Jake Sheldon on Strategic Partnerships, Standout Offers and Getting More Pest Control Leads

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there, my name Dan Leibrandt and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. Today I am back again with Jake Sheldon. This is the second time interviewing him on the Pest Control Legends show. And actually my third time interviewing him, my original interview, which I found this so funny. This was over a year ago now that I first interviewed you on my Local Marketing Secrets channel, which is so crazy. We've already known each other for over a year and we were already podcasting and all that stuff. It's crazy that now we're in person and actually I... Was meaning to mention that we are together in person because we're doing a lot of content for our program. We're also program and we're even releasing a book together, which is really exciting. So we're actually co-authoring a book together. You may have seen that on social media called Zip Code Kings. That will be super huge. We've all put a lot of time into it. Really excited for that one. That's going to come out October 20th. So definitely stay tuned for that. There will be a link to pre-order in the description. In the next podcast, I'll have Jonas Olson, which he's kind of the main author because he's got a ton of credit in the control space. He's doing over $10 million a year. He has the biggest podcast in pest control. So he's the main author. And then me and Jake are the secondary co-authors. Such an honor to co-author a book with these guys. Jake is such a stud. I want to talk good about you, know, Jake has equity in several home service companies. Two of them are pest control companies and he sold a pest control company a few years ago for over a million dollars. And he also sold his agency, what was it? Five years ago, seven years ago.

01:32 Jake Sheldon

No, this was only about a year and half ago.

01:35 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. You sold your agency with over 300 Facebook or sorry, 300 pest control clients, mainly doing Facebook ads. So Jake is especially a killer in Facebook ads. And then also he has a virtual staffing company, expert in that everything related to HighLevel, automation creating offers like so much stuff. Jake is a really, really good marketer. Is such an honor to be with him today. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on, Jake. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So we've been talking about a lot of stuff in terms of how you've been growing your companies recently, what's been working best. And one thing that I've heard has continually come up from you is strategic partnerships. I know you're really big on this and I mean, first let's just get like really, really clear and simple here. Like what even is a strategic partnership?

02:25 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, so for everyone that's in our class, I sound like a broken record. Yeah, I bring this up literally every single week of how important they are. So a strategic partnership is essentially just a business partnering up with another business, sending referrals back and forth. But what a lot of people are used to in the service industry is referrals just like a handshake agreement. They're like, oh yeah, I'll send you referrals if you send me yours. That's it's just like a handshake. But there's much, much more. That you should be doing in order to make the strategic partnership effective and get the best results out of it. So another thing I'll say is many people watching this right now have been in some sort of networking group before. A very common one would be BNI and I've been in BNI group before. What's that set for? Business networker. I was in it like seven years ago and when I in Kansas City had a pest control company there. And they're fine, they do well. You can definitely get referrals from them, but in my opinion, I think it's very, very slow. And I'll give you the reason why. So let's say for example, I own a pest control company. The first person that you pest control owner should go out and get is a lawn care company. So a lawn care company, it's... It's the perfect style of business because they're the same customers that you're looking for. Right. So very synergetic is the word I was looking for. So let's say the first lawn care company that you go out to find, let's just say they have 2,000 customers. Well, instead of just saying, hey, I hope you send me some of your referrals. It's going to be great. Yeah, it's not what you want to do. You're gonna put an actual agreement together, not a handshake agreement, a physical copy of an agreement together that says you guys are gonna share business back and forth to each other.

04:19 Jake Sheldon

And essentially you want them to send out a text to their customers that they partnered with you. So let's say they're ABC Lawn Care. ABC Lawn Care is going to go, you know, hey, customer name. We have some exciting news. We just partnered with XYZ Pest Control Company. If you are interested in a pest control service or dealing with any XYZ bugs, text back Pest and we'll connect you with them. Now, if they send out that to 2,000 people on their customer list, let's just say even a low end 10 % are interested. Now you have 200 leads that you just got. And potentially you could send that in a day, I wouldn't recommend it. I learned that the harder way I told you about that. So don't send them out in a day. I would take a week to two weeks to send all those texts. So that way your office is prepared for all those leads that are gonna come in. It's actually pretty average. Dan knows this, I've done this with... Dozens and dozens and dozens of companies. And it's very common that you'll get five to 15 % of people responding back to that initial text. Really? So if you have 2000 people on the list, it's very common you're going to get 10 % of those, like 200 people to text back. I mean, like, yeah, pest. I'm interested. Really? So yeah, it's awesome.

05:40 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, and what are some other good industries there then? I know you talked about moving. Yeah, there are any other ones...

05:45 Jake Sheldon

Moving is fantastic. So one thing that we do is we partner with the moving companies in our location. So that one's a little different instead of a text. So I'll give you a perfect example is you want to give that moving company a little card. It's going to look like a mailer. It's the size of a mailer and it's going to have a promotion for that specific moving company that they're going to give to their customers. So say that moving company is doing, I don't know, 10 moves a day. Well, they're taking people to a brand new home. Well, that brand new home is typically very clean when they just get there. They're very excited to move into this new home. They want everything aesthetically pleasing. The last thing they want is a bunch of spiders or scorpions or mice running around this brand new house that they just got. So that's the pitch that the moving company gives is, I know you just moved into the home. We're actually partnered with a pest control company here in town that takes care of all our new move-ins. You should definitely give them a call. If you say you came from us, they will actually give you XYZ discount. And of course there's a tracking number. You want to have the tracking number on there so you know where the referral came from. Now think of this everyone watching this. Say you have a large moving company in town. And they're doing, I don't know, 10 move jobs a day. That's actually pretty standard for a bigger moving company. Well, let's say out of 10, they're doing that five days a week. What is that 20? Let's just say on average 25 days a week. That's, so you get 250 moves per month. So that's 250 cards they're giving out on. Your company's behalf. That adds up a lot in the year. So now you guys are thinking about this and you're doing the math in your head and you're like, my gosh, that's so many people that are seeing my business and so many people are getting referred from a company.

07:45 Jake Sheldon

That's why strategic partnerships are so powerful and why I just blast it in our group all the time. Like, guys, I beg you do a strategic partnership. Like, please, whatever you do, if you do anything in business, do this one thing, because it works so well.

08:01 Dan Leibrandt

Know you have equity in a moving company as a marketer. Didn't you say that was the main strategy you used to grow it?

08:08 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, so strategic partnerships is one, it's always the first thing we do going into any sort of. I know, no one does it. That's so crazy. You guys are crazy for not doing this.

08:13 Dan Leibrandt

I feel like almost no one does it though. Cheat code. Huh. And then there's the other side of it, which is, also find really interesting, which I didn't even really know about this until you brought it up, which was that, you know, let's say a moving company, they can refer you pest control leads, but you can also refer them leads and you can make money from the deals you get that.

08:28 Jake Sheldon

People.

08:37 Jake Sheldon

Talk about that. 100%. So example again, the moving company. That, say one of your customers is like, hey, I'm canceling my pest control service. You guys were awesome, but I'm moving out of state. Say you live in Florida and they're moving to California. Well, that's a big move job. Yeah. You're looking at 10 to 20, sometimes even more depending on how many the house is. You're looking at 10 to $20,000. Well, even if they gave you five to 10 % referral on that, say it's a $20,000 job. Now you just made $2,000 on a referral, which is quite common to get a 10 % referral, by the way. So that's what I would. Negotiate with a moving company would be at least 10 % of the way. So you can make even a kind of a side hustle income if you will with some of these strategic partners. Not only you're helping them grow, but they're helping you grow. So again, it's a strategic partnership where both of you win. It's a win-win relationship. That's why I love them. I'm obviously really good friends with all my strategic partnerships because I have equity in most of them.

09:43 Dan Leibrandt

And I think one of the reasons why it works so well is because of the component with trust. Like what I've seen with, especially all the higher ticket deals, but really just any deal in general is the more trust that's there, the more likely you are to close a deal. It seems like, you know, let's say someone's working with a lawn care company and they really trust them. They've been working with them or whatever. The lawn care company has been serving them for over 10 years. They love the guy that comes to their house. Then when they get pitched on a pest control plan, it's like, well, they love these guys. So their opinion means a lot, right? So it's kind of an easy sell, assuming they have a good reputation.

10:22 Jake Sheldon

Another great thing I'll say about everyone watching this, if you do decide to go for a moving company, which I highly recommend partnering with one, they're spending hours and hours and hours and hours with the customer. So they get to know them very, well. Yeah, trust. That's why I, exactly that point, that's why I love partnering with moving companies is because they're building the relationship for hours with these, with this potential client and building that trust.

10:49 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. Kind of like a broader question and topic I want to talk about was that you have equity in several million dollar businesses. You've grown many million dollar businesses. Maybe you come in when it's at 300k or maybe you literally go in at zero and you grow it to over a million dollars. It seems like you've kind of cracked the code. Is there like a code to crack or what like what do you do to grow a million dollar business?

11:12 Jake Sheldon

I wouldn't say necessarily crack the code because every every business that I've gotten equitable share in has been different like you said some of them have been at complete zero we started from scratch and some of my common have already been at you know a million bucks yeah already so I wouldn't necessarily I've cracked the code however I do get around people who I think have cracked the code mm-hmm guys like Jonas yeah I am I talked to him every day even my business partners have done very very well those eight figure sales. Both my business partners have made eight figure acquisitions. So I wouldn't say I cracked the code, however I am around people that I believe have cracked the code. So I've learned and am still learning things from guys like Jonas and my business partners every single day.

12:02 Dan Leibrandt

Also then a good follow-up question there then is you know a lot of these eight figure owners What are they doing different like what is their mentality? Yeah, how do they approach things? What's different?

12:12 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, so one of the first things that I've noticed different about all of them is their mindset on growth and like what they actually think is achievable that is much much different from all the other people I see it's many people that haven't broke the seven-figure mark typically have a limiting belief about what they can actually do I think one of the biggest reasons why I even had set of figures is I already knew I was going to do it I just I was like, oh, so when we did have that first six figure month in seven figure run rate, I was like, it already happened in my mind. So it wasn't mind blowing to me. I was like, oh yeah, I've thought about this for a long time. Knew it was coming. So mindset's number one. Number two, I would say the biggest thing is building a team. Your team is everything. I could never have done what I've done. My business partner would say the same thing. Jonas, I know, he would say the same thing as well. Building a great team is just massive. Your mindset, number one, think, and building a team, number two, is also have to have a good team. Yeah, definitely.

13:26 Dan Leibrandt

A topic that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on.

13:31 Jake Sheldon

Before, I'm so sorry for interrupting. I think this is super important to say too, is the third thing is marketing. Knowing how to market properly, because I just realized in my head it is, as I was thinking about that, was like, all those eight figure, even nine figure entrepreneurs that I know, all have gotten great at marketing and they know how to market. They know how to generate leads.

13:55 Dan Leibrandt

It's just a given. Yeah, what I was going to mention was the concept around A players. Feel like this is fairly common now. Everyone's heard the term A player, but in your mind, what is an A player first off?

14:13 Jake Sheldon

Mmm. Yes, uh, well the first things I will say is someone who has the right mentality the right the right mindset Yep, so that's the first thing I look for even when hiring people is Maybe they're not where they want to be now But they have the mindset that they can get there or they have that that drive just like we were talking Yeah, we're stepping this podcast...

14:21 Dan Leibrandt

Because all those eight figure guys are A player.

14:39 Jake Sheldon

Some people have it some people don't. And when you're looking to hire people to help you grow the company, you need to find people who have that same grit, that same desire that you do, and you can build culture around it. Per example, if I'm looking for a technician, most people that I talk to in the pest control world are like, man, I really need someone who's been pest control for a really long time, who knows exactly how to tech, knows everything about bugs there is.

14:59 Dan Leibrandt

Wait a...

15:09 Jake Sheldon

No, I don't agree with that. Actually, some of my best technicians are ones that are just the right culture fit. Someone who's hungry and someone who fits into our culture well, that's moldable, that can grow with us, has a good mindset, is positive. Those are the types of people I'm looking to hire. I'm not looking to hire someone who's prideful or thinks they know everything. I'm looking for good culture fits. And I would say the mindset of finding those A players are those kinds of people. People with good, positive mindsets who want to grow. Yeah, yeah.

15:47 Dan Leibrandt

A question that we got in our group, which for those that aren't familiar in our Pest Control Millionaires program, we do a weekly call where you just ask us any questions and the group can chime in too. One of the questions from the call two days ago was, okay, I'm looking at maybe hiring like a door-to-door guy or maybe that could even be like a manager on the team. He's like, should I give them equity? And I'm curious, I don't think there's like a right or wrong answer, but when do you think it makes sense to give someone equity?

16:15 Jake Sheldon

When they have value. I think there's a lot of people watching this who would never give up equity, which, that's totally fine too, just depending on your goal. If, let's just say I own 100 % of a pest control company and where my skills are at, let's just say I don't know how to sell. And I'm really, really good at the teching, but I have no idea of how to get leads and how to sell. Fantastic tech. Let's say I worked for Orkin for 30 years and I am fantastic at managing people and doing the tech work. Mm-hmm Well, that would be a gap where I would give away equity if I was that particular person I would give an equity away to someone who does know how to sell and has proven that they know how to sell. Another thing I'll say is I do vested equity. It's not financial advice, but I would do a vested equity. Me, you don't give them, you know, 20 or 30 percent or whatever it may percent equity up right away you start off smaller you know five ten percent and then as they sell as they prove themselves you give them more equity as they hit certain markers vested equity stake yeah yeah...

17:27 Dan Leibrandt

That makes sense. And then what about you? You've taken equity in many different companies. What does that look like for you? Yeah.

17:35 Jake Sheldon

So for me it's all vested equity 6. So I basically prove myself and as that company grows I get more equity in the company as I'm proving myself.

17:48 Dan Leibrandt

It seems like there's really no risk with.

17:49 Jake Sheldon

There's no risk to the business owner essentially because I'm like, if I don't add on XYZ amount of revenue and bring this kind of value to the company, you don't owe me any equity. And so that's why it's been a good win-win. I'm all about win-win. That's why it's been a win-win for all of my partnerships is so like, we don't put on much fake numbers. We don't put on $500,000 equity. Don't get XYZ amount of, sorry, if I don't put on 500,000 $1,000 worth of revenue. I don't get XYZ amount of equity. Yeah, and so people really really like that deal. They're like wow I'm not gonna find that opportunity or else this would cost me XYZ amount. I do all my work for free I bring my team on for free. So people really like that Like that deal. So that's what's worked for me. Yeah...

18:40 Dan Leibrandt

Something else you've been talking about a lot recently, which ties into the equity stuff, is just overall long-term plays. I'm thinking about... Related to equity, the exit, not just like how much cashflow can I get. And I feel like we've seen this problem with a lot of pest control owners that we've talked to that maybe they're starting to hit like 50K a month and now they're starting to like ball out and buy the nice car and all that stuff. But I think something that really every owner should keep in mind, right, is like really you have to start at the goal and where do I wanna get and like, can I actually sell for... Like a big, I don't know, but like the number that I'm aiming for. Not just a quick cash flow, but the ultimate play is how much you can sell for,...

19:26 Jake Sheldon

Yes, 100%. It's all, in my opinion, it's all about the equitable value of the company. Do I have something that's worth selling? And while you're building a company, that's also a great thing to keep in mind because it keeps your systems, your processes, organizations, the growth of your team all in the right place is a sellable. Even if you decide never to sell, building to sell actually allows you to grow faster and better because you always have that goal in mind. I don't know if you've ever done this but if you're if you're going to teach someone something You actually learn it quick. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, so that's almost the same analogy if you will if you're thinking about selling something like oh well Someone's going to be looking at my books or someone's gonna be looking at XYZ or looking at my SOP's well He's gonna have to be good if they're be looking at them. Mm-hmm But if you're like, I'm never gonna sell I'm gonna give it to my kid. You're not thinking about it that way. Mm-hmm. So I don't know if I answered your question.

20:28 Dan Leibrandt

No, no, you did. And then like a follow up there really on the other side of things then is then buying companies. So something you mentioned recently, you have a partner with a good amount of capital and maybe some people watching the show might be in that same situation. So what do you do with all that capital if you have a lot to expend?

20:48 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, blessing is having someone like that in your life. Really what you can do with capital is just grow faster. So that's all we're looking to do here in the near future is just buy as many companies as possible. In short amount of time. While still maintaining great service. At the end of the day, it's a service-based business. We want to provide the best service in town and do it well. So growing, still maintaining the great service.

21:21 Dan Leibrandt

Would you say buying companies is the fastest way to grow?

21:25 Jake Sheldon

In my opinion, Either you're purchasing routes or you're buying it through marketing or door-to-door. Marketing, as we both know, I love marketing. So you can buy your way to a lot of accounts. You can buy your way to a lot of accounts through door-to-door as well. Or you can just buy the routes. But for most times from what I've seen most people don't have access to that kind of workflow. So I'm not sure how helpful that would be, but if you can find someone who has cash it surely makes growing a company much faster. That's for sure.

22:10 Dan Leibrandt

What are the other topics I want to make sure to hit? Which I know we're kind of going all over the place, but I think this is really good. Another thing is offers. I know you're really good at offers and you've run some crush or Facebook ads. You were just showing me your account the other day. Was like, dude, you're getting, what were you getting leads for like a dollar?

22:27 Jake Sheldon

Way, I do want to go back because I think people watching this might take that the wrong way as far as the cash flow. I will say in the beginning of my business, I did not have an investment for it. Think people could hear all that and be like, you want to...

22:44 Dan Leibrandt

Control company that you've already sold.

22:45 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, yeah, and I could see people being like he's only no wonder he's growing so fast this year Yeah, because he had an investor the entire time and that's just not true. This is very recent Yeah, so I do I just want to know if I so yeah didn't dismiss any of things we were trying...

23:01 Dan Leibrandt

No, no, no, I should have made that point because that's just one of your circumstances. You own many of these other million dollar businesses where that's not the case. Yeah. Sometimes, you get an equity in enough companies. One of them is like super rich.

23:14 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, yeah offers. Yeah, so sorry go ahead.

23:18 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, regarding offers, well, first off, I was mentioning you were getting like a crazy cost related. I think that was on a Christmas lights company that you have. Like first off. I mean, like what makes a great offer?

23:34 Jake Sheldon

No. Well, something that... Excuse me, Jonas, we're just talking about this the other day. It's something that everyone else in town is not doing.

23:45 Dan Leibrandt

That's good.

23:46 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, so a perfect example of this would be in pest control. Everyone in town that I had seen on Nextdoor or Facebook or Google, everyone, I mean, everyone was doing either $50 off or $100 off. Like everyone, every single person.

24:05 Dan Leibrandt

And that's Facebook Ad Server.

24:07 Jake Sheldon

Facebook ads, Google ads, everywhere I saw on Nextdoor, everywhere you could think of I saw on each platform. Went, okay, well if everyone's offering that, how would I stand out? That's what you want to think of when an offer, like what stands out in the market? So one of my mentors was telling me, he's like, okay, if you really want to stand out and do something crazy, something that no one else is willing to do. So I was like, okay, well, what's that mean? So, okay, so what do you do for your initial? I was like, oh, my initial is usually 250 to 300 bucks. So, see what happens. Do it for 67 bucks. Yeah, and there's a book called The Power of Seven, but.

24:45 Dan Leibrandt

Just for a moment.

24:53 Jake Sheldon

He's like do it for $67. I was like heck no. I would never do that. That's a horrible idea. I'm that's gouging the market or whatever that saying is. I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to underbid my prices all that. I didn't want to also destroy the market. Yeah. He's like just see what happens. He's like do it for $67.

25:15 Dan Leibrandt

But.

25:16 Jake Sheldon

Of course, make sure they sign up for the rest of the year. So that was my offer. I would give away the initial service for $67 if they signed up for the entire year. So then it was worth it for me. Okay. Yeah. So it wouldn't be worth it if I would never do it one time for $67. Yeah. So I was like, well, I guess I'll just try that. So we just got a flood of leads and this is my first pest control business I ever did. We just started getting floods and floods and floods and floods of leads. So I was like, wow, this really works because I was different in the market. Another offer that we did here recently, Jonas actually gave me the idea is we this is tangible for all you pest control people. You can steal it right here. So we were doing the free mosquito control to services of free mosquito control if they signed up for our general pest service And so we were still getting our regular initial price and we were doing it for the whole year Regular price, but we would give those to control services away for free. Mm-hmm and that offer worked very well, So those are the power offers do something different that no one else in town is doing and be willing to do something that other companies don't. And you'll get leads to stick out in the market.

26:36 Dan Leibrandt

Dang, because me and you have talked a good amount about this. I've actually never heard you frame that or anyone else frame it that way. So that's really good. And also, you know, other people in home services like Dan Antonelli, him on my Local Marketing Secrets podcast. And he said the same thing, but in regards to branding. Whenever he takes on a client, he will always look at what the competitors are doing. So, you know, if there's a big competitor doing red, if there's a big competitor doing green, if there's a big competitor doing blue, make sure not to do those colors. Maybe we do purple. Or we do pink, or we do black, I don't know, like whatever. Checking what the competitors are doing and doing something different. I feel like that's more important now than ever because there's so many different companies. There's a lot of competition and maybe everyone just tries to be a little bit cheaper or, okay, well, not $50, I'll do $60. Or like you said, maybe just everyone does $50. You have to find something that's different and maybe it's... Not even as much valuable as the $50, but just the fact that it's different, there's something really attractive about that,...

27:41 Jake Sheldon

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I mean I even seen people do like everyone else in town started picking up on his offer. He went to our program. He's like, man, I've been doing this offer for a while. Now it's kind of starting to fade down. Try a new one out. Again, do something different from the market. And he did a gift giveaway was actually his hand. So he gave away a big gift and people started flowing through again. So yeah, you always have to innovate, always do new things. Again, always be different from all the competition. Yeah.

28:10 Dan Leibrandt

So just to be clear then, kind of like what you were hinting at, is there offer fatigue? I mean, do you usually see that an offer works for like a month or three months?

28:20 Jake Sheldon

Man, that $67 offer worked for years. It worked for us. So yes, there is offer fatigue, but if no one else is willing to do that offer in town or doesn't know how to do it properly, because there's a science to it, yeah, covered more in depth, but you have to do the offer properly as well. That's a super long conversation. Yeah. Well,...

28:23 Dan Leibrandt

Really?

28:42 Dan Leibrandt

Well, what's the science to it? Is there like any...

28:45 Jake Sheldon

There's a lot of things you have to get right if you're going to do a pretty good offer. So number one, you have to do the marketing properly. You have to get a lot of things, like your copyright has to be good. We talked about that earlier. Your image or video has to be done well. And your follow-up process has to be very good too. Speed to lead, have to the right person on the phone, have to have someone who knows sales psychology as well. Get a higher percentage. So a lot of those things have to be done properly in order for a group. To work or you're just wasting money.

29:25 Dan Leibrandt

And also, would assume, and we talked about, mean, this also relates to strategic partners and potentially any other lead generation mechanism, but you have to make sure that you're able to take on that much work. So if you actually have a crazy good offer, like you better be ready for that work.

29:39 Jake Sheldon

Right? Yep. Yeah, especially if they're strategic partners. Man, I'll give that example. Yeah. It would be helpful. So I partnered with a lawn care company. Long story short, that lawn care company had over 4,000 customers. We ended up getting the customer list. We sent out a text to everyone. I should rephrase. They actually sent out a text to everyone on our behalf that they partnered with us. We sent out that text all in one day. Nightmare with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people interested in the service. We didn't have enough technicians to do it. At the time we only had three.

30:15 Dan Leibrandt

No...

30:19 Jake Sheldon

So it was a nightmare. I of course had to jump in a truck. My business partner had to jump in a truck. We still didn't have enough people to do it. It was a nightmare. We almost ruined the partnership. Yeah, yeah. It was pretty bad. But luckily we were able to get everyone done. We were able sell people a few weeks out to get the service. I wouldn't recommend that. That was a dumb mistake, but I learned from it. And now I know to set that texting cadence in longer. Direction. Yeah.

30:50 Dan Leibrandt

Well I'm sure everyone in the audience kinda wishes that would happen even if they're going crazy, they have to go tech again themselves, they haven't done it in years. But just cause a lot of people is like, can't generate leads for whatever reason, maybe they haven't tried things like this.

31:04 Jake Sheldon

There's a lot of things you have to get right if you want to generate leads. Jonas and I have talked about it many times, but there are a lot of things you have to get right in order to do it. You could do mailers, door hangers, Facebook ads, ads, and if you don't do it right, it won't work. You can't just do them and hope it works. You have to do them properly or it's just a big waste of money.

31:25 Dan Leibrandt

The problem is it seems like, especially you as a business owner, I think we talked about this yesterday or the day before, it's almost like you kind of have to be an expert in everything or at least you have to know a little bit about everything. You have to know a little bit about... Yeah, like you have to know a good amount about sales. You have to know a good amount about... You know closing and the CRM and you know, teching like every single component of the business and that's probably where people mess up. But I do think that's a good transition to talk a little bit about the program. I don't think I've talked about it on this course or on this podcast at all. I don't think, you know, we did a show on this podcast maybe three, four months ago. I don't think we talked about it. So first off, I just want to like preface with this. What is the origin story of Pest Control Millionaires? This like crazy pest control program.

32:16 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, so I started it. Years and years ago. It wasn't called the Pest Control Millionaire Program. I ran it with my old agency. Was originally started with just a class format, met person, did a few small things like that, and then started just coaching people through Zoom. COVID happened. We all know what happened with that. And so people weren't meeting in person. So we just stuck to the Zoom style. And essentially what the class was at the time, was teaching people how to effectively market online. So how to generate leads online, what it took to get those, all the things you have to get right, and the follow-up sequence, some automation training as well. But how to do that properly and how to generate leads for your pest control company. Now, as time went on, sold the agency, I continued to do this. I had met Jonas years ago.

33:14 Dan Leibrandt

Him when he was like, his company was small,...

33:16 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, yeah. Think, yeah, actually he was teching at that time. No. He's kind of asking some pointers and stuff with like Facebook ads and yeah, we just stayed buddies throughout that whole time. I sold my agency or reached out to him. Was like, hey, what are you up to? And we were sharing some stuff back and forth. I was like, man, this would be, he's just a book of knowledge. Was like, man, it'd be great for people to know these things that you know. Could help so many people. I like, I've already done a class. Before, like, hey man, would you want to teach the things that you know to people? He was like, yeah, dude, that's what I want to do, to provide value to the industry. And I'm like, it's perfect. That's how the Pest Control Millionaire Program was formed. Jonas and I came together, put our two worlds as far as knowledge in the pest control industry together. And he made the program so much better than it was before. It was a decent program before. People were getting some pretty crazy results, but it's so much better now and then we met you. And then Jonas and I didn't know much about SEO and search engine and some of the things that you touch on the class. We're like, wow, like Dan, he's the expert on this. Need to bring Dan in. So that's when we brought you in on the class and now we feel we're the trifecta. Yeah.

34:43 Dan Leibrandt

That's the word I like to use, the trifecta. No, it really feels like almost the perfect storm.

34:50 Jake Sheldon

Of...

34:51 Dan Leibrandt

Each of us have our own designated pieces of expertise. And like we were saying a little bit earlier regarding the equity stuff, it's almost impossible to be an expert at everything. You might be really good at sales, or I'm really good at SEO and PR and copywriting. Like that's my field, but I'm not as good at sales as you are, or I'm not as good at automating as you are or delegating as you are. So like all the different skills combining and then like ultimately one thing together. It's really cool. Yeah, no, I'll just, I'll just say I personally went through the program. I mean, maybe it was six months ago or nine months ago, just to go through it. I was like, dude, this is really good. There's so much content in there. And also there's so much that wasn't even released yet. Think there's like, mean, 80 hours of door-to-door content, which is just like nuts. And now what we plan to do is even revamp the course. And that's going to come out soon where it's going to be much more structured. And also it'll be a little bit more logical of like the...

35:57 Jake Sheldon

You know.

35:59 Dan Leibrandt

First phase, or really, yeah, the first phase of like what to do the first month, how to get leads fast. And I feel like that's actually what people are after, right? Because kind of the struggle on my end, sometimes SEO is a hard pitch because it's like, look, if you have barely done any SEO, it might take like six months to see real results. It could even take up to 12 to like really see some ROI. So the great thing about the program, I think, is that and again, I don't want to like blatantly pitch, but I'm a genuine believer in the program that it's structured so you make your money back right away, right? Like the quickest things you can do, you know, of doing a referral campaign, doing strategic partnerships, doing upselling, increasing your prices, like all these different things. Like, I mean, it seems obvious to us and you know, me, you and Jonas have talked about it so much, but it's just like you either know it or you don't, right?

36:54 Jake Sheldon

The course was designed to be tactical. You watch it, you implement it makes you money. That's exactly what people want. The tactical side. Don't know about you've talked to lot of pest control owners, but most pest control owners I talk to, they don't want fluff. They don't want to put something in and get clicks or impressions. They're like, I know want something tactical that turns in the customers and turns in the customers. Quickly or builds equitable value in my company, which all the things we teach in there, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, strategic partnerships, upsell campaigns, like I said, we literally cover everything you can think of in the course. It's all tactical. That's what people really love about it.

37:45 Dan Leibrandt

Don't want to be like all pro the course. I will give you like an objection which we actually heard earlier today I believe someone texted you maybe they texted you back or called you back and They said they ended up not buying the program because they didn't have enough time and it seems like that's Kind of a common response like what would you say to that because I did it is a legitimate concern I mean, yeah, but there's a lot of content but like what would you say to that? Well?

38:11 Jake Sheldon

Few people in our program now that decided to wait. I would roughly about six to eight months. Man, I wish I would have just taken the time, maybe 30 minutes to an hour out of my day, you know, twice a week. I wish I would have done that, you know, six or eight months ago. We won't shout them out, now that they're in the program, they're like, man, I put on, know, XYZ amount of revenue and I wish I would have started earlier. So yes, it is definitely a legitimate concern, but I think everyone watching this has two hours a week that they're watching Netflix or scrolling through TikTok or whatever they're doing. They have. Two hours a week to watch this material and that will tactically, that something tactical like implementing world of business. I think everyone has that amount of time.

39:08 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, that makes it much more reasonable, because when we... You know, mention some of things like we have like 80 hours of door-to-door content, which that's like optional. That's not part of the core course, but that makes it feel overwhelming. We're just like two hours a week. It's like everyone can do that. And so cool. And also I briefly wanted to cover the book that we're going to launch. Dude, this is so exciting. I'm so excited for this. I released my first book like six months ago and I kind of vaguely pitched it to Jake and Jonas. I've kind of floated the idea or whether they want to have their own books. Like, dude, let's do it. Like that would be so awesome. Again, mission of giving back to the community of like, we've learned so much, we've gone through so much pain. And like to help other people not go through that pain, like there's something to be said there. It is fulfilling and it's clearly not about the money either because the book is like, we're not even making any money on the book or like the, you know, like the free Skool group that we have or the free YouTube channel that we have, like all that's free. This podcast is free. You're watching it right here. Like, so, I, and all three of us genuinely have that passion of like, I want to get back. I want to help. And for people that are super ambitious, like us, like there's, especially in pest control, there's not really anything like this out there. And particularly with the books, I kind of just want to ask you a little bit about that process and what that was like. What was it like, putting the book together, now you're going to be an author.

40:35 Jake Sheldon

Well, we both know we spent a lot of time in the initial planning process of putting the book together. Do we want to talk about filming? Yeah. So we also filmed everything that we cover in the book, which took extreme amounts of time.

40:54 Dan Leibrandt

Two videos each one like 10 to 40 minutes...

40:57 Jake Sheldon

Yeah, we put our heart and soul into this. Because at the end of the day, yes, we're all business owners. We do want to make money. But when we leave this planet and we can't take the money with us, it's about impact. Least I can't speak 100%. For me, was like, how can I help the next person? Because I've been helped a lot in business. I've had some amazing mentors and people who helped me and give me value. And I just wanted to pay that forward. I know that might sound cheesy to all of I agree.

41:11 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no...

41:27 Jake Sheldon

Mean it. I just want to pay it forward, give people value. So yeah, it's been really, really fun to put this together and get the information that I've been given and try to give it to other people too.

41:43 Dan Leibrandt

It's really exciting. We've been spending this weekend too doing some book promotion stuff. So you guys will probably be seeing that on social media and stuff. Really exciting. And I guess we'll wrap up the podcast here, Jake. The last thing I'll ask you, which I've been liking asking my guests recently is what is your message for pest control owners? Like, what do they need to know? What's in your heart that you just, you want to tell them?

42:07 Jake Sheldon

Oh man, I guess one of the big things is make sure that you're taking care of your customers because that's why we're in the service-based business. Yeah. Is to take care of people and provide a great service. So just keep providing that great service. I think a lot of people get focused on build, build, build, build, build and that is of course great. But at end of the day, we're here to serve people and provide that great service. Next is take care of your team as well. That might even be number one, but take care of the people that are growing this with you. Make sure you're taking care of them, and that will also externally help you grow your company when you take care of your employees and take care of your team members. And then number three, I would say if you want to grow, also learn marketing. That's why, of course, we created all the things that we're creating, is if you guys... Learn really, really how to market, whether it's from our program or not. There's a bunch of external stuff that's out there. But truly dive into marketing. You'll never regret it. You can never know enough. You'll never regret getting more knowledge. So that would be the third thing. Just be a human.

43:23 Dan Leibrandt

Love that. And yeah, just a little bit off those first two points of your employees and your customers. That's really one of the main mottos that Jonas pushes on in the book. And just something I've kind of gathered across listening to a lot is it's all about people, right? So treating people, whether that's, again, all the people that we've talked about in this podcast, all the kinds of relationships, strategic partners. Actual business partners that could be your employees, that could be your customers, that could be your family. Like all the people in your life, not only is that you're going to find success, but that's where you're going to find fulfillment. So you can kind of get those two in one. So, that's essentially that's, it seems like that's what you were saying.

44:08 Jake Sheldon

The great part is when you help others succeed, you automatically succeed.

44:14 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, it's like the more you give the more you get. I feel like that's, I don't mean to keep this going, but like I feel like that's why a lot of Christians actually succeed in business. It's just like giving mentality and they just naturally receive back. Absolutely. Well,...

44:17 Jake Sheldon

Part of life.

44:27 Jake Sheldon

He gave so I gave. Yeah.

44:30 Dan Leibrandt

Great. I think it's been a great show. Hopefully you guys enjoyed and Jake, where can people find you on social media?

44:35 Jake Sheldon

Jake Sheldon on YouTube, Jake Sheldon on Facebook, and Jake Sheldon on LinkedIn. So those are the main platforms I am actually going to be posting a lot of this material on Instagram as well. Also, Jake Sheldon on Instagram.

44:50 Dan Leibrandt

Cool. So all those links will be in the description. Make sure to go follow Jake and also make sure to get our book Zip Code Kings, which we will have a pre-order link in the description. And also consider joining the Pest Control Millionaires program. We will have pestcontrolmillionaires.com. You can go to that link and that will also be in the description if you want to click on it there. And there'll be information on the website and you can book a call with us or you can just join our free Skool group. Of, you know, we don't want to like be too salesy or whatever. Again, like hopefully you've learned from this podcast, we genuinely want to help. So yeah, we have a ton of resources. Hopefully you guys take advantage of that. Also, while I'm plugging, because usually that's kind of what you do at end of the show, make sure to go subscribe to the Pest Control Millionaires channel as well. That's different from Pest Control Millionaires. Pest Control Millionaires, we're going to be posting all of those 72 videos that we mentioned, which, you know, it's like three, four months ago, talking all about how to grow your pest control company. We're going to be talking about, you know, some success stories in the group, maybe some, you know, private coaching calls that we actually make public tons of stuff on that channel. So that's like, if you're really looking to learn, that's really the place to go. So make sure to subscribe to that channel. Make sure to follow Jake on all platforms and go to pestcontrolmillionaires.com...

45:34 Jake Sheldon

A millionaire which is a general millionaires...

46:07 Jake Sheldon

Www.mooji.org...

46:08 Dan Leibrandt

To learn more about our program. So again, I think it's been a great show. Thank you so much for coming on Jake.

46:12 Jake Sheldon

Thanks for having me.

46:17 Dan Leibrandt

Let's go.