Chase Goodeill on growing Pest Control Consultants to $11M through 10 acquisitions

Chase Goodeill has bought the same customers twice. He made his first acquisition for Pest Control Consultants in 2019, mainly to get one six-figure commercial account. Its original owner had sold once already but still held the customer relationships, and he never showed up after closing. He went out on his own and took that account with him. Years later he called Chase wanting to sell, and Chase bought those customers back for about 60 cents on the dollar.

That was the first of 10 acquisitions since 2019. Pest Control Consultants did $11M in revenue in 2025, and when we recorded, Chase had a plan for $16M in 2026. I’d heard him talk acquisitions on the Bug Bux podcast, so this time we got into how he pays for deals without private equity and what he does with the Google listings that come with them.

Who is Chase Goodeill?

Chase Goodeill is the president of Goodeill Holdings, Inc. and the owner and CEO of Pest Control Consultants, based in Dixon, Illinois. When I introduced him, I called it the largest privately held pest control company in Illinois, set to make the PCT Top 100. At the time it had 4 branches and 80 employees across 4 states.

His grandpa built a pest control company in the ’90s that Terminix acquired. His dad went to work for Terminix as a branch manager, and when his non-compete ran out, he started Pest Control Consultants. At 12 or 13, Chase spent summers treating the outside of homes while his dad did the inside.

When Chase joined after high school, the business was doing less than $25,000 a year. After 4 or 5 years servicing accounts, he moved into sales, and once he figured it out, he sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of recurring revenue a year, all of it cold. His dad gave him 30% as sweat equity. On January 1, 2021, Chase bought the other 70%, and the company doubled the next year and again the year after. (Jonas Olson’s write-up of his own conversation with Chase covers the cold calling and the buyout.)

Every new caller hears about the quarterly plan

Chase did most of the phone selling himself until the leads outgrew him. CSRs weren’t necessarily the right salespeople, so a dedicated sales team now takes every new-customer call, web form and Facebook lead, while automated messages handle follow-up. In 2025, one rep closed over $1M in recurring revenue over the phone, a company first, and the inside team added right around $3M. New subscriptions sold in January 2026 were up 185% over January 2025.

“We tell them pest control is a process. It’s like going to the gym and lifting weights. You can’t do that one time and expect to be in good shape.”

The reps sell the way a door-to-door rep would. Instead of a standalone stinger job, they pitch a full service that includes sweeping the eaves, granulating the yard and treating 3 feet up and 3 feet out, and they call quarterly service “best practice.” A caller who still wants one visit hears that it costs a lot more and gets asked for a year to show the value. On the same call, reps send a digital service agreement, take a credit card and book same-day service, so there’s no reason to get another quote.

Active customers tell you who to hire next

Chase thinks recurring revenue is why private equity has piled into pest control. Cash flow is the obvious upside. The second-best thing, he said, is that your active customer count lets you see months ahead how many techs and CSRs you’ll need.

“I’d rather have recurring revenue than a bunch of cash in the bank. Cash is not king. Cash flow is king.”

Early on, the target was 25% growth a year, which doubles you every 3 years. Now the company can spend $100,000 a month on LSA, pay-per-click and Facebook ads.

The people you need change with size. Chase thinks an owner can bootstrap the first $3M or $4M with cold calling, door knocking and a decent CRM like FieldRoutes, but getting from $5M to $10M takes people you’ve developed, like an office manager, branch and route managers, a lead tech and a lead CSR.

“There’s nothing special about me. If I can grow a business to 5 million to 10 million to 20 million, then so can you, if you want to.”

Buy companies the owner isn’t servicing

That 2019 deal was a competitor 30 minutes away. Chase had been told he’d never win its $100,000-a-year commercial account by cold calling. The original owner had already sold to someone who owned 4 or 5 pest control companies, and Chase paid that buyer just under $500,000. He worried the original owner didn’t like him after losing so many accounts to his cold calls, and a non-compete probably wouldn’t hold on a second sale. The original owner walked away and took about $200,000 of business, the big account included.

When he called a couple of years ago wanting to sell, Chase said no. He kept calling until Chase picked up. This time it was seller financed, so Chase wouldn’t pay unless the account stayed. It did, and it has grown as that customer added stores.

Nobody services accounts as well as the owner did, so Chase thinks 10% to 15% attrition is fair when you buy a one-man or owner-plus-one-tech company. His Chicago acquisition had 3 full-time techs and a hands-off owner, and it lost about 8% in the first year.

Keep the Google listings you buy

That Chicago company had 6 Google Business Profile listings, each with 250 or more five-star reviews. For every customer who canceled, Chase’s team signed up 3 new ones from free leads those listings and the website kept bringing in.

So when Chase buys a company, he buys its phone number and listings too. If it has a good reputation and lots of positive reviews, he keeps the name and number, updates the wording on the listing and routes every call to his own call center. Search for pest control in Rochelle, Illinois, and you might see 3 companies. He owns all 3.

Eventually everything gets tucked into the Pest Control Consultants brand, but a good acquired website may stay up for a year or two. The Chicago site now says it’s part of Pest Control Consultants, and it brings in so many leads that they’re in no hurry to switch it.

Make the seller wait for part of the price

The Chicago deal was Chase’s first million-dollar acquisition and the first time he used a broker. It had $1.3M in recurring revenue, and he paid $1.9M.

The bank wanted 20% down on roughly $2M. Chase put 10% down in cash and had the seller hold back the other 10%, with an attrition clause. Most of the seller’s recurring revenue was quarterly, and the held-back money only counted for customers who got 2 services within 6 months of closing. If a customer canceled before the second service, Chase didn’t pay for them.

Dan Gordon and Brian Post at PCO Bookkeepers ran the due diligence and negotiated on his behalf, scrubbing the seller’s GorillaDesk customer list to confirm accounts were active and current. The holdback saved him well over $100,000.

Banks won’t lend against a customer list

Chase will buy a single $250,000 route in his area, and next he wants $2M and $3M deals. At that size, if most of the revenue is recurring, you’re paying the kind of multiples Paul Giannamore and I talked through. With no private equity behind him, the money comes from the company’s cash flow, his own cash and a bank.

“They’re not going to give you $2 million for a book of business that holds no value to the bank. But if you have real estate with equity, they’ll attach it to that. Then they’ll loan you the money all day long.”

So he tries to buy one piece of real estate a year, with a good amount of equity, somewhere that’s going up in value. He also keeps a line of credit on his home. When a deal comes up, he can put 10% or 20% down and back the loan with a lien on his property, without bringing in partners.

Whether to buy comes down to goals. When his wife asks where the money will come from, they talk about whether the deal fits what they want as a family. Chase still uses a rule he got from Allan Draper, which is to walk away from any deal that doesn’t line up with your goals.

Door-to-door lays the foundation

Chase was opening a branch from scratch and planned to take it from zero to $1M in 4 or 5 months with door-to-door before moving to digital. He and his 2 partners would spend 2 weeks in the market, 2 knocking and 1 working as the start tech, to get the first 150 to 200 accounts on before the sales team arrived.

Putting $1M of revenue on the doors costs him around $1M, with reps from a group in Utah. For summer 2026 he planned $2M on the doors and $3M on the phones, with more going into Local Service Ads, which he calls the most powerful form of digital once it’s dialed in.

When I asked the Pest Control Millionaires Facebook group whether their companies knock doors, almost everyone said no. Chase suspects most have never knocked a door themselves. He started because Aptive, Pointe and other big teams were knocking in his own neighborhood, and he didn’t want out-of-town reps taking his customers. For owners at $3M to $5M in competitive markets, he suggests sprinkling in door-to-door for route density. His team trained reps with Flipping the Script, and he also recommends Lenny Gray’s Door-to-Door Millionaire.

My take

Chase is the only person I’ve heard recommend keeping an acquired company’s listings alive, and I told him so. A lot of buyers merge the websites and rebrand the profiles, which is what my partner Jonas has done with each of his deals. I like Chase’s approach when the company you buy has a strong local presence. Six profiles with 250-plus five-star reviews each aren’t easy to replace, and his 3-for-1 numbers show what they’re worth, as long as someone keeps maintaining them.

On the show I compared his phone process to Amazon, which wins because buying is fast and easy. A caller who signs, gives a card and gets same-day service on the first call has no reason to try the next company in the map pack.

Chase’s line “the more hands you shake, the more money you make” was new to me. A lot of smaller owners are invisible in their own towns. They aren’t connected with other businesses in their area, and nobody sees their brand. Chase’s way out of obscurity starts with the chamber, Rotary Club and shaking hands with people who have influence in your community, and none of it needs an ad budget.

Where to find Chase

Chase answers LinkedIn messages and gets on calls with owners who want to grow. A lot of people helped him get where he is, and he wants to do the same for others.

• Website: Pest Control Consultants
• LinkedIn: Chase Goodeill
• Facebook: Chase Goodeill