Jared LaJaunie on Taking 9 Years to Reach $1M, Then Growing LaJaunie's Pest Control Past $12M

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt. Today I'm joined by Jared LaJaunie, the founder and CEO of LaJaunie's Pest Control, one of the most impressive regional pest control companies in the Gulf Coast. Jared built LaJaunie's Pest Control from the ground up into a multi-location operation with dozens of trucks, a large team, and over eight figures in annual revenue. He's grown through a mix of old school grit and modern systems, including EOS, strong leadership development and smart acquisitions. In this episode, we're going to break down how Jared scaled his business, what actually moves the needle when you're trying to grow past the early stages, and what the next chapter looks like as he pushes toward even bigger goals. Now without further ado, Jared, welcome to the show.

00:47 Jared LaJaunie

Thank you so much, Dan. I appreciate it. That was a very amazing intro. I appreciate it.

00:53 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, Yeah, I think I think me and you met at PestWorld this year. I don't even know if we were in touch before that. So that was just a few months ago. It was really cool talking with you at the PestWorld house. I think maybe we spent an hour or so talking was really cool learning about your journey. And I knew I had to have you on the podcast at some point. So I'm glad I finally got you here.

01:14 Jared LaJaunie

I'm honored to be here, man. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, not to do too much, but everybody I met, you really did stand out in my mind too, man. Just the conversation we had that night, I could tell that you were gonna do big things, man. So.

01:17 Dan Leibrandt

Of man. For people that don't know.

01:30 Dan Leibrandt

Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. That means a lot coming from you.

01:34 Jared LaJaunie

No doubt.

01:35 Dan Leibrandt

So cool. Jared, for people that don't know you, can you explain how you got into pest control and how you ended up starting this business?

01:44 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, man, my path into it was very traditional. I got into it the way I think most people get into it. I might have got into it a little earlier and stayed in a little longer than most, but I was 19 years old and I was married and had my first child and had a house at 19. Needed a job and I got hired on at Orkin when I was 19 as a termite technician for $10 an hour and I was excited about making that $10 an hour, you know? And just stayed with Orkin for about eight years, did all the different positions, became a pest control tech, then a salesman, sales manager, ultimately a service manager and a branch manager and just kind of went through the ranks and I left them and took over another small company for about a year or two. I was doing about two or three million, well, three million when I left in revenue. And then in January 1st, 2008, I cashed in my 401k I'd been saving up at Orkin and I bought a truck and some products and we got to it, man. So that's what happened.

02:51 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. What made you start your own company?

02:54 Jared LaJaunie

You know, I always kind of thought about it, but if I'm going to be very transparent, I was having a because I had a good job being a leader of that other company. I enjoyed it. They paid me well and I was secure. But it was a fam small family company and there was a son in law that worked in that company. That I was really having a lot of trouble getting along with. And I went to the owner of that company and was like, man, you know, I'm really having issues here. We need to do something. Anyway, nothing happened there. And so instead of jumping ship to another company or doing something else with that uncomfortable situation there, I just decided to go out on my own, which like anybody that's ever done it's scary because you go from making a good paycheck and being comfortable as a leader of an organization to literally making no money. Really grinding it out hard. Yeah, so it was almost like just, you know, it either work for somebody else for the rest of my life or take the chance and take the risk and build my own thing. And although it was difficult in the beginning, no regrets on it. And I'm even thankful for the conflict I had with that son-in-law because without it, I may have sat right where I was at forever.

04:08 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no that's been a recurring theme in my life kind of what you're hinting at is like, know everything happens for a reason even even things that are super difficult and you know that that experience of not having good relationship with that guy and Whatever happened there. It actually turned out for you to you know, own this awesome huge business. So it worked out...

04:28 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, it worked out, man. It's worked out pretty good. It's worked out better than I ever could have dreamed that it would have,...

04:35 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. So talk to me about those early days. I mean, when you were just getting started those first few years and then up to maybe like a million or so, what was it like and how did you grow?

04:45 Jared LaJaunie

So yeah, so it took me nine years to get to a million, right? So I was a slow learner. I know some companies that do that in two or three years today, but it took me nine years. But in the beginning, I did have what I feel was an advantage. Was the... 2008 and so most of the world had adapted to technology pretty good, but I started in a very rural tertiary market where I was living at and my local competitors, at least the big guys are doing it, but my smaller competitors were not utilizing technology at all. They didn't have websites. They were still doing Yellow Pages. They wasn't on social media at all. So in the very early days, I was able to leverage Facebook tremendously. Nobody else had it or was using it. And then also I had a website and was doing some digital advertising and probably for the first two or three years I was in business in that small local market. Nobody else was doing it. So it let me grab a lot of market share really early. And then in the early years I really focused in hard on the pre-treat market as well. It's a law in Louisiana that you have to pre-treat a slab for termites where you can build a house. So every house built has to have it done. You don't have a choice. And so I would literally just ride by wherever I seen a house being built. I would call all the contractors and really solicit hard on that pre-treat service and basically give it away for free. Not for free, but break even just to bill my recurring revenue on the back end, have the opportunity to sell to Homeowner Pest Control and then bill my termite renewals. And we did that, man. And we just kept trucking, did door hanging, door knocking, but not with a team. I just kind of did it myself. I had some early experience at Orkin with a door knocking.

06:34 Jared LaJaunie

Called Splat way back in the day. So I was pretty good at door knocking. So I did that just myself to get started. And yeah, man, just slowly added people, know, went through the ranks to where, you know, I started as a tech and I hired an office manager and I moved full-time into sales and just kind of kept elevating myself as we grew. And we got to a million after nine years, you know, doing that. And then... At about a million dollars, I joined a mastermind group. It was with... Donnie Shelton of Triangle Pest Control and some other guys, but Donnie was a real mentor to me in that mastermind group and we'd fly I think every six months to North Carolina and we got in this mastermind group around some companies that were just doing much better than me and Just soaked it up man. And from there we just literally started implementing a lot of things we were learning from that mastermind and it took us nine years to go to a million and we're 18 years in now we're we're gonna finish around 12 or 13 this year. So we grew faster in the last seven years than we did the first seven by huge multiples. So like to say, it took me a while to figure it out, but once I figured it out, we ran with it pretty quick.

07:57 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, it seems like that's the case with most businesses. It's gonna be really slow and painful in the beginning, but as you start to build up, get your footing, if you just stay in it, you stay consistent, you continue to get better, it's just kind of a matter of time before you figure it out and really start to hit big numbers.

08:18 Jared LaJaunie

My father-in-law, when I first started, it's simple advice, but I was like, man, I'm going into this business. I'm kind of, you're nervous when you go into business. You know, I was young and he told me, said, Jared, just the one that stays in it, the longest is the one that wins. And man, that turned out to be true. Just when it's hard and it's difficult and you can't see a way and you're going to hit all kinds of obstacles, especially in the early days. And even now we still have all kinds of problems and obstacles. But the name of the game is just staying in it long enough. And if you could just persist through the challenges and the hard times and just stay at it long enough, eventually you will find success, man. It's not a secret, but it's hard to do. Easy to say, hard to do.

08:58 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely. So with that mastermind that was super pivotal, I mean, what did you learn? What were some of the big takeaways?

09:06 Jared LaJaunie

So in that mastermind, we learned about having an inside sales team and selling pest control over the phone, which is something we were not doing before. We learned a lot of techniques about building a sales funnel and really utilizing digital sales. We learned a lot about building systems. We didn't have a lot of systems before. I was kind of just... Winging a lot of things. So we built a lot of systems. We learned about tracking KPIs and data and making decisions off of data versus just what I felt like doing at the time, you know, and just really just a lot of stuff, man. And then a lot of stuff they were doing different. Like we were one of the first, not the first companies, but it's super popular now. But back then, just a few of us were doing it. We switched, everybody back in the day, I don't know if you remember Dan, but Pest Control, long time ago, I'm kind of aging myself, it was done monthly. It was a monthly service and that was it and that's how you did it. So we switched to quarterly and monthly auto pay before it was cool. If you know what mean, everybody does it now, but we were doing it a long time ago, we were doing it. We learned that and that mastermind.

10:14 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm. Yeah.

10:21 Jared LaJaunie

And that was huge for Cash Flow to switch that quarterly model. Was much more profitable. And then, you know, we won't take a customer now unless they put a credit card on file and auto pay. And we give them the option to do that on the 1st or the 15th. And that changed our whole business, that one decision, because it just helped with Cash Flow. That mastermind really helped my mindset, too. You'll hear it all the time, but it made me believe that more was possible. And I saw some people in the group doing big things and were just killing it so it just gave me more confidence and the vision to know it was possible you know and then also you know I was still at a million dollars I was very much still a technician I was still running around I was still doing all the sales you know just like everybody doing all the things answering the phone and that mastermind really got me thinking about you know moving out of the field and becoming more of a business owner and operator than just a technician and so just all those things put together I was able to just really grasp it and we were really able to take off from that point.

11:21 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

11:29 Dan Leibrandt

So for you specifically, mean, what made that mentality switch? Was it just hanging out with other guys that were more of an owner mentality?

11:39 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, man, I was kind of in a bubble down here in South Louisiana and I was in a small town. We just had one branch and it was in a Thibodaux and I love Thibodaux. That's where I'm from. But we were kind of just in a bubble. You know, and we kind of would just was doing what I knew to do what everybody else had been doing for 30 and 40 years and just kind of plugging away at the old pest control model and just flying out of state like that and being willing to go and get around people that were doing things different, learning things different and being around those people, you know. They say the three things that will impact your life the most is who you marry, where you live, and who you hang around. And I think that's true. And so I stayed married. So that's huge, 28 years. I moved to New Orleans and I changed who I was hanging around. I started hanging around only entrepreneurs that were doing big things. Like my whole circle today is just all, everybody in my close circle are business owners that are doing things, most of them bigger than me, you know?

12:18 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

12:41 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

12:41 Jared LaJaunie

And so I'm always inspired and learning.

12:45 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's a really good takeaway because I feel like you, along with a lot of other owners, they're, I mean, you just know the people in your small local town and maybe some of them are entrepreneurial. They're trying to start a business, but they're not usually successful. So you usually do have to join some kind of mastermind and just get in rooms, just even be introduced to some of these people.

13:11 Jared LaJaunie

Exactly, man. It could be a mastermind or it could just be, you know, at PestWorld, what we experienced at PestWorld, shout out to Allan Draper putting out that, it was Pest House. I mean, what we spent three or four hours there, I think one evening, and I learned more in those four hours around those group of people than anything else that I learned at PestWorld. That was the most valuable part of my whole trip was being around those people that were handpicked to be in that house. You know what I mean? Everybody in there was just the energy. They had some young folks just starting and their energy was contagious and they had some smart ideals. I met you were amazing. And just all the people in there and everybody was throwing around ideals and kind of spitballing and this is working and that's not working. That was super valuable, But it took me spending my money getting on a plane, flying to Orlando, and then being willing to go in a house around a bunch of people I didn't know to have that experience. And it was amazing.

14:11 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, definitely. It's funny because the first time I went to PestWorld was just PestWorld 2024. And I spent basically the whole time there going to all the sessions and trying to see as many speakers as possible. And yeah, I was bored and I didn't learn much. Yeah, no, exactly.

14:26 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, and you were bored and you were bored out your mind, right? No hint on the NPMA, but yeah, if you're you're matter in those sessions, kind of get a little boring, you know.

14:36 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I don't know maybe I don't know like one or two of them were really good But you know on the most part you have to be cautious of the ones you're going to but this time I didn't go to a single session I got way more valuable value just because I was around the right people like you so no I totally agree It's much more about the people than you know just trying to jam in as many sessions or whatever yeah. And you also mentioned in that mastermind, systems. What kinds of systems did you implement and that helped out?

15:00 Jared LaJaunie

Absolutely, absolutely Dan.

15:11 Jared LaJaunie

Wow, man, just basic stuff that we weren't doing, that we were not doing before. We got Bill.com, we got a system for how we did our accounts payable. We switched to bi-weekly payroll versus weekly. I learned that. We got some SOPs in place and a training system in place in an exact way that we hire and exactly how we fire and head systems. Every single service that we did, we videoed and trained on it. And we were doing none of that stuff before. I know it sounds crazy, but for a long time, we'd hire somebody, put them in a truck with me or somebody else for two weeks and say, okay, go kill bugs, man. And then be upset when they didn't work out or they didn't do a good job. Right? Like, you did something so stupid. Well, because we put you in a truck for two weeks and cut you loose and you never done it before. That's why you're doing stupid stuff. I mean, the end of the day, I was stupid for thinking that would, that would work, but it's what was done to me. You know, when we start, they put me in a truck for two weeks and cut me loose and, I made it, you know? So I just thought, you know, this is, this is what we're going to do, but no, you, have to have so much more. You have to really, you know, now today and we're in. I still think it's a quick turnaround from the time we hire. It's about a month. And then even after that, we continue to have ongoing training.

16:32 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, talk to me about your hiring process and how that's evolved.

16:36 Jared LaJaunie

So now today, you know, it's a, have to go through HR first, then they have to get to my operations manager. And then ultimately me and Skye will interview most people, not all the time. Sometimes our operations manager will hire them, but we are checking references. We are checking credit scores. We are doing the DISC personality tests. We are doing multiple interviews and even with with all that, I think it's a 50-50 on the hiring, right? And I don't think there's a more important thing. Than who you hire for your company. That's one of the biggest things that's gonna make you successful or unsuccessful. But you could do all the stuffs, all the systems, and you still only got about a 50-50 shot of them working out. So what we'll do now, a lot of times, is if we have a position open that we need, we'll hire two people for that same position, even though we only need one. And most of the time, both of them do not work. And if they both do work out, great. But it's rarely that both work out, and if they do, we just find a place for them, because now we got two great people. We always need more people, and that's how we do it now.

17:48 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. So is there any reason why people don't work out or do work out?

17:54 Jared LaJaunie

Ah, I mean, it's a, it's a multitude of reasons, Dan, but, um, I mean, either at the end of the day, either we don't like them or they don't like us. You know, when I say don't like, I mean, either they get into it and they find it's just not for them or we find out they're not for us. And we're, pretty good about, you know, not keeping the wrong people too long. That was a personal weakness for me in the early days is I would really keep the wrong people too long.

18:05 Dan Leibrandt

Hahaha...

18:23 Jared LaJaunie

And I paid some heavy prices in the early days for that, know, loyal to a fault, even though people were not, not executing any way, or form like they should be. I made the mistake most young entrepreneurs make. Hired my family and friends and was super loyal and some of them super sucked, you know? So today we're really much better, not better, we're excellent at vetting, you know, the talent that we have and either investing into them and helping them grow. Are very quickly getting them off our team if they're not a fit. And we usually know within that first month if they're a fit or not. And if they're not, we don't talk about it, we don't think about it, we don't placate, we fire them. We just do it. We move on and we get somebody else.

19:10 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, makes sense. And related to masterminds, which we were talking about the mastermind that you joined, but I also know that you have a mastermind yourself called the Eagle's Nest. So can you quickly explain what that is and what you do?

19:25 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, sure man. I got so much benefit and it changed my life so much that we wanted to give back and help other people have the same experience. So my wife and Maria Serentino started a mastermind group called Eagle's Nest. And the goal there is to have 100 joyful entrepreneurs. That's kind of their motto. And basically every month they have about seven or eight people that fly down to New Orleans and we run a big beautiful house. We bring in a private chef. And we get in a room and we mastermind. And that includes looking over numbers. That includes teaching people how to look at their data and their KPIs. We do a lot of work around mindset stuff. And then just the question you asked me, what everybody wants to know, you know, how do we grow? How do we be more profitable? What are you doing? What tools are you using? What AI are you using? What software are you using? How are you hiring? I mean, we get into every detail of the businesses and then we're big when holding people accountable. They do a monthly call like this with the group every month and they, people set goals and then we're really big about holding people accountable to those goals. And if they don't hit them really working out with them, okay, why didn't you, what didn't work and what can we do to help you hit that goal that you set for yourself? And we're just having fun with it, man. We feel like we're giving back and the same thing that helped us and we've had a lot of success stories come out of it. You know, it's people that come in and really grasp everything that that's going on in those groups and are able to grow their companies tremendously. And it's just fun. It's just fun and it's exciting. And I enjoy it, but more than anything, I enjoy watching people get it and you can kind of see when they get it. They kind of almost like a light bulb, like their eyes light up or something, you know, and then you meet them a year or two years later, six months later, and you know, they've grown 20%, 30 % just from.

21:22 Jared LaJaunie

Clicking a few little things in their business and man, it's just exciting. It's like a party. Come back and they're like, man, we did this thing and we grew 30%. And you know, I'm like, yeah, let's, let's go out in the city and celebrate it. And we do, you know, and it's amazing. It's fun.

21:35 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's so awesome. And it's super impressive that you have over 100 people in there now [The group's goal is 100 members]. And I wanted to ask around that. And you actually told me that this is the case before the call, that most of the people in your mastermind run into a lot of the same problems. So what are the problems that most people are dealing with?

21:57 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, so most of it, man, the biggest problems, you know, if you get to a million dollars or even a half million dollars or even a hundred thousand dollars, you know, you're a single operator in pest control. You kind of you know what you're doing. You know how to kill bugs, man. You know how to do the chemical. You know your bugs. Almost all of us are amazing techs. Right. So most of the problems I see everybody having are similar but different. So It really all boils down to mindset and we see the same mindset challenges and that's where most of the magic comes from. And to give you an example, most people, you know, in the beginning and we've talked about it, but it's really a big one. They just see theirself as a technician and they take a lot of pride and they should take a lot of pride on the technical side of things, you know, they'll be like, I'm the best bug killer that there is. And I can't get off a route because nobody else. Can run a route the way that I can run a route. I'm the best. And so I can't get off a route. I just have to stay because if I get somebody else to run a route, they're not as good as me and I'm gonna lose all my customers. Bullshit. Right? I mean, bullshit, man. You might be really good at what you do. And yes, it may be true that if you get somebody else on a route, they may not do it as good as you. But are you just saying that you're gonna run around forever and you're not willing to grow and you can't train somebody and you're not willing to grow beyond yourself and trust other people? That's difficult, but you have to do it to progress, right? So we deal with that a lot. It's a big mindset shift. It's very difficult, right? And then a lot of people, and I've dealt with this in my own career and I can speak on it, just don't believe in theirself enough. And so when you just get them believing, hey, you know what?

23:48 Jared LaJaunie

You can own and have and operate a $10 million company. You can. You really can. And they'll, you'll literally see them be like, no, man, if I get to 3 million, I'll be happy and I'll just be, and that'll be great. And I don't even want to do anything more than 3 million. I'll just be so happy if I get to 3 million. I just can't even conceive nor do I want to even have a $10 million company. Bullshit. You do want to have a $10 million company. You just don't, you just don't believe in yourself enough or you don't have enough self-worth.

24:18 Jared LaJaunie

And yourself to believe that you even deserve to have a $10 million company. And so we work around a lot about, you do deserve to have it. You can do it. And you just need to believe in yourself and be willing to do the things that it takes to get there. So that's just two examples, man, of the reoccurring problems. And there's three or four, you know, and there's always different issues. And of course we get into the practical application of data and how to look at your numbers and we get in all of that stuff. But most people really know all that stuff. They either are just not doing implementation or execution well. And so you kind of know what to do. So we just hold them accountable to the execution a lot of times of what they already know to do, right? Just freaking get it done. And then a lot of the other work we do that really helps people is literally just around the mindset and the way they see, feel, and think about their business and their problems. And we can get them thinking and seeing a different way. It's like magic happens, man. They go back into their business and they do things that they wasn't doing before. Like one example, I can't use names, but I had a guy that was like, man, I just hate selling. I feel icky when I sell, like a car salesman. Said, the phone rings. I don't even want to answer it. I just, I don't want to sell anymore. I'm just not enjoying my business. And we were able to work with him and get him to understand that you're not a salesman. You're a consultant and you know, you're doing a service to the people and you have a unique way of selling. You are not a relationship guy, but you're a data driven salesman. And once he started like going through what his company does and different and not trying to be a relational salesman and changing his mindset around how he sells, he went back into his company, he sold $20,000 in a week, and that was just from one weekend of working with him on just the sales process and mindset around sales. And that kind of stuff makes me excited, because I know as he continues that path, that's gonna change his life.

26:13 Jared LaJaunie

His kid's life, his whole future will change just around that one shift of the way he was seeing and feeling about things. And I'm getting a little excited because I am excited. I'm passionate about it because I just love seeing people have that kind of success, man. It's so amazing.

26:27 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, it's really cool. And it's funny because like the mindset stuff, I feel like everyone's heard it, but it almost seems cliche or it doesn't actually work. I think like at the very least, if you don't believe you can do something, then you can't do it. I think the belief needs to exist before doing it. If you wanna build a billion dollar company, I almost guarantee that all the people that have built a billion dollar company believes that they could build a billion dollar company. Maybe not everyone does, but most of them won't. But I think that's like the prerequisite before making it happen, right?

27:06 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, yeah. You know, it happened to me, man. I had a point in my career where I went to a conference one time and there was a guy talking that had a hundred million dollar company and he had started on the same day, same time as me, was in business just as long as me and didn't have any advantages that I didn't have. And, you know, I think at the time I was doing six or seven million and he was doing a hundred million. And I got to talk to him after the conference and we got to talk and you know what the difference was between me and him? Is that day one when he started, he had the mindset and the intention from the very first day and made all his decisions and all his actions and believed from day one that he was gonna be a hundred million dollar company. Literally the day he started, he said, I'm gonna have a hundred million dollar company. I believe I'm gonna have a hundred million dollar company and this is how I'm gonna do it. And everything got filtered through that from day one. I started on day one and I was like, man, how am I gonna this house bill? You know what saying?

28:03 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

28:04 Jared LaJaunie

How I'm gonna pay these bills and I'm gonna feed these kids. And if I just make, I remember telling my wife, was like, man, if I could just sell 100 customers at $20 a month, that's $2,000 a month, I'll just be, I will be okay, we'll be all right. I mean, that was my mindset, right? I mean, so small. And then after talking to him, today I don't know, I believe I could have a $100 million company. I believe that with my whole heart. I believe I'm worthy of having it. I believe. Could do it and I believe it's totally possible for me to do. Yeah.

28:39 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, and I think you will too. So, yeah.

28:41 Jared LaJaunie

I don't know. Thank you. I appreciate the confidence. Very, very few people do that, right? But, you know, and I don't know if I will do it, but I believe that I can. And you know, that's a big difference.

28:52 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, cool. So mindset is super important. That's like the core. If you don't have that, it's really hard to see any real growth or, you know, obviously you have to set goals before you hit goals. And then let's cover some of those other kind of more technical or practical things. Like are people doing any, I don't know, making any clear mistakes, whether it be on marketing or sales or hiring?

29:21 Jared LaJaunie

You know, one of the big things we keep seeing is most people do not know their numbers. They're not in touch with their finances. And not only are they not in touch with it, but they don't look at them on a regular basis. They don't have it in order. And they could be doing a million dollars a year and not be making any money and not even know it, you know? And so you wouldn't believe the revelation and the emotions that come out. When some people for the first time in months or even years, we make them really go over their numbers in detail and they really see it and we really get into the numbers. And then with everybody in the room, just from looking at those numbers and then P&Ls, there's some people that are super smart and talented with the numbers. They can look at those people's numbers and say, man, your payroll is high here, your chemical spins here. I can tell from the numbers, you've got this problem going on with your fuel. That's really high. And so they just start getting these revelations just from their numbers and get in touch with it. And then we get them on a system to where they're watching their numbers, they're monthly meeting with their accountant, and they're really in touch with that and making real decisions off of real solid numbers. And I know that sounds silly, but that one thing just makes a huge, huge difference, you know? And then some people don't even have CRM, so they're still doing paper and pencil. We've got to get them on CRMs, you know, and using an actual software.

30:36 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that is huge.

30:45 Jared LaJaunie

Or they live in a cold climate and they shut down during the winter. So we talk a lot around that and not to do that. And you can operate all winter long, even in the coldest of climates, there's a method to do so and don't go hunting for three months out of the year, you know, and we work, and that's another mindset thing that we have to work around, but it's also very practical, right? We talk a lot about payroll and how to pay properly and what the proper pay is and the proper pay frequency. I mean, we get into every aspect of it, man. Know, what the charge is always a big one, right? It comes back to mindset again, but that's a big one. Nobody wants to raise their prices, right? So practically we'll lay out a plan with them of when to raise prices, what's the best time of year to raise prices, how much to raise prices, who you raise prices on. But most of all, go home and raise your fricking prices.

31:41 Jared LaJaunie

Some way, or form. We get a lot of resistance to that, a lot of fear. Around that one topic, of raising your prices on customer.

31:50 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, definitely. Yeah, no, from talking extensively with Jonas and other high-level owners like yourself, I've realized that's literally the easiest way to grow is, you know, have an existing customer base, you just increase the prices. And, you know, some people drop off, that's fine, but you're almost never gonna lose money. You might lose work, but that will then be compensated with the higher prices that you have.

32:17 Jared LaJaunie

You got it man, you said it. Just don't be scared to do it. Just like Nike says, just do it. And what I've seen, I've experienced it for myself and I've seen it over and over again with multiple entrepreneurs is, and I've experienced it for myself, you're scared, right? Because you're loyal to these customers. They help you build your company. They've been with you since day one. They're super loyal to you. Now you're servicing all their family members. They become like friends and you feel some loyalty is one reason why you don't want to do it. Then there's the real fear that if I go up, they'll cancel. The truth is, man, is you have to go up on your prices to remain relevant, to give the best service to your customers, and they deserve that. So you're doing a favor for your customers, so you continue to use the best products, hire the best people, and if you're the cheapest guy out there, you can't do that, right? And as far as the fear factor, I understand people being scared, but the numbers don't lie, and over and over, I've seen it in my own company and everybody that's done it. You do lose some customers, but not nearly as much as you think in the added increase, just like you said, in the revenue from raising more than compensates for the customers that you lose. And usually the customers you lose are the ones you want to lose anyway. They were usually the ones that cause you the most pain in the butt anyway. Right? So yeah, raise your prices, man.

33:35 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely, love that. And back to the numbers you were mentioning. So specifically, what numbers do people need to be looking at most often and how often do they need to be looking at them?

33:48 Jared LaJaunie

You know, I'm not the financial guy. My wife is in my company. Matter of fact, Eagle's Nest is going on right now today and I'm doing some other things just today because today is numbers day and it's not my favorite day. So I skipped out on that and the rest of the weekend I'll be very involved in it. But today I skipped out, but I mean, profit, right? Are you making money? Are your numbers in line with, industry averages of what everybody else is doing around the country? You know, and it's the fuel, chemical, payroll, are those numbers in line? How much are you spending on your software? And then the other big one is this, and we see this a lot, is a lot of people mix their personal and their business together. So they use their business account to pay their personal cell phone bill. They use their business account to pay their personal truck note. You know, you can definitely use your accounts when you travel and things, but they're using their business account to go on every vacation and there wasn't nothing about pest control about that, you know? And so, you know, we really talk a lot about separating your business and personal and how that helps you keep clearer numbers, which can help you make better decisions and really separating, you know, have an account that's just business and just personal and really keeping those two separate. We deal with that a lot. We see that all.

35:17 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And I wanted to dive a little bit more into growth and like lead generation. So Jared, in the past, I don't know, a few years or so, what's been working best for you in terms of lead generation? What have you been doing?

35:30 Jared LaJaunie

So it takes everything. First of all, there's no silver bullet, Dan. It takes everything coming together to have growth and generate leads. But I can tell you some of the things that we're doing. We're very heavy in the digital space. So we do a lot of pay-per-click. We do a lot of GLS. We do a lot of social media. Hoping to do more of that, actually. I think we have an opportunity to really capitalize and do more in the social media space. We do mass mailers. We have billboards. We'll do like advertisements on YouTube. We have a whole inside sales team that cold calls. We have an outside sales team that goes out and actually gets business. Know, they get leads, but they also solicit their own business and have their own pipelines rolling. We have, course, all our vans and trucks wrapped as rolling billboards. That's tremendous. The guys out there, if you don't have your vehicles wrapped, do it. I know it can be expensive, but totally worth the investment. It totally comes back to you to have the vehicles wrapped. We're really big when having everybody in logo uniforms, looking professional and having a appearance of being professional, both in our vehicles and our technicians. What else do we do, man? We do a lot of community outreach. So we got guys that work BNIs. We do a lot of things in the community to support. Different charities and we cook and we do a lot of that kind of stuff. Public outreach, we try to be part of the communities that we're in. Yeah, all that. And all that comes together to make it work. Not one of those things by itself, if you have success, you kind of got to do it all. But not to dodge the question, to answer it for you more directly, digital marketing is probably the biggest thing that we use and it brings in most of our leads.

37:22 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, makes sense. Yeah, no, I totally get that. I hear that from a lot of eight and nine figure owners that there's not one silver bullet. I mean, maybe there's one silver bullet to get to maybe 500K or even a million, but once you start to grow and get to a larger size, you have to diversify where you're marketing. Just, can't max out one thing.

37:40 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, it takes everything. The bigger you get, the harder it is to get bigger. You know? Yeah.

37:48 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. And one thing you mentioned there that I'm not as familiar with, and I'm curious what exactly you're doing around this, you mentioned that you have people doing cold calls. What cold calling are you doing?

37:59 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, so in our inside team, know, when they have any downtime, we'll have them cold call various different lists. So like we may have them cold call pest control customers that don't have termite and offer termite or vice versa. They have termite, not pest control. They'll call them and offer that. They'll cold call and offer a mosquito. We have some different ways of getting lists. Of the actual owners of restaurants or the managers of hotels. And they'll just cold call and try to set up appointments for our outside team to go out and meet with property managers or managers of hotels or daycares or whatever, you name it. They'll try to set up appointments for our outside team. So they'll just, we try not to have any downtime for our inside. You we want them just selling and taking leads, but sometimes like this time of year, there's some downtime. They're doing more cold calling and working lists and things like that.

38:56 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, okay. So mainly working your existing list.

39:01 Jared LaJaunie

That's where most of the cold call and success comes from, but they'll just cold call random businesses too and try to set up appointments that we've had some success with that.

39:09 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. And one other thing I wanted to jump back to, you're mentioning this is one of the problems people are dealing with in your mastermind. They weren't busy during the winter and they'd maybe even totally shut down. So how do you stay busy in the winter season or off season?

39:27 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, so again, a lot of that comes down to mindset and thinking they're not doing a, they can't do a good service in the winter or they're doing a diss service to their customer and there's no reason to spray in winter, right? You do a lot of that, but ultimately there's always something you can do in the winter. I mean, there may be days where you can't work, but you can keep your services year round. And it's a lot in switching them to quarterly or some. Some markets we even are a big proponent of tri-annual, right? Just go out three times a year. That's, if you could pull that off, super profitable. But anyway, just instead of spraying at every house, you can, you can dust the weep holes, you can web brush, you're doing an inspection, you're doing something that brings some value to that customer still, and they're on auto pay, so you're getting paid anyway, you just show up. And, know, depending on the weather, you can do something. You can do an inside service on the inside the house that that part of the year, especially if you're tri-annual, you can treat the addicts that time of year, right? There's stuff you can do to continue to add value. And then ultimately, you know, in a lot of winter markets, we'll talk to people about starting wildlife. You could do wildlife all year round. So wildlife doesn't make sense for every company for sure. Always in my own company, we have a pretty robust wildlife department, but I like to say it's 10 % of my revenue and 90 % of my headaches. Like wildlife is a, we can do a whole podcast just talking about the woes of wildlife. And so I'm very cautious to recommend it to people because it's definitely not for everybody. But if you're in a market where it snows and it's cold four or five months out of the year, you know, absolutely get into wildlife.

40:56 Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

41:14 Jared LaJaunie

Keep that cash flow and keep things going year round and do what you need to do to learn it and become efficient in it and go into wildlife. Cause at least you're generating money year round. Don't shut down for four months or three months. And you know, and we deal with that. People enjoy shutting down. They like that time of year not to do anything, but your business isn't going to grow or it's not going to grow fast. You know, you might like that time, but you're here telling me that you want to grow your company, but yet for three months out of the year, you're, you're sitting home or you're going hunting. Which one do you really want? What's the real truth, right? Because there's nothing wrong if that's what you really want. If you're okay with where your company's at and you want to go hunt for three months out of the year, more power to you. But don't tell me you want your company to grow and you want to hunt for three months out of the year. One of them is a lie, right?

42:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, yeah, no, definitely. We don't have to dive too much into it, but I mean, why is wildlife such a headache for you?

42:09 Jared LaJaunie

You know, it's just a much more technical service. It's harder to get and train people on that service. It's harder to train the sales process and then just the expectations of what you can do on the wildlife side from the customer is more challenging and the ticket price, you know, is, it's going to be a lot on wildlife. So they have eroded problems. Sometimes, you know, you go out, they spend a good bit and you may have to go back out a second time and do something a little different or maybe something you missed. And when customers are spending, you know, sometimes four or $5,000, you know, they want to, they want a magic bullet. They want you to come out one time and they never want to see a mouse again. And I get that because it is a lot of money and that's what we want too. But the truth is wildlife, some of the animals are smart and not every situation is the same. You know, in pest control, you can kind of lay out a system and it's cookie cutter. You could do the same thing at every house, the same time, just like McDonald's. Can get the same Big Mac at every McDonald's across the country. Wildlife, every single house and every single customer in every situation is unique and different. And it becomes extremely hard to system, make it a system and systematize it. You got to be able to adapt and do something different on every single account and keeping that. That communication between the salesman and the tech and the customer, which every account being so unique, it can become challenging. Mean, you can do it, we do it, but it's not as easy as doing termite or pest control where you just do A, B, C, D every stop, it'll work like this is the expectation, know, wildlife's not like that.

43:55 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm makes sense. So pest control is much more easy to systemize whereas wildlife and I've seen this talking to private equity guys, too They're always more interested in pest control than wildlife because pest control is recurring. It's easier It's not as custom all the reasons you just mentioned...

44:11 Jared LaJaunie

Yeah, you can systematize, systematize, you can get systems in wildlife and we do, but it definitely is more difficult and there's more challenges. You know, you're an addict, so we do a lot of addict restorations, guys fall through addicts and things, you know, I mean, there's a lot more risk to it. You got guys on ladders and roofs, so your liability is a lot more and then just a lot more training too. You know, we talked about earlier, you know, a month or two weeks, sometimes you cut guys loose in pest control. And wildlife, to get a tech really efficient and make sure they're doing everything and they're safe and they're not going to hurt themselves and they know what they're doing, you're looking at six months minimum. You know, minimum.

44:49 Dan Leibrandt

Dang.

44:50 Jared LaJaunie

And that's just a, you know, it's a hard commitment. And if people don't work out, you got to hire them and you got six months to train them. Mean, it's is a different animal. No pun intended. Yeah.

44:58 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, different animal. That's funny. Well, cool. Okay, that makes sense. We'll start to wrap up the show here, Jared. I've got one final question for you here. What is your message, or do need to take that call?

45:11 Jared LaJaunie

Yes, So sorry. I do not know.

45:17 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. My final question for you here is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there? What do you think they need to know? What do you want to tell them?

45:27 Jared LaJaunie

Mmm. Man. First of all, congratulations on starting your own company. That was the hardest thing you're ever gonna do. Congratulations. Don't quit, stay doing it. It's gonna be hard. It's supposed to be. If it was easy, every single person would do it. Whatever you think you can achieve, triple it today. You can do three times whatever you think you can. If your goal is to be a million dollar company, I'm telling you right now, change it, change your goal that you can be a three million dollar company because you can, right? Shoot for the stars, right? Believe that you can do it and continue to grow yourself. Your company will never grow more than you're willing to grow yourself personally, right? And that's from your health. Make sure that you know, I mean, we don't talk about it, but man, keep your health in line. Go to the gym, eat proper. You're the leader of men and you're leading people. It's your obligation to take care of yourself and be that leader. And the difference that'll make growing your company when you're clear minded and you're healthy, it'll help you go a lot further, right? Work on your mindset, your personal wellbeing, self growth. Me personally, I go to a lot of conferences. I got Tony Robbins jacket on. I did Tony Robbins a while back. Love that guy, right? I go to PestWorld. You know, I do multiple conferences because I'm always trying to, I never want to get to a point where I'm not willing to learn and grow and be better. So always be trying to educate yourself and be better. Never get, no matter how big you get, get to a place where you're like, I got it and I don't need to learn anything else. Be a constant student of the industry always. Yeah. And other than that, I would just say, man, don't quit. Just keep at it and reach out to other people.

47:25 Jared LaJaunie

In the industry. This is one of the most kindest industries I've ever seen. People are willing to help you. If you don't know how to do something or you don't know how to, you have a problem with a thing, I promise you there's somebody out there that not only would help you, but would be absolutely thrilled to help you. Like reach out, get around other entrepreneurs and other pest control guys that hopefully they're doing more than you and they can help you get to that next level.

47:49 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. That was so good. Well, thank you for coming on Jared that this has been an awesome podcast. I really appreciate your time. I know how valuable it is. Where can people connect with you and find you online?

48:01 Jared LaJaunie

So Facebook, Jared LaJaunie, yeah, my email, [email address removed] and Google LaJaunie's, just put in my name, I'll come up in all kind of places and you could get in touch with me that way. Yeah, that's it, man.

48:20 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, cool. So definitely go make sure to follow Jared on Facebook. That link will be in the description and anything else you'd like to plug or promote Jared.

48:28 Jared LaJaunie

Eagle's Nest, if you're looking for a group to plug into and try to become better and you need some help growing your business, not even some help, I wouldn't even say help if you just want to be inspired and work on some things, we'd love to have you in Eagle's Nest and help you. We truly do have a passion for helping entrepreneurs have success there.

48:49 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Is there a link for that?

48:52 Jared LaJaunie

It's eaglesnest.com, believe, we'll bring you right to the website for it and everything.

48:57 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So eaglesnest.com, if you guys are interested in the mastermind, that link will also be in the description. Cool. Thank you so much again for coming on, Jared. This has been awesome.

49:06 Jared LaJaunie

You, Dan. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much.

49:09 Dan Leibrandt

Course.