Jeff Davenport on Building Official Pest Prevention and Starting Over With Prize Pest Control

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there, my name is Dan Leibrandt and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. Today I'm with Jeff Davenport who co-founded Official Pest Prevention with his brother Jamie and scaled it to over $20 million a year with more than 170 employees before eventually selling the company for a very great multiple. What's even more impressive is that Jeff isn't done. After that exit, he jumped right back in and is now building Prize Pest Control, taking all the lessons he learned from two decades of experience. And applying them to his next big chapter. In this episode, we dig into how Jeff built one of the most successful pest control companies in California, what it was like to go through that kind of sale, and how he's approaching business and leadership differently this time around. Now, without further ado, Jeff, welcome to the show.

00:46 Jeff Davenport

Hey, thanks. Happy to be here.

00:49 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So I want to dive into your background. I want to know how you got into pest control. How did this all get started?

00:58 Jeff Davenport

Well, I went to, I attended Brigham Young University in, gosh, was 1990, and I met some people who had sold pest control before, the summer before our freshman year in school, and they had earned enough money to pay for school themselves, and that was super attractive to me at the time. One of them had to earn, it was a good friend of mine. His name was Jory Anderson and he, memory serves, he had earned $28,000 in four months. And in 1990, that's a lot of money now, but that was a ton of money in 1990. So, mean, families earned that much back then in an entire year. So I was interested and... You know, kind of followed him into working for a company called Eclipse Marketing.

01:58 Dan Leibrandt

And talk to me about that. I believe you were at Eclipse for five years or so.

02:03 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, so I started in 1994 as a sales rep and I worked in San Jose. That was a good summer. There were three companies that did door-to-door sales then. At the time, your options were SalesNet, Eclipse Marketing, whatever Vivint was called before they were Vivint, it'll come to me later, but they did just pest control at the time. So I worked for Eclipse because Jory, my buddy worked there. And so 1994 was my first summer. I sold 300 accounts that summer. At the time that was the top. I was a top rep for. For Eclipse Marketing and I thought I had done really well. Then I came back to school and there were a couple of SalesNet reps who had sold like 480 or something like that, a lot more. I was interested in that and then kind of got with them to see what they had done. But yeah, that was the start, 1994.

03:11 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And also I was just watching you on Jonas Olson's podcast, Pest Control Millionaire. And if I'm getting this right, you did a thousand accounts in four months?

03:24 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, so each year, kind of set different goals and I would typically sell in the summer and then recruit for Eclipse in the winter. And then, each summer kind of increased the goal, moved the goalpost a little bit to try to do more. Yeah, in 1998, I sold in Nashville. And that actually wasn't for Eclipse, that was for... Apex is what Vivint was before they were Vivint. Anyway, Apex was, sorry about that beeping, but anyway, I worked for Apex and sold, and my goal was to actually try and sell more than, try to sell a thousand accounts or more. And so I did it. It was a great market back then. We were the only door-to-door. Company we were selling for Terminix at the time and I was selling monthly accounts and I think we're selling at $36 a month and they would go every month for that and went there and we just had the pick of the area and it worked really well. There were like five I've it was I recruited that office and there were like five or six of us.

04:46 Dan Leibrandt

No, that is insane. Real quick, just with the beeping or the dinging, because I'm hearing it, but I'm not sure if the audience is hearing it. Would you be able to turn off your, or turn on Do Not Disturb?

04:58 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, let's see. Let me see if I can do that.

05:01 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, so I wanna dive back into how you did a thousand accounts in four months. And one thing I want to ask you here is, I mean, first off, what drove you to do that? Are you just like a super competitive person or why a thousand?

05:19 Jeff Davenport

Well, again, kind of kept moving the goalposts. So the first summer I sold 300. I actually managed an office and just did sales training my second year. I was in Atlanta in 95, but 96, I managed an office and I sold on the weekends and I kind of saw that I could make more money selling, wanted to really kind of max out what I was doing. In Charlotte in 97, I sold 700 and maybe 25 or so and realized then that, a thousand could be done. There's a hundred, know, roughly a hundred days if you work all this, if you're, you know, four months and you work all the Saturdays. So, you know, had, I was averaging a little over seven service today that year, the year before. So I figured I could do over 10. It was just a matter of maxing out. At the time I didn't know how long I would sell pest control and so I was trying to save up money to move on to something else. I didn't plan to sell pest control forever.

06:26 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. And tell me what you learned about door-to-door during that time. What was working, what wasn't.

06:35 Jeff Davenport

Well, it was a lot about mostly down to first of all just the hours I mean putting in time it was a matter of hey if you know if you're selling so many per hour you need to get this many hours in and that's how you get your work done and it was just maxing out what I was able to do on my own I'm trying to put myself in the right situation in areas that worked well. But yeah, I think just getting better at talking to people, identifying who to spend my time with when a door was answered, trying to figure out, I, is this a good prospect? And should I pour? Energy into it or you know, they're not sellable and should I move on so kind of trying to make that decision quickly worked. You know, learning that just kind of also leaning in and being able to close more deals, realizing that when someone says no, trying to recognize, hey, does this mean no never, or does it just mean I'm not there yet? You know, and trying to figure out how to, you know, things that could work to get the prospects there.

08:07 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Did you have any like keys or secrets around your strategy? Was there any like specific line you would always use or a way you'd always get people to close?

08:21 Jeff Davenport

No, I think I got hard. I tried to make it hard for somebody to close the door on me. So I would knock on the door. This is before Ring cameras and all that kind of stuff. So I would knock. Customer would come out. Usually their reaction is, I'm good. Thanks for coming by. And I was good at pulling them into a conversation.

08:50 Jeff Davenport

And then I would, know, it wasn't, I don't know if it was a super sophisticated approach. It was just tenacious and I was, you know, it was all, we're, you know, I mean, I think it's pretty similar to what people do now. Hey, we're here. I've got service technicians that are close and you can help me fill, fill an appointment. Can give you a deal that's worth paying attention to.

09:15 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, so one of the keys is just pulling them into a conversation.

09:19 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, yeah, think I always thought I talked about in my mind, I set goals that were. Performance oriented because you know sales is a lagging indicator if you're knocking enough doors if you're saying the right things if you're putting in enough hours Sales will come and so I tried to think about the small things that I was doing You how many doorbells and doors I had to knock on to get sales and how many people would talk to me and then out of those people that I Where somebody actually answered how many of those I could get through an entire presentation? And then when I got through an entire presentation, how many of those would close? So I tried to think of it in terms of the big number and it would funnel down to the smaller number that was selling. And at that time, I didn't use a software program to sell. I didn't sell with a tablet. So it was paper contracts and filling out the service agreement with the customer. Giving them their carbon copy, stapling their check to the agreement or getting their credit card info. And then so I was usually left with, one thing I would keep track of, drew, I kind of drew this diagram of what we were gonna do and it was a picture of a house. And then I would draw this three step service process that we would take them through. And then I would write pricing and scratch that out as the regular price and here's your discounted price. And then I would be left with how, so I had a piece of paper basically in that drawing for every full presentation that I went through. And so I was always interested in the end of the day, how many full presentations I had versus contracts. And. And then towards the end of that, the end of when I started selling for Official Pest, I would often incorporate an inspection in kind of a mini inspection into the service. So somebody would say, I've got ants and they're, bugging me. Would say, well show me where you're seeing them. Right. And so now I try to get in and sell from the living room. Set something down like where I wanted to sit. So I set my notebook down where I wanted to sit. And then I would walk around the house, showing them some things that we would do.

11:38 Jeff Davenport

Some past problems they had and that would go back to where I'd set my notebook and I would my clipboard and I would sit there and kind of close from that spot where I had wanted to sit. Yeah towards the end I guess it did get into sort of a mini inspection I'd try to close from either the backyard or the or inside the house.

12:02 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, interesting. And I know it's, it was probably super intuitive to you just because you kept iterating and you found the best way to do things. But I feel like people maybe just getting into door to door or aren't seeing successful that just aren't doing any of the things you're saying here. So I think that'd be super useful. And part of the reason why I wanted to spend a good amount of time on it, just that first 10 minutes or so is because door to door has been super fundamental and crucial to growing your main or previous company, which was Official Pest Prevention. And I want to dive into that more. How did that company get started? And what were the first few years like?

12:39 Jeff Davenport

Well, it's kind of this natural progression. Each year we were trying, I was trying to sell more and more, earn more and more money. And there's a limit to what you can do on your own, right? You're only gonna be able to sell so much. And I don't know, guess that obviously through like door to door con, we're seeing people do more and more. Mean, so just when you think this is it, right? Somebody. Breaks through those boundaries. So my brother and I sold in 99 in New Orleans and we got to know the branch manager there pretty well and he kind of shared some things, some growth that his branch had and he really attributed the growth that his branch had to us and the work that we had done. So that got us to thinking, wow, maybe we kind of changed this branch in New Orleans, we should do something on our own. And at the time I was in, I was at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and my brother was at BYU in an engineering program and neither of us saw, he didn't really see himself going into the engineering field. In my program, I wasn't really happy with where that was gonna lead me. I would hope to get a university teaching position and. Didn't look like that was gonna happen, at least the kind of job that I was looking for. So at the time, most universities and history programs, was what I was studying, were hiring and it really took an Ivy League degree to get the kind of job I was looking for. So anyway, we decided we'd start a pest control company and we looked around Eclipse Marketing. Had offices all over the country and we had been, I had worked, so in 94 I'd worked in San Jose, 95 Atlanta, 96 was Houston, 97 Charlotte, 98 was Nashville and then 99 was New Orleans. So of all those areas I had worked, we preferred to be, we were kind of West Coast people, so we kind of preferred the West. So we looked, considered though, we considered Dallas, we considered Walnut, the Walnut Creek area, because that's where Eclipse's office had been. And decided to go kind of look around. Went around, we looked at San Diego and the LA area. Looked, at Dallas and then, and then while we were looking at, the Bay area in the San Francisco Bay area in California, saw Sacramento and really liked Sacramento. We decided to sell it, to start there. And we actually did a road trip and talked to a bunch of friends and acquaintances, people we knew who had started pest control companies to get some tips and encouragement. Then we started in 2000. We started kind of doing the planning and setup in January and then right around April, the end of April, middle to end of April, we started that year in 2000, knock on doors.

15:53 Jeff Davenport

Tracy, was the first city that we knocked in. And that was a good way to start. That was the only way we knew how to start, but door-to-door sales gives you some density that you really need when you're running crowds. And that was nice, because those accounts came in, know, four, five, 10 on a street. And that's just the kind of density that helps a ton.

16:16 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, so you guys were really big on door to door, at least the first few years. When did you start to diversify or when did it become more than just door to...

16:21 Jeff Davenport

I'll be. So it was like, I wanna say it was like 2012. So we did our own door-to-door sales with just a few friends. And then the first year, the second year we recruited sales reps and we spent most of our time kind of building the company, managing these reps. And then after 2001, the... You know, like all the money we had made the first two years, because really went into paying our sales reps. So we had, we had operated for two years and just made very little money, kind of living off savings and, putting everything into the growth of the company. So we decided, and then at that time we didn't really like the idea of going back to Provo or, trying to get, trying to recruit from far away. So we decided we would just go back to selling ourselves and trying to recruit people from our local area. And we did that. And we did, that was kind of our playbook for a long time. We were, you know, I'd say we were like a football team that only runs up the middle. You know, we had one play and we did, although I think we did it well, you know, it reminds me a little bit of like the, Eagles tush push, whatever they call that, you know, the kind of the unstoppable play. That's what door to door sales is.

17:31 Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

17:44 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, it's kind of annoying, but it always works. Yeah, that's what my high school football team did too. So you guys were recruiting a lot of door-to-door guys. What did you learn there and what worked best?

17:56 Jeff Davenport

Well, so right away we had the sales reps, well, it didn't necessarily have to be this way, but the sales reps we had were a little bit different. They weren't gonna work from nine in the morning till nine at night, six days a week. So we set different hours. We would work usually. Through the summer we worked 12 to dark and then through the winter we worked from 10 a.m. Well, so like we had a meeting at 11 or 12 and then we'd work till dark which is about nine through the summer. And then in the winter, the off months, we would work from 10 to 6 p.m. And then we would gather everyone up and go home. And then we also, learned that. I mean, right away we learned that the sales reps were gonna be effective if we were working with them. So we put them in our car, we drove them out, we pushed them out the door, got them started, and then we would knock, in some cases, the other side of the street, right? And that, they were much more effective when we were working with them. And so that's what we did. Usually we split it up. So one of us, you know, with Jamie and I, one of us was in the office kind of running operations and the other would be out with the sales reps. And in the beginning, we did that kind of one week on one week off, we would sort of rotate through and that's how we, had just local people that we recruited and they would, some of them did well. We had one. One sales rep that sold for us for like 12 or 13 years year round, which I think is pretty stable. He sold well. It's fun. Interestingly, he had worked in other parts of our company. He started as a tech and that didn't work out well for him. Didn't really suit his strong points. So he then he worked in the office. That didn't seem to be his thing. But he came out with us and to sell and from day one did very well and just never looked back.

20:13 Jeff Davenport

So was kind an interesting thing.

20:16 Dan Leibrandt

Someone like that, what makes him wanna stay at your company? Mean, he's doing all different roles. What's different about your company? Why does he wanna stay there?

20:26 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, good question. Think, you know, he was, you know, there was some social glue. Was good for, he became a good friend of ours. We just sort of worked together. We set up a program where him, with him, where he could earn, he earned money on his sales for the first year. And then he sort of had a backend that he would earn commission on. As those customers stayed. So we tried to make that a hard thing to walk away from, know, because he, so he would kind of build up this book of business, almost like an insurance agent or somebody who had customers on service. And we tried to set it up so that he could be successful. He spoke Spanish, had areas he liked to work. We tried to put him in those places and, you know, he liked to work. Independently and he was one that was really good at going out and working. And we put other sales reps with him at times and also with our model. We paid a commission and we also provided a company vehicle for these people. So they would show up to our office and then they would usually go out in company vehicles. And then our top reps would keep the company vehicle. They would take it home and switch, try to make it easy for them to continue.

21:49 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. And also I wanted to ask you, so you guys have grown to, or you guys did grow to over 170 employees. Did you have any bad hires and what have you learned about, like what kind of person would you not hire? What are the red flags?

22:05 Jeff Davenport

Man. Well, so in California, it takes like 60 days to get a person licensed to do pest control. So, and you have to have your salespeople licensed and your service people licensed. So it takes, it takes a long time. And so we became a mini licensing factory, just like a little institution. It was like a degree. And so we developed we developed a course where we would hire people and we would put them into our licensing program. They were often working outside of that. And then it was on Zoom at the time. So they would come in and they would usually catch one or two classes per week. We would pay them to, you know, were paid, it was paid trainings. They would come in, they were paid to be there. They had to be there on time. Usually the course would go for about an hour and a half. And at first it was all about licensing, right? Here's what you need to know about pest control and we're gearing up to help you pass this test that you're gonna take this licensing exam. And then pretty quickly we realized, we should also, we put some life skills things in there, how to, that course was about how to. Be successful not only at our company but in the industry. It was about values and how to succeed in a service industry and how to do pest control and just all things about how to succeed in life and get licensed and be an asset to your company. And I really enjoyed that class. Did it for the first few years. So we would, we seemed like in the summer we would have 12 people or more that were enrolled in that. And then, and then as they got ready, we would have them take the test. And then even after they passed the test, they would still attend that class. And then as we got ready and there was a spot open for them, we would...

24:16 Jeff Davenport

Let them know if they needed to give a notice to their current employer, we'd let them know when to do that and then they would go out into the field. And then we also pulled from that, some people weren't employed or they were employed part-time or anyway, they had days or evenings where they were available. And so we would send them out to do ride along training. It was almost like this two month long interview. And so they would show up and we would pay their licensing fees and then. And if it didn't work out or they couldn't hack in that course, they definitely weren't gonna make it out in the field. So that licensing class became instrumental to our growth. I think we weeded out a lot of people that normally you'd put in a truck and invest a lot of time and find out two months or three months of full-time work later that they weren't working out. And we had them in this class where they would work an hour and a half to three hours a week. And we just kind of see how well they did, what their interest level was in our company and in the job. And so that became a really good thing. I felt like that sort of helped our hiring. And then it also helped us because they'd be in here kind of ready and on deck to take for their full-time assignment. And...

25:43 Jeff Davenport

But then, but they could wait. A lot of them were employed and so they could wait a week or two or three. So we had, it gave us more flexibility. Could pull two people out if we needed to fill gaps quickly or we could have people wait until the next thing came up. And there was always, there were always openings. It was just a question of whether it was gonna be today or tomorrow or next week or a weeks out.

26:09 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, interesting. So you had the two month licensing process and it seems like that almost sifted out the C and D players because you have to commit to that two months, you have to show up to the Zoom meetings. It's going to attract yeah.

26:22 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, and participate. And right away, would, just as the instructor, I would see people that were motivated to be there and excited about it. And it wasn't always first in, first out. We took people out of that academy by performance.

26:41 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also I wanted to ask you, because again, you have such a great perspective on this. You guys have had so many employees. What were some of the key hires that you guys made? You know, obviously we've been talking about technicians and sales guys, but in terms of key hires, were there any people that were really pivotal, like maybe people in your C-suite or even certain managers?

27:04 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, yeah, there were. Now, most of our successful managers and key players started at an entry level position and then worked their way through. So overwhelmingly, yeah, they came. Now, there were some key people that came from the outside, but. It just doesn't work out as I have found that it's harder for that to work out. Usually companies safeguard and protect and want to keep their star players. So if somebody is available, you know, it didn't work out where they were before and it often will not work out. With you. So you have to keep that in mind. So our best hires were people who started and then just worked their way up through the organization. And that with that little academy, tried to earmark people we thought would work well and take on more responsibility because we were starving for leadership. Jamie and I, and then later my brother John came in as a partner and sort of three of us, we did a lot of we did a lot of the work and carried a lot of the load, more than we should have. So we started, we only had really three branches. There were two main branches, one in Elk Grove and then one in Fresno. And we covered almost everything with those two branches. And we had technicians that lived in the parts of our area that we needed them to service. They would keep their trucks at home, launch from their home. Do their services and they would typically report to the office one time per week. And then their managers would go out into the field, work with them and see them quite often as well. As far as key hires, so most of the people that worked out well for us started with us early and advanced. We did, you know, with our termite program, so, we started with general pest and we were always kind of intimidated by the idea of doing termite work. In California, there's a lot of liability there, more so than in other states. So we were cautious of that. But then I met a guy who was...

29:30 Jeff Davenport

Bidding on a contract for the prison system in California and he needed somebody to do wildlife trapping, which we did. We got to talking and he asked if we would fulfill the wildlife part of this contract for him. And then in return for that, he said he'd teach us how to do termite work. And so that was kind of a key partnership where he taught us how to do termite work. And then we started doing our own termite services for our own customers. And then later, we hired a rep who had worked as a sales manager for Terminix and was very familiar with termite sales. He came over to us and from month one started selling around 40,000 a month in termite to our existing customers, which was a big lift. Really just kind of taught us. How to do it, he helped us with the construction side of things, because in California, you call on a termite inspection, you call out dry rot and termite work. And so if there are termites present, you do the termite work, but if there's dry rot, you fix the dry rot as well, and call that out as part of your termite work. And that's huge because I mean, termites eat a of houses, but water...

30:52 Jeff Davenport

Is what causes dry rot that I mean, every house gets some of that. Mean, so just so anyway, he helped us with the construction side. And, that just that just launched our termite department. There was there was all of a sudden, it went from, you know, a few jobs a month to, you know, lots and we started hiring, training other inspectors. And so that was a key hire for us. We had, so the way we had our company divided up, I did sales and marketing, Jamie did the finance part, and then John did our Fresno operations, but we had a couple key people that... Had kind of come up through the ranks, had a lot of technician experience, and then we pulled into the office to sort of help us manage operations. So we had the Sacramento operations manager was a person who had worked with us for a long time. And so that was nice. Then, know, the first really successful when we were all but the kind of too late, we hired a human resource manager who had a lot of experience and he but he was a good friend of my brothers. And so we knew him. He actually had worked in health care, was let go by a really large company. And we hired we hired him. His name is Alan. And he helped us a ton. And man, I they were just managing, when the company got to a certain point, it was just really hard to manage. All the benefits and really people's careers. Mean, they really, people come to you and they want to see advancement and growth opportunity and just making sure that that growth piece was there for everyone, it becomes super challenging and hiring him was a big help with that, hiring for other positions and then just managing all the...

33:08 Jeff Davenport

All the growth and advancement that your team needs.

33:11 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's what I'm so fascinated by, with big companies like yours is just, you know, the different levels that you're at and how can you make sure that everyone's incentivized? How do you make sure that everyone's cared for? So, okay, really interesting. You're focused on hiring internally, so it's almost more about key roles rather than key hires, but there still were some key hires like that termite sales manager and this HR person. Cool. So something else I wanted to touch on, which you actually were kind of hinting at this. And we talked or you mentioned this before the show, is that you said, and I don't wanna exactly quote you, but you said something along the lines of every pest control company needs three things. Someone, or maybe not even someone, finance, hard work, and brains. And maybe that's three people, maybe that could even potentially be one person. Can you kind of explain that concept and what you mean by that?

34:07 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, think so. All the operations, the growth, the equipment is expensive. So you need something, someone, some entity to pay for that. I mean, you can bootstrap it, but even when you bootstrap it, you need some money. And then you need a good, you need good management and a plan and sort of the brains of the operation to... Take you where you're going to solve your problems and provide some leadership. So there's that piece. And then you just need muscle. A lot of it is just hard work and grind. I like to say that pest control is a get rich, slow business. And so it just takes a lot of repetitive hard work. And it's not just the... It's not only the sales side, it's not only the service, it's just everything. It's answering the phone, it's solving the problems, it's making sure you've purchased all the stuff that needs to be there. It's opening the door, it's just all the stuff that goes into making the business run. And you definitely need somebody who's gonna be in charge of all that. And I think every department in a...

35:25 Jeff Davenport

In a business needs that, I mean, for the, good example is we started a termite program and a turf program at the same time with Official, you know, we looked to Clark Pest Control as kind of an example of what to do. And they were, they had, they were starting turf. We tried to do a turf and weed program and a termite program. And our termite program, we made this hire from Terminix. This guy came over. And he was just, he really provided the sales muscle and the leadership and the know-how for that department, had this champion, and then it was well-financed by the company itself. So that termite program just grew and did great. The turf program really didn't have the same leadership. It didn't have an expert, and so it kind of relied on us to do everything. And so we... So we sold some turf and weed services to our existing customers, but it just didn't have the same, it just didn't have the same muscle behind it. It didn't have one person who is responsible for that department's growth daily. So over time, we eventually decided to pause the turf and lean into termite heavy since that was working and put more resources there. So just that, those two departments, I think, are examples of all the things that you need and how, and you're right, I think those roles can be taken on by one person, can do all three, if a person's got money, brains, and muscle. But yeah, those three things, elements need to come from somewhere. And often they're different people, but they can be the same.

37:16 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, got it. And I did misquote you there. I said hard work, but it is it's muscle. Okay, got that. Yeah. Yeah.

37:21 Jeff Davenport

Well, either way, think, yeah, same thing. Yeah, somebody's got to be moving it.

37:27 Dan Leibrandt

Cool. Something else I wanted to ask you, which is kind of a more general question is what would I have witnessed as an entrepreneur and me talking to a lot of other successful entrepreneurs is that throughout your journey, you have to level up as a person and that in a certain sense, the business can only grow as much as you do. And maybe, you know, if you have multiple founders and you have tons of employees, then maybe that changes. But for you personally, throughout your career, how have you had to level up as a person and a founder?

37:58 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, it's very true. I first started, so I was 28 when we started Official Pest, most of the people we were hiring were older than me, and that was a strange feeling. I had some work experience, I'd managed offices, and we were confident in our abilities, probably over-confident, but yeah, as the company grew larger, we had to get better. And you struggle when you're not there. At first I think we compensated by just working harder and that was kind of the old, what we had done at sales, right? If you wanna sell more, you just work harder. And so I think some of it is just you work harder and trying to make up for some things that you don't know. Eventually we kind of turn to peers in pest control industry and just asked a lot of questions. And then you learn pretty quickly there that somebody can give you a piece of advice or a little bit of knowledge that can save you a lot of headache and problem. We learned, know, some of the, so we had people that we would rely on. Some of them were vendors like the chemical guys that come by and sell you stuff. They would show you how to use their products and we would ask questions like, Hey, we're having problems with this kind of certain. Thing, how do we figure that out? We learned like a lot of the bird work that we did, we learned from vendors who are really good at selling their stuff and they would, when opportunities to do the bird work came up and a lot of times it would just come to us from a customer, we would go take some pictures, send those pictures to the suppliers and they would give us some ideas on how to do that work and we would we would go try to do it, but a lot of it is just learning. And we could have saved ourselves a lot of time, I think, by hiring people that knew how to do that stuff rather than just learning. Mean, one of our first bird jobs, we went and we netted this kind of facility, and then we had attached our netting to a pipe that actually got really hot at certain times. And so it melted the net that we had put up.

40:26 Jeff Davenport

Had to go, you so then obviously there were holes in it that birds could get through. So you learn stuff the hard way, whereas if you have somebody who's done that kind of thing, they would just do it. Right, so we started to learn, hey, if we're, if we stop insulating ourselves from the outside and reach out to peers, that's gonna help us. There was a, we started attending meetings of the Pest Control California Pest Control Operators Association, and that was helpful. There were a lot of people willing to, talk to us. And we were sort of suspicious of that in the beginning, but most other pest control operators were really open and helpful. And we tried to reciprocate that with some advice where we could help them.

41:12 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So over your journey, a big part was learning and learning from experts, people that know what they're doing, people that you can rely on. Maybe that's mentors or maybe that's people that are just really good in their specific field. Cool. I also wanted to ask you about your exits. You guys were doing about a little over $20 million a year. You hit a big exit. Tell me what that was like. I mean, what did it feel like to make this lump sum of money and...

41:26 Jeff Davenport

Thank...

41:42 Dan Leibrandt

Just kind of overall, what did you learn from that exit?

41:47 Jeff Davenport

Well, so I was 49 when we, I'm 53 now, so I was still too young to stop working, but we felt like the offer and the timing was right for the sale. So we weren't necessarily looking for it, but we knew at some point we were gonna sell. We didn't have a plan to keep it. In our family or pass it on to somebody. Yeah, when the opportunity came up, it was October of 2021. And we decided, you know, the offer came in and we accepted it. And man, 60 days later, they wanted to close like December 15th or something like that. So 60 days later, the company was sold. So it happened fast. Most of the time, it's a much slower process. So far as what we've learned, I will, we, under that deal, we, so we sold the company and we were supposed to run it for one more year and have it and hit certain bench sales benchmarks. And so we did that. I really enjoyed that last, that last year. I, you know, I thought it was really interesting. Anticimex was the purchaser and. They, it was interesting to watch how they operated the company. Mean, really we ran it, but we had some direction and we sort of checked in with them. And it was interesting to see what was important to them and how they ran their branches. We went to a conference that they held this huge worldwide conference that was held in Stockholm, Sweden. And all of their platform presidents, all of their branch managers attended that conference. And part of it was to, get people together and learn from each other. So that was really interesting to just talk to their platforms in Australia, their big successful companies along the East Coast, because Anticimex would usually purchase a company, they would call it a platform if it was doing more than 10 million. And then their object was to kind of roll smaller companies into those platforms that they purchased. And just to see, to just talk to the other platform folks and see how they were doing things was really interesting. I enjoyed that.

44:23 Dan Leibrandt

Tell me more about that, of like what were the other platform folks doing?

44:29 Jeff Davenport

Well, lots of things on the East Coast. They had moved a lot of their companies had moved from a quarterly service. They were they were doing service instead of every three months. They had gone to a three service per year plus retreats kind of format, which I thought was interesting. Anticimex was really good at pricing their services and then raising the price as needed. And the guy I reported to would talk about, tell your people you wanna be paid a premium wage, then we need to perform a premium service so we can charge a price to support that. And it just all, it made sense to your people and just how that was gonna work and then the expectations that would come, you cause we can't charge a premium price for a service that's not premium. So we need to make it high quality. So they were good at that. We had been, I think we'd been okay at raising prices mostly, what we did while we were running the company was raise prices for new customers. And we had done very little raising for existing.

45:37 Dan Leibrandt

No.

45:37 Jeff Davenport

Were fantastic at raising the price for existing customers. In fact, when we sold that we sold December 15th or so, and then that January 1st, we bumped pricing. For all of our existing customers, like by 15%, I think, which was a pretty high bump and had very little fallout from that. Mean, and I think some of it was because we just hadn't done it enough, but I think there's just a power to inertia and people are gonna keep it the same. And I don't think we raised it out of the realm of our market. We were still well-priced, but yeah, so we learned from that. Learned a little bit from their acquisition model. Think we had purchased, we had done a little bit of acquisition that kind of came to us, but we didn't really seek it out. And I think that's one thing I learned was that, that I think there's a lot of small companies that, that I think there's a market for smaller pest control companies that go up for sale, the small one or two or three route kind of operations. Often they'll reach a point where once they're ready, they're ready and they sell quickly. I think, you know, small companies that are, you know, just, I mean, just a little bit bigger can absorb those. Our company was big enough to take on that kind of a thing. And so I think that's something I would have done has been a little bit more outreach for acquisition.

47:15 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. Okay, good. That was awesome. There's a lot of good points there. So, you know, different service plans, upping your prices and potentially doing acquisitions. Yeah.

47:24 Jeff Davenport

Acquisition as growth.

47:26 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Awesome. Cool. We'll start to wrap up here. I've got two more questions for you, Jeff. One is, what is the plan for you moving forward? So you guys, you guys have a Prize Pest Control now. You know, you are, it seems like you're... You guys are just gonna take over with this new company. What is the plan there? Because again, you guys have learned so much, you've done so much with the previous company. What is the plan for this one? How are you gonna ensure it's successful and what's gonna be different?

47:57 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, so, well, the whole idea was we wanted to continue doing something. I guess there's a lot to unpack there. Know, Official Pest Prevention, I had run for 23 years and finally would run it forever. And so, man, you go from one day, it's your every, almost your every waking moments work and thought and just, even when I wasn't there, I was thinking about it and. Thinking about how to solve whatever problems were there. So selling that and having it go away was really hard. And all of sudden, I'm back in this position where what am I gonna do when I grow up again? And what am I gonna be and what am I gonna do? That is like, think there's a lot of podcasts that are... Surround the idea of retirement and what you do. I don't feel like retirement necessarily applies to me, but just what you do when you have this major life shift or there's a new career path that you need to jump into. Because you still need some sort of purpose, some sort of goal and you know, my... Life had always, I enjoyed my free time, but my free time was usually resting from work, right? And so now, you know, there's, not this like sense of coming home from work and resting after all the stress or hard work. So, vacation and resting is sort of weird when you're, when you're on the couch to begin with. So nothing there. So I didn't want that. So I wanted to work and do something and be productive and still have the kind of building. Experience that I had at Official Pest. So that was what I was trying to recreate with Prize Also, I think the three Owners there might my two brothers. We wanted to kind of apply what we felt like we'd learned to the new operation I'll tell you that's a little more complicated and bumpier than then you might think you would think hey These guys have the playbook, right? They're just gonna rerun it and boom only have a shorter timeframe to get there and unload it again. Well, first of all, don't really have plans for a sale like that. I you know, it could happen, but really what we're trying to do is build the kind of organization that we're proud of and that we want to, and have a rewarding experience. But it has not just been easy, which...

50:50 Jeff Davenport

There's all different kinds, just different kind of An advantage with Official Pest Prevention, all of our net worth, everything we had was wrapped up in that company. And so none of us were going anywhere, right? I mean, we had no other option and no matter how ugly it got, we were in that. Even if, mean, worst case, it kind of falls back and we're, and not that that's a worst case, but. I mean, we would be knocking doors again if we had to do that. So we just, that organization was gonna continue no matter what. We just, Alex Hormozi had this quote that I think was kind of our philosophy that we didn't name as well, but he asked, somebody asked him in a, like, hey, what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs? And he said, you wanna, and I'm butchering it, but he said, you wanna identify your goal and then put so much effort into achieving that goal.

51:47 Jeff Davenport

That failure is impossible. So something like that, that's the gist of it. And I feel like that's really what we did with Official. I mean, we just, our goal was to grow that company and we were gonna put in so much effort that it was just gonna grow no matter what. Prize is different though, because now you've got people who don't necessarily need the money. And so we don't have to be here. And when we get angry with each other, all of us could just say, I'm out, bye. And that's hard, don't know, know, at Official, and I'm sorry if I'm all over the place, but with Official Pest, sometimes you would hire somebody who, some employees need the money because they've got to pay rent, you know, as soon as they get their check, right? And those companies are motivated to show up, they're motivated to be there because they gotta be there, right? And so they're kind of chained to their job. I mean, you can always get another one, but they need to be there, right? And that's the best. That my opinion that's the best employee to have if you got somebody Who doesn't need the money? And doesn't have to show up There are exceptions but that person as soon as it gets ugly is gonna is more likely to leave and the person who has got to be there and so Anyway, this new company Prize has got you know three people leading it and we got if we've had it's been it's been challenging with six people who or sorry, three people, six hands on the wheel trying to drive, you know, and trying to make space for everyone. It has not been easy. Mean, we're still figuring things out. And I think we've enjoyed some good growth and that company is, you know, it's on its way to do well, but it has not just been a layup. Tell you that.

53:36 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, hmm. Okay, so at least part of it is that kind of the vibe has changed. It seemed like with the other one, you were younger, everyone was all in, super ambitious. It has to work no matter what. If it doesn't work, we're gonna start knocking doors again. Whereas now it's like, I mean, you guys all have this lump sum of money. It's not as big of a deal. And also the market has changed. Other things have changed. So it's not just like a gimme. It's not, because that's kind of what I would think.

54:05 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, it's hard work. Mean, you know, the Texas market is a little bit different. And so we've had to learn there when, you know, like, for example, a good example would be hiring. I felt like in Sacramento, I knew what I was looking for for each position. Like if I was looking for a technician, I had a very good idea what I was looking for. And I was, and I'd done thousands of interviews with people in that area and kind of knew it could recognize, I felt like I could recognize what I was looking for. Dallas has taken us a little bit longer. We're kind of starting over again with this new place and kind of figuring out who it is and what that person looks like and recognizing who's going to work out in our organization. And it's not the same. So that just hiring has been a little bit harder among many things.

55:02 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. I know we're over time here, but I have like two more questions if that's okay.

55:06 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

55:07 Dan Leibrandt

Real quick on that, I wanted to ask you, do you ever have any regrets about selling the company or are you glad you sold it?

55:13 Jeff Davenport

I'm glad that I sold it. Mean, I mean, it was, I think for me, the way I worked at Official probably bordered on, took a toll on like my family and I just had a hard time putting it down. And so I was always in it, always thinking about it. And I don't know that I'm looking for balance, but I didn't have enough. Energy or an effort left and for some parts of my life that, I've, you know, and I've kind of changed that. So I think it would have, I could have, I could definitely see myself working like that and sacrificing everything for that company and then, and then selling it when I'm 80 and not having a lot left. So I think, it was a good move. I needed to grow and I'm still learning and, trying to figure out what I want. The rest of my life to be like and I think, yeah, I'm grateful that that opportunity came up. So, still feels like a but...

56:20 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Okay, so yeah. Okay, so it was the right move. You don't you don't really regret it. Cool. Also, but before I forget, I want to mention, I actually have that Alex Hormozi quote written in my phone, because I listened to a ton of Hormozi to the exact quote, or at least from one of the podcasts he's done is, pick a goal and do an amount of work that makes it unreasonable for you to succeed. Yeah, love that.

56:45 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, yeah, I think that was on the Diary of a CEO podcast. Is that the one? Is that where you got that?

56:51 Dan Leibrandt

He's, it's in my notes several times. So he said it's, yeah, at least two times that I have it here. Cool. And the last question I've got for you, Jeff, as we start to wrap up here, and what I like to ask my guests is, what do you want to tell other pest control owners slash business owners? What do you think they need to know? What do you think people are missing and what's on your heart and mind?

57:17 Jeff Davenport

As far as what they would need to know to run successful financial companies, you're just. Well,...

57:19 Dan Leibrandt

No, just like what do you want to tell them? What do you think? Yeah.

57:24 Jeff Davenport

I will say that having sold the company, you know. In running Official Pest, we were always looking to just grow and our goals were to just grow as much as we could. So we were gonna, you know, sell as many new customers, get as many new customers as we could for the company and then try to control costs so that there was some profit, right? And so we, and as we hit our goals, we rarely celebrated. The new benchmark, was always, okay, next year we can do this, next year we can do this. And you probably even see from my door-to-door experience, that's kind of what it was, right? I finished the summer, okay, the next summer I can do this. And then you get to the end of that and you realize that at some point you're gonna make, you're likely to make more money than you can spend. And so what's the... Purpose because the end goal, the end is not necessarily, you get to the end and you realize, man, the great part about it wasn't necessarily this great finish. It was all these experiences and you look back and even the things that at the time might've been annoying or stressful or scary, even those were great experiences, especially looking back. It reminds me of a backpacking trip or a hike that you take where you know, for me, I'll wake up early in the morning and we leave at 4.30 a.m. And you drive to your trailhead and then you hit the trail and you're hiking with your friends and it's fun to get there. Then you get to the end of your hike or wherever you were going. Maybe it's a waterfall. You look at it, great, eat lunch, and you walk back, right? And then it's super fun walking back and you're still chatting with your buddies and you get to the car and then you drive home and...

59:24 Jeff Davenport

Stop to eat somewhere on the way back, and then you get home, right? And so the value in that experience is the whole thing, right? It's not the waterfall that you were trying to get to. I mean, that's fine, and it was pretty or whatever, but it was like the accomplishment of the whole thing, the camaraderie of your group, the planning of the trip. It was all the stuff along the way. And so you can miss all that stuff thinking about the waterfall that you're trying to get to. And miss all of the great stuff that's probably better than the end destination. And so I would definitely not forget like where you are at the present moment and just enjoying all of those classic experiences that many times you won't appreciate. I remember one of the first times we did, my brother and I had to go out and do an emergency initial service for a movie theater. In one of the towns that we covered. And so we gather up all these rodent boxes and we were just gonna go quickly and install these rodent stations around the outside and get them started. And we got there, it was pouring down rain. So we ended up doing this job in the rain, it's late, it's like 6 p.m. And it's not where we wanted to be. We were probably planning on going to sell other jobs but we had to go do this. And I remember at the time, and then... There are some things that went wrong, some equipment we forgot. And of course it just took us longer to do than we thought. And remember at the time, really being stressed and unhappy about being there at the time. Now I look at that as kind of this fond memory of just part of the overall experience. So anyway, I just think I would appreciate a lot of the small moments good and bad along the way because the end journey the end destination is not necessarily a great fabulous place that's just going to keep you in you know isn't going to just be constant happiness once you get there you got to be you have a plan for getting there too you know before when you arrive I guess...

1:01:44 Dan Leibrandt

I love that. Yeah, definitely. The phrase that's ringing in my head is cherish everything. It's not just about the milestones of hitting a million, 10 million, especially not at the big exit, but every single piece along the way, arguably, especially the things that suck and that are super painful because retrospectively looking back, you're like, dang, you that was a really cool experience. I really learned something there. That was a great bonding moment with this person. So I totally agree. It feels like just this, the mentality of the entrepreneur, the person that wants to grow to eight, nine figures plus is go, go, go. There's no stopping. There's no reflecting. There's no looking back. But I feel like there has to be a little bit of a balance there. I feel like you can have a little bit of a balance.

1:02:36 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, and you need a little bit of everything. Know, you're, when you wanna, know, Official Pest was when I was running that company, there were moments that were terrifying because there were some stressful situations to running a big company. You know, you face legal hurdles, all the hiring and personnel decisions that you're trying to make. There can be some really stressful periods and. But some of that's necessary because if you're gonna have something that you care about, then you're of course gonna care about losing it or gonna worry about it being damaged. And so you have to balance that kind of stuff. And one other thing I guess I would say, I used to blame all my problems on Official. I would say, hey, I can't do that because if I'm... If I'm irritable, it's because I've got this really challenging job, right? And so my focus is there. And so, you know, this is why I'm this way. Or if I'm, you know, if I'm worried about and stressed about my job and can't think about other things, it's because of the great responsibility. But now, obviously that I've, we've sold that company and I'm on to other things. I've realized that, wait a minute, I'm not just, a perfect person now, I still have those flaws and it was just kind of crutched. I think there's some personal work to do as well that I'm working on now. Yeah, that was kind of an interesting thing. I've noticed that in other entrepreneurs. I'm in a Vistage group now, which is a group of CEOs that meet together and help each other with their business problems. And one of the guys in the group, said he was overweight and he said, well, I'm not gonna lose weight while I can't lose weight while I'm running my company. And he was trying to, he was in the process of selling it. And he said, because I'm too stressed and I can't do it. So, but as soon as I sell my company, I'm gonna do it. And I chuckled at that, because I had already gone through the sale, and he kind of envisioned himself, you know.

1:04:58 Jeff Davenport

In a speedo on the beach, having time to run and eating right and that that would just be easy once the company was sold. And you find that, those, flaws you have, they carry through beyond the company.

1:05:14 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, love that. You kind of just overall what I'm taking from this is that there's always more to learn. There's always more to work on. The work is never done. Love that, man. Thank you so much for spending this time with me, Jeff. I think this was awesome. And yeah, I'd like to ask where can people find you and, you know, connect with you on social media?

1:05:35 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, well, I'm on Facebook quite a bit and I'm on LinkedIn. You know, Jeff Davenport, my email is [email address removed]. So I'd love to talk to people who they find something that they want to chat about. I'm happy to, you know, message back and forth after Jonas's podcast, I had several people reach out and have with questions about what we had done and I'm happy to talk about things. So. Always feel like there's stuff for me to learn as well.

1:06:08 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So make sure to go connect with Jeff on Facebook and LinkedIn. Also go email of email him if you'd like those links will be in the description and anything else you'd like to plug or promote.

1:06:22 Jeff Davenport

Well, know, interestingly now, one of the things that we've done, I haven't talked a lot about, we are our pest control company Prize is call center based, right? We don't have door to door sales rep. So most of our sales come from marketing that we do. We generate leads and then. Those leads go into a call center and our call center sales reps call them, sell them, and then we have the service department that services them. So we provide that same kind of service for other companies. It's meant to be, so what we've done is it appeals to, I think it appeals to a company that does a door-to-door sales team every summer. They'll often bring on like, 2,000, 2,000 or more accounts in a summer. So it's a lot of work to like get all that stuff ready, put sales reps in apartments, hire to have that big sales surge and then have all those people go home August 31st, right? Or at the end of August, maybe they go into September, but anyway, they go home at the end of the summer. So one thing that we've done is, we can put another pest control company's zip codes into our system. So we generate leads in their territory. Those leads then are sold by our people. And then we put them right into that company's CRM, whether it's PestPac or FieldRoutes or GorillaDesk, whatever it might be, so that these appointments just appear and then that company would go do the service. And it's meant to be something year round where a company would get say 20 accounts a month. All year long. So kind of a more manageable thing than here, take, you know, drink from my fire, the fire hose and take 3000 accounts this summer or 1000 accounts of summer. Even that's a lot. Instead, we have this trickle kind of thing and we, and then we would, you know, charge the host company for the accounts that we sell for them. So we have, we are doing that and on a small scale, rolling that out for companies that are interested in that kind of growth. And I think one nice thing, our accounts compete pretty well with accounts that are built door to door that way, because these are people that called for service and rather than...

1:08:56 Jeff Davenport

Rather than had somebody knock on the door and convince them to take it, they were calling and seeking it out. So I think the longevity or the lifespan of an account like that's probably a little bit better on average, not necessarily, it's gonna vary a lot. I'm not trying to say door door sales are bad, but anyway, I think this product appeals to some people that wanna slow kind of slow growth.

1:09:23 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, awesome. So where can people learn more about that? Or should they just reach out to you?

1:09:27 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, just reach out to me. Yeah, it's not, we don't do it under a different company name, so it's still Prize Pest Control and just part of our call center there.

1:09:36 Dan Leibrandt

Cool, awesome. Well, yeah, definitely go check that out. Go reach out to Jeff if you're interested in that. And thank you again so much for coming on the show, Jeff. I know how valuable your time is and I've really appreciated this time with you.

1:09:48 Jeff Davenport

Yeah, enjoy talking. We'll have to, you know, do a part two sometime if that fits.

1:09:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely for sure. Well, thank you so much. And yeah, we'll we'll stay in touch.

1:09:57 Jeff Davenport

All right.