oh, this is so awesome. I can learn more. And now guys, you have incredible podcasts. There's so much knowledge to learn out there. It's almost like, I go to college, other than you're just putting your butt in a seat and you're forced to sit there and learn. But for those who are self-starters and self-motivated, why wouldn't you just go online and learn and listen to podcasts? And continually, you can be growing and learning. So today, you can go on ChatGPT and just ask it, what are the top 10 blue dollar businesses out there with the highest margins, and it'll tell you everything you want to know. That's wild, man. It's easy to figure it out. Whereas before, it's like you had to know somebody that was doing it or they understood business, maybe to go to a private equity guy or something and try to ask them, Hey, what's a good business to get into? I don't know. It's a totally different world. It's never been easier, in my opinion, to figure out how to start a business and to start it with less people than before, right?

Because there's so many ways to be more productive through software and AI.

You made a good point. In this era that we live right now, there's all of these entrepreneurs putting free information out there on how they built their business. It's funny. I don't know if you know, but you know who Andy Fursella is? I don't. So he owns First Form. It's a number one online supplement company in America, and he's viral. He had a very good podcast called the MF CEO Project. And yes, MF, yes, because he is the MF and CEO, he said. But he and Von Köhler went through the whole journey of building First Form and how he did it, like sleeping on a mattress, painting lines in a parking lot. He was such a great storyteller, such a fantastic storyteller Teller, the struggle. Him and his buddy that owned the first supplement superstore, they took turns sleeping on the mattress because they weren't going to sleep there together. They're like, We're not doing that. But he went through everything. He told all. That's still my favorite podcast to date. They sunsetded it, and he started another one, but they're bringing that one back. They're now recording to bring that back back again. The thing that I loved about it is exactly what you're doing, and you're giving people this information of how you built this.

Like, literally, here's what I did. I tell people this all the time because I learned from Andy, You want to know how to build a show? Here it is. You're not going to go do it. I know you're not going to go do it because it is intensive. But for those that are, I'm here for it. But I really loved listening, and that's what inspired me to start this. It was right around COVID, but not everybody and their brother had a podcast just yet. I got in right before. Now everyone's got one. But the point is, to what you were saying, I took time and I listened to a podcast. It helped me sort my mind. It helped me sort my feelings. I didn't know what I wanted to do at that point. But the moment I went deeper on myself, all those answers came to me, and then I applied those principles. We're doing pretty damn good. But the amount of information out there for people, you can't be stuck. You can't be stuck. Chatgpt can write your workout program for you. It can write your nutrition. It can tell you your macros, everything, because it's all based on SEO.

This is all information. What other tips would you give someone right now that has just started their business in a high margin area, but But they're tightening it up a little bit. They need some help. What would you say?

Yeah. So one, just based on what you said, it reminds me of that point, knowledge is power. They say that, and I'm always like, it's potential power. Because if you don't have the inertia or the energy and the drive to go put it into action, it means nothing. And that's why this super skillset today, it's not the knowledge. It's almost like, yeah, you just got to know where to get the knowledge.

I think it's applied It's applied knowledge, man.

Yeah, it is. Like, applied knowledge. The difference in my mind is that drive that you have, that ambition. It's the ability to become obsessed about something and just keep noodling on it and thinking about it and tweaking it And working it and making it better and better. So as far as for other entrepreneurs who are maybe out there, maybe you have a single location or you've got a little bit of traction. How do you improve it? The biggest gap I see is how to scale. So That first company, I realized I didn't have enough money. I was going bankrupt on the first one. And so after four years, I sold it. I have an NDA on that one, too. But Forbes said I sold it for 13 million. And now I didn't just have $600,000. Now I had millions of dollars to be able to invest and expand. And so then we expanded. The first company, it was figuring out how to scale, or it was figuring out the model in order to be able to scale. And so a lot of people asked me, well, how do you know if you have a scalable I'm like, take a 30 day vacation.

And if you come back and your business is still there, you're ready. You're ready. Scaling, I know it doesn't sound sexy, but it's creating training manuals, right? And it's training job descriptions and getting all that secret sauce. It's creating that recipe for the secret sauce so that you can scale what made you great at that single location. And And the problem is it's not the big things that hold us back. It's a small thing, it's just entrepreneurs. A lot of people, they want to work in the business as opposed to on the business.

This is one that's really good, right? Because, explain that to the audience, because I know a lot of individuals that struggle with this, and sometimes I get really caught up in this one, too. So this is a real thing.

Yeah. So the problem is it's a function of time. So I divide my time into A's, B's, and C's. A is something that's really important, but not urgent. A, is something that's somewhat important, somewhat urgent. And then C, it's urgent, but it's not important. So a C might be paying bills. It's urgent. You got to pay your bills, but it's not that important for you to do it. You can hire somebody else to do it, or obviously, just set up on auto pay.

Yeah, right.

And then maybe a B might be hiring people. It's critical. You got to hire the right people, but can you train somebody else to do that for you so that they're hiring? You create standards, you create what your values are. Here's the job description in terms of what they need to have, but also help them analyze the body language and how they communicate. So you really get great people. But you can train somebody else to do that. You don't have to do that. And then you have your A's, like strategy, or coming up with a new product or service line, figuring out how to make your business more efficient, more productive, more profitable. Those Those are the most important things. And so as an entrepreneur, you should focus only on your A's. Like, get your Cs and your Bs dialed in, where you hire people to do those things for you, but maximize your time. Ask yourself the question, what is the best use of my time right now? That's the question I always ask myself.

I love that. Thank you for sharing that, because we recently, I stopped worrying about my Bs and Cs. I'm only worried about the As, and it's the first time I've ever heard it explained like that. But My wife and I and my partners were sitting down, I'm like, This is everything that I'm doing every single day, and I can't because the actual conversations are in a struggle. I cannot grow this company. I cannot grow this show. I'm worried about B and C. We got to put some guardrails in. We got to figure out who's covering what, what the responsibilities, right? Then we need to hire maybe one or two people so they can go take care of this. We hired one We hired my buddy Dan. That was my boss at Paychecks. Turned to be one of my best friends ever. He has a brother to me. Now, he's transitioned out of corporate, and I hired him. Perfect. First official hire. Great hire. It's pretty cool.

You know what's funny, too, is we feel productive when we're doing Bs and Cs, but it's the wrong feeling. You still feel productive when you're doing things and you feel like this animal of productivity. It's just that you're not focused on the right things. And what happens is you become this glorified manager. You can hire a manager to do all those things. And there's nothing wrong with that position, but you just have to decide if I really want to scale, what does that need to look like? And so for my second company, that's what the focus was. I took my four most loyal managers We went to four different states, and I said, okay, the next step, I want to see if we can actually scale this recipe that we created. Scaled that one in over another few years, and then sold that business, too. Why? I needed more money to grow faster. And because I was in a blue-collar industry, I wanted to take that white-collar approach. I finally now I had tens of millions of dollars to be able to invest in the company. And so I started thinking, okay, what can I do?

Because I'm not learning a lot from pest control at that point anymore. So I started looking at Silicon Valley because tech companies started... 2000, everything was in the pot. People weren't as excited to go into tech anymore. And that's why I was looking at best in banking. But then And towards 2010, things were starting to pick up again. And so I started looking at Silicon Valley going, what can we do? And so I went toward Google, went to Metta, the Nike headquarters, Zappos. And I started studying all these different headquarters and amenities and things they were doing. Because to attract the very best talent, tech had to get software developers in there. And so they had these really amazing facilities. And so I said, all right, I'm going to start doing that. I don't care what every other pest control company is doing. We're going to put in an NCAA basketball court.

That's cool, man.

We're going to have a movie room and a ping pong, foosball, pool tables, a golf simulator. And we're going to make our headquarters look really cool because the issue we're having is I'm like, look, we're going to grow into thousands of cities. I need to get the talent here. And a differentiating factor because nobody else is doing it. I can make our headquarters look really sexy. We can We have really cool company retreats. We started going initially to Hawaii, we went to Caribbean, then we started doing Egypt and Africa, Australia, all this really cool stuff. We had a lot of college kids, and so they were super excited to see the world. And these trips were legendary. We Like skydive on a plane, swim with sharks.

You went skydiving?

Oh, yeah. If you signed up with us to come back the next summer to sell.

You had to skydive?

We all were going skydiving together.

Oh, my God.

My turdy, granted, I didn't have an house attorney at the time. But later they're like, you might want to rethink this one because something happens.

Can't throw them in a cage with sharks, dude. You just can't do it.

It was always part of our thing, but it's really a question of how do you differentiate and make it interesting. Then we got into software. And we recently sold the company, we had 60 different software developers at our company. And so we started thinking more tech and how to make the business more... How to make the sales productivity go up, how to make it more profitable, All those sorts of things. So we just kept thinking of different ways to differentiate the business. And as far as scaling goes, we really nailed it on the second company. It's like, okay, we've got a model. Let's keep growing. Let's create core values so that we can stay the same. It gets harder and harder as you grow a business. It gets bigger. It used to be what would Dave do, but then it's like, what should the company do as a whole? And so by creating core values and picking out key managers for each location, That's how you replicate yourself.

It's really smart. What's the biggest lesson that you learned in growing all those companies? I'm sure there's a thousand lessons.

There's thousands. I think As we got bigger and bigger, it's really critical that you're hiring the right people. Everything comes down to hiring. If you want to be able to continue to build it, you can't build it on a sanity foundation. And so the core values and the people, the metrics are easy to figure out. I'd probably say the number one thing is never stop growing. Don't just build a bigger business, but build a better one. That should be the focus. If you decide that you're big enough or that you've always done something a certain way or that you're good enough because you're just the biggest in the industry, that's when things start to go downhill. I always say there's a startup, a scale up, and a screw A startup, you're just getting going. The scale-ups, when you're starting to scale across the country, you really get bigger. But the screw-ups, you've seen it in almost every company that gets really big. They start to rest on their laurels. And if you lose that entrepreneurial edge, it's really hard. If you stop in business, it's not like you're just stopping. You're actually going backwards because all the other competitors are moving forward.

They're moving at light speed because they're still hungry. It's really interesting because that right there is something that I refuse to fall into. And so as you grow, when you were doing really, really well, people will come up to you that, Man, I'm really proud of you, man. You must be really proud. Is it enough yet? And you're like, I'm just getting started. This is nothing yet. So when people come to me and say, Wow, you've grown. You'll go, Look at this, what you're doing. This is incredible. Sitting down with people like Jay Lionel, I'm like, Okay. You're not happy? I'm like, No, I'm happy, but this ain't it. I'm nothing. I think that's a healthy mindset. It is. I think there's a lot of people out there that say, No, you should always think very highly of yourself. I do when I put in the work. I get very proud of myself, but I also don't sit idle. So someone comes up to me and is like, Man, you're number two on Apple or number two trending on Spotify. Yeah. Okay. Today, yeah, cool. But my point is this. To me, I still see the dude that was recording in the car.

I think every entrepreneur needs to never let go of that beginning entrepreneur in them. That is the most powerful place you can be, is still seeing yourself as the dude or the gal recording in an SUV because it's the only quiet spot you can find. Let everybody else sing your praises. But me, I'm just that dude.

Yeah. Never forget where you came It's like pride cometh before the fall. I was always worried that if I didn't stay humble and just keep working and grinding and trying to figure it out, I really believe only the paranoids survive. You have to have that mentality in order to, if you're number two now, a year or two from now, you still want to be in that spot or number one. You can't rest on your laurels.

It's so hard to explain because sometimes my wife, she'll be like, I don't understand why you're so paranoid about this. You're good. You don't stop working. You keep going. You don't have to worry about you. I know, but what if? So I got to be ready for these what ifs, and I have to foresee things that may or may not come. And I think that is also being really locked in and having intuition about what you're doing. And you can only be that way if you're truly obsessed with it because you connect with it.

Well, that's a great point, obsession. People often ask, what is the one skill you have to have as an entrepreneur or the most important skill? I always say it's obsession. You have to be able to dig in and just no matter what happens, if it's just passion, passion comes and goes. It's like the first part in a relationship. It's exciting and the chemicals are flowing. You want to be around each other all the time. And after a couple of years, scientists say that that wears off, and then you're with each other.

All right, this is it.

This is the deal. We got to figure out how to work together. And if we want to have a family and build something, then That's about commitment and sticking to it and being obsessed about the relationship, working on it continually.

That word obsessed.

Assuming it's good enough and just letting it go to the wayside.

Obsession is a funny word. People love to bag on obsession. You're obsessed. You're obsessed. Negative connotation everywhere. I know. With that word. Is it meant to be negative?

Every high achiever I've ever spoke to, that's exactly what they say. They're like, I'm just obsessed. I'm obsessed about the process, what that looks like, how to get better. I went on a spring break with one of our family friends. His name's Ryan, but his stage name is Cascade. He's a famous DJ.

I know who he is.

Ten millions of dollars a year or whatever.

He just name dropped Cascade. I went on vacation with Cascade.

We were sitting on this beach in Fiji, and I'm like, so how did you get to where you are today? What was it really? What's the secret sauce to what you do? Because I actually don't listen to a lot of DJs. I like music, but that's not something I'm super into.

My wife does.

And he's like, I just stuck with it. He's like, there are so many other DJs out there that were better than me, but it's a hard life getting into it and just going. And he's like, I just never gave up. He's like, 20 years later, here I am.

Yeah, he's a man, dude. He's big. He's a big DJ. That's the point, though. People always go, and I mentioned this on another show this week. People always say, well, be careful because only one % of people are successful at this. It's like, But why is that? Is it because it's impossible? No, it's because 99 % of the other people just quit. They just stopped. They just stopped going for it. You have to be able to stick with something. You have to be able to be like, All right, I'm in this. Can I do this every day? If I would never make a dime, would I like having conversations in front of a camera on a microphone? Hell, yeah. Why I get to learn about somebody. I get to learn your whole... Most of your journey right now. I can't fit it all into an hour, but I get to learn about you. I'm obsessed with this process of getting to sit down with people, hearing their stories, and seeing how we're similar. That's a main passion. But never giving up is super important. People quit me. What's that book, Three Feet from Gold? Have you heard about that one?

I don't know if I have. I've read hundreds of books. A lot of network marketing companies use the reference this book because they want you to keep prospecting and sliding into DMs and getting people to watch your video. But essentially this one guy stopped digging. They were trying to find the gold, stopped digging. Somebody else came in, dug three feet. Gold. Right. Like, literally, you don't know. You better exhaust every option. If you're going to quit on something, you have to know, you have to be okay. If somebody else hits it, I can have no reaction because I'm just done. But, dude, it's so funny because I laugh and I get specious because somebody's so big as Cascade. What's your secret to your success? Just kept going.

Yeah. And I feel I like that, too. I just kept sticking with it. I had a college professor, and I said, we were talking about, how do people create lots and lots of wealth? And He said, over my lifetime, what I've seen, I've studied thousands of businesses. You have an entrepreneur, he just sticks, or he or she, he just sticks with it long term. And they'll go all the way in their '60s, '70s, '80s grinding, and they'll build billions of dollars of wealth. And it's like, oh, yeah. Well, if they'd quit after 10, 20 years, then they may have had hundreds of millions or whatever.

It's funny because you always You always get the question, right? I don't know. It's funny to me because people always push back on this part, and I don't understand it. I just don't understand. They're like, no, give me the real... You're saying, stick with it. Give me the real story. What did you do? I'm like, this is it. Why does there have to be a drawn out answer? It's like, this is the most simple, direct approach. Don't stop.

Yeah. And every waking minute, I'm thinking about it. I'm totally focused on it. And maybe it depends on your life, right? I think of the same, I think of the word workaholic. It's like it's this negative thing, but every manager loves a workaholic, or every entrepreneur is a workaholic, but it's times and seasons in your life when you can dedicate it. It becomes negative when it's pulling you maybe away from your family. It's like you need to have certain priorities or whatever, and you have to learn how to scale back to it.

That's definitely not helpful when you're taking your time so much time away from your children, and they don't know you, you're not there to parent. I think that needs to be reworked, but you can still be obsessed and still be a mom or a dad and be an amazing present parent and still be a workaholic. Because from the guardrails of 8: 00 to 3: 00, I'm locked in. But when I go home from 3: 00 to about 7: 00 or 8: 00 or 8: 30, it's them.

When you start out, you're young and you don't know crap. And your advantage is working crazy hours because you got to accumulate all that knowledge. And then 10 years down the road, now you're a lot smarter and you have more experience, and you can lean on your experience while you start to step back as you start to have a family and you need to spend more time outside of the office. It's like, I got the experience to run circles around these younger ones. But the ones who are working crazy hours and gaining that knowledge, they're going to be your boss someday.

Absolutely, man.

Or go be an entrepreneur or something else.

Well, listen, man, I know. Oh, shoot, man, you got to get going to the airport We'll get to it soon, buddy. But before we in the show, I want to ask you the one specific question. The word determination to me is super important. And for me, what it means is doing what you said you were going to do no matter how you feel emotionally at that time. I don't believe determination Determination is this gritty, sexy thing that everybody thinks it is. It's just showing up. If you can't put your shoes on, just put one of them on. That is determination, and your determination is going to look different every single day. What is your true definition of determination?

I tend to think as I've gotten older, I started to analyze myself a lot more, asking questions like, why did I do what I did? And when you start to go back, most therapists will say, we'll go back and look at your childhood. That'll probably give you the majority of the answers for what you're looking for. And I had this theory that every entrepreneur has a chip on their shoulder about something. I found that most high achievers, they didn't come from easy circumstances. There was something that was hard, and then it later drove them. And for me, it was actually my parents almost lost their home when I was a kid. And my mom I, it, slipped and told me about it when my dad was gone five days a week traveling. It scared me to death, and I never talked about it with them. But I realized at a young age, I needed to have financial control. I got a job when I was 14, at a pizza parlor at 15 working at McDonald's, then working a bunch of construction jobs, all that thing, just trying to have extra money to support myself. I think you have to decide what is that one thing that drives you.

And For a long time, I didn't quite realize it was that. But as I got older, I started to look back, and for a long time, I was just having fun working my ass off, just thinking, Oh, this is what successful people do. But I realized many of my other friends, that wasn't as important to them. I had to figure out what is it that's driving me? And do I really need to be running as hard, maybe, as I was. Right. Exactly. After 20 years, when I finally decided to sell, I really felt like I'd learned everything I was going to learn from that industry, and I was starting to get bored. I was already getting bored when I became chairman and founder of my last company. And I just said, you know what? I think there's other things I can learn, other industries I can go explore. There's new things for me to go seek out. But if you actually can know what it is that drives you and know you're good with that, you can really lean on that chip. Somebody else told me that chips put chips in people's pockets.

They do, man. I got a creator I have a size chip on my shoulder, man. It's just the way it is. I know how to work through it better now because before it was more of a... I was so in a lot of trauma. Basically, what it was is If you don't make it as a baseball player, what are you going to be? You don't have any other skills. Sure. So now it's like, Hold my bear. Watch this. You can't make money on your voice. Watch me.

There's nothing It's like gasoline on a fire when somebody else tells me, You can't do this. You can't do that. It's too hard. It's impossible. Only the one % of one % can pull that off. Watch me. Watch.

Grab your popcorn, dude, because you're going to be watching for a very long time. And for me, it's always that. It is if I'm ever slided in such a way, if someone says something to me in a certain way and minimizes what we've built, I will never forget that. I will never forget that. I will work endlessly to make you see me wherever you go. Like, literally, every time you open up your phone, I'm going to be there. My face, I'll never say anything to those people. But I'm going to win so much that it makes you think, damn, I was wrong.

Yeah. You just put your head down.

I just put my head down and go.

Let your work speak for itself.

It's funny. I remember real quick, and I know you had something to say, but we were at an annual meeting when we were with Paychex. My wife was in the Miami office. I was in the Fort Myers office. We're both sales reps. That's how we met. And we had a new one come in, a new sales rep come in. We're good friends to this day. We don't see each other talk much, but when we do, it's like, what's up, man? I was standing there with my wife. We weren't married yet. He comes up and he comes up, and introduces himself to me. He's like, nice to meet you. He's like, I'm going to beat your ass this year. I just looked at him. I'm like, okay, that's all I said. My wife goes, You have no idea what you just did. You just put jet fuel in an engine. He's going to bury you. I operate like that. I don't know why, but I've learned to deal with in a healthier manner now because before, it would tear me apart. I would be quiet on the outside, but on the inside, I was so angry and just felt like just disrespected.

And I just had to just pound my chest and win. Now I just do it silently.

If you want to supercharge your business, have a villain. Find a competitor that you want to compete against that has maybe said, talk crap about your company or to hurt you in some way, it'll drive you like crazy to build the business. We've done the fastest in those times over my career.

I got some villains. I got some villains, man.

The one other thing I'd say is in terms of trauma, I really think that the secret is looking it as a gift. Because the big question in my mind is, would I have done what I did without it? And so for how long do you look at that and go, I can't believe that happened. It's so tough. I really didn't like that point in my life.

But made me who I am, and I'm grateful for that, right? Absolutely. I'll just sit there in that energy, man. Well, dude, it's just so nice to talk to you, man. Of course, yeah. It's been fun. When I go out to LA, I'll have to hit you up. We'll have to get some dinner or something. It'd be great to connect with you again. But thank you so much for coming on the show, telling your story, and giving them some real value to the audience. We got a lot of people that want to either start things or do have their own businesses that are just of looking for another perspective of how to build something. So I think they learned that from you today.

Yeah, I've got mine. I'm excited to help others get theirs.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, guys, share this episode with someone you know, love and trust. Go check Dave Royce out on Instagram. Just Google search his name and watch all the interviews he's been on so you can hear more of his story because every host that talks to Dave has a different approach. And something may have been said on another show that you don't want to miss that just wasn't necessarily said here. But again, go check out everything he's done. And thank you guys for watching and listening until next time. Stay determined.