Jonas Olson on the Revenue Levels Where Pest Control Owners Get Stuck

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I am with Jonas Olson. If you guys have watched the podcast before, you've probably seen Jonas on the show. Of course, Jonas is a huge figure in the pest control space. He runs the Pest Control Millionaire podcast, which is actually how we originally got connected about a year and a half, two years ago, which is probably the biggest podcast in pest control. He's done 150 episodes, has a ton of subscribers on YouTube, all of that. And also probably more importantly, he has a pest control company called Pest Badger, which does over $10 million a year. And he started just about five years ago. So incredible growth. Jonas is a genius marketer, genius business owner, and also just a really good friend of mine. We have stayed in touch and now we've been growing this Pest Control Millionaires program, which people might be familiar with.

00:53 Dan Leibrandt

You know, we have over 300 people in our program now, which is really cool. All pest control owners and now a good amount of lawn care owners as well. All of them growing super fast. You know, it was really cool. We sent out a text message, maybe, I don't know, a few weeks ago asking, you know, just curious, who here is like over a million dollars now? And I think just over 50, it might've been like 51 or 52 people, so they're now over a million dollars in the program, which is just spectacular. So it's been really cool running that program with you, Jonas, and yeah, just so good to have you on the show here.

01:26 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I appreciate it. You're like, I'm on the wrong show. You said legend. I'm not a legend.

01:32 Dan Leibrandt

No, you are a legend. Well, definitely in the pest control space. It's not hard to be a legend in this space, I would say. So, yeah, yeah. So glad to have you on the show, Jonas. And I was thinking about different ideas to do for this show, and I think a really good one would be where people plateau and get stuck in business. So naturally, anyone who's listening to this and running a pest control business or any home service company, you know that there are just points where you get stuck. Maybe there's a certain hire you have to make, or maybe it's even your first hire. Maybe it's some really tough business decision. Maybe you need to start acquiring companies or whatever it is. So I would like to go through those steps with you, Jonas.

02:16 Jonas Olson

We can do that.

02:17 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I feel like you have a better perspective on this than most people, because you've gone through all the steps. You're now past 10 million. You're pretty close to 20 million, I think, at this point. And also, you've helped coach all these people in the program, and also you've interviewed all these successful pest control owners. So you might have one of the best perspectives on this in the space. So we talked about this a little bit before the show to prepare, and you said that the first place people plateau and kind of get stuck in business is around the 250K to 300K mark.

02:53 Dan Leibrandt

So walk me through that. Why do people get stuck there?

02:55 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think most solo operators, they can get up to like $250,000, $300,000 rather than doing it by themselves. They can do all the work themselves. They can do all the sales themselves. They do everything. That's just the one-man show. There's nothing wrong with that. But where they get stuck is like they get stuck in that technician trap, and that's just what they do the rest of their lives. And it's the people like, I don't really wanna hire anyone. I don't trust anyone. I've tried that before. It doesn't work. And they just never get outside that framework. And maybe it's the people that they're hanging around or they have other friends that are in the studio that are all doing that same model. Again, there's nothing wrong with it, but that's where they get stuck. If they can't get out of their own way to say, hey, I need to go hire someone. And if they do go hire someone, they hire them for a week or two weeks, they're gonna be super great, super technical like they are. And they're not super great at training yet. And it's like, oh, this person did show up the next day and they just stop.

03:51 Jonas Olson

They go through one or two times, they felt the pain of trying to hire someone with something to train. And they had something for three months and they left and they got to do it all over again. So they're back on the field. And they just, they stop right there. Or they say, I never wanted to have a big company. I never wanted to have more employees. So that's just where they get stuck. That's the first trap of getting stuck with a person in a truck. So that's what I typically see. They could do a little bit more revenue, but overall 250, 300K, so a little operator.

04:18 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. I like that term, the technician trap. Kind of what you're saying is like, they're stuck in the technician mentality. And maybe that's where they came from. They worked at a big company.

04:29 Jonas Olson

Most people that come in the industry, that's how they came in there. They work for Orkin, Terminix or someone else. They seen the revenue that they could do per day. They were doing all the stops anyway. And they thought, well, if I'm gonna go do this for someone else, I might as well just do it for myself. I can do this. And then they go start. The other side of the company is from the door to door side. They're really good at selling. And they try to grow a company. And they can't grow a company because they're never in the operational side. So that's just typically where most people come in.

04:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that makes sense. And so is the hurdle then there to pass the 300 mark or so to make your first hire? What is the hurdle?

05:01 Jonas Olson

Yeah, definitely. From there, it's like you have to start, you have to hire that first person. And just because you hired the first person, doesn't mean they're gonna be forever. It doesn't mean they're gonna be your manager. It doesn't mean they're gonna be the GM. It doesn't mean they're CEO someday. They're your first employee. You go to take them out. You ride along. You train them really well. And then you start slowly phasing your way off that route. And you start slowly working the second route. Just because you hire a technician doesn't mean you're not working anymore. It's just you're working on different things. So the biggest bottleneck there is just to learn how to hire someone. Reach out to people who have hired someone forward. What's the process look like? What's the best way to hire? What's the, what are the connections that I need to make? Who the people are in my network that I could reach out to first? Just having that first hire. That's always a scary one. It really is. It's a various hire all the time because let's say you're doing 300,000, but you're probably 200,000, 300,000. You're probably taking like $90,000 a year home. You're making really good money.

06:00 Jonas Olson

But then it's like now you gotta go pay someone 50,000 a year. So I really wanna make, now you're like oh crap, well now I'm only...

06:07 Dan Leibrandt

You're paying them more than you.

06:08 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so now they're making more than you. Now you're back down to 40,000 and it's super scary. And I was like when do you hire? When do you hire? When do you hire? You get that question all the time. Where do I make my first hire? So typically that's the trap, the technician trap is just because of those reasons right there. They either don't have enough faith. They haven't learned enough yet to go back hey if I double down and doing this next thing. And I focused my next eight, 10 hours per day on sales and whatever that we get throughout the day to keep growing the company and working on the company and not in the company. And it's really the hardest one.

06:45 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. One thing to definitely note there and we've talked about this before is you have to be willing to reinvest in the business and not take crazy dividends. We know so many owners that take, especially owners early on that take way too much money out of the business. What would you say, I mean really I guess ideally up to a million plus, you're taking as little as possible so you can reinvest, right?

07:15 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think there's many ways to look at this. So yeah, I think just keep healthy profits in the company so you have money for everything else. And then pay yourself average wage during the company. It doesn't mean as a technician you have to make $100,000 a year. You can make $50, $60 as long as your bills are paid, your family's provided for and then everything extra above that should go back into the company.

07:40 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. And last thing I'll ask on this first stage and then we'll jump to the next one. How do you find that first person? Like should it be a friend or should they be an existing technician?

07:50 Jonas Olson

No, don't hire a friend. Don't hire a friend. There's, again, this is, this could go back and forth in this and I've seen so many times where it does work out. Yeah, I've seen so many times that it does work out. More often than not it doesn't work out. So I'm gonna go with that. Does it mean that it can't? I just don't think your first hires should be friends and the relationship, your friend relationship could be strained even though they're a great friend. They might not be a super great worker or leader. Just go out in your network and just find someone who beats at church. Maybe it's at school or whatever. Use your network. You have a phone, right? It's 2026. You have contacts, you have Facebook. Just use those tools that you have.

08:29 Dan Leibrandt

Cool, sweet. So now let's say someone has passed the 300K or so threshold. Maybe they've hired their first technician. Maybe they even have a virtual assistant or two to do some of the office stuff. And now the next plateau that we've established is maybe around the 500K to 750K mark. So what does that look like?

08:50 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think from there, just not, you know, if they got that in my head, just because we, like circling back to, like your first employee doesn't necessarily have to be a technician. Yeah, it doesn't. People will go back and forth with me, but like you guys know, if you're listening to this, you're stuck at 250K, like you work eight, 10 hours a day, then you go home and you're doing billing, scheduling for an extra two hours a night, right? And so now you have a 10 hour day, it's not a 12 hour day. So you have eight hours. You could go hire a CSR right away or a VA, whatever you wanna do, right? Have them help scheduling, right? Take these extra two to three hours a day that you're spent scheduling, you're spent invoicing, because you should be working on, you know, at this point probably like a hundred to $300 hour tasks and this is like our $20 hour task.

09:50 Jonas Olson

Yeah, take that, have the CSR, do those things for you. Now you're buying back two hours of your time per day. Take those two extra hours per day and start selling, doing more jobs, creating more revenue so you have more revenue, you have more money to play with. So just because we talked about like that technician trap, it's the mindset of being a technician forever, but it doesn't mean that your first employee has to be that technician. It's like Dan Martell says, buy back your time. In the pest control, buy back your time could be billing, scheduling, all that. So that takes up a lot of your time. And honestly, most of us operators aren't super great at that anyway. Definitely, I would just, one of these two hires, if there's me personally, I'd hire a CSR first.

10:36 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely, no, I know you've mentioned that. It totally makes sense. And something else I wanted to note too was like, every single investment into your business is in a way buying back your time. It's not that you just hired the $40,000 person and now you can just screw off for half your time now. But now, and paying that person, I don't know, maybe 50,000 a year, whatever it is, now you can go do things that make the business $100,000 a year.

11:06 Dan Leibrandt

So I think that's the right reframe. And the same way you were talking about lower level tasks. Because you have to calculate your time back to how much you make an hour.

11:18 Jonas Olson

So, I would just kind of say like, if your end goal is a million dollars for the company, let's say you want to end there. Well, how much are you making per hour that million dollars? So don't base your time off what you're making now. Base your time off what the company's gonna be at the end of the time your run is done, right? So my time now is like, hey, when I'm done with this thing, I want it to be $100 million. So my time right now is $30,000 an hour. You gotta think of it that way because if you're going to trade time to go hang out with a friend at the bar or whatever, but that time is worth $5,000 an hour, like based on, okay, well, it's actually just 25 bucks an hour I'm looking at, but it's actually way more than that.

11:57 Jonas Olson

So use the way I reframe is my time is valuable. Every minute hour that I'm not spending working on Pest Badger is $30,000 an hour, basically.

12:09 Dan Leibrandt

Because in the future it'll be $30,000. So it might as well be $30,000 now.

12:13 Jonas Olson

It is 30,000 right now. Because every time that you take away from building your company, is basically money that you've earned that we're gonna get company.

12:22 Dan Leibrandt

That's really good.

12:23 Jonas Olson

But going back to the original question of like the 500,000, it's just learning how to delegate.

12:30 Jonas Olson

So hire those first two people, learn how to delegate and teach them well, then kind of just stay out of the way, right? You don't need to micromanage. You obviously have to trust them first, right? You're micromanaged a little bit. And then when to give them a little bit of freedom, the autonomy go to their thing, let them do their thing. And you have to struggle to delegate it all. Like they wanna have control over everything. And they hire these good people that they still control. And then one of them they're not growing. Because you're still in control, you're still the bottleneck. Yeah, you're still in the win.

13:00 Dan Leibrandt

And you with, how many employees do you have? Like 150?

13:04 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think W2 or 100 and some.

13:07 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. So that is like a hundred major tasks that you have relinquished control. I feel like a lot of people don't think about it that way.

13:16 Jonas Olson

I had this conversation with one of our operators today. And he's stuck in this first days. He's only been in a year. He's doing really well. He's super smart. Very, very, very skilled at sales. Probably one of the best sales guys in our company. But he's stuck in the trap of not giving up control. I just had this conversation for an hour the other day about, Matt, like I understand and where you're coming from. But if I never gave up control, like where would he be at? He's like, no, I think about that all the time. Like, so even if you're super technical, which he's pretty technical guy, but even if this person is 80% of what you are, he could be better at other things than you. So he hired a technician that's actually better than him. Maybe not the technical work, but more in the sales side. But he's like filling out the information correctly and on the app, it's like putting in his notes, like letting the customers know all the things that he's not good at, he found something that's actually better than him. So just like case in point to like, I have that with my own guys, same conversations. So they don't get stuck in that trap.

14:21 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is they're like, as an entrepreneur, you're probably a competent person, a motivated person. Like you are good at what you do. You are good at teching. You probably are good at sales. You are good at these other things. And like you said, it is still worth it, even if they're at the 80%, but really the end goal. And what I've heard from all the top entrepreneurs that I've listened to is including yourself, is like, get people that are better than you at the things, and that's like the ultimate goal.

14:50 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think that's a level up in leadership, but even at the technician, like if the technician is 80% of what you are and you're super awesome, like the customer probably won't even know the 20% of things. I can't say that they're never gonna be as good as they probably are, but yeah, that 20% difference the customer won't know anyway.

15:08 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so that is like 500 to 750. And how many techs would you say? That's like two to three?

15:16 Jonas Olson

Yeah, usually two techs, gotcha. Two techs in yourself, or two techs CSR in yourself.

15:21 Dan Leibrandt

So, and I guess generally speaking, when should someone fully stop teching and get out of the truck?

15:30 Jonas Olson

As fast as possible, in my opinion. Yeah, like from day one, if you can do it, do it. I didn't do it. I did it, my Pest Badger, I did it my second year. By the first year, I was like, I was doing it all, right? Cause I had to get this thing off the ground, start building it, hiring other sales people. I was doing more of the teching side. My year two, this was like right during COVID, so it was really hard to hire. I'm not using that, because you spent really well, like the only one was available. Yeah, so I did tech some then, I put in some long days, I was talking last night, I was doing like 22 to 28, 30 stops a day, usually with someone, but I had a spotlight on the van.

16:06 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I had a spotlight on the house, I had a student work at night, so I was complete as many jobs as I could. So yeah, but the fastest possible, if you can get out of it from day one and never do it, that's what I would do. You have a little bit of capital, you just focus all your time building the company. Yeah, that's what I would do.

16:21 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I was actually gonna bring up that story too with the headlight, because I feel like a lot of people, people see the glamor of you driving the Audi and the plane and all this cool stuff, but no, you were just like them. You were like, same stuff.

16:38 Jonas Olson

I've done every role inside the company. I've been the CSR, I've been the sales guy, I've been the technician, I did all the callbacks, I've handled the customers, I've done this good, I get it, I've been there, I've done it, I did my first company too, but now I know better, I know how to get there faster, because I've been there, done it multiple times now. And I've done it all.

16:56 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah. So what's your previous lawn care company? Because for people that don't know, you had a successful lawn care company previously, but it took you much longer to grow. So actually I'm curious, because I haven't asked you this, where did you get stuck in your previous lawn care company? Was it the same stages? What did those plateaus look like?

17:15 Jonas Olson

Yeah, it was at 250,000. It was just me basically. And I was doing like 200,000 chaos, working all the time. I was really good at answering my phone, I was really good at calling people back, I was good at my job, but yeah, I got stuck there for way too long.

17:33 Dan Leibrandt

Stuck at 250, like for how long?

17:36 Jonas Olson

Probably like two years. Yeah, dang. And that's when I found my mentor, and then it's like, light bulb went off, and I was like, oh, I get it, you know?

17:43 Dan Leibrandt

So yeah, okay, gotcha.

17:45 Jonas Olson

And I think we went from 250,000, then like next year to like five or 600. I just had to go and hire that person, train him, did a really good job, and then he stayed with me for like 15 years, same guy.

17:59 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, yeah. It's gotta be painful to make that first hire, but you kinda just have to do it. And I feel like, actually I did have another point there that I was gonna bring up, maybe I'll come up later. But we can jump to the next part now. So I think that would be, you said, what was it, like around one to 1.5 now?

18:22 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think like even the next stage, a lot of people have struggled between that 650 to like that 1,000,000, 1.2, and they get stuck there a lot too.

18:32 Jonas Olson

So it's just like the next phase, it's the next technician, it's the next evolution of the business. They got three technicians now, right? But they have zero systems in place. Like nothing. And so they're just, they're all, they're just grinding the way it's straight chaos. Like there's no real process or plan to do anything. It's just like everyone's just kinda doing everything because there's so much going on, you're growing fast. There's just no real process yet. So like dialing your processes, sales processes, your SOPs for training, onboarding, off boarding, having all these things that makes it very simple where you can delegate those tasks to something super easy. You know, you go through and do it yourself, you know, by the back of your hand, put it on a piece of paper, in video, start offloading those things, have a simple scalable system that when you do delegate, you have all these processes in place that make it very, very easy to run.

19:26 Jonas Olson

And people struggle there. Cause now it's like they hate plugging away on the computer. Like they don't know. Like with AI, it's so different. Yeah, it's like when I first started, I'd say first started, but like even four years ago, five years ago, like ChatGPT still wasn't a thing. Claude wasn't a thing that, so like you had to hire the consultants, come in, create these things for us where these days you just don't need to. Yeah, that's exactly one of the products you use, how you want it to look like. Like it makes it so much easier. So with all that, it makes it very simple.

19:54 Dan Leibrandt

So what are you doing there? Like you just talking to ChatGPT and it generates you your SOPs?

20:03 Jonas Olson

Well, when we first did all of them, they changed of course too. But like when it comes to like operational side, we hired a consultant to come in and write them all in four. Okay, and it was like five grand or maybe it was like 500 bucks per. Yeah, so it costs a lot of money, but again, worth it. Now you do that because you put all into ChatGPT or Claude and have a writer for you. Yeah, have your manuals done for you.

20:23 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, something else I believe you've mentioned before, you do video SOPs, right? Explain that and why.

20:32 Jonas Olson

I feel like I'm probably included in this. It's like, I don't wanna sit there, I love to read, but that stuff is just monotony.

20:39 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, going through like a 10 page SOP.

20:42 Jonas Olson

Right, you have an SOP in front of me that plants down while watching the video, while it explains what we're doing and shows me how to do it. That's just how I learned a little bit better. So most younger kids, probably the same way. It's just you're to watch, but the two or three minute videos are much easier than sitting there reading. So then you have a little test that are threw out the things that are paying attention, things like that. But yeah, it's just how we've been able to do it. Yeah, so like with us too, there's multiple branches.

21:07 Jonas Olson

So everything has to stay consistent. And so like, if you have like the manager, train the manager, train the technician, technician trades another technician, like things that start to get lost, the brother gets away from you. So, you know, with the videos makes it a little bit easier to train everyone the same way too.

21:23 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I agree, especially like on the younger generation part, like young people don't wanna read through like a long document, but they will watch like a YouTube video if it feels like a YouTube video. So if it's like a young tech or a young sales guy or something like that, I think that's basically required. I don't hear anyone else talk about that.

21:43 Jonas Olson

Yeah, no, it's just something that, you know, we've had to do and we're always refining those, always updating them. And you have new roles that come in, right? It's like, oh, now I get this person to this role. How do I get from this role to this role and are documenting that process, creating these around that process. There's a lot to it, yeah. So like, when you have regional managers or district managers, you never had that role before and now you have to create it and document it. And then the new systems that you have in place for that, so yeah, it's always constant.

22:12 Dan Leibrandt

For sure, yeah. We were just watching this video sales letter from Alex Hormozi, which was really good. And one thing that he said that stuck with me, because we were kind of trying to study what he does, he said that you don't want to build the business the wrong way. And it seems like that's kind of where you're going with the systems thing that you might have a million dollar business, but your systems are all out of whack and you might actually have to spend a lot of money to maybe get these systems in place or you've been doing things wrong. Can you explain that of like how people might be building their business the wrong way?

22:48 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so we see it all the time, whether it's on our Facebook group or whether it's in a pest control managers program we have. And it's like a lot of people come in, they've done it the same way for so many years, 10 years, two years, two years, it doesn't matter where they're at. And they always say, well, you know, when I get to this level, I'll join. Or I don't have the money right now, but when I get here, I do. It's like, I understand that mindset behind that, like, okay, it's a money thing, right?

23:16 Jonas Olson

But it's like, if you're, I have a guy in the group, his name was Nick, I don't wanna throw him under the bus, it's just a good example. He had like $400,000, $400,000, $600,000, all one time work.

23:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, I know.

23:30 Jonas Olson

And so, and he just doesn't know it, he didn't know any better. And there's nothing wrong with it, but he came to join the program, now he's learning, right? And so he had like four, $600,000, it was all on one time work that he did last year, but nothing was recurring next year. And it's simple things like that, that I see all the time, was like, if Nick would have waited to join the program, he kept building future over the next two, three years doing it the same way. Now, instead of like starting over at $600,000 every year, he's starting fresh with the $600,000 that was a recurring every single, now he's stacking it up on top of all those new sales. So it's things like that, that's just one example, if you're building it the wrong way, you're doing, you know, whether you're doing, maybe it's one application per year, two services per year, because you've always done it that way, they're like, oh, there's a hole in the way, and the billing processes and hiring processes have all changed. But if you've just been doing it for the same way for so long, you might be building this thing, you might be getting that $1 million per year, then every single year, you have to start back over at a million, it's just tough.

24:32 Jonas Olson

It's hard on yourself where you just join the program or learn sooner, you better save yourself a couple of million dollars.

24:39 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely, yeah, we see this so often with people, and you know, whenever there's a big decision, maybe like joining the program, it's like, oh, well, you know, I'll do it in a little bit, I'll do it later. And you know, some people, it's just like every year, they're like, oh, you know, I will do it, you know, I am stuck right now, but I'm too busy. And something we've seen a lot with people is like, what I call getting stuck in a busy loop, where like, they're too busy, like for instance, even back to the first stage of getting stuck at the 250K to 300K a year, like they're busy all the time. And it's, you know, maybe they're doing jobs 24 seven, like it feels, yeah, yeah, they're doing stuff all the time, it feels productive, but they're not actually growing. So you have to be careful of that of like, are you actually growing or are you just busy?

25:30 Dan Leibrandt

And you get around that, like as we've talked about through delegation, you need other people, like how big can you grow a one man company? I have three, like 400K max.

25:44 Jonas Olson

Maybe, yeah. I mean, I've seen technicians do forums, so it's possible that company, you know.

25:48 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, exactly. You don't wanna do that. And I guess, yeah, I think the point that I forgot earlier is, ultimately it ties to your goals, right? Like Jake and I have talked about this a lot. Some people, and this isn't like a diss at all, like some people generally just wanna make like a 100K a year comfortably, so that their company maybe does 200K a year, they do like 50% margins, you know, they really love their customers, they love teching.

26:14 Jonas Olson

Nothing wrong with that.

26:15 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that at all. But the reality is, if you want to grow past 300K, especially if you wanna grow past a million plus, you need to be willing to hire people and really take this stuff seriously and start getting work off your plate and giving it to other people.

26:29 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I agree.

26:31 Dan Leibrandt

And, okay, so we covered, or we're kind of talking about like the one to 1.5. Now we'll talk about the last stage here.

26:37 Jonas Olson

At least there's, like, I feel like, yeah, I'll say like, let's go through two more. 1.5 is probably a new one, a different one, and then probably like three million.

26:45 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's what I was gonna mention next. So let's cover that.

26:48 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so 1.5, I'd say like, at this point now you have four, five technicians. And you're gonna have to hire some management, a operations manager, branch manager. Right around there, you can do it all yourself. You can, you can take on that role. Nothing wrong with it. But to get to three is where you gotta hire that person. And where I see, right around that million and 1.5, they got four really solid techs, five techs. And Plateau's there. There's a couple of different reasons. One reason is because the owner gets distracted. He's got a little bit of money. He's comfortable, right? And he goes to start something different. Or he wants to add some complexity to the business or wants to go do something different, has ideas, has a little bit of money in his pocket. He wants to go do the next thing. They get bored. They get, it's a girl in a red dress.

27:40 Dan Leibrandt

Shiny objects.

27:41 Jonas Olson

Yeah, it happens to all of us. And like, one of the things that, as a leader that you have to do is like, know your weaknesses, like know your blind spots. And that's a huge blind spot that I see a lot. It's just that they hit that $1 million. And all of a sudden you're like, yeah, I'd be like, man, you know, I haven't been growing a lot of that. Like, cool. Well, and then like in the next sentence, yeah, but I haven't been in the office in like four weeks. It's so awesome. Well, I mean, this is what you got. Again, there's nothing wrong with it, but this is where I see a lot of these things happen. Rate that one to 1.5. And so from there, you have to learn to manage managers, not manage technicians. You got to hire that manager. You got to be able to manage that person. You have to, it's like you're constantly recreating yourself. And I say it all the time, you probably heard me. Every six months, you have to recreate yourself.

28:27 Jonas Olson

So if you're not, you're going to fall back behind and you're not going to be able to keep up. So you always got to be leveling up yourself, but learn to manage a manager and holding the manager accountable to his KPIs, for that to be, make sure that he's doing a good job so you can focus on the next big task. I see you get stuck at that 1.5 a lot. And I feel like I feel people get stuck there between that 800 and 1.5 more than any other level. I see people stuck there for a really long time. Really long time.

29:00 Dan Leibrandt

No, I see it too.

29:01 Jonas Olson

That and like they're living a good lifestyle, right? Problem is a lot of them suck all the cash out of their business. Because they want to make, they made a million dollars. That's like the new $100,000 in my opinion. It's like the cool thing. They were talking about something. And it is a big thing. You should go, like do a big congratulations. You should have it enjoy those small wins. But people make a couple hundred dollars a year. They start sucking all the money out to go, to be flashy or to do these extra things. Live the lifestyle business, which is nothing wrong with it. If you want to have a million dollar business that's pumping out 400K, again, there's nothing wrong with it. You live that great lifestyle business. You make 400K, you can pull all the cash out. Again, there's nothing wrong with it. That's why you get stuck.

29:48 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, so again, it ties back to your goals. So I think that's what people listening right now, you have to determine that if you haven't already, where do I want to grow this thing? Do I want to pass it down to my family? Do I want to grow to two million, to two million, to five million, to 10 million? Like whatever that number is for you. Because a lot of people have a number that they want to hit or maybe you just want to pass it down to the family or the lifestyle business, whatever. But I think people need to get clear on that now so then you can reverse engineer that. And something I like that you said was that you have to reinvent yourself. It's not that you're just upgrading the business and optimizing it and making it better, but you have to make yourself better. You are kind of the bottleneck of your business because you're the leader, you're the visionary. So if you're not improving, the business probably won't improve, at least to a certain extent.

30:45 Dan Leibrandt

And then eventually they're all kind of about growing. Yeah. And I think I had another point there. Well, so I think you kind of went back to the one, actually regarding managers, that's kind of what you're talking about. So what does that look like then? Going from like you just have technicians, maybe it's you and like four or five technicians, to then you have managers managing and that now you're out of the manager role. Like how do you make that transition?

31:14 Jonas Olson

Yeah, again, it all goes back to that same concept of having your first hire. So now they're making a million dollars a year, profiting this to say 250,000. Now they're gonna spend 80,000, 90,000 on this really good GM branch manager that doesn't add revenue, right? It doesn't add any revenue, it adds more overhead. Yeah, and it's taken away $80,000 of the owner's pocket to go hire this next person. So again, going back to the very first hire, it's kind of the same concept.

31:49 Dan Leibrandt

So Jonas, you talked about how you had to evolve as a person and I'm curious like, and what did that look like for you? Like what was required? What were the sacrifices you needed to make and how do you evolve as a person?

32:04 Jonas Olson

Man, that's a big question. Like for me, of course I started working on myself too. I gave myself better, reinvested in myself. My time, spent at the gym, gave myself healthy for my kids, myself. Obviously keeping up with my daily reading, being invested in myself, buying mentors, paying the money to go learn. Cost 11 on my leadership skills. I've been learning from people who have been there and done it to see what they're doing. If you hang around with these people long enough, like they almost forced you to get there because like they want you to level up with them. And so yeah, for me, it's just constantly recruiting myself. Like every six months, like I learned something big or something new. It's like, aha, aha, another aha moment. It's like constantly leveling up and learning new skills.

32:58 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. It's funny you mentioned six months because this has been a mantra of mine for the past few years. Basically the same thing. Maybe stated in kind of like a funny way. Like if you're not cringing at yourself from six months ago, you're not doing enough. Like photos.

33:19 Jonas Olson

I was like, what the hell?

33:19 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I know. I see stuff from six months ago and it's like, dang, I mean, that's kind of like a bad signal. I mean, were you like really that bad before? But I think that is good. And I mean, you've been in business now for like, throughout your business, for like, yeah, 17 years. So I mean, that's happened every six months for the past 17 years.

33:39 Jonas Olson

Yeah, and I go back and cringe. Like I still see my first YouTube videos ever for my first company and it's bad. It's bad. But again, it's a good thing because you know how far you've come, how much you've evolved as a person, whether it's spiritually, whether it's professionally, whatever.

33:57 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. And I mean, sometimes it is hard to make a leap. Like especially doing things like content or starting a business, like, you know, maybe someone watching this hasn't started their business yet and they just want to start. And you know, it's going to feel kind of cringy to even start the business. Cause it's like, ah, you know, I have to like post on Facebook and I should probably reach out to all my friends and tell them I'm starting a business and I have no idea what I'm doing. It's like, I think you have to be willing to be kind of cringy and be a little embarrassed so that you can progress to the next level and just know that like, hey, I'm going to look back on this and be a way better person.

34:31 Dan Leibrandt

And it's like, you just have to deal with the cringe and embarrassment. Yeah, which is tough. And something else you mentioned was like mentorship. I think that's really key for growth. I think you definitely can evolve on your own. Like you can figure out things by yourself, but like the term don't reinvent the wheel is so key. Some people, I don't know, maybe you actually like the pain or you like a lot of discomfort or figuring things out yourself, being kind of prideful about things. But if you truly are ambitious and you want to grow as fast as possible, like why wouldn't you just learn from other people that have done it, right? And I mean, I've seen you do that over and over again. You've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mentorship and coaching. And I feel like a lot of people, I mean, you've said that people don't understand it and they're like, what are you doing? But I think you're so smart because you see it from an ROI perspective. You're like, I'm gonna spend this $100,000. I'm gonna make at least a million from it, right?

35:37 Jonas Olson

Yep, definitely gotta look at it. It's like if I can learn one big take away that I can pull a big lever to move the needle is what I'll do every single time.

35:46 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, so I think people get too emotional about big decisions like that. They're like, oh, $100,000 or $10,000, whatever the number is. But it's just an input and output thing. Like remove the emotion from the equation and think logically like, if I put this money in, oh, again, it could be Facebook ads, it could be a coach, like whatever, am I going to get the return? And then the question is, well, where can I put my money that will get the biggest return? Like it sounds so simple, but I feel like people don't think about it this way.

36:20 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think like as a leader, I think 5% of your annual revenue should be spent on self improvement.

36:28 Dan Leibrandt

That's a hot take, go further on that.

36:31 Jonas Olson

Well, as I say, if you're doing, million bucks a year, and you go spend a couple thousand dollars on yourself to go learn, it's gonna be well worth it.

36:41 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. That's funny, because you see like a lot of these like gurus or people that have like quote unquote made it. And you see them talking about fitness and about health and about maybe spirituality too. And it seems like, oh, well, you know, must be nice, must be easy. But like, there is some reality and truth to that. Like there's a reason why all of them are so focused on their health and stuff, right?

37:07 Jonas Olson

I think it's just like how you do one thing, how you do another thing. Yeah, so they're super disciplined as a person, going to the gym, they're gonna be disciplined at work, gonna be disciplined with the customers. Like I think like the way you do, again, I repeat myself, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So if you're a very disciplined person, and if you're not, try to get disciplined, and just show up to the gym, stay committed to your goals. Every time you tell yourself, we're gonna go do something, don't do it, you like go backwards a step. So stick to your word. Like, again, I got a good example of that. I told my guys that it was gonna be in Minnesota last week or this week, and then I forgot that you guys were coming to two days later, I was starting to figure all this out. But I drove there at six o'clock and I got there at one o'clock in the morning. I woke up at six o'clock, went to the gym, did all that stuff, hung out with the guys, got to see me, and I left at five o'clock that night and drove back to five o'clock, got back to one o'clock the next day, you guys will be here. But I told them that I was gonna be there. I'm a man of my word.

38:07 Jonas Olson

I told them I was gonna show up and I showed up. Whether it was long time now, they got us to my face, got to connect with them, they saw me. So it's just everything with my life, we have to be there. Same thing with my kids, I just have to. If I know my good business, I have to do it.

38:19 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I totally respect that. And I think a point here too, which ties into everything we've just been saying here, is like, as a leader, naturally, if you're the business owner, you're the leader, as the leader, you can't expect people to be any better than you or any more than you. Like, why would your people be more invested or more involved in the business or, you know, care about it more or hit the gym or whatever than you. So like, you set the standard and very few people will meet that standard, but probably there'll be like a little bit below that standard. So like you said, things like hitting the gym and you know, working like 12 hours a day.

38:59 Jonas Olson

You have to be the standard.

39:01 Dan Leibrandt

Uh-huh, dang, that's really good. You have to be the standard.

39:05 Jonas Olson

Go circle back to the whole health thing. Like, when I stopped drinking, stopped, you know, like, when I started to eat healthier, the impact that I had on the people that surrounded me, what I've heard recently, a million times, I was not expecting that. As soon as I changed my habits and the way I did things and the way I presented myself, like, people stopped drinking. Now they've been sober for years. They started going to the gym, they got healthy, and now they're financially way more stable than they ever were because I did all those things first. And they just watched their leader. Yeah, but I didn't have to say a word to them. They just, they just followed.

39:38 Dan Leibrandt

You lead by example.

39:39 Jonas Olson

So you have to be the standard.

39:42 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. And I think for people like thinking beyond business, like, how can I make an impact? How can I be like a good inspirational figure to my community and to my team? Like, that's how you do it. Like, not just a good business person, but a good person in general. And they follow that.

39:58 Jonas Olson

Yeah, it's really another heard.

39:59 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And something that I'll leave off with here and kind of ties to everything we've been talking about is our Pest Control Millionaires program, which I mentioned in the beginning and what we've mentioned a little bit throughout. But I think it's worth talking about it, especially if people aren't familiar with it. So we run a program with over 300 pest control owners in it now. And we have tons of courses. We do weekly coaching calls and all of these different things. And I feel like if someone is a pest control owner and they're maybe at like 250K plus, that's usually kind of the threshold is here. Maybe you're at that first plateau or maybe later in business.

40:44 Dan Leibrandt

And you are looking to level up. You are looking to invest in something, to grow your business. It seems like that's one of the best investments you can make. Not even like pitching the product, but you look at all the people in the program, all the people that have said things about it, that is one of the things that will really move the needle, right?

41:03 Jonas Olson

Yeah, and it's more about not just us on there. Yes, we have a lot of value and help, but the community that's in there, yeah, people who are, most of us are all doing the same exact thing, different phases from $200,000 and up. But just that community of what's working with everyone and what ads are working, all this stuff is probably the most beneficial part to it.

41:26 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, it's so cool. We saw John Stopka post the other day. He's like, last year in June, I hit my first, actually it might've been May, I hit my first 100K month. Now this year in May, I hit my first 200K month. That is so cool and so inspiring.

41:45 Jonas Olson

And now he's opening up a second office. Understood.

41:49 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, and part of it is just a mindset thing. When I originally got into the entrepreneur, make money online space, I mentioned on your show, starting to grow a Twitter following, and part of what made me feel like it was really possible is that I started becoming friends with all these other guys that were doing the thing that I wanna do. They were making like $20,000 a month with an agency or something. And at the time that sounded like so crazy, it would never be possible. I'm sure that's the case with a lot of people here. It's like, I could never do 200K a month. It's like, dude, John Stopka is like 27, 28 years old. He is no different than you. So I think like being around those kinds of people and of course you're like the motto or the phrase, you are the four or five people you spend the most time with.

42:44 Dan Leibrandt

That is so true.

42:46 Jonas Olson

But even looking back at like high school friends of mine that were so talented, like exceptionally gifted, that I don't know what the wrong people went down the wrong path and they're back at them now and they haven't, like that was their highlight of their life. Whereas they're really good in high school sports and they're still at the bar talking about it today. So it's so true. The older you get, the more you realize it.

43:09 Dan Leibrandt

And would you also agree with what a lot of people say, like you should be the dumbest person in the room?

43:14 Jonas Olson

Oh yeah, like if you're gonna go be somewhere and there's some times where you're not always gonna be the smartest person in the room, but if you're paying, like definitely you don't wanna be the smartest person. I think again, just open it up. Like the hardest part is like those doors locked, people, you're not in them yet. So you gotta work your way into those groups and get them to believe in you that you're gonna do these things or pay them to get in the group. But yeah, so definitely don't wanna be the smartest person. And again, same thing with us. Like I wanna hire smarter people than me. And that would be like going back to like the last sub of three million. Yeah, people, the owner thinks that he knows everything. So if it gets super funky around three million, cash flow gets weird, lots of overhead, bringing out all these managers.

43:58 Jonas Olson

They start changing things in the business. They start changing pricing models and do all this stuff. And then the business stops growing organically. They change up a bunch of stuff and they just don't let it go. And then I travel around the country and I see some of the best home service businesses out there. Every time I go into a home service business that's absolutely murdering it, growing super fast, it's level of talent to have. So instead of going to, you know, finding this person, you know, that $60,000 employee versus a $100,000 employee. Like, oh, well, he could probably just get us through for 60K. But you're buying talent at that point, right? You're paying extra for these people who have been there and done it. They're not learning on your dime. As soon as they come in, I've said this many times, day one, they're moving the needle, but you're paying for speed at that point. They've been there, they've done it, hire those people, pay them more and let them move the business forward.

44:54 Jonas Olson

And that's how we've been able to go to where we are. Is finding that really, really exceptional talent. And it takes time to find these really good people.

45:03 Dan Leibrandt

And yeah, Alex Hormozi has talked about like, getting leverage on A players. Because you think maybe you pay someone $50,000 a year and let's just say they make you $100,000 a year. Versus maybe you hire someone who's an A player and you pay them $100,000 a year, two times as much, like, I can't afford $100,000 a year, but they end up making you half a million dollars a year. It's like, well, you can, you actually can't afford to hire the cheaper person because the more expensive person is gonna make you way more money.

45:35 Jonas Olson

Yeah, or like going back, and it does happen. So I got a caveat of this. Saying that your first employee is gonna be your VP someday. Odds are very slim. But it has happened. I have seen it as a super successful company. Nine times out of 10, it's not like that.

45:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I think, yeah, we have talked about A players in another podcast. Do you like to hire A players internally though? Like, do they still start at the bottom or do some people start at the bottom?

46:07 Jonas Olson

It depends on what we're going after. You know what I mean? If we're hiring an executive, like we're going after the best out. Never hiring a technician. Of course, I don't care if they have experience or not. I'd rather teach them, you know? This comes at a time where you have someone who has a really good experience that's a good culture fit at that point. That's what we're looking for at that point. Because they come in with a lot of bad habits or bad attitude. Like that just doesn't fly how good you are. But it's not that at that point, just teach someone that's ever done it before. Get them licensed and on their way. But if you find a really good technician that has a lot of good characteristics, you'd be a really good culture fit and you could do it now.

46:43 Dan Leibrandt

Is there like one or two or three traits that you would say, like you ascribe to an A player? Is it that they're smart or hardworking or?

46:53 Jonas Olson

I just think, for me, it's experience, honestly. Like I have this conversation and I just had it on Monday, Tuesday. A really high level guy that we're bringing in right now. And I'm just straight up honest with everyone that comes in here and like, yes, we're decently sized company. We're not Orkins, we're not Terminixes, we're not that. So in my opinion, we're still a startup, early in year six. So if you're used to working nine to five and that's your lifestyle and you're past that point of your life where you don't want to build more, this is not the right place to work for you. But if you want to come in here, build something, look back, say, look who we've done over the last five years, like look what we've done already, look what we're going to do the next five years, these are our goals. And you want to work 12 to 14 hours a day and you're going to get the phone calls at 10 o'clock for me or get tech visits at 10 o'clock for me, or midnight, it happens almost every single night.

47:45 Jonas Olson

We push hard here, but if that's the kind of environment that you want to be around and want to be in that culture, then you're a good fit. And I've had it, I had it this past spring. It was, yeah, so this past spring, had that same conversation with a guy, lots of experience in the industry. And he said, I'm so glad that you told me that because that's just not where we're at in life. He's like, I love everything that you guys are doing. I want to be a part of it. He's like, I'm just trying to at that point in my life where I can't be doing that. Mm, great, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm so glad we had this conversation. Yeah, let's go to the next person who is. And now I just had the conversation on Tuesday and the guy's like, dude, this is so awesome. He's like, I love building things. I want to be part of it. He's like, I haven't clocked in to a nine to five job in 30 years. I want to build something with you guys and then you're in the right place. But I have that conversation and I'm like the third or, I'm the last person that you've just talked to for the first start of the day of work.

48:43 Jonas Olson

Because it's gone through, you know, through our recruiting guy. Basically, you bring them in to just make sure that they're just not idiots, right? Qualifies the candidate quick. Then you go from there, they go to another one where leaders James, make sure they're a good culture fit. Then I put them with Trisha who's our COO to make sure that, I feel like girls just have like this sixth sense of like.

49:03 Dan Leibrandt

They do innate ability to like read people really well.

49:06 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so they meet with her and they talk for an hour or two and then it gets to that point and then it comes to me for the executive team. And then, yeah, then I just run them through that again, build the things that I just went through with you. And it looks like, yeah, no, this is what it's gonna be like, I realize that we're working 12, 14, 16 hours a day and I wanna build something that's, look back and say, this is amazing. And that it all works out.

49:28 Dan Leibrandt

Because I feel like some people would be like, oh, you know, no one wants to work 12 hour days anymore but like, even let's say like the younger generation is more lazy, like there are always still people that are willing to work hard.

49:40 Jonas Olson

I hear this all the time and I have 16 year old kids, 17 year old kids, 19 year old kids, 20 year old kids, 25 year olds that are some of the hardest working people. Like they're absolutely incredible. Like they're absolute hustlers, they bust their tails. Like, so I guess there is every age group at the, that's not wanting to work 12 or 14, 16 hours a day but there's still some young kids who are hustlers who get it.

50:08 Dan Leibrandt

And everyone out there that's saying it's not possible, that's just more young talent for you to pick up. Yeah, definitely. Well, cool Jonas, I feel like this has been a great show. Thanks so much for coming on. And I usually have guests promote their own stuff but I can just promote it for you. So I think we do. Well, yeah, we promoted that at the beginning of the show but still where people can find you. So definitely go follow Jonas on Facebook and LinkedIn. He posts there usually a few times a week. Yeah, yeah, go definitely subscribe to his YouTube channel.

50:40 Dan Leibrandt

He's almost at 4,000 subscribers now. He posts a podcast every single week with some of the top people, really all the top people in the pest control industry and also usually a weekly YouTube video on different, I call it PCO tips, like all things that you need to know as a pest control owner, like how to set up your truck and how to price your and how to package.

51:06 Jonas Olson

Yeah, how to go from 150,000, like your first customers, and up so like, I try to go through everything that you need to know like from day one all the way up until where we're at today. And even like my biggest mistakes I'll put on there as a failure. So you guys can learn, I spent millions of dollars doing this stuff. You guys get to learn for free through YouTube.

51:25 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. You have put out so much value for free. It is wild. So definitely go subscribe to that YouTube channel. Also, you can subscribe to our kind of secondary YouTube channel. So his is at Pest Control Millionaire. We have another channel at Pest Control Millionaires where we filmed 15 hours of content last year. And that is just finished publishing around the time of this getting scheduled. And we're also filming more videos for that channel. So subscribe to that one as well. It's got like 400, 500 subscribers at the time of this recording. Go get our book as well, Zip Code Kings. So we published this eight months ago or so. We've gotten about a thousand sales, which is great. I mean, how about 350? Yeah, I know. Yeah, I think we're sitting at like around 900 or so right now, which is really cool. We're actually going to be releasing a second edition of the book later this year.

52:17 Dan Leibrandt

And we're going to have an audio book and a lot of this cool stuff. We're going to be doing a conference later this year, which is probably only available to the people in our program. I should mention the program again. If you guys want to join the program, if it sounded like something you're maybe interested in, if you're a pest control or a lawn care owner and you want to grow your business, you're willing to invest, then go to pestcontrolmillionaires.com and you can see it there. It'll be specifically pestcontrolmillionaires.com slash program. If you want to check out the program, book a call with our team and we will walk you through the whole process. You can ask any questions you want and we can see if it's a fit. And hopefully you can join and join our community of 250 people. We have 20 hours of courses. We have weekly group coaching calls with you, Jake and I. We usually have like 50 people on those calls each week. So I think that's like a no brainer.

53:10 Dan Leibrandt

I think that's something you should really, really consider. And I think that's all to plug. Did you have anything else to plug?

53:16 Jonas Olson

I would just add that if you're not in the free Facebook group.

53:19 Dan Leibrandt

Oh yeah, that's the easiest one and that's one of the main ones. So if you're not already in our free Facebook group, go to Facebook right now, search up Pest Control Millionaires and join the free group.

53:32 Jonas Olson

And just fill out the form because otherwise we're gonna let you in.

53:35 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, fill out the form. A lot of people don't fill out the form and maybe already submitted a request and you can't fill out the form now, just message me on Facebook or maybe you could message Jonas or Jake on Facebook to ensure that we let you in because this is a crazy good resource. It is a private group. So we're only letting in pest control owners and we have like over 10 posts a day, over a hundred comments a day. It is super active. People are sharing all their wins. People are asking a ton of questions. So definitely go join that Facebook group as well.

54:07 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I agree. Awesome.

54:09 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Jonas. It's been a blast and I can't wait to have you on again.

54:14 Jonas Olson

Sir, see you.