Greg Young on Selling Natura for Over $4M and Rebuilding to About $7M

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm with Greg Young, the co-founder of Natura Pest Control. Greg has spent nearly two decades building and scaling pest control businesses across the US. He started his first company in 2012 and grew that business to five offices, then sold it in 2017 for over $4 million. That same year, he started over from scratch and has since built back to roughly $7 million in revenue. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the keys to scaling a pest control business, navigating partnerships, and building teams that actually last. Now without further ado, Greg, welcome to the show.

00:40 Greg Young

Hey, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

00:42 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So as we were talking before the show, we met through the Facebook group and I was super intrigued with your story. Obviously, I know Natura because I interviewed Eric two times before, but I didn't realize that you're, it seems like you're almost like the mastermind behind the whole Natura operation. So.

00:59 Greg Young

Well, mastermind sounds really cool.

01:02 Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

01:03 Greg Young

Me and my buddy, started it back in 2012 and then partnered with Eric's brother-in-law Jake and his wife in a branch together in Vancouver, Washington. And we grew that together for a while and then we split ways in 2017. So Mastermind feels really cool. I appreciate you saying it that way.

01:21 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. Yeah, yeah, of course.

01:25 Greg Young

But yeah, no, mean, we created the name, created the logo, all that stuff ourselves, yeah, started from scratch.

01:32 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, so to backtrack a little bit there, were you in pest control before that or how did you get into the industry?

01:39 Greg Young

And great question. Was doing so I was doing door to door sales. My, you know, I went and served a mission for my church like a lot of guys do that do door to door and then they come back and someone's like, dude, come sell pest control. And I was like, that's so stupid. I'm not going to waste my time knocking doors. I just did that for two years for religion. It's not easy. So I my buddy who was actually the co-founder of Natura with me. He went and sold for Clark Pest Control for a summer and made great money. And he came back and I'm like, dude, if you can do it, I can do it. And so the next year we went and did it together. And then we started a marketing company together in 2008 or 2009. And then grew that. And after a while, we're like, man, we're making a lot of pest control companies, a lot of money doing the sales rep thing. We should start our own pest control company. And that's how I got into pest control. And that's how Natura started.

02:32 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. I never knew you had a marketing company. You said you were helping place sales reps or what was that?

02:38 Greg Young

That's right. Yeah. So back, mean, when they're, there's a lot of different, I mean, back before companies were doing like, you know, Aptive and a lot of, mean, even, you know, Pest Badger, they place their own, they do their own in-house recruiting and sales. And you have some marketing companies out there, like the grit, things like that. Back in the day, I'm old, you said I've been in pest control for two decades and I was like, holy crap. That's a silly thing to say. But back in the day, there was a lot less marketing companies.

03:01 Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

03:07 Greg Young

And so I was one of them was a company called Spark Marketing. And, we were, mean, we, think the, had between 60 and 80, 90 reps every year that would come out and sell for us and which is solid. We, yeah, we placed straps all up and down the West Coast, Texas, Georgia. But our biggest, mean, primarily we were, we were in California that was all up and down the state we were. Then. Yeah, and then with the Natura in Vancouver, we got up into the Pacific Northwest, but yeah, we had cell traps all over the place, Texas, California, were our main markets.

03:46 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And to be clear, that's door to door guys.

03:49 Greg Young

Door-to-door guys, that's right, all door-to-door. Yeah, so that's how I got into it. We got really good at recruiting good guys that knew how to sell long-lasting contracts for pest control companies. It was a fun time, we converted from door-to-door to pest control, and then we had our own internal door-to-door.

04:20 Greg Young

But yeah, that's how we've primarily grown up until the last year or so.

04:23 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. Okay. So then you started the company in 2012. Walk me through the first few years or so. What was that like?

04:31 Greg Young

Dude, the first year was so crazy. I mean, felt, I felt kind of thinking, kind of felt like, I was feeling pretty confident, because I'd owned a Pest Control, sorry, owned a company and it was successful. And I was like, oh dude, Pest Control is going to be so easy. We have the hardest part. The hardest part is the customer acquisition channel. We're adding, you know, a million dollars, pretty easy per branch that we're selling in and. And so we thought it would be really easy. That first year, it was crazy. Like I was working, like I'd go into the office in the morning and I worked in this like shop with no windows. And sometimes I wouldn't see the daylight. Like I would just be in there just working, building crap out or be underneath the truck, rigging up a truck. And it was very different than we thought it would be a lot of hours. But that first year, we've had sales reps selling for Clark Pest Control and Fresno, California, there's a place called Visalia Bakersfield. Um, while also we opened our own pest control company in Turlock, California, which is just north of, um, Fresno, south of Modesto. So that first year we were had sales reps out selling for other clients and started our own thing. And, um, just in our own branch, we put on like 1.2 million, one. We 1.1 million, 1.2 million that first year. So. That was a good first year for us. Like that was awesome. It was worth the hard work. Looking back, I wish we continued to sell for the other client while we continued to build that one branch. Think we jumped into multiple branches pretty quickly. And that's the things got really hairy when we started doing that. Just span of control and, yeah, I mean, the number one thing we needed was good leadership and we did not have a good leadership bench built in our business. So when we grew, we had some serious growing pains.

06:37 Dan Leibrandt

So the problem there with expansion was mainly having leaders in different places. Moving forward, from now on or from then on, you want to be a little bit more cautious to grow until you have a designated leader or leaders.

06:55 Greg Young

Yeah, so I think there's two things that happened to us in California that were two really good lessons for me to learn. First is the success of the team is most closely linked to their immediate manager or supervisor. And so if you don't have good people that understand the culture of the business, that understand pest control and the product and service you're trying to put out, then you're going to have some issues. We didn't have that. We didn't have really great leadership options. So that was one lesson. The second one I would say is we were all salespeople, the owners. There's three owners.

07:39 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

07:39 Greg Young

We were all salespeople at heart. And so we built a sales business that was acting like a pest control company. And so the criticism I'd give to ourselves is we didn't have great leadership. A leadership bench. And then number two is we didn't have a really good, like our vision, our goal was not to be great at pest control. If we were being honest with ourselves, we thought it was, but it was to sell a crap load of accounts. And we did that. I mean, in the three years we were there, four years, technically, but really three full summers, we sold like 20,000 accounts. And that's just, that's not including the Vancouver branch. So we sold tons of accounts. We weren't, we weren't, we got what we wanted, essentially is what happened. We got exactly what we wanted. Tons of accounts. The thing we didn't get was lasting customers, employees that loved their job. And so, yeah, those, those were, mean, as I look back, some of the key takeaways were be really clear on your vision, what you want, because what you really want in your heart is what's going to be made manifest. And so if you're... If you just want to have a lot of revenue, you can have a lot of revenue. You might not make a lot of money. If you want a lot of money, you might have a really great profit margins, but you might be really small. Understanding what you really want in your heart, that's what's going to be made manifest. And then there's a concept that I really love. I've come to really like, and it's the leadership one. It's the idea of who, not how. I don't know if you've read that book or seen that book.

09:20 Greg Young

But that's been really revolutionary for us. And so when you're looking for leadership and you're looking to roll out something new or you're trying to bring in a new idea, instead of, I would always ask, mean, how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? And now over the last few years, we've trained ourselves to start thinking who's going to do this. Who's going to do this? Who are we going to bring on? Who's the leader that's going to take this by the horns? Who's going to do it? And that gets really, that gets really easy when you have a vision in your business that attracts people. Because then you get really great people. That's a really long answer for what you asked, but that's...

09:37 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

09:52 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. No, that was that was awesome, dude. That was already that's already made the podcast worth it. That was so good. Yeah, I want to push more on that point of knowing what you want. Mean, it sounds so simple saying it, but I feel like that's one of the main problems with a lot of owners is they kind of just coast in their business, or maybe they're just so busy. They're working, you know, 14, 16 hour days, and they don't even not even don't have enough time or don't wanna give enough time to really understanding what they want. But I think you would agree and you were basically saying that that is going to be crucial for where you end up. If you are working nonstop and maybe you end up building a massive business, but maybe you didn't even want a massive business. Maybe you actually just want a small profitable business.

10:41 Greg Young

Yeah. I that, that's has been one of the biggest things I've learned. I've had a lot of partners in the, in over my time of running Natura, having Natura. And the biggest thing that's been our greatest success and our greatest weakness is when we weren't aligned or didn't understand or weren't honest with ourselves about what we were really wanting. Anytime that I felt obligated to align my wants with somebody else because they want it. Or anytime someone else has had to do the same thing for me because that's what I want. So we kind of like convince each other. We, who has the best argument, you know, can kind of win, win and you get what I call a false yes from people. But when you don't really know what you want and you don't really know what your partners want and you don't really know what your employees want, when those things aren't on the same page, it causes chaos. And I am a real believer that whatever you actually want, you will make manifest.

11:41 Greg Young

For, for good or for good or bad. Like, yeah, if you, mean, for the longest time, like, this is so crazy to me. I look back, I used to not even know how much revenue my business was doing because that's not the thing I cared about when I was in California. I didn't care about the revenue. I cared about the number of accounts that we put on. And so like someone, I remember being in a group with a bunch of other entrepreneurs and they asked what my top line was. I didn't, I didn't know. I had no idea.

12:07 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

12:08 Greg Young

I knew how many customers I had. You know, um, and over time it's like, and so, yeah, I grew, we grew a really quick, quick, fast business when we're in California, but we were losing customers out in the back. Our employees weren't having a good time, but we were getting what we actually, in my opinion, what we deep down wanted in our heart, which was a company that was selling a ton of accounts and growing really big. And when you, when you can dial in and figure out and be honest with yourself and figure out what you really want. And if you have a partner and. You guys are really on the same page. Dude, Dan, that is magic. And it's synergy like I had never experienced before. Before I had it.

12:52 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, got it. So I'm sure across your career, you've wanted a lot of different things. Like you're saying you wanted, you're just tracking accounts. So at this stage now, what do you want?

13:04 Greg Young

Yeah, so it's funny, I've been dialing this in and trying to hone this for myself. So like, I want a company, I wanna be in a business where we create peaks for our customers and we grow our people. And that's the answer I give people that I don't tell when I don't tell the revenue number. Like those are the two pieces of puzzle that are non-revenue. And then the revenue number, so right now we're striving for 20 million by the end of 2028. That's our goal for the end of 2028. So I want a $20 million business that creates huge peaks for our customers and grows our employees. That's my current goal. And then after that, we've got vision further out from that. We want to be on the PCT Top 100, in the top 20 by a certain day with the drives peaks for our customers and we grow great people.

14:01 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. I think you're definitely gonna do it. And I think another good point you were mentioning kind of adjacent is not just knowing what you want, but I mean, you have to come into agreement with what your partners want. I feel like I was saying you have such a good perspective on this because you've had six different business partners, maybe some of them go well, some of them don't. So I mean, let's just like start generally with business partners. Do you think people should have one or not?

15:11 Greg Young

So that's such a hard question. There's no right, there's no like real answer to that. So I find that I am a business partner guy. I want a business partner. I love my business partner. Now it's, and it's important for us, both of us to always be on the same page. As I look back, I think there's some partnerships I held onto for too long because I love relationships. And so if you're going to be, if you're going, so the way I would answer that question, Dan, I wish there was just this yes, no, black and white answer, but it doesn't exist for me. Here's the thing. If you're going to partner with somebody, make sure it's somebody that has, that you guys are really aligned with vision. You want to go to same, you want to go to the same, the same, you're going to the same destination. Now the key piece to that is you may not always be on the same track. You might hit some huge milestones. You might 10 extra business, you might hit these things and you might get to a point where what you fundamentally want is different and that is okay. There's no shame. There's nothing wrong with that. That's why you see a lot of people say before you get in a partnership, build out your partnership agreement because that's so, that's so often happens where you get a fork in the road. Get to a fork in the road. Two people want different things. My co-founder and I, one of my very favorite people in the world. We built this business together. We were also co-founders with a marketing company. And in 2024, middle of 2024, we just realized that we wanted different things. And that, that triggered an exit and he realized it and I realized it. And he's like, you know, I don't want to go where you want to go anymore. And I can see that if I stay here, I'm going to hold you back. And then that moment I realized like, well, I'm holding him back because where he wants to go is different than me.

17:02 Greg Young

And that without actually was really hard. We've been together, I mean, since the beginning. I've been working with him as a partner or as just coworkers since 2005. So that was 21 years, actually 20 years at the time. But I guess, so the thing I would say is make sure you really want a partner. I'd make sure you both were going to bring something to the table that you'll value down the road. Because what I see happen a lot of times are people like, we're friends. Or we're family and we get along, so business will go great. And I find that that is very much not the case. You have to have the same vision and want the same thing at the end or think you want the same thing at the end. And then you got to be willing to amicably cut, cut and run when it's time to cut and run. And there's no shame in that. There's nothing wrong with that. I used to have a really hard time with the idea of letting go of a partner. And I held onto some partnerships for way too long because I felt like it was bad, like, oh, we can fix this, we can, you know, but. Yeah, so should you have a partner? I don't know. It's different for every person.

18:04 Dan Leibrandt

Got it.

18:07 Greg Young

I'm a partners guy. Yeah, I'll tell you yes if you can find the right person.

18:11 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. Okay, so it depends. Yeah, I've had many businesses, most of them haven't worked out, I mean, of course, it's fun to build a business with other people. It's like a great time. You can share in this experience, you usually grow faster, but something I was gonna ask you there, which I've heard across a lot of other people with partnerships is you should have different skill sets. So maybe you're a sales guy and they're an operations guy or whatever it might be. Do you agree with that? Have you found that?

18:42 Greg Young

I think that's, I think. So I think that's generally good advice. I do not think that is a hard and fast rule that I would stick so hard to that I would say no to people. So I think that's generally good advice, especially as you're starting out and as you're small, because as you're small and as you're growing, you're gonna wear a lot of different hats and it's beneficial to have people wearing different hats. So one of the things, well, my current partner, Andrew Burress, who's absolutely a killer, he didn't start out as a partner. He realized that he was one of our branch managers. He was a good branch manager in California. And he realized that the owners were three pest control sales guys. So he learned pest control like crazy, became an insanely good operator. And then because we needed some diversification in our skillsets, we brought them on as a partner. However, now we're at a point where, so that's why I... My caveat to this is that worked really well when we were small, but now we're at a point where I don't care about his skillset as an operator anymore. He would have, when, you know, my highest and best use it now is not in sales and marketing like it used to be. So we're at a point where at the time it was nice to wear different hats, but you're your business will get to a point where it outgrows your expertise. And if it doesn't, you're probably the bottleneck in your business. So we're at a point where it's outgrown our expertise. He's no longer the operator. I'm no longer the sales and marketing guy. And our business is bigger than that. We have an operator who's better than he was. And we have a sales guy that's better than I ever was. And we have a marketing guy that's better than I ever was. And so that's why I give that answer. Like, yes, it's really good when you're small and you're wearing the hats.

20:43 Greg Young

But if that's all that person can ever offer for the long-term of your business, that'll end up being a bottleneck that holds you back. Because as your business grows and expands, the chances of that person always being the best at their craft and what the business needs is statistically pretty low. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but they've got to level up at the pace that your business is scaling.

21:00 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So the roles always evolve. I mean, you're probably eventually going to hire someone better at that thing anyway. So it doesn't matter too much. I think something that does really matter here, and this is my last question around partnerships, is when like in maybe the successful partnerships that you've had, or you're potentially looking at adding on other partners, what are some of the top traits you're looking for in these people?

21:32 Greg Young

Yeah. So they, for me, before I would ever, so if I were going to align with somebody right now, which I'm not looking to do, but if I was going to, they would have to be really hungry. Like that hunger and willingness to do whatever it takes to hit your goals. That has to be fierce. And as soon as that's not like fierce and strong, and I can't see that in you. And there's a place where I like to live in my comfort zone and, then I'm like, okay, this probably isn't a person that I want to align with. Now I feel the same way about anyone on my leadership team. And we aren't here for comfort. We're not going to get to our goals by staying comfortable. And so yeah, for me, that's the number one trait. They've got a, and obviously the, I mean, the table stakes stuff, you can't be a total jerk. You have to be willing, you have to be able to get along with other people, but you've got to be hungry and you've got to, cause I mean, as you know, running a business is really hard. I have a friend, I go to church. That I go to church with and they were saying, um, Oh, I'm to start a business. And I've seen all my family started a business and it's been so, you know, I told it, I can't, she was expressing to us that she's excited to get through the business setup part. So she could finally just be the business owner and it'll be so much easier. And I remember thinking in my mind, I'm like, Oh, you have no idea what's coming. And sure enough, the business started, it started scaling, started going well and she's swamped and that's I don't think people really understand that that happens. If you're not really hungry deep down, you don't really, really want what you're gonna go get. If you're not gonna strive and reach for more, then you'll get eaten alive. Maybe I'm sounding too harsh on that, but that's how I see it.

23:18 Dan Leibrandt

No, I totally agree, especially those first few years of getting off the ground. It takes a special breed.

23:25 Greg Young

Dude, I'll tell you that those first few years we were growing so fast that I think I'd have to the real number, but I remember it being like 20 months without a full paycheck. Like we went like six or seven months with no paycheck and then we just started paying enough for our mortgage. I destroyed my savings, destroyed everything. Like, yeah, it would have been so easy just to give up, but anyways, it's hard. It can be really hard.

23:35 Dan Leibrandt

Oof.

23:50 Dan Leibrandt

So why did you do that? Just because you're so hungry?

23:55 Greg Young

Um, so it may be, maybe it's hunger. Yeah. I think, uh, I find myself perpetually optimistic, maybe to my detriment sometimes. Um, at some point I look back and like, Oh, I didn't even know how hard that was. Like I wasn't, I think I have a thing in my head that lies to me, all that lies to myself about, about what's actually happening. Um, but I never felt like we had succeeded. And so. I mean, what are we doing this for if we're not going to go hit our goals? And, um, you know, soon enough things shifted and things got better. And then Terminix made an offer and it was a good offer. And we got out of California, which was in our opinion, a terrible place to do business. Did not like doing business in California. It was a...

24:12 Dan Leibrandt

Ha...

24:40 Dan Leibrandt

Hehehe...

24:40 Greg Young

Good option and good opportunity to, I mean, it ended up being really good, but yeah, I mean, I think the reason we kept going is because I just don't feel like we ever hit our goals. You know?

24:50 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. Just that relentless ambition. That's why I see a lot of guys get stuck is they just don't, I mean, again, back to the original point, like they don't really want it. They say they want it, but they don't act like it, which means they don't.

25:05 Greg Young

Yeah, if you want all the upside of running a business without the downside of it, you're gonna get destroyed. Because typically what ends up happening is people see their friends that run a business, they've gone through all the hard stuff. And so by the time you become their friend or all you've ever seen is the upside of their lifestyle, the flexible schedule, the ability to take distributions when they're there. Typically most entrepreneurs aren't complaining to their friends about the hard stuff. And so there ends up being this skew. So the guys get into the business or these... They've worked for a boss forever and they have a skewed perspective. And then they get into it and they're not getting the flexible schedule because that doesn't exist for years. They're not getting the paycheck because that doesn't exist for years. You know, they're not getting the free time with their family because that doesn't exist for years.

25:50 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm 100 % that's the brutal reality that most people don't want to hear and I'm glad you mentioned the exit I wanted to jump into that so you guys sold for Over four million dollars that you mentioned it was Terminix so walk me through that. I mean, why did you sell and how did that go?

25:55 Greg Young

There it is.

26:07 Greg Young

Yeah. So in the state of California, we, had three employees that sued us four times over bogus things, just totally bogus things. Like, um, just made up stuff and they know that at the end of the day, if they push hard enough, the only way that we can convince them is to go to court. The only way we could win is to go to court and go into court is way more expensive than giving them 10 or 15 or $30,000. And so they did that, um, four times. And California has a law, which this is my frustration with California. California has a lot. It's a PAGA lot, PAGA PAGA lawsuit, which is a class action lawsuit without providing a class. And one of our employees did one of those. And so we got sued on behalf of all our employees without any of our employees knowing it and whole, whole thing. My business partner, name's Austin Graham. He was one of the three of us in California. He went and just masterfully masterfully negotiated that thing. But. So all of that happened. We were losing customers at a clip that we were not comfortable with. And I moved away from the, I realized that we have three salespeople here. So I've moved out of sales and into the operations seat and I built this new operational plan for us to move forward. That I was all excited about. And then Terminix made an offer and it was a lot of money. And we hadn't been paying our, you know, we weren't, we just gone 20 months. We just started paying ourselves a little bit more. And, you know, they offered us a lot of money. And then, also the Natura up in Washington, they made an offer to buy out our, our portion too. So those two things combined was a lot of money. And we just were like, man, let's do it. And I had this new plan to move forward that if we would have stayed in California and tried to revamp our operations and revamp our culture, I was estimating it was a three to five year transition process to get us.

28:04 Greg Young

Operating the way we wanted. And so the idea of being able to sell, get some money, go start fresh, just deploy that new plan right out of the gate was enticing. And that's exactly what happened. We started in, you we sold in January of 2017, started in April of 2017 in Reno. And, you know, our retention and customer experience and employee experience is way better because that plan was a good, it worked. It was a good plan, but it would have taken forever. To execute in a business with bad culture, churning customers and employees that are trying to sue you. So that's what happened.

28:43 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm dang, okay. No that totally makes sense so that the business and you guys were in kind of a tough situation and It was almost it was like a blessing that you know, you got this offer now you can now you can you can start from scratch so and I wanted to ask you this I always love asking this question for people that have sold and started back again. So what changed? Starting again from scratch. How did you approach the business differently than previous times?

28:55 Greg Young

It really was.

29:12 Greg Young

So this is gonna be, I think maybe a different answer than what you're expecting, but the thing to change for me is my perception of money. With my first business, everything was on a shoestring, money was tight, we had to make every dollar stretch. So we were hiring technicians that weren't the greatest technicians, because we were so focused on the hourly wage number. After we sold and I had money in my hands, my view on everything shifted. And I was like, we have money and we have resources. And it put me in a situation where I like, where I realized I don't ever want to be in a situation where we're tied, really we're tight financially. So for me that influenced, thing that changed the most is we shifted to a customer-centric plan and then we charged a good amount of money for it. We made sure our prices were always optimized. In California, we were playing a price game because we were trying to help our sales reps get as many sales as they can and all. So we stopped playing the price game and went to a value-based proposition, still sold by door to door. And so the thing that shifted for me was my perception of money and quality. And at the end of the day, the thing that matters the most is providing value to your customers and your employees, because if you provide value there, everything else just kind of works out. That's my biggest takeaway. I don't know that's a question, if that's the answer, type of answer you're looking for, but that was my biggest takeaway from our cell. And the thing that we did that influenced me the most in our, our re a reset.

30:54 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's a great answer. And I think that's the trouble with lot of owners. I kind of already said this before, but that there, a lot of the owners that I talk to and, you know, in our community and so forth, they are maybe desperate to get customers. They don't have enough time. So in a perfect world, like, how you got your exit and now you had some financial reserves, now you can approach business the right way, which I think that should be the goal is when now you have the capital to expend, which I don't know, maybe that's people just increasing their prices a little bit so they can now have some financial leeway to do things the right way. But no, I think that's a really good insight. Something you mentioned there, and I think you've mentioned it several times now is being focused on customers or being customer centric. So what exactly does that mean and what does that entail?

31:53 Greg Young

Yeah. So that's a, yeah, I'm glad you asked that question because for me, it means a very specific thing. When we were in California, so I'm a big believer that, and I could be wrong here and this might be, this might be too of an absolute statement. I don't mean it to be, but I think it's, it serves a point. And that is if you are a technician that transfers into pest control ownership, chances of you running your business, the way that you ran as a tech are really high. If you're a salesperson that transfers into pest control ownership, this is what I did. We cared about the same metrics we did as a salesperson. I was recently talking to a guy that was an accountant and that transferred into pest control. And this guy was awesome. I loved his insights because he had insights that I never had about financial levers and how to set up the business strategically. And he has grown his business really, really, really well. And I think his background has served him. So I think we come into businesses. With our backgrounds and that serves us really well for a while. And it can be a leg up, but also it ends up getting in our way. And so, like I've said a lot of times in California, we were very cell-centric. What I realized we weren't doing is we just were not serving the customer the best way. And so as a salesperson, I'm thinking, what does the customer want? Well, I'm thinking from the filter of a salesperson. As a technician, you might be thinking that's now an owner. You might be thinking, what does a customer want? And you think of them that way. If you're an accountant, you might be thinking that you have a filter that you're seeing your business systems and processes through. And what we did in California, when I moved to operations, I said, we need to become customer centric. So I stopped thinking about the business from a salesperson point of view. I didn't think about it from an operations point of view. I thought about it from a customer's point of view. And what do I want to experience as a customer? And then I built we built this roadmap and we've refined it over the years. Now it's an eight step roadmap that all our customers have to travel through. Starts at brand awareness and it ends in you being a loyal customer for 50 years. And there's eight steps that you pass, seven steps, we've merged a couple that you pass through in order to have the right experience. And then what we do is we build all of our processes and systems underneath that.

34:19 Greg Young

So because what can happen on accident is you have a process and if you have an operational mindset, you have a process that makes sense operationally because it increases efficiencies. However, what ends up happening is it up being, it ends up creating a burden on the customer. Or, I mean, just as simple as, hey, if you need us to come back, give us a call. Or if you're a technician out on, you know, the process for a pest control company, for a customer that needs to reschedule, they're on the door with the customer and the customer's like, hey, I can't do it today. Like, cool, give us a call and we'll set something up for you. In my opinion, you've just passed the ball to the customer and that's not the customer's job. It may not be, it may be the customer's fault, but at the of the day, it's the pest control company's problem to solve. So when you view it through the customer's point of view, I don't ever want the ball to be in the customer's court. I don't ever want the initiative to be on the customer. It's us, it's our job. So we built out this process and then we built all our core processes and policies below that. And sometimes it means, and it's tricky, we have to review these every so often because you'll have a manager over a certain branch that's like, oh guys, it'd be so much easier if we did, you know, we skipped this step or put these two steps together. And we're like, no, no, no, no. There's a sequence of events up at the top. It's our customer experience roadmap that we must follow. And it helps provide, you know, that roadmap, make sure the customer has expectations set up front, make sure that we understand what their expectations are and make sure that we exceed those expectations early and make sure that we validate that we've done our job. So it has all these steps that we go through and it also makes sure that we don't combat your customer too much, you know? So when I say a customer centric business, what I mean is we, instead of making our knowledge or our background, the center of how we build our processes and procedures. We've made the experience we need or we want our customer to have as a center and then built everything around that.

36:30 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, that is such a good take. I've actually, don't think I've heard anyone say that, at least not in this industry of your background defines you. I mean, it's so obvious, just like maybe the neighborhood you grow up in and the people you're around and all of that stuff. If you go into it as a sales guy, you're gonna have kind of like a sales oriented business and the same with anything else. So you kind of have to erase that in a sense. And I'm sure because you started as a sales guy and. You said that you guys were putting on tons of accounts. You put on 20,000 accounts in a fairly short time period. I'm guessing the churn was pretty high there. So talk to me about the results here and particularly churn. Like how's the churn varied?

37:00 Greg Young

Yeah, three years.

37:08 Greg Young

So when we were in California, we had months, we had periods of time, I don't remember what they were, but I remember looking one time and like, holy crap, we turned 38 % in the year. Like, and I had this panic moment because I realized the only thing that's keeping us in business is the high growth. And the thing that's killing us is the churn. And so in order for us to stay in business, we have to grow even more. But we're going to lose it. So that's why, I mean, that's why I pulled out of sales. I'm like, we need to come up with a operation. We need someone to actually operate the business. I don't think we're always 38%. That was one period of time, but I will say here's, here's a good hard number. We added about 18,000 accounts in California and we sold 8,000. And so we lost a lot, you know, we lost a lot of customers. Now we have, we lose between 15 and 16%. We've had years where, I mean, if we grow a lot with door to door, you know, I think in 2023 we grew a lot and we were up like at 18 % that year. That was a bad year for us.

38:01 Dan Leibrandt

Dang.

38:20 Greg Young

This year, think we'll hit 14, 14.5. We're working really hard to get that number down to 12. Which is hard to do when you're scaling, you when you add 30, 40 % of growth and then people can't, I it's hard to keep those, it's hard to keep a sub 15 rate when you're growing with door to door really quickly. But I've met with other, I mean, I also know a lot of door to door companies that would die to have to only lose, you know, 16%. Of their customer base. So I think we were really good at keeping customers while doing door to door. We can always get better, but I think we got pretty dialed with that. The years that we don't do door to door, because we had a years where we don't do door to door, in 2022, we had no door to door. And we had sub 12 % loss that year.

39:14 Greg Young

We still had good growth. We didn't grow by 30%. Had great growth, think it was 15, I can't remember the number. It was more than 10%, less than 20. And we lost 12%. And so, yeah, mean, that's in California, we were losing them like crazy. We couldn't hold on to them. And I feel like our numbers are a lot better now. We're not the best in the industry. I was at a table with a guy just recently. And since he's been in business, he's only lost 2 % of his customers. I'm like, dude.

39:47 Dan Leibrandt

What?

39:48 Greg Young

That's awesome. That's so great. He's still doing all the services. I think that matters a lot. And he knows and he acknowledges that as he scales, that'll shift. But man, I was sitting there, I'm like, Matt, what can I learn from this guy? This is so great. 2%. You've been in business for four years and you've lost 2 % of your customers. So our goal actually is to get to an 8 % attrition rate per year by 2028. That's our goal. When I say, yeah, that's our goal.

40:07 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's incredible.

40:20 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. Yeah, no, what I've seen usually is that churn is higher for door to door just because it's, you started the relationship, you know, but maybe they felt a little pressured in the sale, whatever it is. I feel like in the industry, I mean, a lot of the multi seven and eight figure owners that I talk to have grown through door to door, but a lot of other people in the industry, like there's a whole controversial post in our Facebook group, maybe two months ago or so, and there's like, maybe 80 comments and a lot of people were hating on door to door. So I know what are your general thoughts on door to door? Did you think it's ethical or what do you say to people that say you shouldn't do it?

40:50 Greg Young

I get it.

41:00 Greg Young

I think it's certainly ethical. Mean, I think the non-ethical argument is a hard one to really defend. Are there sales reps that are not ethical on the doors? Yeah, sure. Just like there's ethical, there's business, there's pest control owners or other sales reps that are not door to door that are not ethical. Like, so to say that an entire customer acquisition source is unethical, I think that's usually, I think that's a hard stance to hold. And I've seen people say it. And it's not, it's doesn't surprise me. I totally get it. So my thought on door to door is I like it in two specific ways the most when you're open, when you have a greenfield location, opening a new office, new spot, and you want to get up to a certain, certain, revenue spot. So you start castling at a certain rate door. Just think unless you're doing an acquisition, there's just nothing that's going to get you there quicker than door to door. Like there's just not. And so like when we opened Reno, we were able to quickly get to $1.2, $1.5 million that first year. We were able to pay out our sales reps. We were cash flowing. It was great. The worst part about door to door on opening a new branch is when they don't succeed and you're under that million dollar threshold, then you've got a few brutal years to dig yourself out of. That's situation number one where I door to door is a greenfield office, a new office. Situation number two is right after you make an acquisition and your route density isn't really tight, throw a door-to-door team on top into that market and choose your areas to densify your customer base. We've deployed that through two of our acquisitions and that has made that branch instantly more valuable. It's been really expensive, but it's made it instantly more valuable.

42:56 Greg Young

So those are the two situations where I'm saying, you should do door to door. The thing I would caution people against is I don't think, I think it's very difficult and pretty rare to build a door to door company that lasts, like that's your channel for the long haul. It's like your single channel. First, I think any single channel is risky. And so see a lot of people that do door to door. And that they have this single channel risk. And that's real thing. So I would advise against that, get diversified, hire a good SEO company, you know, like get your SEO going, get your Google reviews high, all that stuff. So I don't like it as a long-term plan personally, because what ends up happening for most people, not everyone, I think Jonas is a good exception to this rule, is you get well, because, but Jonas isn't at risk of single channel risk with door to door. And that's what he's done so well with. What happens when you have single channel risk is I think it's very difficult for you to make money. And so you end up just spending all your money on getting your door to door reps and they end up. And so if your goal is add a lot of accounts, grow really fast, then cool. You will manifest that. And if your goal is to grow a lot of accounts and then sell to a company, that is becoming less and less of a real option for door-to-door companies. So I've met with door-to-door companies that are like, we're going to grow by door-to-door for the next six years. And then we're going to turn door-to-door off and we're going to switch to digital for three years. And I'm like, man, switching to digital is not an easy thing. It's not going to be flipping a switch. So for me, I don't love it as a long-term option.

44:53 Greg Young

Unless you can really diversify it well, which again, I think very few people in the industry have. But I really like it for a greenfield office or layering it on top of an acquisition.

45:05 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, yeah. That totally makes sense. And I agreed, regardless of the marketing strategy, you have to be diversified. And then I wanted to ask you there, regarding diversifying and other marketing strategies. So you guys have been primarily door to door, but what else have been like the main drivers of generating leads and sales for you guys?

45:24 Greg Young

So our biggest thing, so we rank really well in our markets for SEO and that's always helped us. Think, I don't have any proof for this, none whatsoever. You're an SEO expert, maybe you do, but I believe that our door-to-door teams have helped our SEO searches immensely. So we've always ranked really well. Hired, we found because we were pretty single track, single channel, with door to door for so long, would hire this. This is something I'd advise people not to do. We would hire cheap SEO providers that would help us rank, but didn't help us convert leads. So what we do now is we've actually brought on our team, a marketing expert, an SEO specialist, and he manages relationships and vendors. And over the next 12 to 18 months, we will...

46:23 Greg Young

Bring it all in-house. So we own it all. And that is one of the things that that's our plan right now. And we've always grown really well on, you we bring on 900 to a thousand accounts outside of door-to-door every year, just through Google LSA and finding us on Google and customer referral. But that hasn't offset what we do in door-to-door. So let me answer your question. The thing that we've done is door to door, and that's gone really well. Our customer referral is really high, which is really helpful. And I think 18, two years ago, our Google, our organic Google acquisition source became out, started out raking our customer referral. So, I mean, it's just been organic Google and customer referrals and sprinkling on some LSA. But now we're moving forward. Putting a big pause on door-to-door and trying to go really, really hard into other marketing channels.

47:31 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, love to hear it. Cool, well we'll start to wrap up the show here, Greg. I've got one final question for you, which I ask all my guests, and that is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there? What do you wanna tell them? What do you think they need to know?

47:53 Greg Young

I would say... Your job as an owner is to find the number one constraint that is holding your business back and doing everything you can to remove it. That's your job.

48:10 Dan Leibrandt

Always finding the bottleneck.

48:10 Greg Young

That's it. Yeah, your job is a bottleneck finder. And here's just the piece I would add to it. The amount of times I realize that I'm the bottleneck. Like you've got to be willing to realize that you might be the bottleneck and then do what it takes to fix that. Yeah.

48:28 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, so good. Cool, well thank you so much for coming on this show, Greg. I really appreciate it. I know how valuable your time is. Where can people find you and connect with you?

48:40 Greg Young

Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. I'm in the Pest Control Millionaires Facebook group. I love chatting with other Pest Control owners. If have any, if I can ever help you, if I can ever answer a question or you just want to chat, please reach out. I love it.

48:56 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Cool. So make sure to go follow Greg on LinkedIn and Facebook. Both those links will be in the description and anything else you'd like to plug or promote.

49:05 Greg Young

No, I appreciate it.

49:06 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, it's been great chatting with you, Greg. And yeah, hope to stay in touch.

49:11 Greg Young

Thank you.

49:12 Dan Leibrandt

Course.