Breton Bess on Growing a Pest Control Branch From Zero to $5.5M With Door-to-Door

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm with Breton Bess, who's the owner of four successful pest control branches. Breton is a Golden Door Award winner recognized in 2021 for elite door-to-door sales performance. And he's built and sold multiple high performing pest control branches, including growing one to 5.5 million in three years. He's also a US veteran who served for eight years. And in this episode, we break down his playbook for sales mastery, team building, and turning branches into sellable companies. Now without further ado, Breton, welcome to the show.

00:37 Breton Bess

Thanks for having me, man.

00:39 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So I wanted to dive into your background and I think it would actually make sense to talk about you being a veteran if that's all right.

00:49 Breton Bess

Yeah, let's do it,...

00:51 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, so I wanted to ask, and to make this applicable for the audience, I'm sure you learned a lot of lessons being a veteran, and you're doing it for eight years, I can't even imagine. Can you tell me some of the biggest lessons you learned then going through that that have still kind of transitioned and are alive in your life today?

01:15 Breton Bess

Yeah, definitely. I'd say like the one that always just comes to mind the most is the discipline. It's a little bit different than anything in the civilian world where if I don't really love my circumstances, I can run and go to something different. You don't like college, just drop out or switch majors. Being in the military, like you sign a contract with the government and you kind of just have to stick it out whether you like it or you love it or you hate it. And obviously like it's not something that's like super easy. They, you know, so I think that would be like the biggest thing is like the discipline, the dedication. Another big thing that they really preach in the military is attention to detail. And so. Just paying attention to your surroundings. And I'm also just like deep diving in anything that you're gonna do, making sure that you're gonna do it the right way. So I'd say that those are like the two biggest things. Obviously it's definitely shaped who I am and how I live my life and my leadership essentially. But yeah, I'd say those are like the two biggest things for me.

02:27 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, got it. I'm curious then, because now that you don't have like the, an official contract with the government, how do you stay disciplined then if there's no, there's no like sergeant pushing on you or whatever you're going through?

02:41 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like I think I'm kind of the sergeant in my own life, right? Like if I, if I have big goals and dreams for myself, you know, a lot of guys talk about like, I'm not motivated. It's like, I'm not motivated either. There's like a dedication and commitment that goes to. And so, you know, you just kind of find different aspects of your life that you can turn into like your why is there like your holy cause or whatever. And so like if, you know, like I just got married a year ago, it's like, if my, I want my life to be a certain way in the next five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road, you know, it, depends on how, I think like how nice you want your life to be right. You talk quality of life, five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road. If I want to be a multimillionaire and I want to be able to live a certain way, you know, flipping burgers and McDonald's is not going to do that. And so, I think that's like the biggest thing is just like holding myself to a certain standard, whether it become fitness or religion or whether it become business, whatever, whatever aspect of your life you're talking, just holding myself to a certain standard of living, which will get me where I want to. Right. And I think a lot of that has to do with making sure I have a very clear path with my goals and my dreams. So yeah, it makes a lot easier that way.

04:13 Dan Leibrandt

Love that man. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I forget where this quote is from, but the quote is essentially, you fall to the level of your standards. And I've seen that in my life. I'm like a perfectionist. Everything needs to be excellent and incredible. So I've kind of just, I defaulted to that and it seems like you have too. So cool. And also I wanted to dive a little bit more. Yeah, I wanted to dive a little bit more into your pest control background, which we were touching on before the show. Can you just give me a quick kind of rundown? So after you were a veteran, then how did you get into this whole pest control space?

04:36 Breton Bess

Yeah, definitely try it.

04:52 Breton Bess

Yeah. So I actually hadn't finished my Marine Corps time by the time I got into the pest control realm. I got done with my active duty, which that was like a year and a half of time. And I was living at my parents' house in California and just going to the singles ward out there, just with church. And I met a couple of guys that were doing solar door to door actually. And so these guys were making way more money just during the summer than I was like the whole year doing the Marine Corps. And I needed a job just because the Marine Corps reserves and just like a one weekend out of the month kind of gig. And so these guys were super cool and they kind of brought me in and had me come out and try out the solar thing. I'd actually been dating a girl for a year and at we got married and a week later, she's like, Hey, I think I made a mistake. Month later, I found out she'd been cheating the whole time. And, while I was like trying to knock doors for solar, which trying to learn a new skillset, especially with a big ticket item like solar and the solar industry was like still pretty new. People were not acclimated to like having glass on their roof like that. It was just like a recipe for disaster. And I just told myself like, I'm not good at the sales thing. I ended up moving to Idaho for school and worked for like a retention office for dish one or like caliber. And like the manager, my manager's manager actually reached out to me and wanted me to come move to corporate in Utah. And so I moved to Utah. They eventually ended up, my manager ended up moving to the finance department. And so they were looking for a different person to take that, that role. And I was already taking a lot of that management role on. So I kind of, to me, I felt like it was like a natural progression for me to move into that manager position. And they told me they were actually going to look externally first. And if they didn't find anybody, then they would hire me, which didn't sit right with me. And so I just stubbornly.

07:08 Breton Bess

Stubbornly told them like if I, if I would just like go and look for a different job and whoever found it first, that I would just kind of decide where everything would lay. And so a day before they offered me that management position, I actually found another job installing alarms in Salt Lake. I fixed radios and satellites for the Marines. So with the electronics background that opened that door for me. Um, and I worked there for a couple of months and then the owner of the company heard me take a customer service call, wanted me to go and sell alarms for him. And I, and I had that belief that like, couldn't sell, I wasn't good at door to door. Um, and back then, like 2014, 2015, I was making like 20 bucks an hour, which for a no college degree and very minimal, like I, know, that was a pretty good pay. And the owner of the company told me I was going to go knock doors for him. And if I didn't. He was going to cut my hours in half. And so...

08:06 Dan Leibrandt

Heh.

08:06 Breton Bess

I kind of got strong armed into the door door thing again. I went out for that summer and it ended up being, you know, not bad, not great, but I learned that I could sell. I didn't want to work with him anymore. And so I actually sat down with a bunch of different knocking companies. Back then the big four were like the solar alarms, pest control and satellite and I ended up finding a company where I came and sold with them for a year and I did well and I could manage a team for a year. And if I managed well and the team performed really well, they'd actually give me some equity in a pest control company. And so I sold, I managed, and then they helped me start up a pest control company in Indianapolis, Indiana. We built that out for three years. And then the founder of the company had some personal things going on where we had to actually sell the company. And yeah, but that's how, that's how I got into the pest control thing and, never looked back since then. It's just kind of, it's the slow and steady, slow and steady burn. So.

09:14 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, it's so interesting to hear how people get into the industry. And one thing I wanted to make sure to ask you was that you won the Golden Door Award five years ago, which is a big deal in the door to door space. So you're clearly crushing it in door to door. And you said that's kind of how you got your start doing solar sales and everything. So looking back, you know, what would you say to your younger self? About door-to-door sales, about maybe some of the top lessons, what people starting out need to know.

09:50 Breton Bess

Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways I could go about with that one. I think the biggest thing is just the multiplier effect that all these things have, Like the door door thing is pretty big on recruiting and training and managing and essentially replicating yourself, which is great lesson to learn in any business. And I think I, if I could go back and talk to my previous self, like that would be one of the biggest things that focus on is really just putting more time and more effort into that. Luckily, like the mentors that I had were really big on, self education. So I ended up actually dropping out of school, just because the mentorship that I was getting was. So much more efficient and like I was actually learning real life experiences and skills. But yeah, luckily I was in a really good position where, you we got into reading a lot of improvement in business books. But I think that'd be like the biggest thing. And then if I had to give like a second one, I think I was afraid of putting myself in bigger and bigger positions. Definitely some imposter syndrome there. But just like throwing myself into bigger positions, I'd probably be a lot further now if I had done that.

11:19 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. You mentioned, you know, maybe you read some books or other resources. Was there anything that was like a big unlock for you?

11:26 Breton Bess

Yeah, I'd say like my favorite self-improvement book is 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell. I think it doesn't really matter like what if you're trying to do big things in your life leadership something that is always going to be essential for that. And so yeah, for me reading 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership was really like a big eye opener on what I was already doing well and then obviously the long list of things that I needed to work on and still working on, right? But yeah, I'm really big on leadership. A, yeah, that was probably the biggest unlock for me.

12:10 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And I also want to touch on another point that you're mentioning there, which was replicating yourself. And I feel like most experienced business owners know all about this. It's all about delegation and replicating yourself.

12:27 Dan Leibrandt

And so you can scale. But I'm sure a good amount of people watching the show now are maybe solo operators or maybe they're a technician or maybe they're a door to door sales guy. So can you go deeper on that concept of replicating yourself and like how do you replicate yourself?

12:44 Breton Bess

Yeah, I think I'll get back to how do you replicate yourself, but I think more important is like, when do you replicate yourself? And so one thing that I have spent a lot of time on focusing on is figuring out where I spend the most time on things that somebody else could be doing. And so my thought process on this is if there's something that somebody else is doing that, or if there's something I'm doing that somebody else could easily be doing that would open a bunch of my free time, I like time up so I can go and do more important things in the business. Like, you know, for those, for those guys that are the technician, you know, the brand, the guys that own a pest control company, um, you know, it would be more advantageous to pay somebody else to spray the homes, know, paying 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour, whatever, you know, you decide on, um, and then get better at marketing, whether it be door to door, you know, I know you're a big online guy. Um, and so spending time on something where, you know, sale the pay to play, whether you're learning from, from a guy like myself or somebody else that's really good at the door door side, like the coaching and mentoring is pretty expensive or like you're just going out and trying to figure out the door door side yourself. Like that's a lot of time and effort, but when you walk down one of those deals, like that's going to pay for the technician really quickly. And so I think that's like the most important time is figuring out if there's something you're doing that's very redundant that you could have somebody else just do, and then you could focus on other aspects of your business. And then as far as trying to like replicate yourself, obviously you have to understand how that role works before you can put somebody else in that position. And so I would just say like writing down all the SOPs of that position.

14:43 Breton Bess

You know, if it's spraying the home, right, figuring out what products to be using, where to use them, how much to spray, um, and just have it all written out. So you have crystal clear. Like, um, procedures on, how you're going to run that and then bringing somebody along and having them go and do that. Right. Same thing with the door to door side, find some kid on college campus. He's busting tables, making 15, 20 bucks an hour, um, taking them out onto the door, showing them. How to knock those doors and give them the right script for them to be successful. And then, you know, now you're, now you're paying somebody else to do that where you can focus on more important aspects of the business. And I think that's a part that a lot of guys miss or mess up is they're so focused on like, that's their baby, right? Whether it be, you know, the technician side or the sales side or whatever aspect it is. I think a lot of like, I think a lot of solo guys have a hard time giving up a piece of that because there's a control aspect and I, you know, I think it's natural, but it can be scary to kind of branch off and have somebody else on payroll. It can be pretty scary.

15:58 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, it seems like the whole consensus of what you're saying here is that you need to focus on high leverage tasks, you need to continue to upgrade what you're doing and all the lower level tasks, like you mentioned, maybe teching, or even door to door sales. Those should be outsourced. So then I want to ask you, what are the high leverage? What are the high leverage tasks that you're focusing on? What are you trying to spend your time on right now?

16:28 Breton Bess

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I spend most of my time now mainly just like with recruiting, um, finding more door to door sales reps, um, finding other systems that we can implement into our program where we can cross market. If you have a list of pest control customers, um, trying to get as many of them on mosquito services as can or termite business. Um, you know, talking to those high leverage skill sets and those things that you can be doing with that. If you have a list of a thousand customers, then you can get, you know, 2 % of them doing termites. All of a sudden you're instantly growing your business quite a bit. Um, I mean, that's a good amount of revenue. If you only have a thousand customers coming in, um, or same thing with mosquitoes or bed bugs or, whatever, there's a list of things that you can add to that. And so just making sure that I have the right managers for each department. Making sure that they understand what the role is going to look like and just building out the departments like that as much as possible. That way you don't have to spend as much time and money on the door-to-door side or the online ads because you're making your business go a lot further. And you're just adding more value to the customer, which is obviously going to make them happier and which keeps the customer around a lot longer, which is awesome.

17:51 Dan Leibrandt

Sweet, yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Something else I wanted to cover was this crazy success story of yours, building that branch from zero to about $5.5 million in three years. So can you walk me through that? Like, how did that happen? Because that's really like a dream scenario for most people watching the show. Know, most people just wanna hit a million dollars, five million is crazy, 10 million is like totally absurd. So, I mean... Like walk me through that, how did it happen?

18:28 Breton Bess

Yeah, mean, luckily for the position I was in, I didn't have to handle any of the operational side. Just, I just had to handle the door door side. I mean, that's my bread and butter. And luckily for me, that's the most expensive part of growing a business as well. And so I didn't have to outsource that I was able to do it internally, which kept our costs down quite a bit. But yeah, I mean, it starts with finding one guy that you know, I willing to go out and knock some doors. I'd say just figure out that door to door side yourself first. I'd say making sure you have a great service so you can actually take care of your customers and retain your customers. You know, there's people out there that have terrible services, terrible attrition on their accounts and, you're having to do a lot more than $5 million, $6 million in revenue to have a final goal of that five and a half mil. So having a great service, make sure the call center is really dialed in. Then, yeah, I mean, just obviously I didn't go and sell that five and a half million myself. Uh, that takes a lot of work. And so, yeah, had, you know, our final year, we had 45 sale reps and myself going out knocking doors. And so just really dialed in on that door to door side of things. And just, you know, we had a really awesome team of guys that just really loved working together and. Honestly, like it a brotherhood with each other and we just all set really big goals and just crushed it. So I can't, I can't take all the credit myself for that. That was, you know, that was definitely lucky for our team to be all on the same page and same wavelength of where we were trying to go. So just really grateful for that.

20:11 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's awesome. So one thing I'm picking up here is that recruiting door-to-door guys have been huge for you because obviously you mainly grew through door-to-door. So then how do you find these good door-to-door guys?

20:28 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah. Mean, the industry has kind of shifted a lot, right? Like I've been in there. I've been in for over a decade at this point. And so when I first got into it, social media wasn't as big of a thing and the online stuff, I there was a few key players that were doing the online stuff. I know you have got quite an extensive background with that side. Ours was just like the good old like go to college campus and just find some dude that looks cool and looks like he'd be a hard worker. We typically target like the athletes just because those guys have, you know, whatever sport you're playing, right, if you've played it for long enough, you've had the highs and the lows of sports and you know, those are the guys that aren't giving up when things get tough. They're just going to find a way to like be better at it. So I typically love looking for athletes as playing volleyball every single night.

21:27 Breton Bess

Just with a bunch of different groups. And that was really cool because I was able to find a lot of guys there too. And so just putting yourself where those kinds of guys are going to be. I typically go for like the 18 to like 30 year old, typically like athletes. So just finding a place where all those guys are going to be hanging out and just become one of the locals there. And, you know, they learn to trust you and like you and... You know, if you're good at the sport, then they want to invite you more and more. And so that was kind of how I did it. You know, the industry has shifted a lot in the past decade to more of like an online presence. Obviously you can still find guys locally, but you're not going to recruit massive teams from that. And so it's a lot more social media. And that, and the thing is like, if you're good at the pest control side already, and you already understand. You know how much how the money works, the business side, everything that goes into the pest control side of things like there's guys out there like myself, like I was just a lost, you know, 19, 20 year old straight out of the Marine Corps who was trying to figure out, you know, how I was going to pay for life. And, you know, they just took me under their wing and there's guys out there online. And so just, you know, posting as much content as you can about your business. You know, and it doesn't even have to be just the sexy side, just like helping guys see, hey, like you are the expert. And I think the same goes for if you're going to be trying to get more customers organically to you, right? So just leveraging social media and having a presence showing that you actually know what you're talking about on, you know, when it comes to pest control side of things. And then obviously, like if I don't, if I don't know how to sell pest control door to door myself, how am I supposed to train somebody else to sell pest control?

23:21 Breton Bess

And so that was a really big thing for me is I just realized like I needed to be one of the best at it. If I was going to train and coach and mentor other guys. And I think that goes with anything in life, right? If you're going to be coaching and training guys, there's a lot of like online courses you can get where guys don't really know what they're talking about. And people can see through that and they're not going to want to stick around and work with you. And then at the end of the day, just like taking care of people. If you take care of them, they'll take care of you and they've all got friends that they can bring to. So.

23:49 Breton Bess

Yeah, I mean, we could talk for hours on the recruiting side of things, but I'd those are like the tidbits right there.

23:55 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I like that little nugget about almost infiltrating college groups because those guys are primed, they're looking to make money. You can kind of tell if they're athletes and maybe they're playing a sport in college or they used to in high school. And now you can connect with them on a personal level and get in their groups. I think that's a really good strategy. I haven't heard anyone tell me quite a strategy like that. Hear people maybe, set of boo psychologist, but that sounds like a good one.

24:27 Breton Bess

Cool. Oh yeah, I would just walk up to random people and just, hey, I like your shoes. Where'd you get them? Start talking to them. You know, there's a lot of ways you can start a conversation with people. I think like a big thing I realized throughout like, cause I was, I didn't have a ton of friends in high school. Wasn't like super close with a bunch of people. And I kind of realized like we're all kind of lost. And we all kind of want that connection. And essentially at that age, like that's a really tough age, trying to figure out your own identity and figure out who and what you are. So just having somebody that like connects with you. And like I said, like, as long as you like truly care about that person, this isn't like a quick cash grab thing. Like you genuinely have to like somebody and want to spend time with them in the recruiting game. Cause if you're just. Trying to force a friendship or relationship, people can read through that real quick. And it's not going to be long-term. It's not going to be sustainable. Like I'm looking for guys that are, you know, going to work with me for the next five to 10 years, you know? And so I want to, I want these guys to be guys that I actually enjoy spending time with. Like all my sail groups are like some of my best friends. And so it makes it really easy to jump on a call and just hang out. It doesn't have to be all work.

25:45 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's awesome. One thing I did wanna ask there is, so you've trained a lot of door-to-door guys. What are you seeing are like the traits of the most successful ones? Is there anything that you can recognize with all the top performers?

26:07 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah. Coach ability is one of biggest things. I've had guys work for me before where they've done sales, you know, anywhere from, you know, three months to 30 years. And, you know, I would, I actually prefer working with guys that have no sales experience for the most part, just because they know they don't know anything about sales. And so they're just, such sponges towards anything I tell them. I found that the longer guys have been in sales, the more set they are in their own ways. Door-to-door is a different animal. I'm especially selling at the volume that I've been able to, and I try training my guys to be able to do. Coachability is going to be a big thing. Obviously, work ethic is a big thing.

26:59 Breton Bess

Positive attitude, you get guys that just have such a negative outlooks on life. And that makes it really hard to work with when just the world is always against you. So yeah, I'd those would be like the top three for me.

27:14 Dan Leibrandt

What training material, like how are you training these guys up? Is there like five different SOPs or do you give them a book or like what is the training process there?

27:25 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah. So I have like a 60 page training manual that I wrote out with just like all the words, how to say, what to say, when to say, how to stand verbal cues, nonverbal cues, like objections you're going to see on the doors. Mean, just anything and everything you could need on the doors. And then. Because I'm working with like a franchise company, we have like tons of videos and I have audio recordings from me on the doors with my sales guys just recording my audio clips from the doors. And then this year I'm planning on taking some like Meta glass, some training videos so I can have my guys like, you know, I don't think you have too much training. So. Yeah, and then obviously just having them read like business books and sales books and stuff, just kind of getting them in the head space.

28:25 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, 60 pages is super impressive. Sure like, I don't know, maybe it just sounds standard to you, but other people that are trying to get into door to door or recruit people into door to door, I'm sure they kind of, I don't know, maybe they just try to teach them for a few hours and there's not really a clear process there. So it seems like it's obvious to you, but I don't think it's obvious to others.

28:47 Breton Bess

Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

28:50 Dan Leibrandt

Related to door to door, what are some of the biggest mistakes guys make at the door?

28:57 Breton Bess

Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot I would say, I'd say like, if I had to say like one that's just sticking out to me right now. And maybe this is just because like the timing of year and where I'm at with training my guys, but a lot of guys will almost talk too much. And a lot of the door door side is based off of confidence. And just like how married you are to the idea that these customers need it. I had, I heard it. I, one of my guys that like, listened to about the sales stuff was talking about certainty on the doors. A customer on the door is certain that they don't need you and they're certain that the other pest control company that's already servicing their home is doing a good job and you allow them to sell you on that. They are doing a good job.

29:54 Breton Bess

Then because they're more certain than you're not going to get the sale. And so for me, like I'm not afraid of confrontational confrontation at all. And so when there's like long awkward pauses or whatever, like I just will sit in the silence. And so like I'll give an example. You know, I'll go through my, I'll go through my intro, I'll go through the service. So what all we're doing, I go through the price of what it's all going to what it's going to cost for the customer. And then I'll ask them like, Hey, is tomorrow morning or morning or evening work better for you? And I'll just leave it as an option clause. And you know, I'll see a lot of rookie sales reps who will ask for that because that's what they've been instructed to do. Then the customer sits there and thinks for a second and then the sale rep will interject themselves almost in that thought process because it gets, you know, the tension can be a little thick there at times, especially if you're not, you know, acclimated to the door door side and, then they'll start asking other questions or they'll try selling more and they just like over talk. And so with the sales stuff, I, know, I like to say less is more, you know, especially if you're like a pest control owner, like there's so many different things you could talk about. With what products are called and how the products interact with the bugs and egg cycles. There's a billion things that we could talk to about the customer, but customers don't need to know that much. And it's actually better if they know less. A lot of guys are gonna think, that sounds kind of counterintuitive, but the reality is if I unload everything I know about recruiting or sales or... You know, the, you know, the pest control side of things, right? It's like these, you know, with the customers, they're going to, they're going to get so confused and this is a very different world than they're used to. Right. And so when you start unloading everything you understand and you know, about pest control, you know, these customers get genuinely confused.

32:09 Breton Bess

And they realize how little they actually know about pest control and what's being sprayed on their home and how it's being applied and everything else. And because they realize how little they know, they feel really dumb and they actually put their walls up and they say, Hey, I need to think about this. And so I just try to keep it as simple as possible. Right. I tell my sales guys and it's like, dude, if we could wave a magic wand and just get rid of all the bugs for the customer, like the customer would not care. Right? Like the customer doesn't need to know every single product and how much of every product and where every product keep a super, super simple for the customer. And then if they ask questions, they're like targeted questions about the service, like give them a little bit more information, right? Give them, give them some breadcrumbs with that, but you don't, don't need to go full in depth of every single thing you know about this because then the customer is not going to, and you're not, they're not going to buy, you know,...

33:06 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no that totally makes sense What I want to ask you there then because you're saying that I mean that the door-to-door guys should have some pest control expertise that or know-how Do you think that your door-to-door guys should be? Technicians or vice versa that your technicians should be knocking doors or should it should there really be a clear split?

33:31 Breton Bess

I'm not a big fan of mixing those two. Lot of that has to go back to the delegation side. And that's just me personally, right? Like, you know, I have some technicians that, you know, can do some sales side of things, but that's more typically like a branch manager position in my opinion. The sales side, you know, it's not a bad idea if they go out and they try to techie a little bit. But like I said, like just less is more. And so as long as my sales reps understand what we can service and what we can't service, then that's just a lot easier than them actually having touched the products, knowing the products, what they do, what they're called, all that stuff. Cause then they just, you know, there becomes a point where the ego comes into play and we all have an ego of some sort. And so these sales reps just start showing off and then. Like I said, the customer gets confused and then they won't buy. So I actually don't, I don't love mixing the sales and service side. Controversial opinion, I'm sure.

34:35 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. Now I've heard arguments for both sides. I think it totally makes sense. Another thing you mentioned there was about switchovers, that people might be giving too much information. And I feel like that might be one of the hardest prospects to close as someone who's already working with another pest control company. You might disagree there, regardless, how do you close someone who's already working with a pest control company and how does that differ from someone who's not?

35:08 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of ways you can go about it. I think the biggest thing is like just internally. It's not my job to decide if that customer is happy or not with their service. And I think sometimes we get in our heads a little bit where it's like, you know, like, you know, they say they're happy right off the bat. And sometimes us saying like we're happy is like a knee jerk reaction, right? Like you ask a friend, hey, how are you doing? And they're going to say, you know, knee jerk reaction, you know, society has told us, hey, I'm good. Right. And the reality is like, I've asked friends that and you could tell they're not, you're not, they're not doing good, you know? And so when, when I knock on some random person's door and I ask him like, Hey, like who you guys using? How's that been? And like, it's been great. But then they've got cobwebs still up in their eaves. So they've got wasps that look like they'd been around for, you know, way longer than they should have been around or whatever. It's like, okay, well, you know, I'm just looking at the tip of the surface, like right. You know, if you have spider webs up in your eaves, those don't magically get there. The wasp nest that's been around for a year, like that doesn't get there magically. And so to me at that point, it's like, well, you say you're good because you don't really understand that there's differences in pest control services. And obviously like on a, on a baseline service, like pest control is pretty intuitive, but, there are different companies that are doing different services. And I think like one thing that people don't understand in society, like I had a sales rep years ago who, you know, I was trying to help motivate him and trying to help push him through the end of the summer. And we were rewriting goals because he'd already hit the goals he was trying to. This is a kid I grew up with in high school. So he's a couple of years younger than I would go over to his family's house and we'd play ping pong and barbecue all the time. And I didn't, I didn't grow up rich. We didn't have a ton of money growing up when like none of our friends really did either.

37:20 Breton Bess

But he was like wanting to learn more about cars, right? Because he sat in my car, he's like, wow, this is a really nice car. And I was like, dude, let's go look at Teslas because Teslas were becoming like a big, big thing. And so it was like, yeah, let's just, know, for a morning before we went out and knocked, we went and sat in a Tesla. He was just like mind blown, like how nice Teslas were, which you know, I've got Teslas are nice, but they're, you know, it's, definitely not like the, you know, it's not like the most expensive nicest cars out there, but he had never sat in a Tesla before. You know, he just sat in the car, his parents had driven growing up and he didn't realize how different cars actually are. Right. There's differently, there's definitely layers and levels to, you know, how nice the vehicles can get. And I kind of look at pest control the same way, right? Like. You know, there's guys that are not experienced or they're kind of skimping on what products they should be using or where they should be applying or whatever. And everybody's got personal preferences on how much. And so when I get to like a customer in the door and we're talking about the pest control stuff and I can see clearly like, you have wasps and you've got the spiders crawling around and you got ants. I'm not in some neighborhoods where there's like ants swarming people's mailboxes and swarming their yards and you know, you see in Texas or Arizona, all your South markets, there's, you know, the bugs get really bad out there. And so if I can see that and you tell me, Hey, like you're pretty satisfied with your pest control company. That, that goes back to that sales rep. Didn't even understand that there's different layers and different, like, so these guys get used to living with bugs. And so if they see even a marginal difference from XYZ pest control service, like they're going to feel really good and feel really grateful about that. And so I just try like pointing out like, this is what we do. You know, you shouldn't be seeing ants swarming your home. If, you are like, okay, well let's increase the frequency, let's increase the product usage, obviously within, you know, what you can from, from a legal standpoint, but just making sure that the customer actually understands that there are different layers to this. So make sure you take care of your customers because Otherwise they will get scooped up.

39:43 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's something I've realized in business as well is that you can't separate the product from marketing and sales. It doesn't matter how good you are at marketing and sales. If your product totally sucks, you know, if you're coming out here and maybe you don't even have the expertise to, you know, maybe see all the ants around or then fulfill that service and do a good job, then, you know, why even do all the door to door stuff? So I feel like you have to be really solid on both.

40:15 Breton Bess

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's everything, right? Like customer service, whether it be your call center, the way you're taking care of customers that way. Mean, there's a lot of facets into, into pest control, obviously. So, yeah, just making sure you give the customer the best all around experience as possible. And you end up in the reality is you're not going to please every single person. Right. So just doing your best to warm the whole way. And so, yeah, I think that's important.

40:45 Dan Leibrandt

I've got two more questions before we wrap up here, Breton. One that just came to mind, just curious, kind of random question. What is the most common objection you hear at the door?

40:57 Breton Bess

Yeah, that's a lot of question. It depends on where you're knocking. If you're knocking on some of the seller and markets, where the bug levels are very high. And there's like a lot of saturation, tons and tons of companies out there. I'd say that'd be the biggest one is we already have a company. If you're going to a less saturated market, thinking like the Midwest or like some of your outskirts. A lot of times it's going to be that they've already been taking care of it themselves. And I kind of look at those as exactly the same injection, just to switch over pitch from you're already using a company or you're using yourself to why we're, why we would be a good fit for you on that instead. So, but I'd those are like the two big ones for sure.

41:53 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, sweet. So switch over from DIY or from another company. Got it. And last question I've got for you, Breton, you can take this anywhere you want. What is your message for the audience, the pest control owners or maybe pest control technicians or door to door guys? What do you want to tell them? What do think they need to know?

42:14 Breton Bess

Yeah, I mean, I think just like going in line with the conversation we've had today is like just take care of people, right? Like if I'm a technician, your business is only going to grow bigger when you take care of customers, right? If you're not taking care of your customers, they will cancel and that makes the 5.5 or the million or whatever a lot harder to do, Excuse me. Same thing with the recruiting side of things. If you're going to be bringing on some college students or you're bringing, you know, like whoever it is, if you're bringing somebody to come and work with you have to genuinely care about that person. If, you know, and people, people won't respect you if you don't, right? Like, and there has to be a genuine, like you actually give a crap about them. And, you know, and delegation, right? If you're going to be a business owner and your customer service. You know, your call centers or whatever, like just take care of them. Obviously, like scalability, like if you're having to constantly retrain call center reps because you're a jerk to them. Well, you know, they're not going to stick around and it's going to take a lot of time off your plate. If you're constantly having to go knock more doors because you suck and you're not taking care of your customers, then. Yeah, I mean, like you're going to, you know, it's just going to take a lot more time. So when you genuinely care about people and you generally take care of people. You know, I'd say that's the biggest thing. And obviously, like, I've had sales reps that quit working with me and then two years later, they send their little brother to work with me or, you get that customer that refers, you know, family member just moved into the city and they're asking who I use for pest control. And so I referred them over to you, right? Like, just take care of people. That's all, you know, I think that's a big one.

44:02 Dan Leibrandt

Love that. Well, that's a great lesson to end the show. Just take care of people. Breton, thank you so much for spending the time with me here. How can people connect with you and find you on social media and stuff?

44:14 Breton Bess

Yeah, I typically just use Instagram. So it's just breton underscore bess. And yeah, just reach out. Love the chat with whoever it is. So thanks for having me on the show, man.

44:26 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, of course. And anything else you'd like to plug or promote?

44:32 Breton Bess

No, I think that's it. Yeah, just hit me up if you ever need any help with anything.

44:38 Dan Leibrandt

Sweet, well definitely go follow Breton on Instagram and I believe he's on LinkedIn and Facebook too. So all those links will be in the description and thanks again for coming on Breton, it's been awesome.

44:49 Breton Bess

Yeah, thanks Dan.

44:51 Dan Leibrandt

Course.