Jeremy and Jason Julio on building Last Bite while teaching PE and selling to Viking

Jeremy and Jason Julio kept teaching PE the whole time their company grew to 55 technicians and, some days, 500 jobs on the schedule. The twins built Last Bite Mosquito and Tick Control and its sister company, Total Home Pest Control, in New Jersey, then sold both to Viking in an 8-figure deal in 2023.

I’d seen them at PestWorld and all over the Pest Control Millionaires Facebook group before we ever talked. I knew about their charity stunts, but not that those stunts were growing the business. Their marketing budget was under 2% of revenue, and most of what built Last Bite cost the twins time instead of money.

Who are Jeremy and Jason Julio?

Jeremy and Jason Julio are identical twins and PE teachers. When they started, they’d been teaching for 12 or 13 years, coached 3 sports and managed big beach clubs in the summer. Teachers and coaches got them lifeguarding at 14 and into college, which is a big reason they still teach.

Jason came across a franchise ad in a magazine and asked his brother what he thought about starting a mosquito and tick control company. They passed on the franchise because of the royalties, picked their own name and started with $7,000 and one truck. They ran Last Bite for about 10 years before Viking bought both companies in 2023, with The Potomac Company advising the twins.

Today they run Blue Collar Twins, where they share what they learned about exits and advise other operators. They also host The Boardroom Buzz, which started as Paul Giannamore’s podcast before they took it over. They’ve interviewed Paul there, and I asked him about that interview when he came on my show.

A teaching paycheck bought them 3 years of reinvestment

Through year 3 or 4, with maybe 15 trucks on the road, Jeremy was still teaching, bartending and coaching. The brothers answered the phones and did the sales themselves. They even programmed their own CRM.

For the first 3 years they lived on their other paychecks and put every dollar of profit back into the business. Plenty of owners who start as the only technician can’t do that, because their family needs the money.

When I asked whether a tech should keep his day job while starting a company, they said yes, as long as he puts the right people in place. They talked with their team, including operations manager Margo, every day after work. Even so, it was year 7 or 8 before one of them felt he could take 3 days off and tell everyone not to call.

Most customers paid for the season in advance

One of the twins was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the start of a season when his phone wouldn’t stop dinging. Their PayPal auto-renewals were going off, one after another.

They figure 70% to 80% of customers auto-renewed and paid in full for the year to get 20% off. Anyone who hadn’t paid by January got a smaller discount each month, sliding from 20% down to 5% before the season started.

In their last year, they came into February with maybe $3M in cash. With payroll and chemicals already covered, they could think about growth instead of how to afford new trucks. Most owners these days are pushing monthly billing, and I don’t think many offer anything like this.

Mosquito control was the way in

General pest companies were everywhere, and the twins were already stretched thin. Mosquito work took one license, and since almost nobody knew what mosquito control was, Last Bite could present itself as the professionals.

They gave free services to 100 of their closest friends, not knowing if it would work. People were hooked, and neighbors started asking about the signs in those yards. A $20 referral card kept it going, which is close to what Clicki does now (I talked referral programs with its co-founder, Kendall Hines).

I told them I’d built my agency by niching down to SEO for pest control only, and asked if owners should specialize. They don’t think that holds up for long in pest control. Far more companies offer mosquito control now, and customers wanted the gnats and flies gone too. They’d sell an exterior package for everything outside and handle the inside separately.

They grew that way themselves. Customers kept asking about rodents and ants, so the twins referred that work to Turner Pest Control, then bought it. To sell general pest, they only had to email their 5,000 or so mosquito customers. They kept the Last Bite brand intact, named the new business Total Home Pest Control, “a Last Bite company,” and cross-marketed the two. Within a few years it went from roughly $100K and half a technician to 5 trucks and $1M.

Answer the town Facebook groups yourself

Every week the twins shared a Last Bite post into the community group for each town they served, places like Long Branch and Fair Haven. Wives, friends and customers would chime in. When someone asked who people used for mosquito control, the notification hit a twin’s phone, and he’d reply as the owner.

A sister-in-law used to ask why they didn’t hand that job to someone else. They wanted to be the ones talking to customers.

The ads were just as personal, like a Mortal Kombat spoof where the twins finish off a mosquito. When a door-to-door rep tried to talk a loyal customer out of Last Bite, the customer sent them the Ring camera footage, and it became an ad. I’m a big advocate of that kind of content, and a doorbell camera is about as real as footage gets.

When I asked about owners who call social media a waste of time, they told me, “It’s where people live.” Valpak mailers, they said, are garbage now.

Put a nice flag in every yard

“With pest control, you’re supposed to leave flags behind. So we felt like if we’re going to leave a flag behind, it’s going to be a nice flag.”

Drive through the towns they serviced and you’d see thousands of Last Bite signs. Neighbors said they saw the signs everywhere, then wanted one on their own lawn. Some even said they didn’t need the service, since Last Bite already did everyone else’s house in the neighborhood.

People in our group tell me they see me everywhere, and I take that as proof my branding is working. For the twins, the yard signs did that job. If you’re new to signs, see PCM’s write-up on pest control yard signs.

Show up after you write the check

The twins joined local chambers of commerce. They fund a scholarship for the high schools, give back at Thanksgiving and Christmas in several towns and post about all of it. They also rowed 132 miles from Cape May to Sandy Hook and biked from New York to Cape May, raising over $100,000 for charity and landing on statewide news.

For an owner who’s never been involved, they’d start with the local chamber’s monthly meetings and be authentic about it.

“Throwing $500 at a little league and then showing up to two games, three games with a box of donuts and cheering on the team. That is where you’re going to get your return on investment.”

They once spent $1,000 to $1,500 on about 500 logo shirts for a flag football league in Manalapan. Kids wear them every week. They’d rather go to a game, take a team photo and post it in that town’s community group than wait on a plaque to collect dust.

Know your number before you sell

The headaches added up. They got sued over supposedly killing $70,000 of landscaping, and there were major car accidents. On a 500-job day, rain or a no-show tech meant 1,000 jobs the next day. Whenever things got crazy, one of the twins would email Orkin’s M&A guy. Back then, that twin says, he probably would have taken $2M, and he’s thankful it went nowhere.

Then a friend in Georgia who had sold to Terminix introduced the same twin to Potomac. He asked Paul and Franco Villanueva-Meyer what number would let him keep his life as it was, 3 trips a year included, for good. Potomac said they were a year or two away.

Viking’s first offer wasn’t great. Franco, “being the bulldog he is,” told the twins they didn’t have to take it, and Potomac structured a deal that hit their number after taxes. Because Last Bite was mostly seasonal, it came with a one-year earnout. They had to pass a number the twin remembers as about $5M and keep retention in the 80s. Viking did everything it said it would.

Their advice is to get your books in order, because buyers want to see every penny, and to build toward the number you want to walk away with. Jason has no regrets. Jeremy would have sold about a year sooner.

Dog waste is the new mosquito control

Teaching from 7 to 2 gets boring, they said. Former employees kept asking when the twins would start something new, so the brothers made them partners with sweat equity and launched Ruff Stuff Pooper Scoopers, which that team runs day to day. Jason sees it the way he saw mosquito control at the start.

“Is this really going to work? Are people going to really pay for people to go in the backyard and pick up dog waste?”

In year 2, Ruff Stuff had more than 500 customers, 5 trucks and close to 250 five-star Google reviews, with no license to hold and no chemicals to worry about.

Like mosquito control when they started, the market has few players, mostly franchises with call centers, and the twins know they can win on service and branding. To me, that’s filling a gap in the market instead of starting whatever business a friend mentioned.

My take

I told Jeremy and Jason I love how organic their approach was. A lot of companies grow mainly through door-to-door, acquisitions or Google Ads. Last Bite grew through its owners showing up in their towns. They did boost their best posts and run Local Service Ads and pay-per-click, but at the end the whole budget was maybe $75,000 to $90,000 a year.

One of the twins called himself a lot more cautious than many of their Boardroom Buzz guests, some of whom run on debt. He wouldn’t spend his own money that way, though he’s sure Jonas got something out of learning from Alex Hormozi. Most people watching my show are between $0 and $500K, and they should know the self-funded route works too.

On niching, I compared it to Amazon starting with books, and the twins said that’s how it went for them. Ruff Stuff is at the start of that path. When a homeowner has never paid anyone to scoop the yard, reviews do a lot of the convincing, and a steady flow of them keeps a Google Business Profile showing up.

Where to find Jeremy and Jason

Jason is very active on LinkedIn and writes short posts about life lessons and M&A on the Blue Collar Twins blog. Jeremy is on LinkedIn and Instagram.

• Website: Blue Collar Twins
• Podcast: The Boardroom Buzz
• Dog waste removal: Ruff Stuff Pooper Scoopers
• Jeremy: LinkedIn and Instagram
• Jason: LinkedIn and Instagram