John Speed on building a $13M pest control company in Hawaii

For roughly the first decade of Kilauea Pest Control, John Speed optimized for free time, which mostly meant surfing and movies. The company didn’t hit $1M until 2013 or 2014. Since then it has grown to a projected $13M this year, with more than 100 people across Oahu, Maui and Molokai.

Kilauea is the only local Hawaii-based company ever ranked on the PCT Top 100. Almost every owner I interview is on the mainland, so I wanted to know what changes when you can’t just open in the next county.

John doesn’t regret the slow years. He also walked me through the bets that finally got Kilauea growing.

Who is John Speed?

John Speed is the owner and president of Kilauea Pest Control. He grew up near Houston and moved to Hawaii in 1998 for school at BYU Hawaii. The summer before, he visited his younger brother, Paul, who was selling pest control door-to-door in California, and told him, “Dude, I will never do that.” A year later John was selling in Orange County himself. He swore off it every year, and 30 years later he’s still in the business.

After college he had graduate school in San Diego lined up, but living in Hawaii was plan A. Once he could get a pest control license there, he and his wife, Jennifer, started Kilauea in 2002.

He has since made 7 pest control acquisitions and 3 pool route acquisitions, and he’s helping start Oso Pest Control in Southern California. He calls landing in this industry lucky. Since he started, Wall Street has caught on to a business that holds up in recessions and is hard for AI to replace.

Hawaii needs leaders who live there

At the PCT Top 100 event, John heard owners of billion-dollar companies talk about opening a little branch in Hawaii. Everybody has visited, and there are plenty of bugs. But the cost of living is nuts. Most of the 5 or so families John is close with moved away at some point, because what rents a condo in Hawaii buys a house on the mainland. Almost all of them came back and took the hit.

He says you need someone on the island who’s invested in the community and can spot problems and fix them fast. His team, which he calls Kilauea’s secret sauce, kills it. Finding an operator for a new department, another island or the mainland has been very challenging, and getting someone to move is only half of it, because they also have to stay. Alex Hormozi’s team at Acquisition.com told him to recruit nationwide for an experienced sales manager who isn’t married, someone who could realistically stick.

The slow years were a choice

John’s younger brother had about 10 technicians within 2 years. It took John around 10 years. He ran the business the way he’d run his summers selling door-to-door, making the same money in fewer hours and spending the rest goofing off. It was more stable, he said, and way more fun.

Now he doesn’t surf, rarely watches movies and calls himself overindexed on business. He wonders how much farther he’d be if he’d worked harder in his 20s, but he was winning at what he wanted then.

Over time his ROI math flipped. Kilauea used to have more time than money, and now it has more money than time. With great reviews and the best people the company has ever had, he thinks not investing would leave money on the table.

On an island, growth means new services

John figures his market is worth about $100M, and Kilauea could get to $60M in Hawaii. He agrees that scaling pest control is the best ROI if all you want is an exit, but he says something generational can’t only be pest control.

In Hawaii there’s no next state to expand into, and even the next island is hard, because you’re either uprooting people or hunting for talent in a small community. Kilauea bought a company on Maui, but Oahu is still where growth comes easiest. So he’s looking at anything recurring and route-based, starting with pools. At the PCT Top 100 awards he sat next to a third-generation leader at ABC Home & Commercial Services in Austin and spent maybe 10 minutes asking how pools compare to HVAC, which John called super valuable.

Fumigation shows how he thinks about fit. Hawaii has a lot of drywood and ground termites, but Kilauea has never tented a house. John thinks Hawaii’s fumigators are the best in the world, since they deal with porous volcanic soil and wind that would keep a California crew from tenting at all. A guy who carries a 100-pound tent up a ladder isn’t who Kilauea hires to be the trusted company in your home. So Kilauea subs the work to a great partner and makes great money without the headache.

He’d like similar deals in other home services. Still, he knows there’s always “the lady in the red dress” tempting an entrepreneur, and time on a side business returns far less than the same time on the core one.

Spend the $20,000 on the right person

Growing big, John told me, means getting over the fear of spending money on marketing and great people when it comes out of your own pocket. He calls it the terror barrier, and you hit it at every level.

His biggest moves have been cash outlays that were measured bets, usually on people. After Kilauea’s first big job, he had about $20,000 of extra cash that year. He put all of it on top of his offer to a termite manager he knew who had moved to the mainland. Coming back with 5 kids was a gamble for the manager too, and John admits that $20,000 would have been nice to bring home. They’ve worked together 12 or 13 years now.

“That’s all business is, taking great people and growing them and giving the right people the right opportunity.”

When I brought up owners who have one tech, do $500,000 a year and take home $300,000, John said reinvesting starts with investing in yourself, by paying to be around people doing much bigger things. To him, a bigger company is a safer one for his family and his employees’ families, as long as capital goes out responsibly.

He’s also seen, in companies he’s bought, what happens when owners avoid hard calls, like keeping a well-paid manager with too few people to manage. It kills businesses, he said, and he doesn’t assume he’s smarter than those owners.

Simple and executable aren’t the same thing

I’ve probably watched hundreds of hours of Hormozi’s content, so I asked about John’s time at the Acquisition.com workshops. He has done 2 of the 3 levels. (Jonas did the third, a day with Alex himself, and told me about it.) At the second, a team that had built $100M businesses or worked at Goldman went through Kilauea’s numbers. John offered to give me “the $35,000 experience” on the podcast. Out of maybe 3,000 things, they pulled forward 3:

• A playbook for hiring a sales manager.
• Pulling money forward on door-to-door, which is incredibly expensive right now, by collecting the whole year up front and then moving customers to monthly billing.
• A checklist for technicians to cross-sell. Kilauea already cross-sells a ton (PCM’s guide to upselling and cross-selling covers the basics).

Kilauea was already planning some of it. It’s all simple, but as John put it, “there’s simple and then there’s executable.”

Execution is also why he’s shedding some of his 5 peer groups, which he admits is ridiculous. He loves taking in content, but he wasn’t acting on enough of it. He values Entrepreneurs’ Organization because he actually has to produce there. As the boss, he doesn’t have anyone else telling him what to do.

Every acquisition starts as a relationship

John’s first acquisition came about a year in. An owner had closed up and moved to the Big Island, and when John called to buy the customer list, the timing didn’t work. He followed up a couple of months later, when the owner probably needed the money. By then many customers had already called other companies, and John only got maybe 20% of the list on service. It was still one of his best ROIs. Timing is everything, he said, so try to close the deal right around the day the owner leaves.

He admires how Paul Giannamore stays cool. John’s excitement shows on his face, and with a seller, he said, “it’s blood in the water.” On a later deal, his general manager knew both sides and almost translated between them. His note to himself is to tone it down a little.

Buying is an amazing way to grow, he thinks, but plenty of $500,000 companies now want $2M. And some deals take years. His longest took about 15 years from the first conversation to the purchase, and it was a great buy. PCM’s guide to buying a pest control company covers the process.

Success is yours to define

John has a daughter with about 2 years left at home, and he’s saying no to some networking right now to be there. His wife and daughter are fine with him traveling. He isn’t. The business, he said, isn’t an end in itself.

His message to owners follows from that. Making $300,000 on a $500,000 business is success if you’re comfortable there. So is a route in the middle of Montana that feeds your family and lets you hunt 4 months a year.

“Don’t let anybody else’s success or what they think is the win make you feel any different about what success means to you and your family.”

My take

When I asked what works best for leads besides acquisitions, John said everybody knows the answer. It’s Google reviews. Plenty of companies have a similar number of reviews, he said, but a long track record is different.

“You can’t hack, ‘Hey, I’ve been with this guy for 15 years and they’ve been amazing this whole time.’”

For an older company, he called using tools that help collect reviews a no-brainer, unless the company is junk. I agree. Reviews are the main ongoing work on a Google Business Profile, they’re easier than most website work, and an older company has years of happy customers to ask.

During our talk I told John that where you’re from matters less than who you compare yourself to. Many of his Hawaii competitors only saw what their dads did, he told me, and they’re happy where they are. John kept looking for people further ahead, starting with his brother, and he credits peer groups, EOS and mindset for the run from $1M to $13M. If you’re stuck near $1M, PCM’s piece on why companies stall there is a good next read.

An idea that keeps coming up on this show is to figure out what you want your life to look like and build the business backward from it. John did that in his 20s with surfing, and again when what he wanted changed.

Where to find John

John is pretty active on Instagram and is also on LinkedIn. If you’re a pest control owner vacationing in Hawaii, let him know, and he’ll grab lunch with you.

• Website: Kilauea Pest Control
• Instagram: @johnfspeed
• LinkedIn: John Speed on LinkedIn