Transcript of Psychology Tricks That Got My Business to $500M (David Royce)

There's certain jobs you've got to be able to read body language. And sales, in my mind, it's, it's absolute necessity.

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New episodes every Monday. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learn today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com/podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right guys, today's gonna be an awesome episode. I got David Royce here. He's an expert in pest solutions, entrepreneur, and sabbatical. Based out of LA, founder and chairman of Aptiv. He's a serial entrepreneur, founder, and chairman at Aptiv Environment, one of the fastest-growing residential pest control companies in North America. In under 8 years, Aptiv scaled from a startup to the third-largest player in the industry, serving more than 5,000 cities across 34 states with over $500 million in annual revenue.

With over 6,500 employees. A proven operator, David has built and led multiple top-performing service businesses, earning recognition from Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., and Entrepreneur, and receiving Ernst Young National Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Beyond business, David is licensed marriage and family therapist. Amazing. Blending deep operational expertise with rare understanding of psychology, leadership, and human behavior. Today he focuses on teaching founders how to scale companies, and lives with intention. Today's episode thesis is how a door-to-door rookie scaled a service business into $500 million national leader with building systems, upgrading leadership, and understanding human psychology to teach founders about sustainable growth, burnout, and designing a life beyond the scoreboard. Ah, so good. So good you came in today. Thanks for making time.

Yeah, thanks. Technically not licensed in it, but I do know a little bit about psychology.

You know, I just One of my dear friends, I got to know him really well. Robert Cialdini, he wrote Influence and Pre-Suasion. It's more about influencing people, but he's like, don't use it for bad. But I love psychology.

Yeah, you got to be careful not to manipulate, right?

Yeah. Not manipulate.

Use it for good. It's like the Force.

Yeah, the Force.

Jedi.

I love this. You know, that's crazy. I've been doing this 20 years and I'm still not to that level. What do you think? Well, first, tell us your story. Tell us what got you in the business, what you're excited about. Obviously you had an amazing exit.

Yeah.

So let's get to know you a little bit.

Yeah, sure. So I was a broke college student trying to figure out how to make money to go to, you know, go to school at the same time, paying my way. And I had a friend who said, I made $25 grand last summer. Why don't you— do you want to come out with me? You know, we surf on the weekends and then we do this thing where we sell pest control door to door. I had no idea what pest control even was at the time. I just said, hey, if you made that much, I'm going to go do that. So I drive 10 hours out to Sacramento and show up, and for 5 days I sell zero. And it's a commission-only job.

Yeah.

And the other guys around me are selling 1 to 4 a day, and I just look like a total loser and start questioning, like, am I going to be able to pull this off or do I need to drive 10 hours back to, you know, college?

Yeah.

And that weekend I went out and got a bunch of sales books and then I just said, look, this is the best thing I can possibly do to make money. I'm going to dig in. Just keep reading 90 minutes a day all summer long and see what happens, even if I suck. And I picked it up. Like, I realized like I wasn't closing, you know, I was, I was explaining features instead of benefits. You know, a lot of the classic mistakes when you start out. And then I was the top rookie by the end of the summer. And so I had really, really turned a bad thing into a good thing. The second year went out as a sales manager, brought some friends, and the smaller company I got to is actually Moxie. We talked a little bit about before. This is back in the early days, the second year they'd ever started. And I didn't realize it, but I came from Clark, which is like $100 million regional business to like a company with just 2 locations. And it was a startup. It was year 2.

Yeah.

And so there's no training manual, that sort of thing. Jason was very, he was very into training and he was a great guy, very helpful, but there's no training manual. So I asked him like, hey, can I write a training manual? I want my friends to do well. He's like, oh yeah, that'd be awesome. So do that. Our team sold twice as much as the other location that year. And then he pulls me aside and goes, Hey, would you like to recruit and train, you know, for next year? And I'll give you a cut off. Everybody, you know, do what you just did here for all, you know, for the other location. And if you recruit a lot of people, I'll open up more locations for you. So that's kind of how I originally got in the business, ended up recruiting about 100 people and really took advantage of it. And I was making $225 grand.

How old were you?

I was— I was in my junior year of college.

So just a kid.

Yeah, just to get ringing in $225K in the summer, just like in the summer. And then, you know, I maybe work an hour a day, you know, recruiting friends or talking LDS. I was raised LDS.

Okay. You know, that's kind of come like the best door-to-door come from Utah or Mesa.

Well, yeah, if you think about it, like they all serve— the vast majority serve missions and the resiliency you gain from trying to sell, you know, religion essentially to people, you get a lot of doors slammed on your face. And so pest control is really easy. Yeah, relative to, to a mission.

So you go out, you're successful with Moxie. What's the next chapter?

So next chapter is I'm, I'm in finance at school trying to figure out, okay, I got to go, you know, apply at investment banks in New York. And I asked Jason for a letter of recommendation, my boss at Moxie, and he just looks at me and he goes, what are you doing? Like, you're so good at this. You're like top 1% of 1%. You should go start your own business. This is crazy. Like, why would you work 80 hours a week for somebody else? And so that was the first time I really thought, maybe I should look at it. And then he also told me, by the way, I'm selling this business. I'm going to take a little time off. And I was like, well, how much are you selling it for? He's like, like probably $10 million. I was like, wait, we've only— you've been doing this for 4 years total and you're making $10 million? And I understood like how much he'd invested in it. I thought I have quite a bit saved up, like about $300 grand saved from over the years. I was very thrifty in college because I kept thinking I'm going to go to MBA school.

And then he's like, yeah, I'll invest into you too if you want to go. Just I'll be a silent partner. And so that's how I got started.

And it said 7 years. Was it 7?

So I sold Four Summers and then I did a Moxie. I actually licensed the name from Jason, did that for 4 years, sold that business, did an asset deal. And then instead of, you know, $300 grand, I had you know, $30 million plus, you know, to invest into the business, into the next one. And so what's nice is the asset deals, you could just sell the customer list with the corresponding technicians and they would let you keep your sales force and your brand. Well, not your brand. They wanted the brand so that you couldn't go steal your old customers. So really all we did is we just, we slapped a new logo on the business. We could keep all our training manuals and, you know, got to keep our sales force and got to keep going. And so just, it was like, cash to be able to build a business.

Oh man.

So did that another 4 or another 4 years with EcoFirst, sold. Now I've got, you know, tens of millions to invest. Did it again with Alterra. Now I've got hundreds of millions to invest. So just kind of same thing, but it's really all the same organization over time. And then with Aptiv, I, you know, became chairman, took a lesser role.

You know, this sounds really bad, and this is a compliment, but You kind of look like Gavin Newsom.

Oh, thanks.

You ever get that?

Yeah. Yeah. The hair pushed back. Yeah.

No, you know, it's crazy because you're the American dream. I mean, you are like, you persevered, you did door to door, you got humbled a few times.

Yeah.

You persisted. And I don't think most people, less than 5% of the people are cut out for that type of failure and that type of work environment and just going to when you can't make payroll. I mean, you were very different because you could go out and make your own money if you would need it to. You go knock doors again, right?

That's the one thing you learn when you're out there is like, I will never starve in my life. Like, I know how to sell. And in 4 months I can make X amount. And if I had to work all year, I could. It's a really great feeling.

Let me ask you, I've got so many questions, but I feel like the happiest time is in the pursuit. And I talked to Gina Wickman about this. The money comes and he's sitting there, he sold 87% of EOS.

Yeah.

And the day the transaction happened, he felt empty.

Mm-hmm.

And he goes, I've accomplished the pinnacle. I've got so much money. But he lost a little bit of purpose. I just read this book, A Man's Search for Meaning, for the third, third time by Viktor Frankl. Yeah. And I, I kind of feel that that's why I rolled equity and that's why I'll roll again is like, this is my baby, but I don't want it to be tied up into my identity. You're talking psychology here.

Sure.

So when the money came, it's a— but you had this happen several times. So you moved up, then moved up the ladder. And then at a certain point with about $250 million is when it's like nothing matters because it's like there's no other move. And that's what Ed Mylett told me. $250, you can fly private, you go wherever you want, whenever you want, you can pay for everybody, the compound interest. So what was that journey like?

Yeah, so I agree. I think it's all about the journey because once you make it, you know, the most life-changing moment was the first, the first time you sell, right? It's like sell for $13 million. Like you realize you're set. If you just, if you put it into the stock market or whatever else, you know, you could live for a really, really long time, maybe your whole life if you live really thrifty. But that wasn't fun enough for me, right? It's like I remember an advisor told me, he's like, you don't have to do anything for the rest of your life. And I'm like, I'm not using this guy. He doesn't understand. Like I'm, I'm all about going to the next level.

And so you just earn 6%. Be safe. 6% of $13 million. You're good to go. And it's like, you don't know me. I build stuff.

Totally. It's— yeah, it's— to me, like, we're happiest when we're striving for our true potential, right? It's this idea that, like, you're never going to regret giving your best and, like, going for it. And I was very young. It's like, why would I quit? Like, what else would I do? I've heard that 70% of athletes who win the gold medal are depressed because it's like they've lost their North Star, right? It's like, what are you going to do, get a second gold medal?

Is that going to feel even better? It's like Tiger won the Grand Slam, but he kept going. But I heard that even the best golfers— I'm big into golf— is like, they don't get excited as much as they used to. Yeah. It's interesting because like everyone out there listening is like, all I want to do is be wealthy and some people want to be famous.

Yeah.

And Jim Carrey said, I hope you get both. So you'll realize that's not the answer. Look, Jim, I love the idea of just— I will say people do change around you. And somebody asked me this morning, they said, what happens when people treat you differently? I said, try being a hot chick everywhere you go. You can't— she can't be mad because she's good looking. I'm like, I'm not mad if people are curious about coming up and the failures that it took. You can't be annoyed with that. I'm not like— but you got to see what their true intentions are. Are they looking for a free ride or are they looking to learn and accomplish? What is your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, it happens sometimes. And I think a lot of the time I just— I'm not really thinking about it as much. I think most people have pretty good intentions when they've come to me, but I think nobody has sympathy for this situation, right? If you've made it all and now you're like, well, what do I do with my life? They're like, oh, it's hard to be you, right? Yeah, there's very few people who can understand that. And so I like YPO has been a good thing for me to be in just to be able to talk to other people who, you know, are executives and have achieved some of that success and they can tell you, okay, well, it's really about the journey, right? And like, here's, here's what we're doing now to still be fulfilled. I think that's the most important part. Was it Tony Robbins that said like success without fulfillment is like true failure? Yeah, something like that.

You know, I met a lot of billionaires. I don't see a lot of happy billionaires. I mean, I don't know why, but like, I can't imagine myself on a beach. Like, I could go for 2 weeks. I just did. And I was like, you know, I want to get back. I want to get back in the moment. There's a guy I know that got $3 billion for his company and told me 2 years later, I'd give it all back to get my company back. Wow. I'm like, dude, I've started a family office. I've invested in a lot of cool stuff. Like, I'm having fun outside of work. I'm taking my health really seriously now. Yeah, I'm living the best moments, but still I need to have that purpose. And you kind of went on a sabbatical.

Yeah, I just took a whole year off. Just said I'm not going to do anything. I think about like what made me happy, you know, what did I like about what I did? You know, what would I do differently moving forward? I'm at a different stage in my life.

Yeah. Give me some of those. I think that's really valuable for the audience. What would you have done differently and what did keep you going? What was the fire that lit you up?

It's really people.

Yeah.

You know, you get to a certain point where it's like, okay, you've got a lot of money, so what else is it? And it's, to me, it was always about developing people. And I think it came from that first experience where I did horrible and I didn't want anybody else to feel that way. And so I started creating a training manual for my friends. And then as I started to, you know, build that first business and add on to it, it was, okay, well, how do we make it better so that everybody has a really great experience? And so like creating training manuals, developing people, it wasn't something that I initially was good at. It's just I knew the effect it had on people's lives, and that's what was really exciting. So yeah, over time it was just— there's a saying by Gandhi, the sign of a good leader is not how many followers one has, but how many leaders one creates.

Yeah.

And like, that's probably the most fulfilling thing to me, especially watching so many people who came into our organization, many of them early on, like first employees, and rose up into manager, regional manager, COO, all these different types of positions. And yeah, no, it's exciting to root them on.

It's, it's difficult to create leaders. It takes time, it takes good listening skills, and you need to give way more positive feedback than negative, right? And it's a lot as the company starts growing because you need to train leaders to do what you do because you're only one person. Yeah. So what did you find the easiest way to do that? I mean, it's not— I know it's not easy, but what kind of leadership did you guys— how did you instill that in people?

We really tried to have a great culture. I read this book by Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great book.

It's just this whole focus. As we were scaling, it was really hard to kind of control everything, right? Like, you can't be in every location. You can't just be a manager. You have to be an operator and you have to hire really great people who are going to kind of follow out the culture that you wanted to create. And so coming up with lots of different ways, everything from like hero stories to having like certain core values that you really actually focus on. They're not just posted on a wall somewhere, but they're— you're rewarding people, you're giving performance bonuses or whatever else based on those core values. To me, that was the most exciting thing. It's a thing I think that helps a business continue on and be really, really large and have people still feel good about attaching themselves to it.

I got a good book for you. I'll give you— when we finish, I'll give you my book too. It's not as good as the book I'm going to give you. The book I'm going to give you is called The 5X CEO. I think you'll dig it. Do you know Todd Peterson by chance?

I know of Todd. It's funny because his building was located right across from us and Aptiv just leased the building that they used to have.

Oh, that's funny. Because he built—

that's how close we were, but I never actually—

Yeah, yeah. I talked to him the other day and he just— he kind of built off door-to-door too.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's just amazing to hear.

You know, he actually started in pest control back in the early '90s.

It makes sense. You know, that was really the door-to-door model. Then it got into windows, then selling cable versus Dish. And then like, exactly. I got door-to-door guys now, but it's different. I just knock on the door and say, we're not here to sell anything. We just want to put a sticker in your garage and lubricate it for free. So it's just so you can take the C players that couldn't sell anything. But I love to get the sales side of it. I mean, I'm really jealous of home improvement because they go out and they fight for leads. They build demand where it doesn't exist. I get 34,000 inbound leads a month.

Wow.

So I'm spoiled. Like, we— I spent a lot of time. That's why these pest control companies come and do a shop tour. Like, how do you build that kind of demand? Yeah, but our stuff— garages break, you can't get out, air conditionings go out, the plumbing starts leaking. Yeah. Very rarely do you get like this mass— I mean, unless there's scorpions everywhere, mice, and you're like, you're going to get those demand calls. But you guys go create the demand. I mean, I started studying home improvement and I'm like, man, I'm an amateur. Like, I got so much work to still do. There's so much to still— but I tell you, I get a lot of— I get a lot of like— it gets me going to come into work because I don't do anything that I don't want to do anymore.

Yeah. What, what gets you not?

What's that?

It'd be awful if you were a slave to the business, right?

It's like, oh, I don't—

I just over the, over the years I kept shaving off. It's like, don't want to do this. We can hire the people to do that. It's really rare that you can't find something, you know, that you can be replaced by. For a lot— a big part of people, they think, although I can never replace this about me or whatever, you can.

Like, the only thing—

you're willing to pay for it.

Only thing I can't replace, and I think a lot about this, is I've got an amazing assistant, probably renowned, world-class. I mean, she's amazing. Ashley.

Yeah.

Is— I can't have her call somebody and say, Tommy said you did a good job. I mean, I could.

Yeah, that's fair.

But I want to be able to say, dude, I'm so proud of you and what you've accomplished and how hard you work. So I do have this thing where I'll say I have to do, or I can delegate, or delegate to elevate. Yeah. And almost everything I do, the orientation still, because I know somebody could do a great job, but I like to tell like the come-up story of like—

that's great.

So those are like the things that go to the graduations. I like to be the culture guy.

Yeah.

And I love sales and marketing.

You set the tone.

Yeah, well, I'm like, look, guys. And they're like, you think you could outsell me? I'm like, well, you work here, so what do you think? But I always love that guy. I love the competitiveness. Like, it's a very competitive environment here. This says, this one right here says aspire to be number one. I don't like people that just play the game to play, to have fun. It's like, I know not everybody could be number one, but you can strive to be number one. You can show up in a different way. You could read, you could do ride-alongs, you could ask questions. What do you do now? So now you've, you've kind of been off for a year.

Yeah.

I mean, reflecting back and kind of looking forward based on the rearview mirror, what does get you excited?

It's a dang good question. I'm still trying to figure that out. I think that the dream phase is probably the most exciting thing in any business.

Yeah. Yeah.

So the first year was like, take time off and try to decide like, What really did it for you? What was really exciting? The second phase to me that, you know, trying to climb that second mountain, for me it's probably something more creative or philanthropic. It doesn't just have to be about scaling a business. In fact, at this stage in my life, it's probably not what I want to do to go scale, you know, into 34 states again or whatever. And if it can make money, that's great too. But this last, last few months, I've really been going down rabbit holes, just studying different businesses, thinking what's exciting to me, you know, what's the size of the market? Does it make, would it make sense if I wanted to go get into that and just, you know, do kind of have a different game to play? To me, it was never really about the widget previously with pest control. Pest control was the last thing I thought I would ever do, but it was about, you know, it was about the people. It was about training me. It was about creating a model and then trying to be the very, very best competing at it and turning, you know, a sales force of 3,000 people into this like game of who can be the very, very best at what they do.

Wow, I love that. Well, one something that you guys probably didn't catch there is looking at the total addressable market of what you're going to look at, and Rogers happens to be a big one. Uh, you know what I really got obsessed with pest control is when I heard about Terminix and they IPO'd and what they're willing to pay. Yeah, these multiples. And it's weird, pest control does like weird shit on like 3 times revenue, but if you do the EBITDA it's like they're paying 22, 23x for the right businesses.

Right.

And that was so fascinating because, look, we, we get in the 20s too. Yeah, but we're like, we're heavy demand. I mean, we're recession-proof. We're like, it's a little bit different. But so it's kind of— I guess pest control could fit into both of those.

Yeah, it's recession resilient. We always joke that the bugs don't read The Wall Street Journal. Yeah, it's pretty consistent, you know, recurring revenue model.

What He did this really fast. I mean, what was— I think about all the things that money buys, and the vast majority of the things for me is free, like spending time with my fiancée. I don't have any kids yet, never been married. Hanging out with my parents, they're very healthy still. Yeah, my sister, my niece, my nephews, my dogs are amazing. They were just here. But I think there's a lot of things that money has been able to do, like my health. I got really good doctors. I take all these peptides. I'm like, I've got really great coaches now. I mean, what did money open or unlock for you?

Yeah, I think the longevity is actually a big one for me as well. I got into it probably in 2016, just sort of focusing on— as I got older, I started to notice my energy wasn't there like it used to be. So I started searching out ways and it's like, oh, well, if you work 14-hour days all the time, you know, you better be doing other things as you get older, like sleep and nutrition and working out and all that kind of thing. Supplements. So yeah, that— I think it just makes life a little easier, right? It's like I can hire people to clean my house or do things I don't want to do for myself.

Buy back your time.

Yes. Right. That's probably mainly it.

Yeah.

You can have a nicer vacation or whatever, but I agree with you. I think there's 3 things you need in life. First is a dog. Second is a partner, and third is kids. If you really want to be happy, although they'll bring you extremes, they'll bring your happiest moments and also your very toughest moments.

Everyone that knows me or listens to my podcast, they're like, dude, when are you going to have kids? And I'm like, I'm getting married in January. It's on the top of the list. I know it's not predictable. The days are long, the years are short. How many kids?

Yeah, two daughters. Yeah.

Awesome. I— all I want is health. For myself and them and just experience the world. But they're not getting any free rides. I came up— my mom worked 3 jobs. It's like, I just don't know that balance. And I'm going to ask you this question because we fly private a lot. I still fly regular too. I actually enjoy it because, like, I will say, some of these private jets, they don't have internet. And first class isn't bad. And like, I need internet, like, especially with cross-country. But when raising kids, because you've done therapy and you've discussed these things and YPO, and how do you set those boundaries to not give them the golden spoon?

It's tough. Well, one, I'm giving all my money away to charity when I die so that they have the incentive to go work hard in school, you know, and do something with their lives. I think that's really, really important.

You're not going to switch. It's ironclad. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. My whole life I felt that way. And maybe it's like the American dream concept. It's like I don't feel it's fair if people are just given that. I know how I felt when I saw other people who, you know, had had that in their life. It's one thing to be like smart as a parent and help like pay for school. Great. Like totally understand that.

Or half of their first car or something.

Yeah. And, but it keeps going on. Like then it's like, I'm going to buy you a house. I'm going to buy you vacations each year. And then it becomes, you're a stream of income to them. And it's like you're supplementing, but I don't know. Just never really felt—

How old are your daughters?

Uh, they are 13 and 11.

They're gonna have a tough road. Yeah, they got a lot of love. That's all they need. My dad was competitive, my mom gave me love. They both did both. But yeah, so I never was really diagnosed with ADHD, but my dad was, so they gave me Ritalin in first grade. And then really, that got me right off because he realized I turned into like this quiet kid that had no energy, wasn't hungry, just turned into like a zombie. But I know you were undiagnosed with ADHD.

Yeah, it was the opposite. From like bouncing off walls and like hating school.

And yeah, I know, you know what, either it's ADHD or dyslexic. I can't even say the word even though I'm not.

Yeah, dyslexia.

But I got into reading a lot. But ADHD, like, if you get the right people around you, it's a superpower.

Absolutely.

Tell me about it.

Well, it's a double-edged sword, right? So if you are like, if you love business, then you can do it for 14, 16 hours straight because you're super passionate about it. Whereas if it's, I don't know, doing fractions or— I'm trying to go back. Yeah. My daughter, I think she just— we've had a diagnosis for ADHD for her and she just came home and asked me the question last night, actually, she said, or two nights ago, she said, Dad, do you take pills for ADHD? And I said, I do. And she was like a little nervous about the idea of doing it. Like, would it be embarrassing to do that? And I'm like, babe, you're going to love this when you get older. It's like a superpower. Yeah, it's a— but it can be a double-edged sword for certain. If you look at entrepreneurs, I think 30% of entrepreneurs have ADHD specifically, whereas only maybe 5% of adults have it. And then I've heard that between dyslexia, OCD, you know, being on the spectrum for autism, up to maybe 60% of entrepreneurs have one of those four.

At least I would think. I mean, look at Elon. I mean, look, and I'd say if you're— if you pass that $10 million mark, I think that's going to— the percentages go up, up, up because you got to have a set— like I'm obsessed.

Obsessed. Yeah.

I mean, I told the team today, like, I'm a psychopath. Yeah. And I'm like, I want to pull out the psychopath in you. And I don't look at it as a bad thing. Like, be obsessed, right? Like, dive in and be where your feet are. When you're at home, be at home. Turn your phone off. Like, be all in.

Such a good point. Yeah, wherever you are, be there.

Yeah, sure. I love this stuff. You know, there's this great book by Gary Brackman called Driven, and it's very few and far between. It's 4%. It's actually in our DNA, our chromosomes. And you got the power to change the world. The other people, like we could destroy the world too. The other people don't need us. We need gatherers. We need the farmers. We can't survive without them, but we could change the world and we can make it a great place. And he described that he was sitting in this room and he's like, there's like, most people have a monkey and they're telling them what to do. We have 12 monkeys. Yeah. And you just got to know how to make them listen.

That's why entrepreneurship is so great, right? There's so many different things going on that it just, it keeps you busy and you can have one monkey focus on each thing.

What's, what's one system? Obviously $500 million plus in under a decade. What's one system that mattered more than anything else in making that scale repeatable?

You know, it started on the sales side for me and still like 80% of our business was brought through door-to-door. The other 20% was digital. And so figuring out, I didn't invent the door-to-door model. You know, it, in fact, even in pest control, it had been around for about a decade by the time I got into it. And so when I got into it, I just said, I want to be the very best at this because I can see other companies, they're not great at training it. They're good, but they're not great. And if I can help everybody do better, if I can help my friends do better, I'm going to feel better. And we were all incentivized because we would all make more money. And I just thought, That makes more sense. I hate the wet rag mentality where companies, they bring someone in, throw the wet rag against the wall, see who sticks, and then, eh, so what, the other ones didn't make it. It's just bad for your company's reputation. It's a horrible experience for them. And I almost, you know, was that wet rag that fell. So creating sales training, learning psychology, learning body language, paraverbal communication, all types of different closing vocabulary, That's where I think— I mean, that would definitely be my, my greatest skill set.

Well, let me ask you a question. I think this is really important. I lose 35% of my technicians the first year, then I don't lose— it's a single digit, really small percentage. But I realize when it gets to be 140 degrees or 20 below in Minnesota, because we're in a lot of 23 states, not as we do. Yeah, but And then it's you're alone all day. And so I bring everybody in that was never in the industry.

Yeah.

And it's almost like you're an entrepreneur because you're kind of out there. Yes, we support the leads, we book the call, we give you the inventory, but you're out there kind of— it's almost like a business within a business. And I think what you probably— and tell me if I'm wrong— you probably were really good at seeing talent in people and good at recruiting rather than hiring somebody that never made eye contact, that didn't believe in themselves at all. Like they couldn't even have a conversation. I don't know, because could you make anybody great at door-to-door? Do you believe anybody?

No, not anybody. I mean, they have to have the initial skill set to be able to do it. They don't, they don't have to be— they have to have some of that skill set. Yeah, it's hard to teach drive. That's almost impossible, right? And so if you, if you have that ambition, that drive, you're willing to learn and just focus, go, go, go, and constantly be relentless, like, that's what I'm looking for. And if I can see that— when we would hire people, it's like, tell me something you've done where it was hard for you and you just kept going and you figured it out, you know. And if people can transfer that, you know, that crazy obsession from— maybe it's sometimes it's even just school, but if it's a sport, you know, if it's debate, whatever it might be, you know, just transfer that same skill set into, into, uh, sales.

I think sports works great. Farmers, Farmers make great installers because they work so hard.

Farmers are incredible at it, actually.

What other questions do you ask in an interview?

Anything to just get them to talk. Like, you know, here's a pen, sell me on it. What do you think?

Yeah.

And just watch them, at least if they're really trying. If they sit there and they stumble, it's like, come on, like, you got to be able to like kind of do a little bit of spin here and figure something out quickly. You got to be on your toes when you're on the doors because door-to-doors, it's so tough. Like, first 10 seconds, they're making an impression of you and they're literally going to shut the door on you or they're going to listen to you the further you go. And if you're really great at sales, you can read that person and decide almost within 10 seconds, are we, are we in harmony? Like, are we synchronizing? Yeah. Are they listening? Are they into it? Or, oh, I'm just going to go to the next door because it's so easy. It's just— you can just go to the right, to the next door. It's not about like a certain warm lead.

It's just a numbers game.

Yeah.

Once you get good, you're probably like 1 out of 20 is going to listen to my pitch. I'm going to close 1 out of 40 or whatever.

Sales reps, like, you're probably going to knock 120 doors in a day. 60, you know, 60 of those doors, you know, someone will—

our home.

Yeah. And then of those, you know, maybe you're going to talk to 20 people, probably. I'm sorry, you talk to about 40 people and then you're trying to close maybe 2 of those. And just numbers. And we would have— we'd actually— we had— so we had a whole system like a Google Maps and you could look at every home. It would pull up and you would click a pin on the home and you could see the customer, you could leave notes for each one. We could also—

Is that some rabbit sales rep?

No, we invented it. We came up with it ourselves, but we knew we could get data to tell us because in door-to-door, right, that the key is to the retention. You're trying to figure out how to have better retention. And so there are about 10 different data points that we would collect, you know, from different data providers that would tell us about each home. The sales rep doesn't know what all those things are. They just know, is there a green, You know, pin on top, is it okay to knock? Or if it's red, they're not allowed to knock it.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Because you're trying to make sure they're going to retain really well. But we know who's, you know, paying their bills, who's on time with their mortgage, who has a dog, you know, who has kids. There's all these different factors that play into it.

So it's really interesting. The data is key. I mean, yeah. So do you think— and obviously this would never happen, but do you think if you had to go back out and sell pest control, you could do it?

Sure. Yeah.

All day.

I think I'd be actually a lot better. I think it'd be, you know, rough the first couple of weeks. But having wrote the training manual on it and then revised it every year for years and years because I was so passionate about it. Yeah, I think I'd be great.

I met a guy named Al Levy in 2017. He wrote a book called The 7 Power Contractor, and the first thing he said is, show me your manuals, show me your SOP, show me your checklists. And I didn't really have one. And he said, how do people know how to win? He goes, what happens if your car breaks down? What happens if you need inventory? What happens? Are you allowed to grow a beard? He goes, what if you need PTO? Like, how do you even apply? How do you move up in the company? How do you explain to your wife how you get paid? Like, where's all this information? And I don't like the word manuals. I call it a success guide. Yeah, because a lot of people— but when you build the system, it's almost like follow— I came up with an 8-step sales system that works every single time. Without failure. If you follow the steps, you slow down, you don't miss one, you will succeed. It's impossible not to. I wrote it because I was living it. I was out selling doors, doing the work, and I'm like, man, this is it.

If we do this right, the 8 steps that work every time, and people still get cocky, and then you see their numbers start to go because they start skipping steps, right? That's how you know who the most likely to die of the pilots They're 41 years old. And the reason why is because they're cocky. They've just learned how and they start skipping the steps. The tire pressure is their fuel, right? Check the gages before you take off. Check the propeller because usually they're smaller Cessnas. And that little lesson I learned, they die young because they just started coming into money, you know, Napoleon Hill, later in life. Not that late. I mean, I'm 42, but they buy the plane and then they get cocky. They start skipping steps. And if you could get the steps and you can make it simple, I read some stuff and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so complicated. But you're right. Personality profiling, smiling more. Yeah. And smiling's free. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Exactly.

Yeah.

I love this stuff. Like when you said you read an hour and a half your first summer, what did you find the most useful? The books. What books were they and why?

So books by Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, all those guys, and Jeffrey Gitmer or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Red Bible. Yeah.

And then the second the second year got really awesome, like where I started reading books on body language like Alan Pease. And then there was another one that came out later, Joe Navarro. I don't know if you've heard of him, but you should definitely read his book. It's incredible. But he's a former FBI agent that focuses on body language and he goes through every little detail because for a long time I wondered if a lot of these things I was teaching was whether how real it was, like how much truth that there is there to smiling, head nodding, you know, you know, having certain postures and talking.

Yeah, I talk about posture all the time. I play with the dog every time. I knock the door because strangers ring the doorbell. Yeah, there's simple little things like that. I offer coffee on the way. Hey, listen, David, I'm stopping off at Starbucks. Can I grab you something? No, I'm good. Listen, you come to my house, my fiancée is going to cook for you. Don't make me guess. And I'll make a little joke. They've already got my profile. It sees why I love the company, why I love garage doors. It's got a picture of my dogs and my fiancée, why I'm here working. And just these little elements. Like I said, it's influence, not not trying to manipulate. And then I learned this thing that changed my life. Give options instead of ultimatums. Instead of them being able to say yes or no, you might say, that just sounds like it's a little over my head, a little too expensive. Yeah, well, David, let's just pick another solution for you.

Yeah. And then you got to— I can tell you've done this before.

This is investment into your home and your family and your safety. I mean, I think You should be good at sales if you're an entrepreneur.

Absolutely. You're selling your vision, right?

You got to sell people all day. And then I realized, like, my next Tommy 3.0 is straight up recruiting. I think a lot of people feel like they're the smartest guy in their building, and that's a mistake. Like, what if you hired people? What if you had phantom equity or equity incentive programs or profit units or whatever you want to call it?

Yeah.

What have you got them invested in the business?

Oh, we did that. You know, I give 25% of the company away.

That's amazing.

Create an LTIP, a long-term incentive plan for everybody.

And what kind of, what kind of money did you give out?

It was over 9 digits.

Like, oh my God.

Yeah. So we had people make 6 and 7 digits. Hundreds of people.

Hundreds. Yeah. No, I, I love that. The first deal I did $100 million. This next deal will be more. And then I want to make one more ride. But I'm just being really serious when I say I'm Tommy 3.0. I'm shaking hands, kissing babies. I'm working with endorsers. I'm making commercials. I'm here doing what I love to do. A lot of CEOs take so much pride that they're still in the business. Yeah, I'm like, dude, I want to be able to leave for 2 months. I want it built to last, as Jim Collins would say. Yeah, I don't want to say Tommy's the key to this business. I want to say take him away, the business will thrive because my ego is not my amigo when it comes to this stuff.

No, not at all.

Yeah.

Dave, Dave 4.0. I was chairman and founder and that was it.

That's great. And it's working your way. You said you shed a little bit off every year. And I've noticed, like, I think it's important for me to have a personal brand because a lot of people come to work here. They're like, dude, I see your stuff, I follow you. I wanted to come work somewhere with somebody that's going to be fair. The harder I work, the more I succeed. Yeah, I won't say it's hard work. I'll just say intentional work because I've told everybody 2 years ago, you can work from home if you want. I mean, all my C-suite, I'm like, dude, I don't, I don't keep track of your PTO. Like, they just get your stuff done. If you don't, we know what's going to happen.

Yeah. Hard is like a mentality. Like, hard work to me is working a minimum wage job and yeah, not knowing how to get better. Yeah.

What, uh, you know, there's certain people in this company that, that you ever heard of raising the lid? Now I got to get you out of here pretty soon.

Raising the lid.

So the law of the lid. So what that means is the more I'm able to grow, the more the company will grow, the more the C-suite, the more the leadership grows. It's also working from the bottom Bottom up, right? Like I got a pyramid. I'm at the bottom, the upside-down pyramid. And like, I work for all the people out there serving the clients.

Yeah.

But yeah, the law of the lid says like, I start putting books on my guys' desks. I walked into my COO's office and I'm like, I took off my shirt like a weirdo and I said, what's your excuse? I know I work as much as you. And now the dude's ripped up. He's like 10% body fat. That was like, I knew what he needed. And my job as a leader is find out where the chip on your shoulder is, how I could get you.

Yeah. And then you're allowed enough to—

Yeah, yeah.

You know, because you believed in me, he trusted you. So yeah, you can say that to him.

I'm allowed to. And, you know, I got to work on— here's one question I have for you is I'm very confrontational with like 5 people in my life, but no one else. I don't like to do the bad deeds. I don't like to fire people. I don't like to give them negative criticism. I will— I say I call people out, not up. I call them up, not out.

Yeah.

My question for you is, how do you get great at feedback? Like, what and how many people can you give real feedback to before your bandwidth is gone?

So I think in being direct and having people understand that direct feedback is a good thing. I read Ray Dalio's book Principles. Yeah, you read that one?

Yeah.

And they talk about radical transparency, and I think it's a really hard one to achieve. They actually graded each other based on who was right. You know, they would get scorecards kind of like baseball players with their stats.

Yeah, we do the same thing.

Nice.

Everyone's a scorer. I mean, look, we score everything. It's almost annoying to people, but I'm like, I want to study. Success leaves clues.

Yeah.

Input, but have a little tact when you give it, right? Say, dude, you got to start shaving because you look like shit, right?

So you want to be kind, not nice. You know, like you got to be able to deliver it. You're not being kind to somebody if you're not telling them how they could actually improve.

Yeah, call— like, like my coaches, I respected them before I loved them because they're like, if you're not getting good grades— and a lot of my coaches were like, I just want to make sure you get a warm meal tonight. Yeah. Because they care about you and we're going to do good in the game, but I know mom's still working. And they changed my life because I respected the hell out of them. Yeah. And that's the deal, is they could tell me whatever they want because I knew that they cared.

Yeah.

And it takes a while. I mean, we're at 1,300 and I'm like, we just handed out flowers for Valentine's Day. And I'm like, I don't know half the people I just met. Especially in accounting. I don't hang out in accounting.

I get it.

I know everybody in the marketing department, but, you know, I don't know how to be a better leader. I— and I'm working on it, by the way. I've never arrived. It's continuous improvement all the time. Read the books, get out of your comfort zone. Yeah. What did you find was your biggest limitations when you were the, uh, CEO, the main guy?

In some ways, I think getting out of other people's way. Yeah, that, like finding the right people for the position that they can be even better than me. For a long time, I'd say, you know, up to $100 million of revenue, it's like I had to be the smartest person in the room. And you get up there and you're like, okay, like I'm not going to go learn digital marketing. There's no way I'd ever catch up to somebody else at this stage in my life. I got to go hire an expert to bring that expertise and let them, let them roll and, you know, grade them based on what they're saying they can do versus what they're actually doing.

I love this stuff, man. I got to get you out here to the airport. Let me just ask you a few more questions.

Sure. You know, one other thing I'd say, too, about being direct with people. So the sales reps that we would have, it was, it was a team mentality. So if somebody had a bad day or somebody was new, every day we would do a training session for about half an hour and we'd say, okay, who wants to go up? We called it, we called it putting on your armor. So they'd come up to the front, we'd record them on an iPhone, then we would put it up on the big screen TV in front of the office. We'd say, okay, anybody, if you see something great or you see something bad, tell us. And then we'd just go through and we'd click pause and we'd say, okay, what's wrong? And they go, well, see how he's kind of frowning right there? Let's get rid of that frown. All right, press pause. Oh, see how he dropped the pitch of his voice there? It was perfect. It sounded confident. You know, that sort of thing. Every single day we're constantly working.

How many did you do in their heads?

You can be a couple, you know, a couple.

So it was like 3 minutes each.

It's more like you get everybody in, like kind of get them pumped up, you know, have some incentives for the week or the day or whatever, and then do a couple of these, you know, a couple role plays. A lot of people don't like role plays, but man, when you see yourself on camera and you see how bad you suck or how great you are, you know, if, if you're great, You know if you're bad. I've had people come in where someone was used to selling 6 or 7 a day and for 2 days sold 0 or 1 accounts. And they're like, dude, get up here. Like, you're not too good for this. They get up, we're like, oh, right here. So you're like doing this weird thing with your forehead where you're like, it's like squinting. Yeah, you're squinting like you're frustrated or something. Like, let's get rid of that. And goes out, sells 7 the next day.

It's crazy. I think it's I think 82% of language is nonverbal. Yeah, there's some stat like that. And a lot of it, believe it or not, and you know this, but it's, uh, 95% of our brains are subconscious. So how do you feed your subconscious brain? It's Tony Robbins type stuff. Yeah. How much of that did you get into?

A lot. So yeah, I would write up my goals, uh, or I'd figure out what my goals were for the summer. It was my last summer.

Reverse engineer.

Yeah. Reverse engineer, say, okay, I want to— I sold 500 the previous year, 529. I want to try to sell 1,000 this year. Something crazy because I wanted something that would keep me on the doors working every single hour outside of the box. Then I put it on my mirror. I read it every morning and every night to keep it, to get it to sink in. That gets your reticular activating system working right now. It's on your radar. That's what that is, a system. It, it looks for ways to achieve what that goal is. And then if you're constantly thinking about it, you're constantly like, look, I got to constantly be on the doors, keep working if I want to hit this goal. And then, you know, it's just that action that carries you through to be able to achieve it.

You almost manifest it.

Yeah, manifestation. It's, it's setting a target. It's constantly obsessing over it. And that's that action in order to achieve what you want.

Bree, my fiancée, is always like, why do you talk to yourself so much? She's like, I hear you in the shower doing math. My most common— it used to be my calculator was open all day. Now it's ChatGPT because it does the math. Yeah, it's kind of made me lazy, probably. I used to carry around a TI-83 in my back pocket.

What a great mentor, right? ChatGPT is the best.

Yeah, I talk about it. It's already returned and all these crazy things. Well, let me ask you a few more. What are you scared about as far as AI? And I can give you some examples, like the human meaning. Like, what happens? Like, yeah, we go golf every day, we're going to live through utopia. But like, I still like to do stuff, to accomplish things. I don't know.

I think, yes, there's probably certain industries where it'll wipe stuff out. But I think for the most part, in a lot of industries, it just means you need less people. People to do things and it makes life work easier. I've always like, in school, the concept in economics of creative deconstruction, it's like some jobs go away for hopefully even better jobs. And typically our society has continually moved in that direction. So with AI, man, I think our industries are in good shape.

I love it, man. Everybody's—

I don't think we get robots, you know, to do what we do. And maybe someday that happens. I think it's a ways away though.

Yeah, we'll see. Next year, Elon's working on the humanoid and says in 10 years there'll be 10 to 1 robots.

Yeah, maybe. I remember 10 years ago he said, oh, we're going to have autonomous cars or whatever.

And you know what, he's just barely getting going in Austin, right?

This year.

It's true. The thing that gets in the way is the government. That's why China moves quicker because it could just say, we're going to go do this. But then you've got— there's going to be casualties with autonomous cars, but not near as many, right? As with regular people. By the way, the autonomous car insurance is first year ever this year. It's cheaper. Autonomous car insurance is cheaper than regular. So the regulations got to switch and humans can't keep up. Once the machine starts working, I could download everything you need to know that you would learn through a master's PhD on surgery and the robot will do it better with precision.

Makes sense.

So I look, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll say that. What do you hope people remember about your leadership beyond revenue rankings and awards?

I tried my very best to develop people, like, that I really cared. It wasn't just about the money, that, uh, I was constantly focused on trying to develop something so that they could do better. Uh, and this might sound silly, but I really do believe I created the best summer job for college students ever. To be able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. We have a few guys that will make $1 million a year at it. They'll work longer. Some of these guys are, you know, after college they've stuck with it and they're just so good at it. They might do maybe 6 months and then they take the rest of the year off and they surf or do whatever they want to do.

I feel like I got so much to learn after getting off this podcast. Is there any book that, you know, I could lean to the E-Myth or The Richest Man in Babylon? I mean, there's so many good books. Was there a book that changed your life?

It was definitely the Tony Hsieh book, Delivering Happiness. The one today that's really like Delivering Happiness 2.0 is Will Goddard's book, Unreasonable Hospitality. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

I read that. I'm going to read it again.

Yeah. But one for you, read What Everybody's Saying by Joe Navarro. If you love sales, you'll love this book because you can read people even better. It's a whole nother level to sales that nobody's written a sales book on body language. It's crazy to me. Like, they should. I almost want to reach out to Joe and be like, hey dude, you know, you should do it specifically for this industry because politicians know about it, right? Lawyers are trained in it. FBI, CIA. There's certain jobs you've got to be able to read body language. And sales, in my mind, it's an absolute necessity.

Do you know Chris Voss?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Never Split the Difference. He's a buddy.

Yeah. He just came and spoke to our YPO chapter.

Oh, it's so good.

So it's great.

I was with him, we were just bullshitting, and I go, so look, I've— I'm happily engaged, but what do I tell my buddies out there that are single? He goes, you walk up to the girl, the good-looking girl, and he's got his like New York accent, right?

So thick.

Have you given up on meeting the man of your dreams yet? You want him to say no. He's always like, get them to say no. Would you have a problem with me making sure your door is safe? No, I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, I want you like, get the nose out of the way. Yep. Love that guy. So I'm going to get into this. How do people get a hold of you, David?

You just reach out to me on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn.

Yeah, easy.

And then finally, I'd like to give you a chance to close this out. Anything that we didn't talk about or that I should ask, just give us a little something final for the audience.

Great question. I think it goes back to obsession. Like for me, usually I get asked like, what's the one key skill an entrepreneur has to have? You do have to be able to focus on it. And maybe that's why ADHD is such a superpower, but it doesn't have to be something even you're passionate about. I think passion is dangerous for a lot of people because then they're like, oh, I want to go be an actor. I want to get into music. I want to have my own restaurant. And it's like, well, those, you gotta be in the top 1% of 1% to even make decent money in those industries. Like why not garage doors or pest control or plumbing or storage units, whatever it might be. There's not a lot of people that are as focused on, you know, or obsessed about those industries, or it's very mom-and-pop per se. So if you got a little bit of education right behind you and you're willing to constantly be learning, there's lots and lots of money in it.

I love that. It's been a pleasure having you. Thanks for making the time for me.

Yeah, I appreciate the invite.

All right. That was great. Listen, you guys got to meet David. He's, he's a genius. A lot of— you gave me a lot of work to do. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700+ employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com/podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.