Trading Secrets - 245. David Royce: From Pest Control to Power Moves, how being a door-to-door salesman led to selling his pest control company for over NINE FIGURES, the art of closing deals and entrepreneurial lessons

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

This week, Jason is joined by a serial entrepreneur who has built four of the most successful environmental service businesses in North America, David Royce! David is the founder and chairman of Aptive Environmental providing pest solutions to thousands of cities in 34 states. David’s companies have been highlighted in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. In 2015, David was awarded the Earnest Young National Entrepreneur of the Year award.  David shares his journey from knocking on doors as a pest control salesman to becoming Rookie of the Year by mastering sales through relentless study. He breaks down the art of closing deals, why perfecting your pitch is everything, and how taking initiative—like creating a training manual—helped him dramatically increase his earnings summer after summer. David also dives into why “unsexy” jobs are underrated, how he nearly bankrupted his business before scaling it nationally, and the ways Tony Hsieh of Zappos influenced his approach to company culture. He opens up about his biggest career mistake, the importance of mastering sales as a lifelong skill, how to manage newfound wealth, what he looks for (and avoids) when hiring, and what’s next on his entrepreneurial journey. Plus, he shares his best advice for anyone looking to build a successful business from the ground up. David reveals all this and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss! Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guest: David Royce Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast!  Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast  Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial  Trading Secrets Steals & Deals! ROK Financial: Business owners-when opportunity knocks, do you have the capital to answer? ROK Financial, helps small businesses access up to $5 million in funding—in as little as 24 hours. Whether you're expanding, upgrading equipment, or simply need working capital, ROK makes the process fast, simple, and personalized. Visit ROK.biz/tradingsecrets to get started and see what your business may qualify for in seconds. Square:  Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, or running a design studio, Square helps you run your business, without running yourself into the ground. With Square, you get all the tools to run your business, with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com/go/tradingsecrets. Nutrafol:  Start your hair growth journey with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code TRADINGSECRETS. Rula: The first step on your journey to mental-well being is easy. Rula starts by asking you a few questions about what's important to you and then provides a list of licensed in-network providers who match your preferences. You can schedule your preferred time and meet with your therapist as soon as the next day. Go to Rula.com/ [tradingsecrets] to get started today. This Is Small Business Podcast: if you're the kind of person who's always chasing growth — whether it's in business, career, or just betting on yourself — There's a podcast that just dropped a new season and it's right in that zone. It's called This Is Small Business, hosted by Andrea Marquez, and Season 6 is all about entrepreneurs who took massive risks to build something real. So if you're plotting your next move - maybe launching that side hustle, scaling a business, or pivoting hard - go check out This Is Small Business on Apple Podcasts, Spotify — wherever you listen.

Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today's guest is a serial entrepreneur who has built four of the most successful environmental service businesses in North America, Dave Royce. Dave is the founder and chairman of Active Environmental, providing pest solutions to thousands. of cities in 34 states. David's companies have been highlighted in national publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. In 2015, David was awarded with the Ernest Young National Entrepreneur of the Year Award. We are going to discuss David's entrepreneurial career and how he transformed a small startup company into the third largest residential pest control company in North America with over

$500 million in annual revenue in just eight years. David, thank you so much for being on sharing secrets. Thanks for the opportunity. You know, the cool thing and like, is my listeners are going to listen to this intro. They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just put 500 million and pest control in the same sentence? And the cool thing about this podcast, for all my listeners back home, is we get to explore all different industries and uncover where money's made, how it's made, and how we need to rethink what we're doing today to maybe emulate someone like yourself. So I want to take a trip way down memory lane. I read and saw in an interview you did. You talked about the fact you were in college. I think it was like 20, 25 years ago.

And you get a call to possibly be a door-to-door pest salesman, pest control salesman, right? And you're on the track. You're at BYU. You're killing it at school. Like you're thinking investment banker route. But you take this opportunity. Talk to me about what that opportunity looked like that summer and how much money you made doing it. Yeah. So, you know, broke college student, kind of paying my way through school, had a buddy say, hey, I made 25 grand last summer. You know, there's a few of these summer jobs that you can go do where you can make really good money if you work, six days a week, all day long. And I thought, that's damn good money. I'm going to try that out. And it turns out I was horrible at it. Okay. When I started, I went five

days without a single sale. And that guys around me are going, you know, one to four sales. And it sucked. You're, real quick, you're like literally, like, not because I, there's only so many, like, actual industries where people are still knocking door to door today. Pest control business was one of them, still is one of them. You were literally just knocking on doors. Knocked doors. Yeah. We'd start about 10 o'clock in the morning and then just go till dark.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Okay. So you suck at it at first. Then what happens? Horrible at first. That weekend I went out to a Barnes & Noble bookstore, bought like six sales books. And then I just started reading.

I like committed, okay, 90 minutes a day. I'm going to steady sales and just see what I can do. Because I'd already like moved to Sacramento from BYU. You drove 10 hours, had an apartment. I'm like, it's not an option not to make this work. I gotta figure this out. And then, yeah, by the end of the summer, I was the top rookie in the company.

Okay, and so that was, you know, 25K back then. It's probably doubled today. So you don't have like a pot to pissing at this point. You make 50K selling pest control sales. That's the reality of the situation. That is. Okay, I think people back home there listening this, we're always selling, right?

We're selling ourselves in social media. For sure. We're selling ourselves if we're in the dating world. We might be selling ourselves to our family. We're always branding and selling. What were some of the tech? Because I feel like selling door to door, especially at that age, is probably one of the hardest things. What were some of those things that you didn't do early on that you started to do that turned your business for it, even way back in college? Yeah. So one of the key things is just learning how to close,

like asking for the business, right? It's one thing to kind of present. But if you just stop, the customer doesn't really know, like, so are you asking me to close? Or what, like, if you just kind of, so what do you think, as opposed to maybe doing some sort of an option close? It's like, so we're here tomorrow and we're here the next day, you know, would three or five o'clock work better for you? Okay. It's a little bit of a tie down. Okay. You know, and it suggests that you have confidence.

And most customers, they actually respond to that confidence. They're like, I'll give you a shot. Why not? Okay. So tell, like, an option close, because I just want to make sure we get this right. Option close is the idea that if you're thinking about a potential solution, you give them alternative. You give them alternatives that are both in your best interest. Okay.

Give me an example. So like right there. So just like I said, so if you give your presentation, right, let's say like you're asking for money from somebody. So would you guys like to pitch in $100 million or $200 million? Which one are you feeling best about? Interesting. They're both in your best interest. Yeah. Right. And they feel that confidence. And they're like, well, if they're really feeling it's, hey, we'll do $200 or if not, they might do $100 or they might say, hey, we'll do $50. And you're like, sweet. So instead of waiting to get the answer on like yes or no, what you're saying is you're assuming in your sales pitch, they're going to say yes. And presenting two different options. Interesting. And that small tactic is what led you as a college student to pop off, which then led to- I'd say initially. It was like the first thing. And then if you really get good at sales, like part of it has to just do with work and determination. Are you willing to work crazy hours to accumulate more and more sales, right? Because a commission job, the more you work, the more you're going to make. Yeah. It's just a numbers game. Yeah. And the other things, the one question I got the most from the other people around me when

they saw me really getting good was they would say, okay, go over the objection again. Like, I hear customers say, oh, you know, I've got, you know, pets or something. It's like, yeah, you mean, we just, you know, all of our products are, you know, family friendly or responsibly, or they're responsible. Sure. You know, once the product's dry, pet can come out and they'll be fine, that sort of thing. And they would say, I say the exact same thing to them. Yeah. But I would always tell them that I don't think it's like what you say, but it's how you say it.

Okay. That's the most important part. It's like tone are you saying? It's tonality. It's how fast you say it. Do you sound defensive? when you say it. Like so, for example, you could say the same thing,

like, but maybe add some desperation in your voice, right? Well, all the products, they're pet friendly, you know, or once the product comes, the dog comes out, it'll be fine if it, you know, that kind of thing. If you sound nervous, you have deer in the headlights, your body language looks weird. Yeah. Really, your body language, your nonverbal communication

and your parverbal, how you say it is critical. And I think that's a difference between a top 1% salesperson versus, you know. We just had a Navy SEAL on who was the one they're responsible for taking out bin Laden. And he talked about, like, as a Navy SEAL and as a sniper, the two biggest thing is that calm is contagious, but panic is also contagious. Yeah. It's interesting. Those like things that are applying to Navy SEALs still apply in like the door-to-door sales business. Everything. One thing I want to, because

we're going to get into your business and all the particulars of selling a company and building it up and scaling it. And if you're if you're sitting here right now and you're wondering like interview tactics and questions that might be thrown your way, like all the things you would know from a founder who has sold a company and built a company up to 500 million. We're going to get into that. But before we do, I think one of the hardest things, and this is like kind of a selfish question for me, once the door's open for me with anybody, I'm like, I can roll. Let's rip it roll. I'll sit down there, talk to you for hours. Yeah. It's hard to like, it's hard to like cold call. It's hard to like make that first initial reaction. And I think doing it as a college

student in door to door sales is probably the hardest. Because when you show up at someone's door, especially today, immediately the guards up. Like, who the hell are you? Why you're at my front door? You weren't invited here. What's going on? So what are some things you've seen your salesmen do that you've hired and or you did to, like, bring the guard down when you're showing up on someone's front doorstep?

We always teach ourselves people that you've got about 10 seconds to make an impression. Okay. Right? And so the way that you look, if you can look like a confident, competent service professional, you're calm, you know, the way you describe it. It's very casual. you're there, you're taking care of a bunch of the neighbors, it's not a big deal, you're not nervous, you know, if you guys can be here, there's some sort of an offer, you know, we've got it done

for half price or something like that. It's enough just to have them go, okay, keep going, or they're like, no, no, get off my doorstep. And I think it's really critical to read the body language too. If they're like, hell no, get out of here, then, you know, just go on the next door. It's not worth, you know, pushing and upsetting the person or whatever. But sometimes there's a little bit of a, you know, it's kind of like, oh, I don't think we're really interested. And we're like, oh, well, have you guys noticed the, you know, spiders and the wasp nest along these eaves here and they'll kind of come out and look. They're like, oh, okay. And then it gives you something to talk about along the way. So you kind of have to know whether to continue or just to go,

it's not worth, you know, pushing a forward. Okay. So that's a good, I mean, we already got two trading secrets right there. We got the first 10 seconds to make a first impression. The calm is contagious. And then I think we also have the option closed. So those are those are three good ones. Telehealth has made mental health care more convenient and accessible for millions of people. However, critical challenges like finding a suitable therapist, scheduling appointments, and the expensive out-of-pocket costs still keep many from getting the care they need. Rula is on a mission to make high-quality mental health care from a licensed professional, easy, and affordable for everyone. Rula's got you covered.

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you and we eat right. But the most important thing is between our ears. And with Rula, you can do that. Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improving their mental health and over well-being. Head over to Rula.com slash trading secrets to get started today. After you sign up, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them that we sent you. Just go to R-U-L-A.com slash trading secrets and take the first step towards better mental health today. You deserve quality care from someone who cares. Your first year, you make the 25K, which then, of course, in today's world, is 50K, which is a ton of money for doing door-to-door sales. Yeah, three months. I think I then heard you went back the following year and made more

than double than that? I did. Okay. What did that look like in how much do you make? Yeah, so I made 35 grand the first year. Okay. And I went back and made 60 grand the next year. And what I did was I recruited a few people to come out with me. And then I was a sales manager. And then I got paid a little bit of commission off each of those people that came with me and then off my own sales as well and I went to work for a smaller company that second year and when I got there I asked the boss I'm like hey do we have like training manuals or something like my other company was big hundred million dollar company is like oh we don't really have any of that but you know we'll work with you guys and that sort of thing so I asked well can I create a training manual for you yeah because I brought friends I wanted them to do well

and he was like yeah if you're willing to do that great and then our our sales team in that Dallas location, they did about twice as much as the other location that he had. And he was like, hey, at the end of the year, he pulled me aside and said, if you will write, you know, create training manuals, you know, training videos, whatever you want to do, and then oversee the program, I'll pay you a cut on every single person in this company. So it gave me an opportunity at a very young age to go out and recruit, train, manage. College students, I had about 100 people I was managing by the end of my fourth summer. Wow. And the fourth summer, I made 225 grand. Your fourth summer? How old are you at this point?

I was a little bit older because I served a mission for my church at the time. Yeah. But I was pushing to mid-20s. So mid-20s. Two, like, how much do you say two, what? $225,000. So I call it half a million. So that's like a half a million today.

Selling pest control services. This is blowing my mind. Talk to me about, let's flip rolls here. I'm a consumer. Anyone that owns a house. Even if you rent a house, you have anything to do with a home, you know that pest control services are like almost mandatory. this point, especially during certain seasons,

pending on where you live. I'm kind of curious now. What is the commission look like? When I'm working with it, what is my negotiation room when I'm a consumer buying, like how much commission are they making per sale? So it can vary back then it was about half as much as it is now. Yeah, but they made somewhere between 20 and 30%

off an annual contract. And so what they're doing is we would typically give customers maybe like half off the first service, which usually costs more because you're doing inside, outside. It's more of a clean out. Yeah. And then you're paying a sales rep off. If we're going to go back to that customer's house, say four times in the year or six times in the year, then they're making a cut off all of those services just for the first year. But our expectation as a company is, you know, probably 80% of those customers are going to stick around more for

the long term. Gotcha. So if you were to sell a year service, you'll get paid off that year. And do you get paid? I'm not always curious. You get paid right away or do you have to get paid once they're paid over time because the company wants to make sure that the customers are sticky. You know, you're not just signing people up and saying, oh, just try it out, see what happens. It's, yeah, they're going to get paid over the course of anywhere from six to nine months. Interesting. All right. Now, everyone listening to us, I think the brains are starting to turn a little bit.

And they're thinking something we've talked briefly about on this show, but not all the time. It seems like in today's world, it's the boring businesses that are becoming the most profitable, the longest lasting, and creating people like you to become some of the biggest entrepreneurs in the country. And it does feel like society, from a society perspective, everyone's so drawn in with social media and the glitz and the glam and the flex and this and that and the cool, popular, sexy thing. Just give me your take on your perspective on this idea that sometimes it's not the sexiest business that will actually produce the biggest profits and the biggest success and any other businesses that you've touched or invested in that are a little bit, maybe call it unsexy like the pest control business. Yeah, so there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that just came out. It was last week, I think it was called the Stealthy, Wealthy. Okay. And one of the stats in it was that the top point one percent, not just the top one percent,

but the top point one percent of income earners, that's $2.3 million a year or more. Okay. 43 percent of them are in these boring kind of blue-collar, unsexy businesses. Huh. And what are, like, some of those are like what? Like, obviously pest control is one, but like. So I think the example they gave of one of the people, he creates machines that, rip-up carpet in schools.

That's insane. And the line was funny. It was something like, it turns out kids are really dirty. And these carpets have to be ripped up every single year. And so it's just this, you know, model where, you know, people have to have them. But it's kind of the last thing people would ever think of, right? Yeah.

Yeah. People are going to need a machine to rip up all these carpets at the end of the school year. It's crazy. And like, even as I'm like studying and preparing for this interview, I'm seeing that as of 2025, the U.S. pest control industry is valued at 26.1. billion dollars with an annual growth rate of 5.4% reaching $44.3 billion by 2034. Like, these numbers blow me away. As you were thinking about going into investment banking or getting into this business, were you doing this type of research? Or were you just like, wait, I can't, I can't replicate

the money I'm making sitting at a desk, crunching numbers. And I am going door to door selling pest control services. Yeah. So, like, in school, I was setting finance, like, investment banking was the sexy job. If you get that coming out, paid the most, you're going to grind and work really hard. It was going to be a great experience, you know, to maybe go into MBA school or something. And, yeah, I'd make $70,000 coming out of school, but I'd already made $225 and, you know, three, four months of work. And so, I mean, that didn't quite make sense, but my boss, he pulled me aside. He's just like, I asked him for a letter of recommendation. I'm like, I need you to make this pest control thing look good for me. And he's like, I don't get it. Why are you going to work 80, 100 hour weeks for somebody else? You're so good at this.

This year, I can the top 1% of 1%, you should just go start your own company. Yeah. Unbelievable. When you start your own company, you end up blowing it up. Talk to me a little bit about what it looks like from day one. Did you take on other people's money? Did you raise capital? If so, how much?

And talk to us about what just the business looked like and how it grew. Yeah. So in my business classes, I had studied the statistical likelihood of success in business of a startup. Sure. And back then, like the stats were 80% percent. of businesses go out of business in five years. In 10 years, 95% are out of business. And I also had studied franchises and just the idea that like a proven model, those numbers actually flip in five years, like 80 to 90% of the franchises are still around. And you know, it's like they already

have, you know, the financial targets, the key metrics that you're supposed to measure. They have the whole business model like all there for you, the training manuals. And I thought, I'm not sure I'm ready to go do this on my own entirely. Yeah. He, my boss said, hey, I'll invest in to you if you want to go start your own company. And I'd saved up about 300 grand. And then he invested 300 grand into the company. So I had a good amount of startup capital get going.

And then he had sold, he was selling his business to Terminex at the time. So you put all your savings, though, into the company. Yeah. Yeah, I was saving for MBA school. Yeah. And just, you know, maybe for a homesome day or whatever else. Yeah. And then put it all in. Yeah.

All in. And I know you're, I'm curious where you go from here. But when you put in your 300 and then he matches your 300, how do you then decide how to split equity? He was a silent investor. And so he's like, I don't want to do any of the work, but I'll give you, maybe give me 20, 30%. Gotcha. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. When you got your 600K, business is starting to run. What does it look like from here? What was really great about the business, it was kind of like a business on training wheels, right? It was like, it was one location. I chose Corona, California. there was a reason for that one i got married pretty young okay good for you my wife and i were

college sweethearts and she was going to law school uh in malibu and we were living in san monica i would drive in about 50 minutes an hour every day to corona to the location but from that location we could service all of orange county all the inland empire and all of like south and east la so i had access to about nine million customers out of a single location in my head i'm going hey from an overhead standpoint. I can be there. I can oversee it. Make sure it goes well. And we can build like the largest pest control branch possible in my mind at the time. How quickly did it take for you to take that 600K, invest it and then become profitable? Well, profitable is always, you know, when you're investing, you're trying to get all, by the time we actually got all the money out,

back then it took actually four years. Four years. But after that, I never had a year where I was profitable where I actually got my investment out of the business until I sold it later on because the model became more and more expensive. Sales commissions became more and more expensive. They doubled and then they're probably almost two and a half times what they used to be when I first got into the industry. So are there many times and someone who owns several businesses and I think about people that are in business development roles for businesses I own, a lot of them make more money than the actual ownership group does. Was that the case for your business too? That you would have people in sales actually making more money than you were from a salary perspective and bonus perspective? Yeah. It took me a long time to actually make money at it.

In fact, I just kind of, like, said, hey, I'm going to take a dollar per year, right? Wow. The goal, like, to actually get your investment out, there just wasn't a way to do it after that first company because we're growing so fast. Interesting. Yeah, you really got to learn how. In fact, the first year, I almost bankrupt the company. How so? Well, so you pay the sales reps out.

Although you're paying over six to nine months, you still, there's still like a year of contract revenue that you're paying or you're paying a commission out on it. And when you start up, you have a lot of startup costs as well. and so I actually had to go to some of the sales reps when their payments were due on the very first year and say, hey, do you mind if I'll pay you 10% interest on this but I just need like a couple more months. You guys did way better than I thought we were originally going to do. So because you had to front some of the money

before the cash flow actually came in. Think about like digital marketing too, right? If it's like a recurring model, like when you sell something but it's maybe like a service business, you're paying a lot more up front typically to like Google. than you're making right at that point. If you were buying maybe a product,

that's a kind of a different story, but a service, we count on the idea that it's a subscription service. Therefore, we're going to pay a lot more up front so that we can maintain that customer over maybe, say, five years on it. Makes perfect sense. Hot days, human nights, and non-stop plans,

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Nutrafol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code trading secrets. That's Nutrafol.com promo code trading secrets. You scaled this business pretty damn fast, 500 million by eight years. I'm just trying to think, yes, there's a lot of strategy in doing that. Did you run into like massive headwinds with either becoming a leader, employing others, dealing with hiring or firing. Was there any big learning lesson that you can think of when it comes to managing people? Yeah, I had several advantages. So one, I'd worked at that large $100 million company. So I understood what a large company looked like. The second company was a small company. And a small company, you're a little bit more of a jack of all trades as you're learning things because they don't have

all the departments built out. And so you learn actually a lot more at a small company than you do a large company. However, a lot of their operations are not always, you know, as buttoned up as a larger companies might be. Right. The third advantage was I took finance. Not a lot of people in the pest control industry with finance degree to understand the math. And even I almost bankrupt the company

just because I allowed everybody to keep doing better and better. And so I needed to pay close attention to that. When you said a cap on commission? Well, I never capped how many they're going to sell. So like if I didn't want us to go bankrupt, I would have said it maybe the three-month bark instead of the three-and-a-half-month bark.

They still had a couple more weeks ago. It's like, I wasn't going to go to them and say, hey, you know what, we're good. I don't have enough money to actually pay you guys. At that point, like, I could kind of see we're getting close, but I wasn't 100% positive. It was the first time I was running the business, so I actually didn't know. Wow. Where I'm curious is, like, you start with the 600K. You say it takes four years to become profitable.

In notes that I read online, it looks like you sold your companies to Terminx. I did. Three times. Three times, right? Three days. Moxie pest control, eco-first, and Altura. Notably, they're saying Altera was sold to Turmin. X in 2015 for an estimated $135 million.

This is online, of course, we don't know exactly what that number is, but is that relatively close? Yeah, I mean, Forbes estimated that number. I have an NDA on every deal, so I can never say it. Okay, gotcha. All right. Well, don't blink twice if it's $135. Just kidding.

I don't want to get you in trouble. But, like, what's the turning point from having a pest control company doing 50K as a student, then $225K, you start the company, $600K,000? You're not profitable for four years. And all of a sudden, you sell three of your companies, one of them that's estimated by Forbes for 135 million. Where did this turning point happen? So I don't think it's so much of a turning point. So what happened was around the fourth year at Moxie, I was going, okay, if I really want to scale nationwide, I need cash to grow to grow fast.

And so, you know, these larger public companies, one of their ways of growth is M&A. And so they've got to do a certain amount of M&A. But what they wanted, they really just wanted the customer base, and then they wanted the technicians to go along with that customer base. And so I negotiated a deal where they said, look, we'll let you keep the salespeople, the leadership, and then, you know, just give us what we want. We just need the assets. So I structured an asset deal, got a bunch of money, and then started another company, and basically just took a different name or put a different name on the company. And so I kept the golden goose that really created the value and then just kept going because I needed the cash. And it allowed me to keep the equity in the company.

On the second company, then my original boss was out, I had a total 100% equity. Wow. And then we could just keep going. And so we grew that one and then a few more years down the road, sold that one again, but kept all the leadership, kept the sales team. And there's other things we did. Like the second company, we really focused on learning how to scale. into more of a regional business. And I learned the importance of hiring the right managers,

because the managers, they are your culture. And so you're trying to find guys that will religiously follow what made the first location and the second location so successful. And that's creating really great training manuals, you know, great systems of processes, all that sort of a thing. And then on the third company, I was going,

okay, we're getting big. I literally can't see the managers all the time, and I can't see all my employees employees, how do we keep that, maintain that same family feel for the business? And so I thought about going back to MBA school, like at night. And then I started studying companies outside of the pest control industry. I started looking at companies like Google and Instagram and Zappos and studying like their company cultures, their office buildings, the types of activities and things they did.

And the reason I did that is because in my mind, that was the toughest market to recruit, right? because software developers, the supply was so limited. Sure. And they were fighting. It was very, very competitive. And I thought, I wonder if I could take that and sprinkle it into the pest control industry. It had never been done before and make pest control sexy that way. Where if somebody walks into our facilities, they're like, what is this place?

I don't care what it is. I could tell that the owner cares about them. I want to be a part of this. This looks really, really cool. So we had like an NCAA basketball court, golf simulator, movie room, ping pong, foosball, air hockey, all that kind of stuff, ESPN, like on giant screen TVs around the office all the time. We just made it in this really cool place to hang out and have fun. And it really worked to recruit people and then to maintain people because it was so different for our industry.

Just nobody had even thought about that possible. In fact, I had one of the presidents of Orkin come out to take a look at us when I was selling Altera. And he looked, he walked in and almost immediately, he looked around. He's like, they'll never buy you. I was like, why is that? And he's like, this is way over the top compared to what they have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there's no way because then everybody else is going to want this same thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, you know, it's kind of crazy. Well, the first thing I'm thinking is, as an entrepreneur myself, is all of that, that costs a ton of money to do all that, right? To like make those experience. I mean, if you're a hundred million plus company. Sure, sure. Does it really cost that much to invest, I don't know, maybe three and a half million,

four million into a building at the time? That's true. It's not that much. And then we had all these really cool activities we do. So like our top 5%, 10% of income earners on the sales side or top operators, we would take with us to trips. Like we do Hawaii or the Caribbean. And these trips were like legendary. We do like skydiving and diving with sharks and scuba diving and jet skis and all this kind of wild stuff.

Just a really fun way to go out and like celebrate our success. And then also brain share ideas, you know, like best sales secrets. You get the top guys together and they start talking and they realize they're not like being competitive with each other. It's more like, hey, how can we like share with each other so we can all do better as a whole? Same thing on the operation side. Okay. All right. If you're the kind of person who's always chasing growth, whether it's in business, career or just betting on yourself, listen up.

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or pivoting hard, go check out, this is small business. Season 6 is live right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. It's one of those shows that actually pushes you to think bigger and you know I'm all about that. And you did, I mean, obviously, that's one of the things when you said like kind of making an unsexy industry a little bit sexy. I kind of thought that when I saw in 2021 you announced that you guys would have the ambassador program by partnering with PGA pro Tony Fanoon and NFL star Zach Wilson. And then in 2023, I thought that was so cool. pest control partner of Utah Jazz, real Salt Lake, which is the MLS team, and then Salt Lake Bs, which is the MLB, minor league team in BYU, athletic. So it's kind of cool to get an industry

that people wouldn't think is like, like you said, the sexiest, but then now you're partnering with like some of the coolest teams that are out there. And we had a suite at the jazz stadium. Yeah. Wow. It was a box of like 36. Yeah. And I think the, the record we hold that, we actually hold the record for the most full box suite in the arena, like annually. we win that. Really? Yeah, it's like 98% full all the time because anybody at our corporate headquarters, we just say, hey, who wants to go?

There's a sign-up sheet. It's just a really great way to create, you really create a culture where people are excited to be part of something. That's genius. One of the other things I heard on one of the interviews you said is that you had been hiring a bunch of people from a management perspective, and then you kind of hit reset because one of your focuses was hiring smarter. And I think a lot of people out there, either they want to be the person that's hired

that's considered smarter. or if they are an entrepreneur, they want to know what smarter means. So when you did that reset, in your eyes as a leader, what did you define as smarter? And then through interview processes, how did you figure out who those people were? Yeah, I'm a big believer that C players

are what drive away are A players. And so, coming up with, I think it's so critical, and I shouldn't take credit for those. So Tony Shea from Zappos, unfortunately he's not around anymore, but a lot of the cultural ideas I had came through him. He wrote this book called Delivering Happiness.

And I read that book, and that was the first aha moment where I had, I shouldn't be just looking at past control. I should look outside my industry for ideas. But he talks about his first company, it was like an advertising company and how, as they were growing really fast, they were just hiring on anybody, you know, to bring them on. And it wasn't intentional about what type of culture they were trying to build.

And so by the time they sold the company, I may have sold it for a couple, million dollars but he was miserable yeah and so when he went to start zapos the second time he said okay let's write down like what are our cultural values like what are our core values going to be what is our actual mission and then when we're hiring what are the key things we're looking for they have to like check all these boxes in order for us to let them in and so with altera we got very focused on company culture you know created our 10 core values and then tried to dial in hiring and it gets harder and harder you get bigger and bigger right because like i'm not the one interviewing it

everybody at that point where people are spread out across many many states 34 states now with adaptive and so the the leadership has to be super committed to what that checklist is what those core values are and it's still hard yeah it's it's always hard because when you're growing at a super fast rate you're looking at all the best candidates who've come in and sometimes it's like all right well these are the best so we're going to choose the best but if you know at the end of the year sometimes you have to, you know, kind of clean house, you know, maybe to remove the bottom 10% or whatever it might be. It's interesting that you're so true when you said the C players will, you know, deter the A players

from being A players. And like we've also heard on this podcast, hire slow, fire fast, which I think is a good one. You know, when you said the Zappos thing, this is a case study I read a long time ago. And I totally forgot about it until you brought up Zappos. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember he talked about this. the fact that he would have issues with retention, and the cost of retention was so expensive that he would put people, new employees through training program. And after the training program, if they were qualified to even get in the training program, it was pretty tough. But

after the training program, he would offer them a lump sum to not take the job. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was like, it was like five, ten, maybe fifteen grand. It'd be like, he was fifteen grand cash. I'm going to give you this to not take the job. And because the people that took that money would take it and leave but the people that were like no or the long lifers and he's like the cost benefit of knowing that the people that wouldn't take it would be worth massive material amounts to the company which I thought was kind of cool yeah it's such a unique thing well I'm actually I went toward their facilities twice so I'm not sure if they still do it they probably still do but you can fly to Vegas you can go tour their facilities they have tours like every hour

and they just walk people through and like they talk about their company culture and why they created it. And then they even have, it's like a three day training session where you can learn all these secrets to their business. And I met with Tony when I was there and I'm just like, okay, I love that you're doing this, but you got to tell me why. Because you're giving away your competitive secrets. Like your secret sauce, you're just giving it to the world. What about your competitors knowing all this? Sure. And he's like, yeah, I just think the world would be a better place, you know, if everybody operated this way. And I'm like, it hit me. I'm like, oh, damn it. Like, I'm so selfish. This man is such a better leader. Totally. And it's like it certainly

made me think, I want to get back, you know, not just within my company, because that helps the company do better. But, you know, we really should get back to the world if, you know, we want to be that change that we want to see in the world. Yeah. Perfectly said. Your company today service is 2.1 million customers service more than 4,000 cities, like you said, in 34 states, receive more than 125,000 five-star Google reviews and employees more than 2,600 employees. You sold the company for over nine figures. As an entrepreneur who's been met with all these accolades, where do you think the biggest misses are in today's entrepreneurship culture? That's a good question. I think I'd probably go back to what we were talking about earlier. I think that the media only focuses predominantly

on what's sexy or what's disruptive, what's almost like scary or like AI creates a lot of, yeah. So like AI is like what's hot right now, right? Before that it was tech and just, but very few people want to hear about plumbing or pest control or medical waste services or document shredding or all these other things

that they may be subscription model businesses, right? Which is very similar to SaaS. Yeah, it's true. And they're needed, but they're under the radar. And honestly, it's even better because I used to joke there's not a lot of MBAs running into pest control. Yeah, no, not at all. Right?

Yeah, that's why I think this podcast is so cool. Like this episode is so cool. Yeah, it's like a secret. Yeah, when else would you talk about pest control? I didn't even think about all these industries, right, that like I would never think about going into. And it is true. It's a bit of like an ego hit, right?

When you come out, if you're in college, you're studying finance, and then it was a total 180 for me, but it's less sophisticated. It probably doesn't require a college degree. But, man, you can have competitive advantage. in so many industries just by having gone to college and maybe study business, you know, or having gone out and become really good in that industry, maybe what could be in sales or operations,

and then like you've got to lay in and go start your own business. A lot of times it doesn't require that much money, maybe to go start in that sort of industry. I think that's a good point for all entrepreneurs. When you look into yourself, obviously you've talked about the accolades, what's the biggest mistake you've made in your career? Oh, wow, I've a lot. How much time you get it?

Really like almost bankrupting myself, definitely. And I've done it a couple times, like where we grew too fast and I had to take the foot off the gas and go, hey, we need to rethink this. Let's go a little bit slower next year and work through it. But I will say that out of all the mistakes we made along the way, it was very confident in the team. Like for 20 years and many of our team members were with us for that long, whatever it was, we were going to get through it. And that just gave me confidence that whatever the problem, you know, whatever struggles we'd had, if we put our minds on it, we stayed calm, we just knew we'd eventually figure it out. We got lucky. Some people don't.

If someone who's been an entrepreneurship now for like five years or so, what I would say is, I don't know if this connects with your path or not, but honestly, some days I just feel like I'm Rocky Belboa. It's like how many freaking hits can I take to the face, to the gut, to the liver? but just like making it one inch forward the next day. And then there are some of those days you have like the glory days, right? Like where you're celebrating because you won the belt. But like it's entrepreneurship. It's hard. It is hard.

It's insanely hard. So I relate a lot of it like to being a gladiator. Yeah. Right? Like if businesses go out of business that often, you really have to have something to prove. Like you're going into the Coliseum and you think about how many people have died. or going to die like ultimately you're going to die

in business like that's just what the statistics say and so you've got to have something to prove like it's not a place for dabbling wannabes you've got to be all in

and like enjoy the thrill of solving problems and tackling really big challenges yeah exactly and I think one of the toughest things is too is like when your name's on the founding group or whatever

whenever everything is good no one's coming to you you're doing your thing but when there's issues it's like the world will just come to you and you're just like whole floodgates are open

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it's all you got 300k today it's funny because people always say that if i just i'd just i'd get back in sales okay i'd go sell door to door or i'd go get in real estate like in la or something and sell like these super high-end homes you know if you if you're hustling to hustle and work really really hard yeah and then you're willing to work also on your personality and like sales skills, it doesn't really matter what you're selling, that skill you can use it your entire life. Maybe you go sell software, you go sell whatever it might be. It's amazing what people make money in. Yeah, it is amazing. So many random things. It is. And it's often the things you don't think of that people are just killing it in. Pass control business is one of them. Exit for over nine

figures. Is there any other place that you have taken your money and invested that has just provided massive dividends or returns to you outside of your core business? Hannah Buffett was always big on concentrating your wealth at one area and it can be really smart it can be really stupid right because you can go really big and make it

and for me four times over I was able to do it over and over and over again ultimately I just I just wasn't learn anything new I was like ready you'll know when you're ready and I think the question you may ask yourself oh but the money's so good like why would I? I think that's the

moment you know it's probably trying to move on and do something different. Like I'm happy when I'm striving for my greatest potential and I'm learning constantly. And if I'm not learning, it doesn't matter how much money I'm going to make. At some point, you just get to that and you're like, I can retire if I want. Or I can go figure out whatever's next in my life. So is one of your investment like trading secrets? Would you say it's have a niche, stick to your niche and just crush that niche? Yeah. So a professor once told me that the wealthiest, people he'd ever seen they have found an industry and they just kept sticking to it and what's what's funny is i have a lot of friends that are not only entrepreneurs but they're in like they're in hollywood or

they're in the music industry and one of the things i was with this guy has stage names cascade but his real name's ryan rad and yeah and we're on vacation the other and i asked him i said so what what isn't it made you so great like famous dj probably he makes many tens of millions of dollars a year And he's like, you know, I just stuck with it. He's like, there are guys that were even better than me, in my opinion. But, you know, over time, it just kind of faded for them. He's like, this is what I really love. And I just stuck with it.

There's something to that, like attrition, too. Yeah. You keep going. And you'll just continue to just keep going. Just keep going. You think like you have something differentiating and just keep going. So as long as you're willing to continue to learn and just keep working at it, I think the question is like, how long does the passion last?

you'd be obsessed about it, as opposed to just passionate about it. Like, where you're, it's almost like you can look at it objectively because you are obsessed with it, but you can step back if you need to. Whereas passion, yeah, you're excited for a while, but if you lose the passion, you're just out. Yeah. So, I don't know, it's probably, there's a combination of the two. A mix of both. All right, this is a fun question.

You sell the company for what Forbes says, $135 million. It's one of them. When you get that big first check, what's the most exciting thing you did? What'd you buy? Where'd you go? What did it cost? Give me something fun. How'd you celebrate? Oh, gosh. On that one, so selling that one, it was more, okay, we'll have enough money for the next company for however much we want to grow. And then it was taking chips off the table for my family and I. Okay. The first, like when I sold Moxie and I sold Eco first, it was really just, okay, dump everything into the next one.

You know, on the third one, it was like, okay, I had two kids. Yeah. I'm like, this one I need to be thinking about my family and I, let's take at least. half of the wealth off the table, we'll, you know, we've got plenty of money to be able to invest in the company. And a lot of people will talk about like this one or this last company that I sold, this last company I sold, I have an NDA for that one too. But, you know, at $500 million, the average pest control company sells for anywhere, depending upon its size, anywhere from one to three times, whatever the revenues are to give you an idea. And I was with somebody

else and they're like so how does it feel in this last one i'm like well that last one actually doesn't really matter to me the one that made the most difference was the first one interesting because that's when your life Forbes said that one sold for 13 million okay selling going from like having nothing to 13 million is wild wildly different right like you could retire if you want you know you just live conservatively off it out for you know an entire lifetime i was only 30 years old at the time. But yeah, it's, and that one, I bought a Lamborghini. I was living in a riddle home because I was like, too cheap to go buy a house. And I'm like, I need all this money to throw into the next month. Sure, sure. And so, yeah, that was my splash. I've always like cars.

What did Forbes say you sold your second company for? I think it's 30. Okay. So they sell you sell for 1330, then 1.35. And then the last one, if you're doing an estimation based on revenue sales anywhere from 500 million to 1.5 billion? Yeah. You're not confirmed. That would be the math, yeah. So, I mean, that, like, when you start to get to that type of wealth, what do you, like, what do you do, what do you do you do with it all?

Like, it's your thought process. Legacy, is it, how do you protect it? How do you give it back? Like, what's your philosophy on how to manage that type of wealth in a lifetime that is, on average for your standard mail right now? I think it's around 70, I don't know, five years. I feel like you live a pretty healthy guy. I feel like you're living to 100 plus.

But what do you do? Like, what's the thought process with all that money? For me, I would say I'm probably different than most people. Although I've certainly met enough out there. But like I want to give all my money to charity when I die. Wow. I'm not huge in the idea of creating trust funders. I want my kids to have the incentive to work hard because they know like I'm not just going to give much of money someday.

And so just investing wise. I think is important, you know, having a balanced portfolio. I look at investing more like maybe an endowment would where, you know, half are going to be in alternatives, you know, the other half might be in the stock market or whatever else. But really investing for the long term, that sort of thing, trying to maybe make 10% a year. They're just letting that compound over the next however many years I live. That's awesome. I know one thing that entrepreneurs and potential employers would want to hear from you is you talked a little bit about it, hiring smart, and looking through A players or C players, and we touch down a little bit.

But I think those philosophies are great, and it's easy to say those things. I think the hardest thing to do is to be able to qualify if someone has those things. Are there any specific questions that you'll actually bring forth in an interview? Are there tactics you'll do as far as, I don't know, like looking at their resume? Like, what are some things a guy like at your level is looking for when you say you're really looking for the right people for the right culture for the employees. I've hired thousands of people. I've interviewed a lot.

I'd say what's really critical is like figure out what job description of one you're trying to hire for. You want to hire the right person for the right job. And different personalities tend to do better in certain types of positions. So if you're hiring somebody for sales, like I love that they have some sort of experience in resilience, you know, especially if door-to-door, like have they done anything in door-to-door before? Have they had some sort of a sales job?

tell me the hardest things you've ever done. I want to know how resilient they are as an individual. Certainly, you know, it's really easy just to look at a resume and go, okay, do they check the box in terms of the qualifications they need to have? Do they know how to work this program or have they done this type of operations in the past? But also are they just good listeners? Most of our positions, because it's such a simple business model, I can bring somebody in and train them within two to four weeks

and have them going in whatever position in the company that I need them to do well in. Interesting. So if you keep things really simple, I looked at my business as like the in-and-out burger of pest control. Some pest control companies, they want to get into everything,

you know, like termite fumigation and, you know, wildlife and all this stuff. And for us, it was even just commercial. And we do a little bit of commercial if it came our way. Yeah. But we just said, look, we really want to be good with families. Yeah.

Like families who have pets, you know, they have kids and people, best at that. You know, and In-Hourger's just got a few options for burgers. I'm like, that's a simple model to expand across the country. Let's do that and do it really well. When you keep it simply, you can scale. There was a question that I did see. You did a CNBC interview and a question that you said you'd like to ask people to identify red flags. This one really landed with me. I have had a couple people that I have hired that are like the best hires. I will never be able to replicate that. And I have had some people that have fooled me and done the worst hire in my life. And this question

really landed with me when you said you will ask the person to tell them about your previous employer and what are some things that they could improve what I liked about that is I feel like again the people that listen to this podcast we talk about all things we talk about financial matters personal matters and professional matters and I think that's a question again whether you're like going on a date you're interviewing or you're interviewing someone else or being interviewed that's a great question yeah to like see how they reflect on their previous employees or previous relationships or previous accomplishments, etc. I thought that was a great one. Well, think about it. You're actually inviting the person to essentially talk shit.

Exactly. On the other person. Can they do it in a polite, like, mature manner that provides maybe even the employer some good feedback to go, okay, well, here's how you'd fix that. Yeah. Or someone that's doing less of finger pointing and more thumb pointing, right? Like, hey, these are things I didn't really enjoy over there, but here's what I've learned from it. And here's what I could have done better. Like that's, and my point in that is, If you have, if someone interviewed in whatever position, and they're constantly negative about every single employer in the past, you start to identify like a pattern.

And you're like, okay, I'm going to be the next, you know, employer they're going to talk negatively about the next one that they're interviewing for. Yeah, exactly. It's more about personality and the way that they go about it. Because, you know, you want a group of positive people. You want people who can be critical about the business, but provide, you know, feedback in a way that is helpful to the business. Yeah.

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in such a short period of time to go from knocking on doors to make a 25K in the summer to according to Forbes, possibly we won't quote anything. We don't want you to be in trouble but exiting companies for over a billion dollars.

I mean, what, and I know you've taken sabbaticals and you've retired and you've come back and you've done more things. Where do you go from here? What's the dream professionally at this point? Are you retired? Will you go back to work? What does it look like?

I'm trying to figure that out. Yeah, that's a problem to. It was funny because when I sold, it's like the idea of just saying retired, well, that's weird. I'm like 48. Why would I say I'm retired? Yeah. And what is retirement? Anyways.

So I thought, well, let's just say sabbatical. So I told myself, I want to take a year off and just really think about what's next. You know, maybe people look at life in chapters. You know, first chapter may have been scaling and building businesses. I tend to think that the next chapter for me is either something more creative or something more philanthropic. I really enjoy helping entrepreneurs. I love, you know, doing podcasts and, like, show. sharing information, like trying to help others.

You know, I've got mine. I want to help others get theirs. They have people who are passionate. I just love being around people who are passionate about what they do. Yeah, I love it. It's inspiring. All right, I'm going to ask you this.

I'm going to end with this here right now. I am very open with like our training secrets stock numbers here. So I'm very open with it. I have one company that we just passed eight figures in business. We're scaling, we're growing. I have my own personal brand that's been doing like seven figures

the last several years. So good cash inflow from that. and growing this company. Like if you had 1.36, I have a good amount of money saved up, but, like, nowhere at that level, like, where you could retire or do anything like that. If you were to give me a piece of advice, what piece of advice would you give me?

What are some things you think I should think about? And it could be general, but just, like, you know, someone like in that spot, what would you say? I'd say, like, I mean, you obviously, you have, like, a front row seat to learning about all these different companies and, like, meeting with such intelligent people. I would be looking, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation, right? Yeah. That's like the famous quote.

Of course. And so I would figure out like, how do you identify the best opportunity or opportunities that you can apply to your industry, maybe from the outside? Or maybe even, maybe it's another opportunity. You see it and you're like, you know what? I met with enough of these guys in these boring blue-collar industries. I see this one. It checks the boxes for everything they've told me that I need to do. Yeah.

I got to figure out how to get into that and, you know, seize the day. I think action is the hard part, right? A lot of us read a lot. You know, and it's the question of, well, am I really going to take this chance on this and go all in and work all these crazy hours to make it work?

Right. I was very lucky in the sense that I was young and I, my wife and I didn't have kids for 10 and a half years. Sure. And so we had a long runway. Well, she was as, she was an attorney and I was doing this,

working 14, 16 hours. days together and we just come home and meet for an hour before we went to bed yeah you know we just hanging out the weekends yeah and so we could grind and grind and grind for a really long time and we were really committed to that idea of like working hard and I would say seize the moment while you're while you're young yeah maybe before you have kids or while they're still younger and they're not going to remember you're not being around yeah no just to you know to build build that's because your priorities they start to change they change drastically yeah and it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing for them to change and to want to be a part of their lives.

All right. That's a heck of a trading secret. I love it. The last thing I got before we get into your trading secret, if someone listen to this and they're like, I want to get into the pest control space now that I'm motivated by everything you said, obviously the years are different. Competitions change. Landscapes change. Would you recommend it? Would you tell someone get into it today? If they have access to money, if they can get the capital, what What I would say is, one, go get the experience first, go sell, call active. They'll have an interview, they don't take everybody, but if you're, if you have sales experience or you're very driven, they can see that, you can go sell, learn the, I always think

that's the best entry point to learn a business. The operations, it is a different skill set, but you may be able to hire somebody who already has that skill set to help you along the way. And yeah, and then the third piece is you'd have to have capital to be able to figure out how to do that. The private equity is doing a roll-up in the pest control industry, similar. They've done it in HVAC and a bunch of other industries, obviously. And they're probably in the third inning right now. And so there's still time, I think, to get in. But at some point, kind of the opportunities for like the big multiples will probably run out. Okay. All right.

It's towards the ninth inning. But it might be still time you can get in if you got a little capital. And one last thing, I said it three times now, but I do have one more curiosity question is I think for entrepreneurs, they all define success differently. I think some entrepreneurs are just like, hey, I just want to, you know, if I can make more than I made in the corporate job, I can make $100,000 and have freedom, that's what I want. Lifestyle business. Right. Some people see everything you've done and they're like, that is the dream of what I would define

is success. In your eyes, like how do you define success as an entrepreneur? Yeah, that's what I've learned as I've gotten older is that's different for everybody. Yeah, yeah. Even for me, I could have stopped a lot younger. and still felt successful. I think you have to define success for yourself. And I don't think it's an end point.

A lot of people like, oh, if you could sell a company for a $1 million or something, then I'd feel great. But yeah, the truth is you feel great based on whatever target you set. And every goal you set in life, for the most part, you kick that goalpost further out

once you achieve it. And it's just it's never enough. And that's a sad thing. I do think people have to take a moment and celebrate. And some of us are so, for whatever reason, the way we were raised or whatever else, it's like, I'm not meant to be celebrated. I don't even like to celebrate my birthdays. Yeah. But most people aren't that way. They want to be celebrated. They want to have an award. They want recognition. And it's amazing, too. Employers, like, they've got to realize recognition

for the most parts. It's free. Yeah, that's so true. Just like saying, hey, thank you to this person. They came up with this idea. They helped the company improve this much in terms of efficiencies or whatever, overall, it's making the company this much more. Just like celebrating something, I think is so critical. And yeah, I wish I had a little bit more than my life where I valued that more. Yeah. I'm just a, I'm a not duck. I like that too. I think it's a really good one. When you're defining success, whatever it is that you do, because it's got to be unique to what you define it as, don't have it be an endpoint, right? Like, don't have it be a number or a goal because you'll always want more, like have it be more of something that's general material for you.

The thing that you take away, it's not just the money at the end, but really it's the character you're building along the way in that journey. Like the entrepreneur journey, that is the reward. It's not just the end goal of whatever, you know, exit you have. Yeah. Because a lot of people go, they get depressed, like after they sell, right? In fact, each time I sold the lull, this usually took us about six months until we could ramp up and get going again. That was the most boring time. And like, number one, like you don't have all the dough.

Open mean hits throughout the day. You're like sitting off emails, you're like this animal of productivity. And so it's tricky. I think you have to also separate your ego from the business where you're still that same little kid. You were when you're growing up, you're more experienced, you know, you're more mature,

but I'm still just Dave at the end of the day. I'm not Dave, the business owner or whatever else. And it's really hard when you no longer have that. And then you're like, wait, who am I now? Yeah, interesting. the same person, you just got to, it's in your hat. It's in our head. The identity piece, that's we could have a whole podcast about that, but we got to wrap up. Dave Royce, founder and chairman of active, environmental. What an interesting journey it's been. Congratulations on all your

success, but you got to wrap with a trading secret. So it's something that is specific to your experience. They couldn't get in a textbook, TikTok tutorial, YouTube tutorial. They could only learn from your experience what you've done. It could be financial, professional, personal, but just like an overall Dave Royce trading secret. What can you leave us with? I'm going to go to education is a lifelong thing. I know there's a lot of debate right now about whether college makes sense anymore. Because when I went to college, I mean, they had like a college library. The internet was just getting popular, but the websites were horrible.

Sure. And so access to information, like that was the reason why I went to college. I wanted to learn business. And I could go buy some books in my own. But, you know, the textbooks and just being forced to sit down and learn I thought was really valuable. Today, the internet's amazing, right? Between the amount of podcasts out there, the YouTube videos, the TV shows, all these different things that can teach you how to do business, it's incredible. And reading is one thing, like for about 15 years from the time I got into sales, or actually 20 years, from the time I got into sales until maybe five years ago, I only read business books. And I would read about two per month. And it was everything from biographies to business books. books about marketing or whatever it might, whatever topic it might be, you can always be getting better. And so if you really want something, you want to build a massive business,

just keep learning. It's a simple secret, but, you know, leaders or readers, it's that common basic mentality. I actually haven't heard that quote. Leaders or readers. That's a good one. I mean, it's a basic one, but I've heard a lot of quotes, not that one. Leaders aren't readers. One business book you'd recommend? Is there one that comes to my? I'm going to go back to Tony Shea delivering happiness. Tony Shea, delivering happy. intentional about how you build your company with the right company culture. So that when it does get big, you're still happy with it.

Okay. And then to follow up in your training secret, are you pro, are you for college, against college? I'm still for college. Okay. Yeah, I'm optimistic. I just think the whole thing needs to be redone. I think if you're paying for it, they should allow you to take whatever class you want. Because the first two years of generals,

I hated college. And it sucks because half of kids drop out of college, right? Yeah. It's just so hard to get through the first two years. I'm taking all these classes. They don't want to take. Yeah, I don't want to take. I already took him in high school for the most part. Yeah. So if I had just taken four or five years of business classes, how much better would I have been?

Yeah. And I would have loved that. I would have happily paid for that. I would have paid more for it. Sure. So I just think that college needs to be rethought. I respect art history, but that art history class, that was an art history 101 that I don't know, probably spent 10 grand on. I don't remember a damn thing from it. But hey, here we are. We live. We learn. We grow. Dave, thank you so much for being on this episode of Trade Secrets. Where can everyone find everything you have going on, profiles, companies? these, et cetera. Just go to LinkedIn. Okay. I'm pretty simple. Very cool. Go find Dave Royce on LinkedIn. And thank you so much for you on training secrets. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate it. Ding, ding, ding. We are closing in the bell to the David Royce episode. A lot of action, a lot of business, a ton of success. And it's

so good to have the one and only, the curious Canadian with me on the recap. David, how we doing? What did you think of the episode? How are all things? All things are great. I got a lot to get through to the episode, including an old school throwback definition where I think I know what I'm talking about, but I might not know what I'm talking about. So I'm going to kick it to you for that. But before we get into the business side, it's so nice to have an entrepreneur on the pod on another episode. It brings us back to our roots. But I got to touch on a little reality TV first, a little influencing first. You're in the Hamptons. You got some people staying at the house. You got some Love Island people staying at the house. It looks like you're on Love Island right now with

the shirt that you're wearing. I wish people could see it. But tell me about. about the Hamptons. Tell me how that whole thing works. Tell me how you got the conglomerate of people together. Just, just educate the people a little bit because I know they're asking. Yeah, for sure. So the house is, it's called the gallery house. And that's actually owned by Gary V. And so what they do is they do brand collaborations at the house. And then that justifies, you know, the price of the house, the cost of the house and all expenses. And then throughout the month of July, they have different influencers, creators, public figures, There's all different people within this space in certain capacities staying at the house

and they're hosting them here. Now, this house isn't owned by them. They rent it out. I think I looked online. It's a $20 million house. And I think the monthly rent is like $200 to $250,000 a month, which is crazy. And we at ReWired got one weekend to host. So we had, you know, my business partner here, we had one of our agents here.

And then we brought creators and public figures that we work with and or our business. are working on deals with and or are trying to work with, right? So, yeah, we had the Love Island folks here, which are great Taylor and Clark in O'Landria, which is awesome. We have Chicklet and Millennia here. They are creators that have the funniest, funniest content. They were just, they'll be on the podcast, too. They were just at Kaisenet's Streaming University, which is fun.

We had Giuliana here from Bachelet, Tyler and Tate, Tyler Cameron, Rachel Kirkconnell, etc. We threw a party here on Saturday, which was part of the arrangement and got to see a lot of familiar faces there, which was great. And overall, just a really, really good weekend. So it looks like some of this stuff from afar is for fun and play. And while there is, of course, some fun, you have some laughs and have a couple drinks, it's a lot of work too, right? So, but it was a very successful weekend. We had a blast being here. Great connections.

And it was just a good weekend, man. That was great. What did it look like from afar? It just look like there's a bunch of people, and everyone's asking how these people know each other? How are they in the same house together? That's a really nice house. Who's paying for the house? So Gary Vee rents the house.

You're saying about a quarter mill a month to rent it. And then are you paying? 250K. Are you paying for the house? No, great question. So everyone that's here is everything's taken care of as far as transportation, the food. I mean, this thing is stacked with food. they have and it's like just red carpet treatment they'll steam your you'll steam your clothes they'll

do your laundry i mean you name it you want it they have it so no one's paid though to be here now what's interesting is there's a lot of brands doing integrations here so then a lot of the companies that are seeing the quote-unquote talent here now have an interest in doing paid activations right so but no one is paid to be here but everything is paid for so when you say paid for, paid for by Gary Vee, who owns a house. And if that's the case, what's his kickback? How is he getting his ROI in the investment? It's a great question. So all the, like, if I look at the backyard, David, which of course they have, you know, big pool and they have a tennis court, racquetball court, steam room, son, a cold plunge, everything. I'm looking at like a

massive de jrano sign right now. Like it is huge. There's a huge de jrano activation, you know. And if I continue, I'm looking at a massive Hendricks gin activation and many others. So they deck brands out in this house and they make sure that the house gets a lot of exposure. And therefore, the brands pay a fee to the gallery house and this becomes an income generator for them. Right. We get an experience. We get to network. We get to, you know, whatever, do content. meet people that are, they're doing brand work. They're being paid by brands. And then the long goal here, of course, is to then have paid activations generated through a lot of this networking. So, and then while, you know, while we're here, we did five podcasts. So we have Landre

coming on, Tyler and Tate, Giuliana, Chicklet, and Millennia, everyone that I pretty much told you, and Rachel Kirkano, all those episodes will be coming out too. So yeah, it's a great question. It's super productive. It's been a ton of fun. leave tomorrow and back to the grind. I mean, look, we've been doing this pod for four years. You've been in this world since 2018. Some of these things still surprise me. I can't imagine being one of those Love Island contestants who's been off the show for two weeks.

And all of a sudden, they're in the Hamptons in a $20 million house. And they're seeing it for the first time. It must be information overload. So for you to be there and to educate them on it, you know, they're probably super grateful for it. And it's obviously probably something that you really enjoy and are fortunate that you, you know, passionate about that you get to do. Yeah, I was calling it, choking around like I'm the old man. I'm like, the kids here. I mean, they're these young kids and they're so kind and extremely talented. And my gosh, I think we've done doing this for four years, David. You know, we've had almost every type of reality star on from every different show. I have now seen and Ben in, I guess he called it the reality TV unscripted space since 2018. I will tell you with certainty, I've never. um i don't think i've ever seen this type of hype and buzz it's it's i mean like i've never seen it like people are so into this show the other thing they're really good at is like they're always

working the phone like they're they're hitting they're streaming they're on lives they're always putting content out and it was interesting to see they did a live at 3 a m here and everyone was just dancing and stuff and then people will clip the live and then go to Twitter and there'll be like hundreds and thousands of tweets based on their live. It's just that show, we've talked about it before. We'll talk about it again. It's done insane, insane things in this space and industry. But Hamptons has been good. Nice little life update. We got to get to the main event here, David Royce. What'd you think? Yeah, I mean, David Royce, let's turn the page a little bit, back to the roots, entrepreneur, inspiring, motivating, and just, I got to say from my perspective, always love seeing you as

an interviewer grow over the four years. But when we get someone that you are like hairs on your, on your arm stand up because you are like, wow, I'm active, I'm activated. I'm learning from this guy. I want to know more. I'm a listener now. I'm trying to get tips and tricks. You're a little bit more on the edge of your seat. You're really asking really great questions because you're really intrigued. You're not necessarily looking to have to talk about a certain topic or something it was a news or a clip or anything like that. You're just so invested. So I think, you know, do you feel differently when we have entrepreneurs on? Yeah, it's just a whole different style of interview, you know? Yeah. I mean, this is a guy who became a billionaire from the pest

control business. So to have the, it's kind of like it reminds me of the M Agreed episode, to have the opportunity to sit down with these people and like pick their brain and learn everything. It's like, I feel so fortunate that this is part of my job, right? So you probably hear it in my tone and my energy. You can tell I'm just like literally trying to get all the information out of them, not only for our listeners, but like just for my curiosities and benefit too, because it's wild to see a space like this and to see someone become a billionaire in a space like this.

And it reminds me the Todd Graves episode too, right? Todd Graves is now worth $20 billion selling chicken. tenders, right? So to have the opportunity to speak to these people that we look up to and can learn from is truly like an honor. All right. So we have influencers, reality TV people on and business people on. The reality TV people are easy to identify, hey, we need, we need O'Landria on the show, right? Not everyone's saying, hey, can you get the pest control guy on the show? How is a pest control conglomerate mastermind, business entrepreneur mastermind, stumbling? Stumbling. tripping and falling us way onto Trading Secrets Podcasts. It's a great, great question. We always

like kind of pull the curtain back here. So we give exposure and we really showcase the reality of that. He had a whole team reach out. So they put a full pitch together. They showed us exactly what he could talk about, how he can add benefit to the show. So, you know, like imagine you go on Shark Tank, right? Like you hear the people just pitching the sharks. We were pitched by a PR company that represents him as to why and the benefit of his experience and what he's done could bring to the show. So, and we get those, David, just like, I don't know if you and I have ever talked about that.

We get pitches like this probably, probably 20 plus a week, probably like 20 to 50 a week. People will reach out and ask to have whatever it is that they're doing on our pod, which is pretty cool. Like, it's really cool to see those pictures come in. It's so cool. And just to watch them, like I watched the video of this before I podcast. and sometimes I just get the audio, the video, like he's, you can tell he's smiling the whole time.

I mean, he's so excited to talk about. He's got such a wealth of knowledge. I myself, am a homeowner. I have pest control. I didn't have it for a few years. So I have it. So it resonated with me. And I'm like, wow.

How much you pay for you guys? So I pay, I think I pay 50 bucks a month. And I, door to door salesman. He came and that's how I got it. And he was the same thing. I'm doing the neighbors in the home. And I didn't do it for a year. And then that year, I had the worst, like, wasp problem,

wasp outside a B problem, wasp problem. They were making a massive nest in like the faucet of my outdoor roof. And I called the guy a year later. And I was like, can you come in? And, you know, I got hooked. He's like, yeah, he quoted me on like $350 or something to take care of it. But if you sign out for the 50 bucks a month, any of those big one-time treatments were part of the package. So now if I ever have a B problem again, I just call them.

it's zero dollars like my shed outside i hate mice every time i open my shed for the spring and summer there's 10 mice i just call them now they set the traps they do the things i never see dead mice again it cost me zero dollars so i pay the monthly tons of value for me and like you you guys talked about those blue collar industries they're of value everyone needs them and somewhere behind the mice behind the bees behind the daughter or salesman is someone making a ton of money and rightfully so a hundred percent what would you say is your like when you listen to an episode like this, David. Him and I were talking

well after the podcast. Any minute I could get with him, I was asking him a million questions. It was actually, yeah, it was interesting some of the conversations we had off camera. Such a smart guy. But what was like your biggest takeaway? When you listen to an episode like this,

what are your learning lessons? I'm going to just do some quick hitters here because I don't want to talk about too much of them in depth. I loved how at the end of the day he only got to the level wealthy got to because he ended up showing value. So he was a door-to-door salesman. He kept getting better at that.

But then once he started the training manual and his boss was like, I'll give you a cut of every person that you can train under this manual, that's when he went from the 20 to 35K to the 225K over the summer. So showing value, not just like being satisfied in your role,

but always finding way to show value is how you're going to really exponentially grow that wealth if you stay within that company. I loved that. I loved his just comment about like, it's not just good enough sometimes. be passionate about something you have to be obsessed about something and then from the like relationship side that i love the dynamic that he had with his wife like for 10 they didn't have kids for 10 years

they were both she was a lawyer and he was grinding away at this he was like we would work 14 16 hour a days we would we would meet for an hour before bed and catch up and then we would really enjoy our weekends together but because we were both supportive and passionate about building this life together it allowed us to get to where we were at today and you know i i got to end with the last saying like he shoved it right out my hoop like he loves to read leaders or readers he reads two books a day business books i even have tony shade delivering happiness like i think it's about time that i just step off my little high horse and i pick up a goddamn book and make myself better like david royce did today so that's a lot of takeaways right there um you know

some self-loathing takeaways in there as well but well i had a bunch more but i mean really like these are the guys that i said to make the hair on your next end up these are you are the guys where I come away from the podcast feeling like a better person for a listen to it. I love it. That's what Trading Secrets is all about. We change it up. We throw different people from different industries and different stories. And hopefully it's something that everyone back at home can appreciate and learn something from. And if you have any ideas of guests or industry as you want us to explore, please go give us five stars and let us know what those are. And I promise we will do our best to have those on this podcast. We did say last recap, David, we were going to do a giveaway

and I said it on the podcast, a four pack of love potion from Justin Glaze. So I went to the reviews and we did a random drawing and it looks like the account, Deb, for sure, is our winner. So if you get this, Deb, just shoot us an email, Trading Secrets at Jason Turt.com and we will make sure we send you a pack of the love potion. This is a great podcast. Justin seems so smart and down to earth. I enjoyed watching him on the Batchezer franchise and look forward to trying his love potion products. And David, we're doing pretty good, man. 5.7,000 reviews at a 4.9 out of 5 rating. So we'll take it.

4.9 rating. That's great. We're honored. We're blessed. We're fortunate. I think it's sprinkling people like David Royston and entrepreneurs in with all of our guests that we've had is what differentiates us, makes us a little different. You never know what you're going to get, but you always know that you're going to walk away learning something. And I think that that's the beauty of it.

That's right. You're going to learn something. it's an entrepreneur this week, and we have more entrepreneurs like the founder of LTK and many others coming on. But I told you, if we have some reality stars coming on too, and we have some stacked episodes with Rachel Kirkconnell. We have Landria coming on. We have Millennian Chicklet. We got Juliana, Tyler Tate, and many more. So continue to tune in to trading secrets. Remember to subscribe. David, got anything before we wrap? Well, I said it, I teased at the start of the recap. I did have a definition. I need answers,

and I can't go without saying it. He said he grew his business by MNA. I'm assuming he means mergers and acquisitions. You nailed it. I'm right. Hit the ding, ding, ding, and let's sign this thing out of here. The Curious Canadian, he's growing up. Let me just make sure I heard that right.

M&A, not M&A. M&A, yes. MMA, I know. Okay, I have to say. Very different. I love it. Well, that is a beautiful thing. The Curious Canadian, you are just becoming it.

After all these years, the only, probably, the only hole in your sailboat is the fact you still haven't found your crypto. And I got to read some books. And you got to read some books. But here we go. It's all about learning people. It's all about learning. David, thank you for being on this episode and this recap of Trading Secrets with me.

I'm so excited for what we have planned in the rest of this summer and fall. Huge episodes coming. And we will see you. We hope this was another episode of Trading Secrets. one you couldn't afford to miss.