Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - He Turned A Summer Job Into A Nine Figure Exit - David Royce

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

On this episode of Escaping the Drift, we sit down with David Royce: founder of Aptiv, EY National Entrepreneur of the Year, and the man who turned a college summer job spraying for bugs into a nine figure exit to private equity.Before selling Aptiv for a number that made hundreds of his employees six and seven figure earners, David was a broke BYU finance student who sold zero pest control contracts in his first five days on the job. He went to a bookstore, bought half a dozen sales classics from Zig Ziglar to Brian Tracy, committed to 90 minutes of reading a day, and finished that summer as the top rookie in the entire company.In this episode, David opens up about the moment his boss casually mentioned selling his pest control business to Terminex for 10 million dollars, the ego he had to swallow to walk away from a Wall Street M&A career, and the white collar approach to a blue collar industry that built one of the fastest growing service companies in America.We dive into why the secret about unsexy industries is they have sexy margins, the Wall Street Journal data showing 43% of the top 0.1% of earners own boring businesses, and why door to door still grows companies seven to ten times faster than digital marketing. He breaks down the surgical software his team built to knock the right neighborhoods, the customization touches that separated Aptiv from every other pest control company, and why he gave 25% of the company away to his managers on the way out.If you have ever sat in a white collar job wondering what AI is about to do to your career, this conversation will hand you the playbook the wealthy have been quietly running for decades.💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford *************💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.*************✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...*************#EscapingTheDrift #DavidRoyce #Aptiv #Entrepreneurship #BlueCollarBusiness #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit #DoorToDoorSales #PestControl #Entrepreneur #BusinessGrowth #SalesTraining #BoringBusinesses #WealthBuilding #BusinessPodcastSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Back again, back again, in time for another episode of the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, I mean, I don't know how else to say this. If where you want to be is filthy, filthy rich, this is probably the podcast for you because this dude we got today. I'm going to try to rattle off as many accolades as I can because this is just ridiculous. But this guy built a massive, massive home services company called Aptive. He was ranked by Ernest and Young as the national entrepreneur of the year. He has led many companies recognized on the Inc. 500. Glassdoor, 100 best places to work.

American Business Journal Awards, fastest growing services company, America featured in the Walshie Journal, Forbes, Fortune, entrepreneur. Yeah, I get it. You've heard enough. This is like Tiger Woods teeing off at the Masters by the time they lay out all the accolades. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is David Royce. David, how are you, man?

I'm great. Good to be here. Did you get you pumped up now? You ready to go from that? Yeah, I appreciate that. It's a big pump up. Thank you for coming in from L.A. It's always such a pleasure when people come in to talk to us, and I greatly appreciate it.

These things are never as good on Zoom as they are in person. They just aren't because there's always those weird pauses and everything else. But for those of you don't know, Aptive is a massive, massive home services company designed in pest control. And you built that thing from the ground up, and you have since exited it last year, and now you are just out giving back with all of your newfound glory. And one of the reasons I want to have you on, and we're going to get deep into it as we go, is with the rise of AI killing so many white-collar jobs, if you will, through the finance sectors and the projections of what it's going to do through different white-collar sectors,

you know, home services is where it's at. And, I mean, obviously private equity has seen that, which is why they bought you guys, and getting into those home services businesses, I want to talk about that to somebody that's listening to this, because there might be a kid somebody that's listening to this right now that's thinking, what am I going to do? And I think that any of the trades or any of these type services are definitely something like AI is not going to show up

and spray your house for bugs. They're not going to show up and put your HVAC in. They're not going to show up and plumb your toilets. They're not going to show up and do your wiring in your house. These are things that are not going to happen. And the value of these businesses is exponentially higher because we'll get to your opinion on why you think all of them. those things are getting higher. But first of all, where did you start out, man? I mean,

obviously, I don't need the full origin story, but when did you first get started with with this type of business? Yes, so I was a broke college student. Okay. Where's you going to college? I went to BYU. Okay. And I had a friend who said, I made 25 grand last summer. You got any interest in going out with us, you know, we surf on the weekends and then we sell pest control services. And all I heard was 25 grand in three and a half months. Yep. And I was like, yeah, whatever that is, I'll go do that. Now, I'm going to interject here because I should have known you went to BYU. I should have known that instantly.

Because for those of you don't know that, I've got a lot of friends that have done similar stuff that involve door knocking as a big part of their business career. And they will tell me straight up across the board, there is no better school for door-to-door sales than Mormon missions. It's like a factory for excellent, because, I mean, I imagine the calluses that you built up on your mission. Like, right? It's like, if you're out there trying to sell literally religion, you're.

into non-believers, people believers of other face. Man, that's a tough sell. All over the world. All over the world, right? Two years. Where did you go? Where did you go? It was a Panama.

You went to Panama, right? Did you speak Spanish before you went? No. No, you did not. I took a couple classes, you know, in school. A couple classes. So you're doing it not only that, but you're doing it in the language

that's not your maiden tongue. That's right. Yeah, that's a challenge. So, of course, I've got a lot of friends. Of course, you build a coming like this. Of course, BYU. Of course. So we're struggling college student.

You had this skill set already. I thought I had the skill set because I showed up and I was horrible at it. So I sold zero for five days. And this is one of those jobs where it's a commission-only job. So the only benefit I was getting was cardio out of my first week. And everybody else around me was selling one to four sales per day. It's a little bit closer just to make sure.

Just a little closer. There we go. So, yeah, so I was worried. That weekend, it was the first weekend, I'm going, gosh, am I going to go home? Can I actually pull this off? So I went to a bookstore about half a dozen books, all the sales classics like Ziglar and Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, and I just said, I'm going to read 90 minutes every day,

rest the summer, and just stick it out no matter what. By the end of the summer, I was the top rookie in the whole company. Just from applying what you read in the books? Yeah. So if you had to pinpoint, what were the shifts that you made based on what you, the literature you read from what you were doing to what you started doing that made you successful? So number one, it was really apparent.

I was horrible at closing. Like I kind of tell people what the features were and then be like, so what do you think? Yeah. You don't have to say yes. I can come back. Right. As opposed to me like, no pressure. An option close or something, right?

Like, hey, we're going to be here tomorrow at three o'clock and also at five, which one it would work better for you. Give some sort of option close. And then really features don't sell, like the benefits that those features sell. And as I got more and more into it, I mean, there's so many ways to improve your sales presentation, to be more likable. I started studying body language the second year. And that was amazing.

You realize how much of what you're doing is body language and not just the words. So yeah, so I did that. The second year I went back, I was a sales manager. And I brought a bunch of friends out. But I went to go work for a smaller company that was a startup. And I got there and there's no sales training manual at all. And I asked the boss, I said, hey, can I write a training manual for you? You don't want my friends to do well.

He's like, yeah, of course, that would be awesome. And so we trained. We created training video. and by the end of that summer, he had two locations. Our location did twice as much per rep as his, it was the other one. And so he pulled me aside at the end of the summer, and he said, why don't I pay you?

I'll pay you a cutoff everybody in the company. If you train everybody. Yes. And you develop the sales program. You're writing the training manual. And then you come back until you graduate college and do that. So I did that. And then over the next couple summers,

I had about 100 people working for me, my fourth summer. Yeah. You know, scaling it for him. I really ran with the opportunity. Well, they were really working for you. They were being trained by you, but they were working for the other guy that was reaping a lot bigger benefit from it than you are. For sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So it worked out. I was making $225,000 in the summer. Back then, it was like almost half a million in today's money. Dude, that's so funny because literally at lunch today, you know, I'm on with one of my guys. And because we take our top 25 performers out here every month for a really expensive lunch. And we were talking about his first job, and he said over the summer I would go to San Diego.

because he went to, I think he went to Utah State maybe. Sure. And he said he would go down and he would make more money in the summer selling pest control in San Diego than he would anywhere else. I wonder if you train them. Who knows? You might have. That's funny. About half of everybody that did pest control sales for us just because we're so big now.

Oh, my gosh. So when you graduate, you're making a quarter of a million dollars essentially over the summer, right? When you graduate, do you know immediately you're going into this fee? or did you actually think you're going to get a quote-unquote normie job? Absolutely not. So it's the last thing in my mind. I was sitting finance to go to New York and do mergers and acquisitions for the Besson Bank. And I went to my boss and said, I need a really great letter of recommendation

because this pest control thing, I'm not sure how it's going to look. Like I know it's incredible for sales, you know, which I thought would teaming up nicely with a finance degree to do M&A. And it's just like, I don't get it. Why? I don't know if it's somebody else. He's like, you should go do your own company. And I was like, oh, no, no, no.

It's like not for me. It's not sophisticated. And it's kind of funny. Like, I was really, it's embarrassing to say, but it just wasn't impressive to me. Is that, dude, isn't that funny how, I think that's the hang up so many people have with these businesses is they just, they look at them like, what will the neighbors say if they find out I'm the bug man, right? It's a card. It's like, how do you get passionate about it or whatever. I mean, look, I wrestle with that same thing here.

I mean, we built a massive company here by the scales of Las Vegas. I mean, we're the largest luxury brokerage. We have 500 agents. Somebody has a work here for us. And but still, the stigma, I get in rooms with people that are in high finance or, you know, have, I'm in a couple high level masterminds. And the last thing I ever want to say is I'm a realtor or a realtor. Gosh, I just said realtor. I don't know.

I just said, yeah. It's like the last thing I want to say because of the stigma, I think, somehow attached to the job. Sure. So I get it. And it's so funny how, yeah. So, okay, talk about that. How did you get over that? So he then told me, he says, well, just so you know,

I'm selling my business at Terminex. And I said, oh, well, why are you doing that? He's like, you pay me a lot of money. I'm like, well, how much? And it goes, 10 million bucks? I was like, wait, I've been here for three of the four years that you built this business. I know how much you put into it. It wasn't that much.

He's like, yeah, I'm going to take some time off. you know that kind of thing. And I was like, okay. So I started to think about it. It still took me a couple of months to come around to the idea. But ultimately I just like swallowed my ego and said, I'm going to choose the opportunity. So I basically recreated the same thing.

I went down. I started my first company in Southern California. I had him invest into me as well. I had about 300 grand saved up. He was capitalized. He doubled that for me. And then I could call him. It's like, hey, like you need something once in a month,

call me. I just want to be a silent investor. And yeah, I could. just asking about ops or something that maybe I didn't know about. I was really good at the sales side and not to the operations side, but I had to learn that. Yeah, so we did that for four years and then sold that one. Did the exact same place.

Sold the Terminx. But I only sold the customer base with the foresponing technician. I did not sell the Golden Goose, which was the sales force and a key operator each location and what would eventually become an executive team. So I was able to do it again. And then I took all that money and threw it. to the next one so we could grow multiple locations.

They didn't have a non-compete in your buyout? We initially we had a non-compete just in the locations, just in Southern California where we were. And then I ended up building the second one. That was like really learning about how to build a regional business in multiple states. And then Termin X said, hey, we'd like to buy that one too.

Can we buy it? I'm like, yeah, you'd need my money. They bought that one, four percent of it was for 30 million bucks. And then I had tens of millions of dollars to throw into the next company. Yeah. And so it just kept kind of using that same playbook until we got too big.

Private equity was the last one. Yeah, so that's such an interesting place because it's kind of where, you know, we are as a company. And we're at a place where we're too big to get bought by another real estate brand. Like another real estate brand can't, we could never come in here and write us a check

for what our valuation would be. They just couldn't do it. But we're not big. You got to buy them. Well, no, no, no, but we're not big enough for private equity yet. So we made a decision this year right now we're currently building a growth platform.

Anywhere in Compass just merged, just had a merger. So big boy just bought Biggest boy. But they are laying off a lot of very talented people through redundancy. I mean, that's what happens when you have a merger like that. So we get synergies. Yeah, we're talking to a lot of really great people. We think we can help us grow from a 500-person company to a 3,000 agent company, outside of the market.

So we can't do it here. We've maxed out kind of what we can do in this market. But into other great. markets with the southwest. And I think when we get to that 3,000 agent, now we're big enough repeat is to buy us, which would be obviously the dream. You know, it's funny when you start in business,

like you're a little different because you saw it happen, right? You knew the model coming in. But most people, like when we started this business, we never built it to sell. You were never thinking about the end. No, you know, you're just, I'm going to die here, right? Yeah. And not to say that, you know, we're looking to sell the business,

but at some point it's got to have, you got to have an endpoint. You can't work until you're a million. Yeah, at some point you're going to be old enough where you're like, I can't do it anymore. Yeah. I like to retire. You'd like to retire.

I love that on the buyouts, you got singular to those markets and just what you did. Yeah, that's sometimes tough to do. Yeah. It was even crazier. I just said, well, if you want to buy me, then I can't. What I'll do is I'll agree not to buy the specific customers, but I have to still go back in the same markets.

So how did you do? Okay. So the structure of your deal, did you sec? Were you contracting your sales force as a separate company? No. So how did you split that out? We built out software that identified where every customer was. That was our old customer.

Okay. And then we told our salespeople where they could not. And then we got really good at it because what we realized is retention is the key, right? With the recurring revenue model. And we started like taking into account different factors, you know. We knew if somebody was paying their mortgage. We knew if they had a dog, if they had children, all those kinds of things. They'd pay their bills.

And so we could actually do. decide not only don't knock homes that were our old customers, but then it was, let's knock homes where we have the best retention. High probability. Yeah, we know this is a high probability of a low big, our customer is going to go bad debt. So let's just avoid knocking that customer. If somebody calls into us, like, we'll take the call and go service them. But if we can control who we're going to knock with, you were surgically knocking neighborhoods. Exactly. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. We got into tech, too. We were like 17 years ago, probably the first pest control company ever to go, you know, start building on technologies.

in-house because, you know, the blue card business is, they're the last ones to get the best technology. Yeah, they're terrible. People just aren't thinking about it. Yeah. And so we started doing that, and it was awesome. It gave us a really like a frontrunner competitive. So when you did, when you got in the tech world, did you, on your, on your buyout,

did you option that out so you can sell it as software as a service? We didn't. No. Well, I mean, look, I can read your buyout. You don't care. I mean, if you're listening to this, don't. don't care. I can see what he sold for, but yeah, it's a lot. But yeah, but that's what, I mean, going back to restruct, let's go back and restructure the best possible exit deal now in hindsight,

right? Is there anything you would have done differently? You were done to walk away. So the reason why we didn't worry about the software is we always looked at it like it was a competitive advantage, but you're right. Like if we had found a way and said, okay, we're willing to give that up to other companies, then we can license it to other companies and make money that way. But for us, We're like, no, we want to dominate. This is ours. We're not going to give it to anybody. Yeah, we did fine, right?

Like, we're doing 500 million a year. Pest control companies sell by one to three times revenue. You know, the large you are, usually the morning. It's just stupid. This is just, yeah, the numbers are, you do the math on what he just said. 500 million of revenue, 3x EBTA is what you sold for? Yeah. Yeah, well, revenues, like, one.

Three X revenue? Revenue? Revenue? Yeah. So like I can't tell you exactly how much because I have an NDA, but the cool thing is we gave 25% of the company. Even if you're bad at math, you can still figure that. That's a big, big number. That's a huge number. So we gave 25% of our company away to our employees too. It was unique because instead of like taking investors money because I was able to do these asset deals to Terminax, I didn't have to give money away to investors. Yeah. So I could have total control and just give out equity if I wanted to. So we created this, called it a long term incentive.

plan, but I knew on the fourth one that was going to be done after that. And so I said, hey, 25% of the company, anybody who's a manager in the company, it could be like the lowest tier manager, sales manager, can be a ops manager, can be middle management, executive team. Everybody's got the ability to get a piece of this. So how many, let me ask you this, since you can't tell me the exact number on your NDA for the buyout, how many millionaires did you make on the exit? That's a good question.

What I'll tell you is that we, it'll be like my favorite number to know. It was a nine digit number. That would be my favorite number to know. I would say, you know, hundreds of people made six or seven years. I mean, that's awesome. Yeah. Because that is, that is, you have, just through that, all right, forget the opportunity, forget everything else, through that one decision to say we're going to do this,

you change the trajectory of hundreds of families, not people. I mean, some of, I mean, some of the, I don't know, if you're smart, look, I mean, the way that Some of us go through money or some way that we live, seven figures is not going to necessarily, you're not going to buy a mansion somewhere for that amount of money and live forever. You still have to work. But still, what you probably enable a lot of those people to do, especially coming out of the blue-collar world in some cases, you know, pay for colleges they might not be able to pay for their kids and create opportunities within their families that wouldn't have necessarily been there.

That's amazing. That's best part. A lot of people, they paid off their homes, they bought their parents, a brand new car. Like, there was a bunch of sports cars, to be honest, or fucking a lot after that. You're like, go buy assets, go buy assets, go by assets, go by assets. Just buy an asset and then use that to buy the car. Put one step in the middle.

Whatever makes you happy. Whatever makes you happy. So now, I mean, look, looking back now, obviously, there's so many things that you've been through to do this. If somebody's listened to this right now, there's a lot of fear from AI and all the of that stuff about taking away white-collar jobs and what's going to happen, And what would you advise people to do when it comes to the trades and how to get into this and how to start? And what would you advise?

Let's talk about, let's just talk strictly for the next 20 minutes or so about that. Let's teach a business lesson on that. So I think that, you know, this is just one of those things. The secret about unsexy industries is that they have sexy margins. Because not a lot of people want to do it. And to be honest, there's not a lot of folks who have college degrees that are in it. And so there's some unique competitive advantages I had. One, I had worked at a large regional company that was like a $100 million plus company initially.

So I saw how a big company worked for the summer. Then I worked at this small entrepreneurial venture, but I also had a finance degree, just super unique. And then in addition to that, I asked my boss, I said, okay, he had three kids. He's super busy trying to run the operations in and do family. I said, what would you change? Like, where would you focus on the business if you could improve it? He gave me a list about 30 things that I could do. And so I had this idea of why not take like a, a work?

white-collar approach to a blue-collar industry. Yeah. And I work the same, like, I worked 80-hour weeks just because I'm like, I was going to do that in investment making anyways. Why don't I do it to this and just crush it and see how big I can go, you know, at least until I have kids. It's insane. Like, so many people, they chase passion, I've noticed.

Like, it's like, oh, I want to have a restaurant, you know, or I want to go Hollywood. I want to be a new rock star or whatever it might be, right? But you've got to be in the top 1% of 1% to go do that. Yeah. And the reality is, is most, you know, millionaires, they are in kind of these boring blue-collar businesses. So if there was an article in the Wall Street Journal, it said that the top 0.1% of income earners.

So that means you make $2.3 million or more in the U.S. They're part of the, like 43% of those people are, they own boring businesses. It's just wild. It's not something that's really in the news, right? Oil change places, car washes. Exactly. Car washes are super liquid. Yeah.

Incredibly liquid. But you think about a restaurant, the average net profit margin is 3 to 6%. It's terrible. Best in class is 10%. Yeah. Value rates 90%. You know what Port-a-potties is? Yeah.

I looked this up the other day. What is it? 25%. Is the margin? That's on average. It's like you make 25% for your net profits. You tell me you want to go into restaurants? Yeah.

I'm like, I get it. It's a crappy job. I see what you did there. I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Yeah, because nobody wants to say I'm the porta-a-potts. dude. Some of the best ones, it's stuff like that.

Like garbage is incredibly lucrative. There's a certain, there's a certain kind of people that are in that industry. I don't know if I'm in certain large northern, northeastern, you know, places. I don't know if I want to try to get in the garbage business. You might run into a little opposition maybe, maybe a little opposition, which is funny. Where would you, what part of, what, so if you could do it again, obviously, you can't just say, You can't say pest control because it's too easy, right? If you had to pick another trade to go out and start tomorrow, which one would you choose?

Depends. If you're starting out from scratch, what I'd suggest is go get experience in one of these trades. So it could be HVAC, plumbing. Obviously, you talk about pest control. If you had some money, you could do car washers. You could do storage units. Well, those are real estate plays more than anything else. Yeah, they really are.

But they have incredible profit. Marks. Great. Great. So yeah, I mean, there's so many that what I found is best is just get on chat GPT and ask it, say, what are the top 20 blue collar businesses that are out there and rank them for me in terms of profit margin in terms of growth, likelihood of success, go through all these factors.

And you can just talk with, it's like having a mentor in business, just walk you through it all. It's incredible. So when you talk about all of those things, too, with another thing with blue collar businesses is like Cody Sanchez's preach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That, you know. Buy one, right? Yeah, they don't want to do it. Like, the boomers are retiring and the kids don't want to take the business. Yeah, silver tsunami. So, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to take some of these businesses over in those cases. With your M&A background, like, did you find when you were growing your business, was it easier to do it through acquisition? Or was it easier to do it just by opening new markets.

So we did all new markets. We were 100%. That's what you did, new. Yeah, and that was just what we knew. And we were already growing so fast. Like, we grew seven to ten times faster than the traditional pest control company with that growth. Why? Well, the door-to-door model is crazy. Like, it just, it grows seven to ten times as fast. It's just like, say, digital marketing or, you know, direct mail or whatever

other form of marketing you want to do. Hang it on doors. And so we're already going so fast, and we had so much money going into it. We're like, well, let the private equity people figure that one out. It's so funny you say that because, like, in this business, in the real estate business, right? I mean, we spend, the top agent spend massive amounts of money on digital marketing and YouTube and just everywhere. You have to just spend so much money. You try to track the ROI on all of your ad spend. But I know people in this business that will just get up at 8 o'clock in the morning when it's 114 degrees outside, go to a neighborhood and just start banging. And they are always doing well.

because just like blue colors, they're doing the thing that people don't want to do. That's the unsexy part of this business, right? And so, but is that just in pest control? Or would you say any business? Would you say it's 7x faster to growth on the dock and doors? Oh, yeah, I really don't know about other businesses.

But in pest control, it definitely is. There's plenty, right? You can do this for home security systems. You can do it for solar energy. You can do it for roof sales, you know? There's all kinds of things that you can sell. Yeah. Certainly real.

Yeah. No kidding. Speaking of, you're from Utah. Sam that does the door to the DDD-Con. Have you ever been to that? Sam's Door-D-D-Cond. No, I've never been to it, but I know about Sam Tagger. Yeah, Sam's a good dude.

Sam's a friend. It's amazing what he's built. It is. I can remember when he and Bridger were just, I can remember, I thought it was a joke the first time he said it. First time he said to me. I was like, they were in Dallas, and he goes, yeah, I'm going to have this thing, door-to-door-door con.

And I was like, you know, again, the negative connotation. of the door-to-door salesman with con. And I was like, oh, that's a great day. And I'm thinking, this guy's, he's lost his mind. And, dude, what an amazing event. He's pulled off with that thing. It's really great watching what he does. But back to door-to-door.

So let me ask you this. When you're targeting people through, especially you're targeted software, obviously you're making the assumption that they probably already have some sort of a pest control. It just depends. I would say about 30% of our sales were switchovers from other companies. What would make somebody

switch? Because I get I don't even think about our pest control. You don't even think about it, which is what makes it such a great repeat business. So one of the things

we initially did back in the early days, now most companies will do this, but when you get to home and if you look up in the eaves, you'll see spider webs and was a mess. It's like the perfect little, it's almost like you have your little stage when you're talking to the customer.

It was something we could look up and discuss, and we would wipe that down, you know, with a Webster and get rid of that stuff. But most of the other companies didn't back in the day. Yeah. And so immediately people would say, oh, you tell them something your neighbors have loved about us as we get up here. We take all this down for it.

You never have to do it on your own. You're not out here with a hose trying to do it. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Price, why not? Then it might be a lot of the companies that just have a license to do around the home or inside the home. They don't take care of the yard, but they don't take care of certain pests that are out in the yard. And we're like, well, let's just add that to the service.

Why would someone go to the Home Depot and have to get their own products? I mean, that's the whole reason you got a pest control service. You don't want to store pesticides in the house, especially if you have kids or pets, which don't want to do it. Are there certain markets that you just would avoid because of the bugs that are out? Like, I'm from Florida originally,

so I'm thinking like, Palmetto bugs. Florida is crazy. Yeah, pomato bugs are everywhere, just whatever you do. It's like, you know, because when do you think about your pest control? When do you think about it? You think about it when you see a bug in your house.

Right. And you're like, what are these guys even doing? Right. Right. Out here, you see a scorpion in the house. That's the thing that's like, what are we doing? So like what market, do you have any markets should just completely avoid it? We're in 34 state or 37 now.

I mean, we're everywhere. It doesn't bother us. We know how to treat form over there. It just because it doesn't matter. But it's funny because, you know, in the summertime, whenever there's heat, you typically have more bugs. And then there's some bugs, certainly in the wintertime too. But there's usually more specific pests.

And Florida, it's just like year-round. It never stops. Yeah, it just doesn't. Yeah, people that are not from Florida. It's like a different country. Yeah, it does. Bugs don't bother me. I grew up. I grew up in North Florida. They don't bother me. It's a fine thing. You know, it's interesting that I have, you know, a lot of people that I know that are done so well in your industry.

Tommy Mello from A1 Garage being one of those. And one of the things that Tommy always talks about what made his company different was like the fact that part of their SOP was to like call the client when you're on the way and say, I'm going to Starbucks, would you like me to bring you something? Little touches like that. Yeah, Tommy's got some crazy little touches like that. They're really separated them out. What were some things that you may be implemented in your company that made you guys like, whoa, really stand out from that, from the eyes of the consumer? I think customization. So like if a customer, like we'll ask questions, like, what's the name of your pet? You know, and so we get there, it's always in the paperwork. So even if there's a different technician that shows up to the home, they can go, oh, okay,

how's already doing? Everything good. Just ready inside. You know, we're going to go ahead and treat the outside. We actually took photos of pests on the property. So trying to establish value and we're still needed, right? Because if you go out and you treat, everything's gone, do I really still need it?

Yeah, right? Of course, yeah. You know, but pests are like weeds. You can have a gardener come out and pick up your weeds, but in a month, too, if you have all the weeds back. Yeah. So you have to have that gardener consistently come. And so for pest control, you're trying to help them understand, like they're looking back if you're not here.

And so we actually would take pictures of the pest so they could see it and understand where it was. And then we would ask for help in certain instances. So, for example, if someone's stacking wood right up against their house. Like, that's a bad idea. You're having rodents. Yeah, or spiders. It's like, hey, can we move this wood to the back fence?

You know, so it's away from the house. So that way you're not getting them coming in. Like, you're telling us you keep getting into your kids' room, which is right next door. Let's get them back here. Yeah. So in the pictures, they really, they really helped. It helps retention. It helps work as a team.

Because they've, yeah. You prove you still need it. Yeah, exactly. I love it. When you guys were getting ready to exit or you're getting ready to sell out. to P.E. Now, granted, again, you're a unicorn from this because you started with this knowledge and went into this from day one knowing what we wanted to do. But so many people, when they get ready to exit, they have to recast their books. I mean, there's so much work that has to happen

prior to that exit. What was that process like for you when it got serious with Pee? Like, we're going to do a deal here. Was it a siege? Was it relatively simple? Because you had it, if you, if you could have structured something differently from the get-go to make it easier, what would that have been? United States is with private equity, it's never easy, especially if it's their first deal that they're doing. Yeah. Because we were the platform company, we're the first company they were buying.

And that's a tough one. If you're selling to a strategic, they already know what they want out of the deal. They know everything about pest control. They know just a plug and play. If we get your customers, we're going to have X amount of retention. They know how to treat for them

and how long they last. And a lot of times, like, they're a public company. It's like, okay, well, if we buy you at this price, they're immediately the value of all those customers because of this price according to the stock. Yeah. And it's just like, it's a no-brainer.

Yeah, it's real simple deal. We made money buying you. This is awesome. Yeah. There's private equity is like, okay, well,

it's like a full body inspection every spot. Yeah. Multiple times. It's not fun. How long did a process take when you sold it be? Long time.

I mean, it probably took almost nine months. And they kind of told us six months is probably typical. So tell me about when the wire hit? You know, I'd had so many wires it before, honestly.

So this is the thing. People, but that, not like this, this is serious, though. No, but here's the crazy thing. Were you toned up to it?

No, the four, yeah, because the most life-changing event is the first time. So when I sold my first company for a few million bucks, that was crazy.

Right? Because now, I'd never even seen that type of money before. Yeah. And you have enough where, you know, have enough where you know, you don't ever have to work

as long as you live. Sure. You can live well, but you're not stupid. Yeah, but not great. Yeah. So, yeah, that was the life-changing part to me. And quite honestly, each time I sold and made more and more money,

I'm like, well, it's not that life-changing. Like, you know, my vacations might be a little bit better or whatever. I guess I can have a second home or something. But I found the material things are not as exciting. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah.

They're fun at first. Oh, yeah. Eventually, you know, it's that hedonic treadmill theory. It's like, you adjust to everything. normalized to it as well. Yeah. And then you're like, all right, well, what's next? I think I've saved, I have saved more high dollar real estate people with this one bit

of advice. Before you buy the Lambo, just go rent one for a week. Yeah. Just drive it everywhere for a week and understand that when you go to the grocery store, you got to park it way out here sideways, so nobody hits it. So you don't get a door dings. You don't do that. Like, just all of the things.

And after the end of a week, if you're not just like, you're getting in the car to go somewhere, then buy the lambo. because, I mean, yeah, you buy stuff and you do. You get tone deaf to it so quick. And you're just like, okay, this is another thing. I find that for me, it becomes all about experience. It's all about what can I do? I want to do some stuff that not everybody can do.

That's my goal. What's on your list? Well, I've already done some really cool stuff. So we'll talk about some. What's your thing? So, okay, the two coolest things I've done ever, one of which I just did, one of which I did two years ago. Two years ago, we bribed the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt, which, cheaper than it sounds.

Because everything in Egypt is on a stamp. You have to get a stamp. So we've got a stamp from the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt for my buddy and I to go to a live dig at Sakara, which is the sarcophagus complex just outside the Giza pyramids. If you watch, there's two things. There's a Netflix. There's a show called The Secret Tumes of Sakara. And then Josh Gates, who has a show called Expedition Unknown,

claimed he was the first American there, but he was there three months after us. So we were the first Americans at Saccard. And I'll show you the videos when we're done with this. I mean, it was straight Indiana Jones tomb rating. It wasn't like go to a place where, like, there's a tour. That's not what we were doing. That was really amazing.

And then a month and a half ago, I went to the South Pole. Yeah. So more people climbed Everest every year than go to where we were in Antarctica. It was really amazing. We went there and, uh, with you, like, rappeled down a glacier, went through like, I mean, went through like ice caves. I mean, it was, it was pretty amazing. See some penguin?

No, because you're in the interior. The penguins are on the coast. I saw penguins in Cape Town. But no pan? Yeah, because we were no, they took a jet, like a, like a 737 and landed on the ice. Barely, I didn't, I mean, it was, it was, it felt like landing and taking off in a cornfield in Iowa. I thought the plane was going to completely come apart.

That was the scariest. part was the landing and the taking off the jet. Yeah, but it was super cool. It was super cool. Next year, we're going to go to, we're planning a trip to the Donsoon Cave Complex in Vietnam. So it's the largest cave complex in the world, and it's a six-day hike through it.

It's really impressive. So we just caught into that, so we're going to do that. But that's the stuff I like to do, because I want to go somewhere that, I want to go do stuff that people can't do. I'm the same thing, like travel is my favorite. All right, so tell me about you. Let's go. I don't even something somewhat,

so sexy and unique and different. It's more that it just expands my mind everywhere I go. I like thinking through a different lens, right? My wife calls it a feast of the senses, you know, because the food's different, the architecture's different, the music's different, spirituality's different, all these different cultural things. It's just fun.

And then oftentimes I'll bring something back, you know, differently. And I'm like, I don't have to do this way anymore. I'm going to do it. Yeah. One of my favorite things that's ever been said in this podcast studio is my friend Chris Connell said, I've never met a well-traveled racist. That's true.

I love that comment. I love that comment. What's your favorite place in the world do you've ever been? Oh, gosh. Am I allowed to say San Trope? Anyway, that's it? Santerpe, that's it? Just a great place to relax.

Great food, great beaches. You know, a really cool spot I was thinking about when you said Vietnam is in Cambodia, Anchor Wat. Have you ever done that? No, I have not done that. That's fine. It's where they filmed Tomb Raider. Yeah, that's Indiana Jones stuff too.

I know, I know exactly what it is. It's like I got all these jungle trees growing on top of these old ruins and It's like 27 square miles of old ruins that were kidding for years and years. The jungle just swallowed it. Yeah, it's wild. So how often, so now, I mean, I mean, look, what is your, now that you're, I mean, let's face it, you're filthy, filthy, filthy rich in a, in a magnificent way. What is your, what's the day to day now?

What do you do? Yes, I took, I took a year off. I just said, I took a year off to try to kind of detox from all the different things. And think about what I liked, what I didn't like about the last 20 years. why did I do it? And then the next thing, as I thought about it, it's probably something more creative or something more philanthropic,

having nothing to do with what I've done in the past. I just want to just expand my mind in a different way. You maybe use the other side of my brain, maybe have something to be more service-oriented. Not that building a pest control company doesn't, because you're developing a lot of people and providing service in that way. But now I'm diving down rabbit holes,

exploring different ideas. I have a lot of friends that will come to me and say, hey, what do you think about this business I do? or this, you have any interest in doing this? A friend in Hollywood is like, what a fun of movie and TV? Yeah, sure. Just like whatever it is, I'm open to it. And it's been fun not to have to commit to anything

and just take time to think about it. Because the best part about a business, it's the dream phase. Before it starts, before the rubber hits the road, and you're actually going to go execute. And it must be nice to also, you know, what I found from my friends that are in similar situations to you

is one of the best parts about them is they just stop having an opinion on everything. Like my friend Alex, like he says, yeah, I mean, probably, I don't know, man. Sure, whatever. Like, don't you have an opinion on this? He's like, nope, don't care. Like, there's nothing in the world you could possibly say to me that is going to bother me in any way, shape, or form. Life is good.

I don't have to have an opinion on things anymore that make me angry. I can just let it roll off my shoulders because nothing is going to happen. He says that's probably the best part of the whole thing. I noticed that with a lot of people as they get older, too. They're just like, you know what? Like, I've seen everything at this point. I don't care. Whatever you say, sure, yeah.

Yeah. Water, yeah. Why fight it? Like, or why make you upset? Yeah, sky's green. Four plus four is five. Whatever, man. Have a great day.

It's good. I'm happy about it. I'm happy for you. Have a great day. Totally. So you took a year off. You did that. But what's, so now that you're back into just, like, what's, come of your daily schedule.

What's the daily schedule now? I wake up. I work out for an hour. Do you wake up naturally? Do you have alarm? I have an alarm. Okay. Most of the time I'll wake up because if I'm consistent every day,

usually I get like seven and a half hours of sleep. Yep. Which is different. I did six hours of sleep for 40 days. Do you have the eight sleep? Oh, eight sleep? The eight sleep? You don't have the eight sleep yet?

No, I don't. Not a sponsor of the show, but should be because I talk about this way too much. You got to get the eight sleep. Okay. So the eight sleep is something that all NFL, a lot of NFL coaches make their players get. And essentially it is a, it's a cover for your bed

that it has coils in it that can be heated or cooled because it goes to a control unit's on the side and then it uses AI to raise and drop the temperature of your mattress as you're sleeping based on what sleep state you're in. I need it last night.

I've never slept better in my entire life than I'm sleeping on this thing. And it's... Sleep eight. Eight sleep is what it's called. All right. You owe me a thing now eight sleep? Come on. That's another plug for you. I'll tell him you seven.

Yeah, it's not cheap. It's not cheap. I mean, for you, everything's cheap. But, you know, it's a little pricey, but it's worth, dude, it's worth its weight. All right. So you get up naturally. Yeah. So you get the right amount of hours to sleep. You go to the gym? Do you go to the gym or do you have a gym at your house? I have a gym at my house.

Make breakfast with the kids each morning. How old are your kids? They're 13 and 11. Okay. Both girls. Yeah. So it's been amazing. Okay.

They're still like us. Still at 13? They're good. Yeah. We're good. It's starting to change. They can sense it. Yeah.

It goes by so fast when you go from, you go from daddy to dad to bra. And it happens so quick. Happens that you're like, what did you just call me? Why did what just happen? Yeah, I have 18 and 60. It goes by fast. All right. But you get to have, you get to make breakfast with them, which is awesome.

See them every day. They go off and then what do you do? And then, so I'm building a house. So that's taking a lot of my time. Where's the house? It's in Pacific Palisades. Okay. And I've really enjoyed just the architecture, interior design like that.

side, using that side of my brain, it's been really really fun. For some reason, I've always loved architecture. And then I bought my neighbor's property. She was 90 and moving on to a home and bought that. I'm going to expand my art and all that kind of thing. Yeah, and then just taking time, like, the rest of the day is more just looking stuff up. Oh, but wait, Pacific Calgary just burned down, right? Yeah, I just went to an event out there in Malibu and, oh, my gosh, it still looks like a third world country.

It's nice. Yeah. We lost our whole community. Ten schools burnt. And that's the hardest thing. It doesn't matter how much money you have. I can't fix it. Yeah.

And it's been so depressing. Well, the zoning on those sea walls is insane. Yeah. I mean... First mile end is rough because you've got to get the closer commission to pass it. Yeah.

It's insane. Oh, boy. So it's going to be rough. I mean, only 8% of people are rebuilding right now, actually under construction. 25% of a, only 25% of applied for a permit. I think it's just,

it's going to take, it's probably like a 10-year-plus more than that probably that's wild um so you work on your house which is working on that we're really lucky our the new house i purchased had not did not burn we're really close to the beach and we're close but we're about two blocks away from where it went down to the house that we were renting though in the meantime while we bought the new one and we're remodeling it that one caught fire so we're like crap oh my gosh so when we got the news we were up in Santa Barbara and you know what let's just put the kids in school here because we can get them in immediately

Yeah. You've got 10 other schools in LA that are looking for places to go. Plus everybody's looking for a house. It's really sad because it forced a lot of people just to leave in L.A. entirely. We go back this summer permanently. But a lot of our good friends are in New York City,

Miami, Orange County, some of those ago. They're just like, you know, a lot. Well, I just saw our report today. I want to say that L.A. County had negative growth of like 57,000 people for the first time ever. Like, God, not coming back.

Man. Yeah, that is, man, that's, that's wild. Yeah, we can do better. L.A. needs some better leadership for sure. Yeah, I think the whole state could use a little bit of leadership we could take. We had a house in Orange County. We actually just sold it just because life changes. And my kids are going to college, you know, next year.

And with those sorts of things, we just don't know how much time we were going to spend down there. Much of the regret of my 16-year-old who insisted we would still be spending all the time now there. But that's okay. Let me ask you this. So here you are. I know that people probably wonder what would happen if they could just all of a sudden literally do nothing. Do you do nothing or do everything?

What's the last thing you taught yourself how to do or you learned how to do? My biggest focus that has really changed my life is like my focus on longevity. Yeah. So getting the right amount of sleep per night. When I turned 40, I just noticed I wasn't as sharp as it used to be. And it gets worse. It gets worse. It gets worse.

It gets worse. It gets worse. So much worse. I don't remember everybody's name. If I've seen some for six months, I can't remember names. It's like I feel like I have brain fog. And so, all are you doing sleep? Are you doing supplements?

So yeah, I just got, I started. It's kind of like whatever he did in entrepreneurship, I'm like, all in. Yeah. Same thing, right? All in on. All in. All right. Well, let's talk about it then.

Let's talk about it because this is good, because I love this stuff too. My wife's trying to make me live forever. How old are you now? I just turned 49. You just turned 49. Okay. I just turned 54, two days, or earlier in the week, on Monday. on 54. So supplements, how many supplements do you take a day? So what I do is my main focus is,

do you know Brian Johnson? I do. So he's a company, Venmo, or whatever, for 800 million. Now he's trying to stay young forever. He spends like a couple million bucks a year on all this crazy health stuff. And I met him before. He's come and spoke to our YPO chapter with Mark Hyman and just followed him for a long time. And he's created certain supplements. He has a certain stack. I'm just kind of like, If he's that intense, I'm going to do that. A lot of the stuff that he's doing, I was doing before where I had all these different supplements, and it's just easier to buy it all from 10. You think is one?

He actually saves money, and you're just getting it from one place. It's easy. And then, you know, I do blood work a year. And I'm like, okay, I'm low. Once a year? I do it every three months. Do you really? Wow.

Every three months. I'm like, all in vitamin B, I'm low in vitamin D, whatever it is, then I'll supplement. Yeah. I mean, mostly for supplements, it's pretty much, yeah. What about peptides? I take creatine. I haven't gotten into peptides. Really?

I'm a little leery. Are you? Yeah. Like, so I, you know, when Metformin, you know, there's things you could do. Additionally, you could do metformin. You could do Brepamycin. I started doing some of that stuff and then, like, they came out like, yeah, my former's not really what people said it was.

And I'm like, I don't think I want to be a guinea pig. I'll let it be other people. If there's science actually says, yes, there's, and there's enough tests out there. That's kind of when I get into it. But I'm not like the early adopter. No? No. I guess I'm a little more freestyling you.

I do a microdose of the retitututious. guide of your brain. I do the BP 157, the GQU 5, the TB 5, or GQU, whatever that one is, the TB 5,000. That's all in one thing, glow. I do. And then there's one more, uh, H something. But I don't know, dude, it's, I don't, I feel, I feel like, I feel like my joints are

better. Yeah. Because, you know, I hit a, I had a place at like 52 and like my joints weren't that good. Like all of a sudden I was like, man, I'm a little stiff. Like, I play golf and I'm like, I'm a little stiffer than I should. And since the BP 157, like really, I mean, good. Just good for joints, which is great. Help me a lot, we'll say.

That's fantastic. But my wife has tried to keep me to get me to live forever. Now what about the other stuff? Are you a, so like I got really into Gary Breka for a while, so we have his whole protocol where I have, I have the oxygen machine and the EWAT training on the bike. We've got the red light, we've got the grounding, we have all that stuff. Where are you with all of that stuff?

Like I have a sauna in my new house. We have a sauna, yeah. And the cold plunge. It's like, I love that because there's so much data, right, on saunas, you know, because they've had these in Finland and Sweden and these places forever. It's like, I think your life extends like 29% if you do it four times a week or more. It's just nice to have data on stuff. Yeah. Like, I'm okay experimenting a little bit with things, but. The cold plunge thing, I just, that's why I draw the line.

Is it? I can't do it. I just, I just, I say that. As it wakes me up. I feel like so good after. I don't have, you know, man, I sleep pretty good. I don't have a problem getting up. So I'm like, I just something. They're like, oh, see if you like it.

Just turn your shower full cold and in the wintertime and stay there for tens. No. I think that's actually worse. Terrible. Is it worse? I'd rather jump in all in and just be there and absorb it. When you have half your body where it's kind of, it's cold and the other parts are like warm because it's not hitting. Oh, so it's the worst.

It's the absolute worst. It's just terrible. All right. Well, if you had to give one piece of advice to an aspiring entrepreneur right now, what would that one piece of advice be? One who's already in it and scaling, one that's thinking about. about getting in the- Must it, both, both.

If you're just barely thinking about getting entrepreneurship, I'd say one, study, you know, study what a good business opportunity would actually be. Get on chat, GPT, ask it lots of questions, figure out what are the types of industries where there's the most opportunity, it'll tell you all kinds of stuff, look for really great margins,

and then go get experience in it. I'm a big believe you should go get experience before just trying to jump into something. Just because I'm passionate about watching the NBA, doesn't mean I should go play in the NBA, right? True. Especially if I've never played basketball before. It'd be a tough road.

It'd be a tough road to kick team, I think. It's challenging LeBron. I'd say it's impossible, but it'd be a tough road for sure. Yeah, it'd be brutal. So, big believer in getting experience. And then if you're a, if you're an entrepreneur, but you're small, and you're trying to figure out how come I can't scale, I just am too busy in the day.

That's the number one complaint I hear. I don't know how you take the time to write training manuals, create job descriptions, figure out if something works or open up a second level, location. I can't, I can hardly do one location. And my question's always like, okay, are you working like a manager or are you working like an operator? Like you're working in the business or on the business? Yeah. And so many people get stuck. It's good to feel busy, but that's not necessarily effective work. Yeah. And so I have this thing where I say, divide your time up into A's, B's and C's.

A's is It's not urgent, but it's important B's are somewhat urgent, somewhat important and then C's, it's important, I'm sorry, it's urgent, but it's not important. So that would be like paying bills. Yeah. Like you can set that up on auto pay

or you can have somebody else pay your bills for you. You don't have to do it. It's certainly urgent because they're due, but you don't have to do it. A B would be like human resources, like hiring people, right? In the beginning, you hired everybody. You want to make sure you only have the very best people. But can you transition?

somebody else to do that? Yeah, you can't. Like, once you get it dialed in, you write up the processes, you hold them accountable and all that. The A's are, it's strategy, right? It's creating a new line or a new product. It's decreasing your cost.

It's increasing efficiencies. It's strategically finding ways to grow and develop or whatever it might be. Those are things that really make your business grow, or it's, you know, writing down your recipe for success into manuals so that you can scale and grow bigger. So that's my main pitch to everybody.

It's like you've got to get out of the business. I've got some brother-in-laws that are dentists and orthodontists. And I'm like, guys, you've got to get your hands out of people's mouth. If you really want to grow your business. You know the problem that I think it is, man? So many people can't scale because they run into the thing where they go, oh, you know, nobody can do this as good as I can. Right?

So I personally, and that was me for a very long time. I do adapt what I called the 80% rule, which is this. If I can hire somebody that can do it, 80% as good as me, then I'm good. And here's why. But here's the reality of that 80%. The 20% is ego. And there's an excellent, there's a good chance that it's more than that. Like years ago, I used to, you know, in this company, I always kind of insisted on being the broker.

Like I want to be the broker. Just because I wanted to be involved. And I thought that was my magic touch to be in touch place with people. I was like, oh, nobody could ever do this job as good as I could. Hired somebody I thought I could do it 80%. And then, like, one month then I realized, I'm like, oh, my God, she's so much better at this than I ever was. Ever was because her level of patience is so much greater than mine. That's super fair.

For that job, you have to. So I think if you're out there struggling with that, focus on somebody 80%. Because I think what you'll find is they're probably better. The fun thing, too, is a lot of people think when you're bigger, it's like, I can't manage all of them. I don't know how you do that. And I never work less than I'm at a massive company. Yeah. Like, the bigger you are, the more you're.

you can pay people to do those things, and then you can hire even better people. You can hire seasoned executives who have worked with billion-dollar companies to come work for yours, and they do a better job than you. Which is what we're doing right now. And you can learn more.

Like, to me, that was the fun of the thing. It's like, I want to be the dumbest person in the room. I want to learn from other people, you know, at that stage. Before, you know, probably up to say $100 million, a smart guy in the room. And then you start hiring other people that you're like, hey, we're at a massive scale. Like, we can't just go around now.

Yeah. You've got a lot of people's lives at stake. I should probably take. this off a spreadsheet at some point. There's going to be something better than this. Oh, man. Well, that's awesome. Well, dude, thank you so much for coming in, David. It was awesome to have you. This is a great conversation. If they want to, if they want to find you, how do they find you? Yeah, yeah, they could just go to LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn.com. Yeah, I'm actually kind of a private guy. This is my way of giving back.

Yeah, that's it. You're just like, yeah, and I don't do that social media stuff. You're not going to find me there. I stopped it 100% like five years ago. I'm just like, I'm off. I actually removed. And how fring was that? It's nice, because you just have to think of it. about it. Like, I still will use Instagram, like, to follow things that are, you know, like longevity or whatever else. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. I don't always have to, like, constantly follow, update my life. It's like, no, just having, well, in business, especially, like, the business that I'm in, it's exhausting. You have to post up. Like, I'm, I'm not talking to consumers. I'm talking to agents, right? That's who I'm talking to. It's exhausting. It's, it's,

I've read so many books on how unhealthy it is to you for, you know, especially young girls, about a third of more depressed. You know, like, you know what? My wife, like, encourages me. You kind of set the example for it. Yeah. On it all the time, and our girls will actually see it and go, okay, into that or whatever. My rule with it or what we try to stay with our kids is, is, because you're fighting

enough battle with teens of that. That's just what they are. So my thing is, if you're going to be on it, be creating something. Don't be consuming. Yeah, that's fair. If you want to create something that you think is good, it goes out in the world, create something. Who cares if nobody watches it?

If you're creating something, now I'm okay with that. But if you're just sitting there mindlessly consuming, it's not good for you. It's not helping anybody. All right, well, listen, if you listen to that today, you should be inspired. Because literally just with focusing on things that other people just don't want to do,

man, there is gold in them hills. You just got to be willing to go. Don't mind it. We'll see you next time.