Chad Louk on Building Prodigy Pest Solutions From $7,000 to 8 Figures

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm joined by Chad Louk. Chad is the owner and founder of Prodigy Pest Solutions and Prodigy Marketing Pros. He has over a decade of door-to-door sales experience and has spent the last seven years building and scaling Prodigy Pest Solutions into a multi-branch, eight-figure pest control operation across Florida. Outside of business, Chad is a father, a private pilot, a race car driver, and an entrepreneur who's deeply focused on systems, execution and scale. In this episode, we're diving into what it really takes to grow a pest control company, align marketing with operations and avoid the mistakes that stall growth. Now without further ado, Chad, welcome to the show.

00:45 Chad Louk

Thanks for having me Dan.

00:47 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, So I want to back up here because you've built this crazy big company and have had all this success, but where did it start for you? Where did it start for you? How did you initially get into the pest control space?

01:01 Chad Louk

Like a lot of kids, right out of high school, I got recruited and went into door-to-door sales. So, knocked doors for my Scoutmaster for three years and then had an opportunity with a brother of mine, moved into ownership in Florida. Partnership, we had a third partner, it just didn't really work out. And so I ended up selling off, going off my own. And that was back in 2018, so I've been on my own for the past seven and half years.

01:26 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And you mentioned before the call that something kind of unique and probably relatable with some of the owners watching this is that it took you, I think about three years to get out of the truck. So can you talk about that time in your company of being in the truck and then how you eventually got out of it?

01:45 Chad Louk

Yeah. So I had no pest control, actual technical experience. When I opened, I had a prior company, like I said, with two partners and we built it from zero to about 800 K when I walked away. And then they gave me a small lump sum to pay out over three years, took that money. It wasn't enough to hire employees. And I kind of was not sure where I was going to head. And so I had, and also I had some doubts on whether I made the right decision walking. So I had a really slow start. Was a one man show, had a beat up, rusted out Ford Ranger Seatle cab. I'm six foot six. That was 230 pounds at the time sitting in that truck. Was like a clown car. But yeah, I think the first three years, it wasn't until my third year that I broke a million dollars in revenue. So really slow start. Things just kind of fell in place though. I think, I don't know if I could have done it any differently, just because I had such a little experience on the technical side, on the office side, I only knew the door to our sales side. And I hired techs as it went and then I had sales reps come and go. It was just, there was a lot of bumps and ups and downs on the customer volume that we had. And so I didn't know how to properly hire in time for that. And so a lot of times I found myself in the truck.

03:07 Chad Louk

But I think ultimately the dream that everyone has skill of companies that you're not Chad Louk pest control that your business functions as its own. And you don't want to be in the truck. You don't want people requesting you. You don't want people calling you specifically. And so it was around my third year that I realized I was never going to get this to the size that I wanted to. If I didn't step away completely from in the field. And so it was around my third year I stepped away from techie. And then it was at my fifth year where I stopped knocking all completely as well.

03:36 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. So zero to 1 million, were you mainly getting leads through door to door then?

03:42 Chad Louk

Yeah, yeah, was door to door. Some things in my favor, like when I opened up, I moved to this town called Lakewood Ranch in Florida. It's about an hour south of Tampa. And I moved there in 2018 and then 2019, 2020, 2021, they are the number one master plan community in the nation. And so I got in a little bit earlier than everyone else. And so I was knocking, I was the only door to door company there. Now there's 14 pest control companies knocking here. So it's become very competitive, but at the time it was just like the easiest thing ever. So much growth, so much people that have no attachment to Florida. They're moving down during COVID and stuff. And so I was just picking it up. I also got kind of lucky. Google at that point was pretty easy to put locations at houses. And so I had a few, locations and homes in that area. And so when people looked up like pest control near me, it was like right in the middle of their neighborhood. And so I was the first one to pop up, which was super nice. So we got a lot of, for that are cheap, online advertising. Got a lot of local search ad. But primarily, yeah, probably majority would be door to door.

04:52 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, awesome. So how did you learn door to door and what was working and what wasn't?

04:59 Chad Louk

My two older brothers did door to door, one of them six years older than I was two. And so they had already done it pretty well. I was terrible in school. So I had no plans after high school. And so pretty much right at like at 14, I knew that's what I was going to do. Not like I prepared for it in high school by any means, but I just didn't have a plan B. Was going to door to door. My brothers were successful at it. I'm going to be as well. Got out there my first week right out of high school. I skipped graduation, just flew out to DC from Chicago. And my first week was May 28th, right? And the first day I show up and everyone's talking about how they're getting burnt out and it's getting harder. I'm like, well, I just, it's my first day. You guys saying it's hard? What?

05:42 Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha!

05:42 Chad Louk

And they're like, yeah, just, you know, go, you know, take a longer lunch. It's okay. And so this is like, I got in at a kind of a rough spot in the company. But my first week I sold eight accounts, which, you know, it was pretty good for someone getting into it. My second week I did 17. And then my third week it got rain, just torrential and I did two. And that's where I just buckled. Just, I never recovered that summer. And so that, that first summer I sold 78 accounts and made like 13 grand. And my mindset on like what I could do in this industry, like completely shifted. I was like, I don't think this is for me. My brother sold 190 accounts their first summer, 200 accounts their first summer. I'm doing like a third, a fourth of that. Clearly this is not for me, right? And my older brother, once two years older than me, kind of wrote me back in. I moved in with him in Utah after the summer and he kind of kept me into the program. So I ended up going out another summer and that summer I locked in, I sold 228 accounts. And yeah, it's just kind of, and then I was just all in. I ended up going to BYU-Idaho for one year. My mom, during the summer, she applied for me, took the money out of my account, she's like, you're not coming home after the summer. So she sent me off to the college and I was sitting in a business management class and talking to my professor and he asked me like how much money I in door to door that last summer. It wasn't a lot. Permissions have definitely changed since then, but he told me he's like, if that's not what you can make in a summer, why are you here? Right? He's like, and this is this guy told me he's like, you could, you could easily do that year round. And it's not really the model. Don't do it year round. He's like, you can do that year round. You'd make more money than I do. And that's kind of where the shift happened in my mind. Um, so my third summer I went out, did really well, made six figures in four months.

07:40 Chad Louk

And decided that's the pathway. I was gonna move into a management role with the company I was at currently, but then my brother who had stayed on me decided to keep me locked in. And so ultimately brought me into as an ownership partner with him. And so I was... There's the day we saw that company had turned 21. So I fast tracked really quickly into an ownership role. And that was like the biggest thing for me. Still had my youth, and door to door, wasn't burnt down. I was still knocking. So when I was able to knock for them, build it up. And then my company had a few years of good years building up, which I mean, there's no cheaper way of advertising than your boots on the ground yourself. So, that's really how I built it with no loans. Think I started Prodigy with $7,000. Was a rusted truck that I bought off my old company for four and then had some chemicals, some licensing, website, boom, seven grand. So yeah.

08:34 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's incredible. So behind the success of your door-to-door sales, before you started the company with your brother and then it's now your current company, what is your secret? What is the key to a successful door-to-door sales program? How do you get sales? How do you sell people at the door?

08:55 Chad Louk

Well, the secret is to replace yourself recruiting. That's the big thing. Finding people to replace you on the doors. Like I said, I don't knock doors anymore. I've got a lot of reps out there doing it for me. I'm more of a trainer now, more of a recruiter, which I wasn't at the time. My first three years I recruited zero people. And so I had to just go all in on the sales side. I think a lot of people just have a personality for it. You see some guys that just run out the rip do really well and they don't know anything about pest control. So you're either selling yourself, you're selling your brand or you're selling fear. That's another thing. A lot of people pitch on fear, right? Your company doesn't have rodent bait boxes here, rodents next door. You need us, right? I'm here now. I'll do that discount. A lot of guys are pretty salesy with that. They'll be pretty pushy, high pressure. I think I... Went pretty technical with my backing. Went more of a technician route. I pitched on inspections. So I'd go around the home, pointing out areas that had issues or potential issues and was more of like an informational person. So I'd give them all information. Did come off salesy at all until the very end. I'm like, Hey, here's everything we found. Here's what your company's missing. Let's look at what your company's charging. Cool. I can do it for this price. Does that make sense? And so that's my pitch to close. It takes a lot longer, but I'd found I had to talk to a lot less people with that kind of a sales style rather than just pitching trucks on the street. I'm going to do it right now. Yeah. So I'm a little less pushy, but longer. And I think I'm more of a quality over quantity salesman.

10:25 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, got it.

10:31 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I heard you mentioned that on Jonas's podcast, Pest Control Millionaire, essentially being more information and expert focused. So then, you know, for your company and also the companies that you train, because we'll get into this, but you guys train a lot of companies to do door-to-door as well. So are you training the door-to-door guys on pest control as well, or are they technicians then transitioning to door-to-door guys?

10:58 Chad Louk

Yeah. Yeah. So it depends on the state, but what we like to do is like get all our guys coming to Florida first. And so we do a training with them. So to knock in Florida, you actually have to go through 40 hours of training, which would be. You use office technicians. And so we make sure all of our reps at the very beginning know how to do a service. They know the products, they know what's legal. They know what we're actually doing. And I think that's a fundamental difference with other organizations. Think other organizations have this mindset that we're a sales company that happens to do pest control. I'm a pest control company that happens to do sales. I would much rather have my guys very technically knowledgeable and maybe lack in the sales department. It just helps on quality, helps customer retention. We may not sell the same amount of volume as those guys, but we're retaining a lot more. And a lot of our reps come from those larger organizations that are really sales focused. Have a lot of fantastic sales training, but then they really dropped the ball on the service training on the ethics training. And so we like to get those guys coming over and we'll give them that information. That just takes them to a whole nother level. I'll be the first day. I don't think I have the best sales training. We just, not the same size of those companies. Don't have the backing that they do, but we really focus on making sure that, and I've got plenty of trucks on the road that they can ride along with and see the service and make sure they're doing the right job.

12:30 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, that makes sense. So when the guys are knocking doors, what are some of the biggest mistakes they make?

12:39 Chad Louk

I think, your intro, right? Within the first 30 seconds, like if someone's going to watch this podcast, right, they're going to listen to that intro. You gave a definition of who I am. People are going to decide right then and there if they're going to watch this or not. So did you hook them? Right. And so your, your initial pitch, it's gotta be something that brings body to them. And also if they have an objection right off the rip, don't, don't blow right through it. Let them break something up. Most of time it's going to be, already have a company, right? Like I'm not, I'm not interested. I already got a company and then they'll just tune you out. So if you don't listen to that objection and answer it, you're never going to get further in the pitch because the rest of the time they're just thinking about, I don't have to listen to this guy because I already told them in my mind that I'm not going to go with them. So slow it down, pause, let people talk. Think a lot of guys just plow through objections, but that's not the right way to do a sales. You should listen and then you got to overcome it.

13:33 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, makes sense. So you guys, and actually, can you clarify, I know you guys help other pest control companies with door to door, but what exactly do you do? Is it more consulting or implementation?

13:44 Chad Louk

Yeah, so I'm not a, not a training program. So we actually outsource our reps to them. It's a white glove service. They're completely hands off. So we go to their office. We send a team there. We run all the meetings. We get the uniforms. We get the software set up everything. They're doing nothing with it. All they're doing is facilitating the jobs. They're not paying the reps individually, they're paying us. We handle all, it's all the counting's done, everything. And so really it's for companies that are doing well with SEO, maybe acquisitions. They're looking for just another avenue to grow the company. We found some of the companies we market for want to get into a different area. They want to expand and they found that, you know, if they can just send a bunch of guys there to grow that brand and then bring in the SEO afterwards, it's going to help them a lot better. So getting the traction earlier in it's just, you can get into a neighborhood, grow it really quickly, get a lot of volume density. So, but yeah, we're, not training. Just, we're just sending reps there. That's the, that's the mindset.

14:46 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. Just wanted to clarify that. So, and you were talking about this, that you guys have many big clients that might be doing $30 million or $50 million, and you're even talking to people that are doing like $400 million. Can you tell me, first off, like, what do you see as consistent across these big companies? What are they all doing that maybe the small guys aren't?

15:11 Chad Louk

Acquisitions is the biggest. Think a lot of these companies have been doing acquisitions, but as you get into anything over 50 right now, you're talking about private equity realms. These guys have a lot more money, a lot more backing, and they're doing this way more often. And the brokers, they're going to go to them first because they know they're paying more. They know that they can do it. They don't have to go through a year of checks and balances. So these guys that are in that middle ground, the let's say 10 to 50 range, they're just not a key player in that room. So, and truthfully, if I was a business, right, if I was looking to sell my pest control company, I'm not going to talk to those companies. I'm going hit up the big, the big 10. I want to talk to those guys. Cause I know they're, they're going to the ones that they're in my market. They don't need to find funding. They'll have it. They're ready to roll. So, yeah, that's kind of my mindset is, I'm just finding another avenue. And I think they've realized that the equity side has just become so expensive. And door to door has always been known as a very expensive route to grow a business. I'm not just kind of SEO is way cheaper. But SEO has also become, mean, the cost per lead's also shot up quite a bit. And so I think it's just diversifying your risk if you have other avenues to grow. And I think a lot of these companies, even myself, I don't plan on using door to door in a branch forever because it's not a profitable way to grow a business. But to get your business to a size that has a market share in that community with door to door is really beneficial to then scale it back and then use other avenues like SEO to continue growing it.

16:48 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Well, I appreciate you mentioning SEO because I'm an SEO guy. Yeah, I agree that I never recommend only doing SEO or really, for that matter, only doing any kind of marketing only. I'm sure you'd probably agree. Only doing door to door only doing Facebook ads.

17:04 Chad Louk

Well, that's the, that's the unique thing, Dan is you're, you're actually in a good category because I don't think door to doors for everyone, but I think SEO is for everyone. If you're a pastoral company, you're not doing any SEO. You're a fool. You have to be online. This, the way the world's moving right now is digital. The way companies are growing is digital. So if you're not advertising online, you are dropping the ball tremendously. Uh, and that's probably my biggest gripe is companies that say like, yeah, I just grew up by word of mouth and I'm super busy. I'm like, yeah, but imagine if you hired another person and then you did SEO. Like you'd be growing like crazy. So definitely you always need to be online spending money.

17:39 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. So I completely agree. Cool. Okay, so acquisitions is really the thing that sends the big players from the small players. I'm curious, I don't know if you mentioned this or maybe I missed it. Have you guys done any acquisitions?

17:55 Chad Louk

I have, and I'm not a key player because I'm in that smaller realm as I talked about. So the companies that are going to sell to me are the smaller guys that don't have a market share. And so I've done four and I'm not too crazy about them. The largest deal that we did was about, I think it was 350,000 is the company size that we bought. And the problem is with those companies is the business is them. Once they're gone, a lot of the people are like, he's not here anymore. Okay, see ya. Or they have a lot of, you know, they get what they can. They're going to sign up people that whatever they can, they're not going to turn down leads and see if a lot of customers that you got to raise price on. And once that happens, they're gone too. They're also lacking a lot of analytics. They probably didn't run their software the way that you should and so you don't really know what you're getting into and you buy it you don't realize how many accounts are you know overdue on down balances or they should have been canceled or You know, whatever and so I've just been burned a lot in that category. So if I was to do it again It'd have to be a business that is in the one to $3 million range that has a key known in that area. And the owner ideally is in a retirement stage where he's owned the business a long time. Have plenty of data to back what you're buying and he's just ready to go. And, but I'm just, not in that spot where I can pull something like that off. And also I look at my door to door program, sorry, door to door program. You know, if I'm looking to build my company by $3 million, it'd be a lot cheaper for me to just do it myself. And so that's kind of where I'm at right now. But I do see the value of buying a company. You get all their SEO, you get all their trucks, you get all the customers. You don't get all the bad reviews about someone knocked on my door. It's well known that door to door accounts aren't as longevity of a traditional style account too. So, it is a safer account to buy.

19:49 Chad Louk

But just things you got way back and forth. Do think overall it's definitely a cheaper move to go with the door to door repair again.

19:57 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've heard a lot of nightmare stories with acquisitions and it seems like kind of the consensus is they have to be somewhat larger. Shouldn't be a solo operator like you're saying. So is there a size that you're looking for in the future that should not be under 500 or 300?

20:17 Chad Louk

I think the one to three range is the sweet spot. Yeah. One million to three million, but. The problem with this industry is everyone has heard the companies that were selling, like these big companies have sold. They hear, Oh, you get three X multiple. And so then they hop on a phone with you and you're like, that company is $50 million and they were growing by 20 % a year. Like you're not the same company. Their EBITDA was triple yours is too. And so you got, you got to tell them like you're, you're actually like a one to 1.5 on a good day of revenue. Uh, and they just don't really, and they're like, okay, well, I'm just going to keep it. Right. And so a lot of guys just have this mindset. They've never actually talked to anyone that's in brokerage that's planned an exit. They just think, yeah, I'm ready to sell and it's worth this. I'm ready to retire. And it's not so, and then they realized to actually get to that multiple, it's going to take them another three to four years to fix things. And at that point, you know, deal's gone. So, yeah, I don't, I'm not really chasing acquisitions right now personally.

21:19 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, got it, cool. And I wanted to go back, so you grew zero to $1 million, mainly through door to door. Now you guys are at eight figures. So how did you get from, you know, one to 10?

21:35 Chad Louk

So still door-to-door. The percentage of door-to-door has definitely changed. We were the one to one million. That was probably like 95 % door-to-door. Right now we're closer to 60%, which I would love to get it down to 40. I think it would be a really great spot for us. It's a safer, safer growth rate. But I think for us, we just had a lot of great reps come through that I brought on reps as well. And I just couldn't turn them down. It just kind of made sense to continue growing at that rate. We've really dialed in our technicians training. So a lot of our technicians are cross selling customers now. I think that's the one problem with door to door companies is that they're one subscription companies. So they focus on the pest control, their bread and butter, which is great. That's a great company. But we've really focused on getting our technicians to sell other categories like rodent exclusions, trapping, termite bait stations, termite treatments, dry woods. And the more subscriptions you have the customer the stickier they become so we're really focusing on our customer age to stay as long as possible And we find that the cheapest way to get a customers through technicians as well the commission's lower. They're already there You're gonna get the job and write that in there There are less pressure sales style to sub customers tend to like that approach better They feel like they're not getting sold by salesmen, but it's like hey, I point out an issue on your home. Okay, cool makes sense so we've really focused on that. We've also obviously grown out our inside sales program as well. So all of our online referrals, we've got a referral company called Clicki that we're using as well. Let's see. Yeah, I think my big push this year is definitely getting the technicians to really drive up our revenue percentage.

23:21 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, getting a lot of upsells. And you kind of already went through this, but just take me through the nuts and bolts of like, is it after a certain amount of services, then they upsell certain services, is it really more custom and just whatever problems they notice?

23:39 Chad Louk

Yeah, so we do out in second service. So the first service, we don't want to sell them. We want them to, they just went through door to door, high pressure sales. We want them to feel like that's it. All right. Now we focus on service. So the first service is the most crucial to keep the customer, show them a really good job. Most of time we're pitching on spider webs. So really focusing on cleaning all the webs off the home. We don't want any fire ant nests in the yard anymore. So treating those, we're going to focus just on the service. Then in the office, we'll have our inside sales team calling the schedule up the fall of service. We want the second service set for them to be home. And so then we're going to send a technician out that's going to have the training to do cross-selling. So they're going to have a longer time window to spend at the house and we want them to be there and meet them, do an inspection. We're going to try and get in their attic on that visit as well. We're going to try to find entry points, probably get on the roof as well, looking for exclusion points. And that's going be when we're going to pitch. From there, then it's on an annual basis. So then once a year we'll say, Hey, you get a free inspection with us. You don't have a termite warranty with us. We do an inspection, let you know if you have termites. And so we'll send out someone which is called WDO certified wood destroying organism. And at that point, obviously we're looking for other things like rodent droppings in the attic as well. So it's not every service. We don't want them to feel like it's constantly high pressure sales. We try to keep it just once a year going forward.

25:05 Dan Leibrandt

And what would you say are the pros and cons of adding wildlife services? Do you think other companies should do it?

25:11 Chad Louk

That is a loaded question. Wildlife is very vague. So I don't do like, I'm in Florida, right? Like we don't do alligators, we don't do bats, I don't do birds.

25:21 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, yeah.

25:22 Chad Louk

There's a lot of raccoons. I don't do a lot of that stuff. So when I say rodent, I would say rats, mice. Sometimes we do armadillo work, like the oddball stuff like snakes and stuff. I think when you try to do everything, you're good at nothing. So focus on what you're good at. Keep, I mean, we do a couple of things. I'm licensed in every category in Florida, so I can do everything, but for a lot of it, I sub out. So as a whole wildlife, I'm going to sub out, bee removal, I'm going to sub out, tenting, I'm going to sub out. You talk about like the biggest risk in pest control is tempting, right? People look at the high dollar amount that you can get from those jobs, but that's, mean, the biggest fines I've seen in this state for misapplication have been through that. So I'm not trying to lose my license. I'm not trying to misapplicate someone's home. And also I'm getting claims that, you know, we did something to hurt their, their home or their livelihoods or their health. And so, and also my technicians health and safety is priority to me too. I don't want them wrestling with alligators. We, try to just stay in our niche, which is pest control, termite rodent. That's the big three that we focus on. And then predominantly I'm residential as well. I do a little bit of commercial work. I think it's good to have a little. Bit of a diversity, right? But for the most part, I focus on just the basics.

26:47 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, makes sense. I want to jump to team building then because you guys have a pretty large company at this point and you've also grown it pretty fast. I want to hear, what are your top lessons of hiring and building up the company?

27:05 Chad Louk

Higher ahead. It's the biggest thing. The biggest mistakes I've made is trying to make my profit better so I can pay myself more. I'm working crazy hours and my employees are stretched so thin that they're stressed out. It is way more expensive to play catch up. We had a branch last year grow by 2.3 million to be exact, 2.3 million last year. We started with four techs by the end of the year we had 12. Every month we were playing catch up. Were adding one tech every month. We were rushing the training on them. They weren't qualified. We took what we could get and it just crumbled. And so I actually had to cut our, of our sales program for three weeks. We sent them to a different office for three weeks to reset. And that probably cost me $400,000 in potential revenue in that office. So if I had just been smart before the summer and hired out three technicians and maybe that first month, two months, they weren't getting their full potential and revenue. But none of that would have happened if I had done that. This past October, we hired five new managers for a corporate office. We had a technical director come in. We had an office manager. We had someone in software. We had someone in HR come in, all these people, all right? And most door-to-door companies, they focus on heavy growth in the summer. So all these people came in and we don't have a huge exponential growth coming right now. So we're kind of just losing money at this point with these people. But I know I'm gonna grow my business by... A couple million this summer and so it's gonna pay for itself. So don't trip over pennies, all right, don't trip over dollars, pick up pennies. That's kind of the mindset. You hire ahead, plan for the future. And I also kind of like that. You put your back against the wall, you have no other option but to grow. That's my mindset. So I like having the staff on ready to go. And we got some big goals we gotta hit to make it make sense.

28:59 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And is the hiring kind of intuitive and situational? Are you following a process or coaching?

29:08 Chad Louk

Yeah, so there's PCO Bookkeepers, we use them for our analytics and they have some benchmarks on when you should hire a technician, when you should hire a customer service rep. We found that my company is unique. Know, our margins may be different than an Orkin, right? We may have different, and obviously we're a much different size. So there's some basics like technicians and CSRs, those kind of make sense. The revenue mark's not going to change that much, but we talk about managers and people in place. I think you can be a little variety in that category. But I think we're at a good size now where we have some data to track with some of our other offices, because I have four offices now. And so I've seen kind of when we need a new service manager or a second service manager. And then you got so many customer service reps now that we can see analytics on who's performing and who's not, right? But yeah, the whole thing is higher ahead, plan for the future, get your back against the wall, and you gotta figure out a way to grow.

30:11 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, makes sense. And then about branches. So right now you guys have four branches. I assume you're going to expand. So what is the strategy of breaking into a new market and opening up a new branch?

30:26 Chad Louk

Yeah, yeah, so that's where I am a firm believer in door-to-door because there's no better way to get your brand out there with a rep going talking to 100 people a day. Go send some guys out, get your brand out there. So we have a metric, we like to get a branch to $2 million with door to door. And then from there, we're going to phase it down. So I believe that a $2 million branch has a market share in that community and people are going to recognize the name and you're going to organically grow. I don't know if other companies would agree with that metric, but I found that's to be the sweet spot. And so from there, it's not like we're stopping growing all together. And I'm not saying I'm never going to door to door there either. But at that point, I'd be open to opening new offices, scaling those offices. And I think at 2 million, you're going to see that the profits going to really show. It's going to be a good spot. So we're going to scale back. Ideally, I do that in one year. Ideally, I go from zero to 2 million in one year. And I cut the program for either that entire next year where we send out a smaller team to just kind of replace the cancels. That's, I think, the good spot for us. I'm not really looking to run the program forever. I don't want to send teams there every year. Think the more years that go on where you're knocking the same homes, you're going to close less and less. You're going to get more more cancels. People are going be more more upset with the fact that you're just constantly berating them. And so I think where we do cut the program is branches that are going to be over 5 million. I think that's kind of where we see it makes more sense to focus on the technician selling or the to kind of pick up slack. And that branch may not be growing at 40 % a year anymore, but it's going to be replacing its cancels. It's going to be still trending upward with inflation.

32:15 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've actually never heard that point before of only knocking an area maybe just for a year or two and then moving on to another, because you are gonna be hitting a lot of the same homes. I would assume that is going to be a big problem and people just, if you keep knocking their door, they're gonna be kind of upset. So that makes sense.

32:34 Chad Louk

Yeah, I mean, obviously people move, people die, people come, they go. But how many, I guess it depends on the market, right? Like if I'm in some small town in Indiana versus if I'm in New York City, you can probably knock that market much more than you could in South Bend, Indiana. So, I guess it comes and goes and depending on where you're at and also how big your teams are. Some companies run 80 man teams. Other companies run five man teams. So, I know some guys that are in Boise, Idaho and they just got five dudes and obviously, yeah, you could do that year after year. That's fine. But we're kind of in the sweets, but I like to do about 20 guys per office.

33:11 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. And you actually just mentioned something I wanted to ask too was because or since you have such a unique perspective on door to door, you guys take up a lot of Florida and then also you help a lot of companies across the US. What are you seeing is the difference in the areas? Do you see some states or areas of the US are better for door to door or that? I don't know. Like what is the difference between the different areas?

33:40 Chad Louk

As a door to door salesman, I probably would answer this differently, but as an owner, every market you'll be fine. You can sell anywhere. Guys obviously have their preference. Some guys, they think that a certain, culture is going to be better to talk to. They think a certain demographic and their income is going to matter more or the bugginess of the market, like a hotter market versus maybe they're up in the Northeast holder. I think you can sell anywhere. And I think you can sell the same amount. Two. So we sell in eight states right now for five companies, mine being included. And I think any one of those states, I could go in there and do the same amount of numbers that I could in my home office in Florida.

34:25 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, so doesn't vary too much.

34:28 Chad Louk

It's going to be different. I mean, you're going to have different objections. You're like, if I'm knocking in Maine, people are, they're going to see a quarterly service. They're like, why would I get a service in January? There's snow on the ground. And then in Florida, you're going to get the objection that I already have a company. Right. And so it's just different. People are going to have different objections. The tolerance too, I guarantee you less people are knocking in Maine. So people are like, you're not going to hear you were just here or I'm sick of these solicitors. You're not going to hear that up there, but in Florida with 14 companies in my market, you're going to hear that pretty much every door. You're the fifth guy to stop by this week. So, you know, there's, different challenges, but overall, I don't think it matters.

35:11 Dan Leibrandt

And you just mentioned knocking in the wintertime, especially somewhere cold like Maine. Would you recommend that or should it just be during the summer?

35:18 Chad Louk

I specify a service. So if I'm selling a...

35:21 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

35:21 Chad Louk

Quarterly subscription in the summertime, one of your quarters is going to fall in the winter, obviously, it's seasonal. No, I would not knock doors if there's snow on the ground. Because when you're creating the sale, it's important to... There has to be a reason why you're there, right? There's issues in this neighborhood, there's bugs. Also, I think a quality of life for the salesman walking around all day outside in the snow would probably be pretty rough. So no, we wouldn't do that. And in fact, when we do work in the wintertime, it's only in warmer markets like Texas, California, Florida. Yeah, I wouldn't be knocking.

35:59 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool, got it. And I also wanted to ask you, what KPIs are you tracking? What are you looking at on a daily or weekly basis? What are you staying in touch with?

36:10 Chad Louk

Are we talking door to door or my pest control company?

36:13 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, let's say just the pest control company as a whole.

36:18 Chad Louk

Okay, I mean, big ones cancellation percentage, resource rate, big one for us right now. I think we're in spot right now where I think risk mitigation is the biggest. And so we're looking at driver safety scores. We just had an accident two weeks ago, three vehicles involved. Just, I mean, that could be detrimental to a company. One of the quickest ways to damage your company. So really focusing on our driver safety scores are... Texting and driving, stuff like that. But route completion for the technicians is a big one too. We really want to make sure that what we're scheduling on the jobs is getting done, getting serviced. So most of our KPIs are going to be technician related.

37:02 Dan Leibrandt

Cool, makes sense. And you guys do a lot of door to door. Are you doing any other traditional marketing, even like door hangers or mailers or anything like that?

37:12 Chad Louk

No, no, I'm not doing any of that. So I'm old school, but probably not that old school. I haven't heard of great success from that. Maybe some companies have had that. I just, I don't have any background in that, be honest. With door to door, I just think. You get a, you get to go and talk to someone and your pitch is going to change. If I sent out a mailer, the pitch is the same. And so you're not getting any objections. You're not able to change the format of what you're pitching. So I think you may send a mailer and say that there's issues with fire ants, but someone's got a terrible issue with spiders and you're pitching fire ants the whole time. So I liked the idea of being able to change on the go. Um, I also think people don't tend to respond to. Ads sent to them either by email or mail, tends to get thrown away, interactive ad, right? So like if I'm putting out a Facebook ad, right? I've got a video and I can retarget, I can recapture, I can see who's answering these, I can see who's watching them. There's just a lot more data with that. You can't see if someone's opening up your flyer. So no, I don't do any of that stuff, but I think online advertising is a big one for us.

38:25 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. No, I was just asking because Jonas is really big on that stuff, but I know a lot of people, I don't know, it's super old school and, was that?

38:32 Chad Louk

On the flyers? You said on the flyers he's big on those?

38:37 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, everything old school marketing, mean, just really everything marketing as a whole. That's yard signs, that's door hangers, that's mailers, I mean, you name it.

38:45 Chad Louk

Yeah, we're big on yard signs. I think, okay, so here's, are we trying to get a sale from this or are we just trying to get our brand awareness out there? Sure. I think if I send, okay, great.

38:56 Dan Leibrandt

I'd say more so brand awareness, but it's kind of just what he calls guerrilla marketing and you just, you hit everyone with everything and they're just, they're gonna close.

39:03 Chad Louk

Every, yeah, every aspect, sure. So I would be open to, if I'm opening a new market, maybe a month before I'm sending door to door guys out there, send out some flyers to the neighborhoods we're going to be working in, send some mailers, put some bandit signs on the corners. And then by that time you're knocking there, they, and subconsciously you're thinking, yeah, I've seen this brand before. But I don't think your close ratio on that, like you're not going to get your money back on those ever. But it's just about what could come from it. I don't think you're going to get sales from it, but it's just getting your name out there. So I wouldn't be opposed it for that aspect, but I would never expect it to be a percentage of my sales.

39:43 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And you mentioned online advertising, but I don't think you mentioned it as one of the aspects of one to 10 million. So what aspects of online advertising are working best for you guys?

39:56 Chad Louk

Definitely Google AdWords, LSA, although that's the primary. We don't do a lot of social media advertising. We have a few influencers that will post our stuff, but I think we could do a lot better at that. It's not something I've really tapped into. So right now, definitely it's the Google category. We've had some in the past, I think we were better with like Yelp and Angie's List and it's kind of just fizzled out for us. So yeah, right now all of our advertising ad spend is going towards Google.

40:25 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, mainly Google Ads, cool. Well, sweet, we'll start to wrap up the show here, Chad. I've got one more question for you, and that is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there? What do you wanna tell them? What do think they need to know?

40:41 Chad Louk

Always work harder and replace yourself. I mean, that's the dream, right? We didn't become owners to always be in the truck. At least I didn't. So if your goal is to build a brand, build up a legacy, you got to be replacing yourself and you got to take some risk. If you're just trying to make safe money and year over year, you're never going to get to the point of where you want to be. So, the big thing for me, like when I started, I was making, like I said, my third summer made a lot of money in door to door. Wasn't until three years later as an owner that I finally made the same amount that I did as knocking doors for a summer. Was working way more year round. And then boom fourth year finally shot up made a lot more than I did in door-to-door and every year it's gone up from there And so I think yeah, if you're if you're trying to take it to the next level lean on people like Dan, Jonas learn from them you can never learn too much, learn from your competition, be friendly with your competition. That was one mistake that I made. I had a huge ego and I thought I was better than all my competition. I had the best service, was cutthroat, didn't talk to them. But once you realize that there's enough business out there for everyone and it's better to have a friend than an enemy in your market. And people start talking, they start sharing data. They start saying that they like their competitor now, like building friendships with your competition. Leaning on each other for that. Like I said, I refer out a lot of business that I don't do and so I'm being friends with those Competitors now I get better rates. I get better deals. They want to go through us first They're gonna be more receptive of taking my leads and also things that they may not do They'll refer to me. Maybe they're not in a market that I am they may refer someone that moved so Definitely be friendly with your competition The industry is always better when we talk we improve together...

42:30 Dan Leibrandt

Love that. So my three key takeaways there is work harder, take more risks, and be friendly with your competition. Just be an avid learner.

42:41 Chad Louk

Yeah, definitely. Lean on your suppliers too. I think for me in a sales background, was the biggest thing is I had my suppliers, Syngenta, BASF, all of them. Would come out, even the chemical reps, they would come out too to my office. For my technicians, we do presentations and I sat in on every one of those and I learned how these products worked. Learning from them, getting the technical background, I would say my background is more technical now than it is sales. Which makes me more confident in myself now too because I know what I'm talking about. So learning all the aspects of the business will be huge. You can't expect to hire someone to do a job that you don't know how to do yourself or that you're don't understand how can you manage or, you know, give praise or talk about failures if you don't even understand the job itself. So don't let someone else have all the power in your business, outsourcing it, understand what they're doing. And that's a big thing that Dan's doing right now is with SEO, do the course, learn it. If you're hiring out a company and do SEO and you don't understand how any of that works, you're going to get taken advantage of 100%. Those companies will just outsource it. They won't do any of the work and you have no idea if the metrics are good or not. Understand how the business works is huge.

43:57 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. I appreciate the plug there, I appreciate all the kind words. Yeah, with that, we'll wrap up the show. Thank you so much for coming on, Chad. This has been great talking with you. It's been great spending some time with you, and I know how valuable your time is. So just thank you for being here. And where can people find you and connect with you?

44:19 Chad Louk

Well, likewise, Dan, I appreciate the time too. We're all busy. So it's a huge help that you were able to give me a spot on the show. You can find me on Instagram, Chad Louk. That's C-H-A-D-L-O-U-K. My phone number is [phone number removed]. My Pest Control email, first and last name, [email address removed]. Happy to help any of you guys. I don't charge for any advice. I also don't... Recommend that you take my advice either. I've been successful in my company, but I don't know your company. So if you do ask for advice, take it with a grain of salt.

44:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, awesome. And I'd also like you to plug your door-to-door program. So who is that for exactly? What size pest control company?

45:02 Chad Louk

Sure. Yeah. So I own a marketing company like we talked about. Yeah. We do door to door sales. So I just do door to door. I don't do SEO. I don't do AdWords. I don't do any sort of online marketing. So we're just sending our reps to the markets. I think ideally your company that's been around a couple of years, you're doing a couple of million revenue. You understand it. And you're just, you're maybe you're stagnant or you're looking for a new way to grow. And so you're kind of doubling down on the business again, understanding that it's going to hit the profit pretty hard. But a year or two down the road, it all makes sense. So we're looking for that kind of category. Obviously, don't be in my market in Florida. Can't compete against myself. But in the other 49 states, I'm happy to hop on a call and talk to you to see if it makes sense.

45:46 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, cool. Well, if you guys are interested in door to door, either expanding your team or just getting into it to start, then definitely go contact Chad. Thanks again for coming on Chad. That's been awesome.

45:58 Chad Louk

Thanks, Dan.

45:59 Dan Leibrandt

Course.