Jonas Olson on the Wrong Market, Higher Prices and Thinking Bigger

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host, Dan Leibrandt, and today I'm joined by Jonas Olson. If you don't already know Jonas, he's the founder and CEO of Pest Badger, the Midwest powerhouse that pivoted from lawn care during the pandemic and rocketed to a $10 million pest control empire with 14 locations in just a few short years. He's also the face behind one of the top five pest control YouTube channels, boasting 140k subscribers and co-creator of the Pest Control Millionaires coaching platform. In this episode, we'll unpack the door knocking origins, viral video strategy, and culture first leadership that fueled the Pest Badger's explosive growth and how you can apply the same blueprint to your own business. Now, without further ado, Jonas, welcome to the show.

00:46 Jonas Olson

Thanks man. Appreciate it.

00:47 Dan Leibrandt

Of course. So I'd like to jump back to your journey and your origins. You've been doing some crazy stuff in the past few years. And it seems like you've just blown up all of a sudden, but I want to get back to square one. So maybe what would make most sense is your lawn care roots. Tell me about your background and lawn care and how you originally got started.

01:05 Jonas Olson

Yeah. Again, thanks for having me here. Yeah. I started this at a pretty young age. I wanted to start at 18. You know, I had a conversation before this, but I want to start at 18, try to get out the ground. Didn't really have any money. Didn't know I was doing so kind of flop. Did the high school thing. Went to college for welding, hated every minute of it. Cause I'm blind. Like the greater in my friends, we're in a students. I just, that's what I did. And then fast forward a few years later, had a good job, make us a piece of money at that point. And I saved enough money to go buy myself a real commercial lawnmower. And then I started my grandma's backyard, knocked on doors, got my neighbors or her neighbors knocked on another door across the street, got that neighbor. And then I did that for about a year, year and a half, so I had to go to work Monday through Thursday.

01:51 Jonas Olson

And then then I'd actually go home and get grass from Thursday through Sunday. Did that for about two years. And then I had a daughter and it said, Hey, I didn't want to work out of town tomorrow. I didn't like the lifestyle they're living there at, you know, drinking at the bars every night. Most of them were divorced, didn't want to take that path. And so I decided to go all in the lawn care thing. So I quit my job at 26, had a baby at 26 and went all in lawn care. I got my first customer. I actually was a commercial customer that had two houses, uh, residential houses. I got those. Now it's like my first year client and I fast forward 12 years later, they're actually still a client of mine, which is really, really cool. That's kind of how I got into the industry. And I built a pretty successful business. Then we're doing like $3 million revenue. And then COVID hit shut us down and pivot at that point.

02:43 Jonas Olson

Wisconsin was about, you know, the border is 45 minutes from me and pest control was deemed essential. Wisconsin was a little bit more open. It was a lot more open. Uh, during the pandemic, the Michigan was shut down completely. You couldn't do anything. And I taught myself how to knock doors. I still remember to this day, knock on her door and thankfully her dog was allergic to wasps. And so there was a, there was a ground office that I was able to treat in there. So I knocked the first door, sold it with that being said, I also about threw up, had to step away, uh, gave my composure, go back in and knock the door. And I was just kind of just selling whatever. I didn't care as lawn care, pest control didn't really matter. But yeah, that was my first door knock. And then, I sold that one and it was like, Oh, like bulb went off and like, Hey, I can do this. And then I think like my best day after that, like next year or so, it was like 15 a day. So I got a decently good at two. So that's kind of how it got in the industry and kind of how, why I had to pivot.

03:36 Dan Leibrandt

Dang, that is crazy. No, I know you're a huge proponent of door knocking. You talk about it a lot and you say that lawn care companies are not taking advantage of it. Can you talk about why door knocking is so important and why it's a big opportunity?

03:49 Jonas Olson

Yeah. So like, I think door knocking is like one of the oldest strategies ever for, um, for marketing. Right. And so if you think back to like, even like the early sixties and seventies, my grandpa used to knock doors too. He had a refrigerating business, a grocery business, but had refrigeration trucks that he would deliver their groceries to. So he'd want to go out and just deliver one house groceries. He'd knock on the neighbor's doors and fill up his route that way. So it goes back to the early days. So taking that same philosophy and apply it to what we're doing today. It's the same concept, but what happens, uh, it seems like this is how we all start out. Like I told you, when I first started up my lawn care business, I started knocking doors, knocking neighbors. I didn't know what I was doing, but it still worked. And so what happens, I feel like most companies, they start out that way and they get a little money in the bank. Then they start going online and like, it's way easier. It's obviously way easier just to hit a few buttons and do all that. Then it's actually go knock doors and get your face kicked in every day.

04:43 Jonas Olson

And so people kind of just get away from it where they just stick to those, you know, the grassroots marketing, like door hangers, flyers, postcards, door knocking, old school marketing tech, they still work to this day. So yeah, it, uh, it definitely really effective. And like you said, the lawn care companies, there's very, very, very few that are doing it. And I said forever, uh, at the blue ocean,...

05:02 Dan Leibrandt

How do you overcome the fear of door knocking?

05:07 Jonas Olson

I still think that every day there's a little bit of fear. Um, not going to lie. Like the hardest door opens always your own, you and yourself out there. Uh, but then after like the first few doors, then it just gets easier throughout the day. I don't know if it ever goes away. Maybe it does. Um, instead of knocked 10s of thousands of doors and it's still like that first door is like, you know, you still have this little jitters every single morning, but eventually it goes away and you just kind of settle in. And you know, especially if you have a bigger vision of why you're doing it, how it's super cliche these days. The term is just overused, in my opinion. Uh, so just having a good reason to go out there and do things every single day. And it's like Alex always says, like a lot of 100, whether it's postcards, door hangers, emails, text messages, go out there and just do 100 a day. And it'll work.

05:51 Dan Leibrandt

And how should you go about door knocking when you're going to each house, you know, maybe you go to the nicer neighborhoods around. What are you saying at the door?

05:59 Jonas Olson

Uh, there's a million things you can say, but I always just, you know, do a quick icebreaker, which is like, it's kind of like, think of like a headline and marketing. Like you get first three seconds to make an impression or you kick off the door. Uh, it's the same thing. So just coming up with like something that's easy relatable. So what I always say is like, if you're, if you like shoes and you come up with really nice shoes on, like I'm going to talk about your shoes. If you have a really nice boat in the yard, you know, the guys that love fishing that on the doors, like talk about boats, talk about fishing. Like it's something that's just very relatable like that. So that's how I start out. And then I just introduce myself who I am.

06:38 Jonas Olson

My first name, last name, so there's no ambiguity because like there could be, I know my name's probably not a good one to use because there's not very many Jonas's out there. But let's just say your name is Joe. Like there's a million Joseph's there, but you say first name, last name and the company that you're with in the role in the company. There's zero ambiguity that you're like not being honest, right? And then from there, uh, I just kind of tell them what you're doing in the area, why you're there. Uh, maybe you're giving them the discount of the door because you're doing the name for it at the same time. And then from there, it's just kind of just soft clothes, you know, so you're interested or not. That's cool. And just see what happens, you know, and there's way more to it. Like I do a 12 over course on this alone, but that's the gist of it. Honestly, like it's not that hard. And if you're just first starting out, just go introduce yourself. Tell you're coming from your, the neighbor's house that you just got done servicing. Like I said, they probably don't trust you yet, but they've seen your trucks in the areas seven times already.

07:31 Jonas Olson

They trust your neighbor. They just go tell them what you're doing in your neighbor's house, the problem that they're having, how you solved it, and maybe give them a special offer at the door.

07:39 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. I know something else that you're really big on is offers. You know, Alex Hormozi came out with this book, $100M Offers, and he's, he's really popular popularized this term and this way about going of business. How do you use offers? What offers are you using for your company?

07:56 Jonas Olson

Yeah, that's another great question. I think even before Alex, I was deep diving into Dan Kennedy's books, like No B.S., but like it goes way back, right? Uh, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. There's so many good books out there. So many great marketers and Alex is like the new, yeah, like obviously the new, uh, creator out there. And so there's nothing really new out there, but it's all the same works. And we talked about this at dinner too. Like I'm not a huge fan of discounts. I think it makes your brand, um, not as you can just go, you don't get as much value. So if you, again, if you give a discount, that same customers always don't want to discount. They're going to think of your brand as a discounted service. So I always like to throw in value stacks, right? And say, I'll give you this thing for free and this thing for free. So maybe that's a mosquito treatment or a flea intake. They can do it the same exact time that you get them for free for their first initial treatment. That's the way I like to do things. And there's a hundred different things you can do there, but that's just the first thing type of mine, things that you can do for free.

08:53 Jonas Olson

They're not going to cost you a lot of time, but add a ton of value to their first.

08:57 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Okay. So you have to make sure there's something kind of irresistible cause that's a word that comes up often. And how does that compare to competitors? Like what do you see as kind of the normal offer in the pest control market?

09:10 Jonas Olson

It's the same thing over and over and over again. It's a $29 free service or a $47 free service or a free service in general. Like there is zero value there. They're not going to say, Hey, that's a company that I want to go with majority of the time. People are not by enough price. They're buying out value. So if you can create enough value, they're willing to pay more for your service than anything else.

09:30 Dan Leibrandt

Can you expand upon that more? How exactly do you really create value?

09:34 Jonas Olson

Yeah, sure. So like going back into what I talked about, so you're talking about, you know, you're doing to their pest control service. It's X amount of dollars, right? Then you do a lawn treatment and then you do a mosquito treatment. You're building all this value, building your value at the company and you say, but for, let's just say you're competing against another customer or another customer, but another competitor and you're charging the charges. Let's go keep this easy, like $150, but you say, but for all this, it's just $200. Like, Oh wow. We're just $200. I can upgrade to you. That sounds awesome. And then going back to your brand and what you look like, how you present yourself, you know, you're like go into that, but that's just how I like to do it. Like I like to build so much value that I can't say no. And they're going to charge your premium service for us to be there.

10:19 Jonas Olson

I don't want to compete at the bottom. Like it's hard to build a company as it is. Cannot build a company with no profits or you're constantly giving away a free service and an initial for $50. Just hard to scale.

10:29 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely. No, I did want to get into brand. So let's talk about that. Cause you have such a killer brand. I mean, you have a huge YouTube channel and even like regarding the pest control space, you have Pest Control Millionaire, the big podcasts. A lot of people know you in the space. Um, you know, whether that be customers for pest control or other people in the pest control space. So how do you think about branding and why is it so important?

10:51 Jonas Olson

Yeah. Another great question. And yeah, I go back to the day beginning, the first thing, my first company, you probably didn't know this was Olson's Lawn Care.

10:59 Dan Leibrandt

I know I do know that.

11:01 Jonas Olson

And then it, and then it from there went to, uh, Olson's Lawnscape. And then from there, I went to Olson's Lawn and Pest. And every time that I did this, I still didn't know what I was talking about. Maybe I still don't, but I've definitely learned a lot since those days. And so taking my name out of the equation completely, uh, was step number one. Step number two is like, I love, um, characters. And I think especially in, uh, in the space that we're in the service industry, uh, and I know like in the past 10 years or so, a lot more have been building logos and characters. And I love that. Uh, so I built that, you know, Buggy's our badger and he's on all of our trucks. And so like our, all the language that we speak to customers, all the emails to go out text messages, it's all from Buggy the Badger nighttime manager, whatever you want to call them. Uh, so what we know he's got a certain tone is certain language that he speaks. If we know that our customer avatar is mainly women. So speaking to the women of the households, things like that. So we dove deep. And then in the colors too, I was reading a book at this time, at the time.

12:03 Jonas Olson

And it was, uh, it was like, it was a delivery company. It's food delivery. It's actually a restaurant that was delivering food. And I can't remember the book on the top of my head, but they had one pink car and it had like a lobster on the top of the car. And so everyone always said that they kept seeing this, uh, this car all the time. It was like downtown New York, if I remember correctly. And, uh, they said they had one car and I was like, well, that's crazy. So I was just reading the book at the time. Like I'm gonna like, and that was moving to Green Bay, uh, for my company. Everything was green back at home. My colors were green. So I couldn't go in there with a green truck either. So I knew that 1% of all vehicles were pink. So that's why I chose pink.

12:43 Dan Leibrandt

Wow. Yeah. No, I love it. It stands out so much. Um, just, it's so bold actually. Cause people think that's like a female color, but actually using pink is, I would argue the most masculine thing. Cause you're like, no, I'm so masculine. I actually can rock in a pink and I'm sorry. I can see that point as well. Um, but talk to me more about the mascot thing. Cause I feel like that's still not clear to a lot of people. So I had, um, Dan Antonelli on my other podcasts, probably the biggest guy in home service branding. You know, he did it for Tommy Mello and, um, you know, Gettle and these other big companies. And he made it really clear to me. It really didn't make sense until he explained it to me, but talk more about why exactly a mascot and why do you need like a, like a, uh, fantastical figure versus it could just be you Olson. Uh, why is it, why should it be a mascot?

13:33 Jonas Olson

Like I said, I'm trying to build the brand and so I want Buggy on everything, whether that's like I said, all of our email marketing, our text messages and our trucks, like it just stands out. It makes it more fun, more relatable, uh, especially like when you were back in, like, I think even investments, this might came from his book. It's been a while since I read it, but like going back to when I always think we're like having those, those figures, like I go like Tony the Tiger, I got a Froot Loop box. I think it came from his book. It's like all things like that. There's just me made it so relatable. I think, I think I remember correctly too from that book. Again, this has been a year or two since I read it even longer at this point. Uh, I think the very first character was like, oh, an oatmeal box or something. I think it's a Quaker oatmeal. It has like an old, like Quaker guy. I think that was one of the first ones, like 1940 or something. Don't quote me, but I think that's what it was. So it goes way back in the day.

14:24 Jonas Olson

So I just learned through that process. And then my mentor, uh, Jonathan Pototschnik, he had, he has like a dog on his and I kind of, obviously I learned from him. So it's we did all this brand new training. So going through that, I was like, okay, now this makes more sense. So having again, just that brand as a whole across all marketing channels, you know, using their face on everything, like it goes super deep. But that was my philosophy around the Buggy.

14:51 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. And talk to me more about the value and results that you've received from that. Like, how's it different when you know, pull up into someone's driveway and they see the truck and they see the logo on the shirt and the, you know, maybe they see the website and such. How is that different? And why does that help?

15:10 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there, but like, and I know it's people say, well, how can you, how can you track if that's actually getting value? But as soon as you add that logo and people actually start calling, you can track the source to the saw trucks and you can see that, you know, last quarter you got two, $300,000 in revenue from just your trucks. You know, brands doing pretty well. So it's just tracking those things. And it's like, again, it's not like there's a lot to unpack here. So you don't, like at this point, I wouldn't even put a phone number on our brand at this point, I'd have a website on there. I probably wouldn't have a phone number. I probably just have our logo and our name. Because again, you're not going to, most people, there's no call to action on the van, right? There's just not, it's brand awareness at its youngness. There's no real call to action. Most people aren't going to have a problem that are following you around if you're driving down the road. But let's just say your park was somewhere and someone has to walk by and they took a picture.

16:05 Jonas Olson

The first they're going to do is go to ChatGPT or Google and say, you know, Google Turf Badger, Pest Badger, right? Your name's going to come up. You're going to call through Google. Anyway, then as it goes into the office, they have the phone and say, how did you hear about us? Like, Oh, well, I saw your truck. I was walking on the street. Cool. And he put a source close to that. So again, I don't know if I answered your question fully, but that's just how I see it.

16:24 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, sweet. And then when do just to kind of wrap up this branding side of things, when do pest control owners need to start thinking about branding and implementing branding? Is that at like a hundred K a year or can you do it a million?

16:38 Jonas Olson

Another great question. I say the earlier, the better, if I could go back and do it all over again, I probably, that's still probably make some changes, but it doesn't get any cheaper, right? As you scale. And so we added, we added a few things. We have the tagline as you went, our tagline, we get into trademarks too, if you want to, but make sure that your trademark and everything from your brand to your logo to your, to your everything that you have, just make sure, make sure that you have that done. But our tagline is one of them and it's our tagline is have a pest-free day. So it's in all of our truck. So even that simple little change can obviously add, you know, tens of thousands of dollars at the scale we're at. So just the early, to answer your question, the earlier, the better, honestly, because again, it's not going to get any cheaper, right? If you have one or two, three, four trucks, great. Do it now and put a lot of thought into it. Call Dan, honestly, read Dan's book. He used a lot of good insights. Um, again, I'm not a super huge expert on this topic, but I've done a lot of research and I've done a lot of my own.

17:40 Jonas Olson

Um, so I would say it's not going to get any cheaper. So if you're doing a million or less, go do it now. Cause at five million, I guess that's not going to get cheaper. Yeah.

17:49 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And then you're mentioning why the, or how the trademark is so important. Why is it so important?

17:55 Jonas Olson

Oh, because I mean, I've actually seen this in person. I have a friend that went through this. So he owned the, he had a company name in his state. He researched in his state and he owned it in his state, but he grew to a pretty big size. And I think if I remember right there, they were doing about 10 million at this time. And there was a smaller company that was doing like, don't quote me. It was like 80 to 800,000 that owned the trademark and that company. And so they had to buy the trademark from this company and it cost them, I think $100,000 or maybe more because they don't know the trademark. So just because you look in your state or your county and the name's available to dot or in the domains available, doesn't mean that it's not trademark. So go get a trademark lawyer, look it up online, make sure you buy the trademark, make sure you get in the trademark, your logo, your name, tagline, everything like that. So it's super important because it could cost you a lot of money in the future for sure.

18:53 Jonas Olson

Even your color scheme, you can, you can get done.

18:55 Dan Leibrandt

So really interesting. Okay. Another topic I wanted to cover was pricing. So Jake, Jake was talking to me, I think it was just before you came to our hotel room. You were saying like, or no, actually Jake was saying like, Oh, well, Jonas was telling me to up my prices. He kept telling me, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to listen to Jonas. Cause he knows fast. Why and when does it make sense to up your prices? Like does every company need to up their prices? What is the psychology behind that? What, why do you do that?

19:25 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I think that the majority of, if not all the majority could have still have room to move. And so that's the first thing that I look at is pricing. Again, most people that are just starting out, they call their competitors, right? And they're like, well, here's the bottom. Here's the top. And then I'm going to put myself in the middle or even worse, like, okay, well, I want to undercut these people. So I'm going to price even lower. The other side of that is you've had people that have been in business for 20, 30 years. I've never raised the prices. So they're doing like $80 quarterly. I see all the, like I literally see this all the time. So the first thing that I always recommend is just raise your prices. And I have people that push back on me all the time. And I was one of those people myself. Like first time that I did it, I remember sending out the email, like, what's going to happen? And I think we raised it by 20% that year, which was still a significant amount. And like two people cancel.

20:17 Jonas Olson

Oh, it only took me one time to realize, okay, I need to do this every single year. At this point in my career, I just know, like bottom 10% of my customers is okay. If you raise them by 10%, you lost 10%, you're still going to do less work in the same amount of revenue, if not more. And I say this all the time. And I probably heard me say this in the podcast, in the class, on YouTube, like even if you raise your prices by 50%, you lost half your customers, you still be in the same amount of revenue, but less work. So the first thing I always do is raise your prices. I want to be the top. I want to be higher, charge higher than every other company in our, in our area. So we literally call around. We do the same thing. We also know our break even point, you know, or we're going to break even on this job. And then we add 20, 30, 40% margin, say this is where we want to be because we want to be able to recoup our marketing costs as fast as possible. It costs as fast as possible.

21:11 Jonas Olson

If we can get that on service one, great. If we can get it in the first 30 days, even better. You know what I mean? So that's how I look at it. So you're never going to be able to scale a company by having zero profit. So I say right away, raise your prices. And yeah, that's what I got to say on that.

21:25 Dan Leibrandt

Love it. You're telling me a good story earlier of how you scaled one of your many locations from 300k a year to I think it was 800k a year. And you did that fairly quick. It might have been in a few months. I might not be getting the details exactly right. But retell that story. But what happened?

21:43 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so again, no fault to this person. He just bought a business and had a decent clientele didn't really grow it. And he decided that he want to sell it and just happened to fall into our lap. And so I made the deal happen. And yeah, he was like $350,000 revenue. And he had quite a bit of customers like he had 700 or 800 customers done the exact number. But he would just like kind of let them do whatever like he was like, Oh, well, I'll come out in May and then I'll come out in July and then maybe one time at the end of the year, maybe it's a one time thing. So he said, Well, okay, we'll take that same philosophy, but put it in our model. So it goes in our clusters, put it on, you know, our often we're going to come out. And then of course, we raised prices, like I said, and so almost overnight, we went from 330,000 to like 700,000 overnight.

22:41 Jonas Olson

Same exact company. Like, okay, so even if you lost 10% of the customers, right, we're still gonna be much further ahead. And I was okay with that. Because like, because people, you know, people, I just don't like change or especially to come in, you change everything, like cards on file, and they had no cards, like there's so much impact there too. But it's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna put them in our model, they leave, they leave for lost 20%, but still raise the price by 20% and added five more services, they're gonna be like, this is a lot of change. But even if I lost half the customers, it would stick. Well, only as I have to say, don't quote me again, like maybe 20, 30 customers only canceled. And they all went with the service level, we all raised the prices and that company went from 340,000 to like 650,000 overnight. And then we added an additional like 150 to 200 on upsell for pest control.

23:30 Dan Leibrandt

Geez. Okay, so just to make sure that I'm hearing you right, you only up the prices and added more services.

23:38 Jonas Olson

That's simple. I didn't add more clients. And then from there, I just upsold them to the next service. So they already were getting mosquito because this company is all mosquito. And so like, okay, we're gonna go service them this many times instead of just random ones. Like they're just like, yeah, come spray me or you know, come do my application whenever and that's just not how we operate. Like you push you on a schedule come out every 21 to 30 days. Because we want you to also have the best results to you want you to enjoy your backyard, enjoy your cookouts, things like that. So you don't get by bugs until you're out there. No. So that's what we did. And so that's kind of what happened. We went from 340,000 to 650,000 overnight upsell them. And I think today, today that branches like shooting for eight already. And it's only in the middle of the very beginning of June. They already shoot for $850,000 for revenue this year.

24:27 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, that's insane. And tell me more about that service stack. Does that make sense for most companies of providing, you know, you said like an additional five services. Should most companies do that? Or when does that make sense?

24:39 Jonas Olson

I would say, honestly, no. Not at first. I'd say we get really, really good at one thing, get to scale, and then add on services, like the fastest way to grow is just be good at one really good thing. And I tell the same thing to my kids. Like they love sports. And I love that they love sports, but they want to do them all. Yeah, they want to do wrestling, they want to do cheer, they want to do track, right? And it's like, I get it. But if you want to be really good at one thing, just focus on that one thing. And you go much, much further. So it's the same thing. I'm in business, like, get super focused on one thing, whether it's pest control or mosquito control, or whatever your thing may be. Focus on that. And once you get to a good market penetration, like, okay, now I can add services, no ad, no, add the next thing, which very beginning, like I kind of get it because it's so hard for people to say no. Because they just looking for money. And I get that. But as you grow through that phase, some of the hardest lessons I had to learn is just saying no.

25:37 Jonas Olson

So once you get the point where you can say no, say no, and just focus on that core service.

25:42 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And if you don't mind sharing, what does that pricing model look like? Are you hitting them every month? Is it a few hundred dollars? Tell me more about the pricing structure.

25:52 Jonas Olson

As far as like the mosquito control or pest control?

25:54 Dan Leibrandt

Yes. Like, for instance, that that story that you're telling of, like, you completely revamp their services, you have everyone on this big service model, and you up the prices, what was the difference there?

26:05 Jonas Olson

Yeah, so I think, again, don't I just throw out numbers, but I think we were they were doing like some applications like $50, $60. And I wouldn't touch it less than 80 bucks. So let's just be in this small lot. But they are doing some lot to back here. So they do like, they do like $56. But then they do like the neighbor's house and the neighbor's house. So like every time they got a neighbor, they get a discount, which is great in theory. But you fast forward two years forward, half those customers left. And so now you're going to this one stop for $50. So don't ever discount because they're just neighbors. Like it doesn't make any sense. Because I said, in two years, you're not going to have half those customers. Anyway, they'd be going there for 50 bucks. So we just raised the price right away from $50. Like, again, don't quote me these numbers, but just big petitions. Let's save your raise to 80 bucks. So now we're doing a minimum of $80. Now we're just getting $30 right there, which is pretty much profit right there. And then from there, you know, we're just adding on pest control.

27:07 Jonas Olson

So however you guys bill, whether you guys bill monthly or bi-monthly or quarterly however you guys bill, just build that way. So you can there's a bunch of different models, you can build subscription, right? We can build that into let's just say, you're building $50 a month for pest control. And you know, $50 a month for mosquito, you're building 100 bucks months. Your, your LTV went from this is going 12 months, your contract value went from, say $400 to $800 or $500 to $1,000. That same customer.

27:39 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Awesome. And something else I wanted to cover was churn. So how do you reduce churn? How do you keep customers as long as possible?

27:47 Jonas Olson

Yeah, that's a great question, especially in pest control in lawn care. But churn is actually fixed on onboarding. And so it's just being very, very clear. It's setting very clear expectations upfront of what the offer is going to look like, what the service is going to look like, how long it's going to take you to actually prevent the problem. So if you, if you say, Oh, yeah, we're coming in, fix this property, and you're never going to have an issue again, like you just be lying to customers, you're setting yourself up, but you said, Hey, you know, this is going to take a few applications, you're probably still going to see some bugs out there because this is just the real world we live in. You know, if we're doing mosquito control, we're probably can reduce it to 80%. We still have 20% excuse out there. So it's not going to be mosquito free. As long as you set the expectations upfront, be realistic with the customers, then also follow it up with them too.

28:34 Jonas Olson

There's so many things you can do here from a welcome package that shows up the door two days later, the technicians drop off, you know, the follow up phone call, you know, a couple days after the service to check in on the customer, emails that go out, text messages that go out. There's a lot to unpack in this little thing. But the very, very best way is just on, you know, the onboarding the customer.

28:55 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, go deeper on that. Like what do you and your company do specifically that retains customers longer?

29:01 Jonas Olson

Yeah. So again, start out very beginning. Like we're constantly, I'm preaching to you, my sales guys, like it's so important just to be open and honest from day one. It was a good, good. If you say you're never gonna see a bug in the next day, you see bug like, it's just not, it's just doesn't look good. Yeah. Most times if people have never had a treatment ever, and then you go do an application to house, they're going to see more bugs. It's just how it is. So also, and they see a bunch of activity. What the heck? What did you guys spraying? So that's step number one is just being very, very clear set the expectations. I love welcome packets. So this is again, way back in the day, we used to send out welcome packets to every single customer in an envelope. So just think of what you could do today, because there's so much, there's so much automation out there. So we used to send out a welcome package that just had like stickers in their logos in there. It had our insurance in there. It had some like back in the day, like people loved coupons.

30:02 Jonas Olson

So we had like coupons stacked on their head, our insurance, maybe it's that had our insurance in there, had a bunch of cool things. And they had like lumpy mail, which you can put like a spider there, a scorpion, or like we use a fly swatter. Yeah, that looks like there's something in the mail that they have to open. And it would just go through like their core values, just things like that. What could you make that today to be modern? And then how could you give it to them when they least expect it to like wait, a pest control company just did that for me. Like, that's the craziest thing ever.

30:33 Dan Leibrandt

And how long should you expect to keep them? Is it three, five years plus,...

30:37 Jonas Olson

I think that again, depends on the medium that they come in. And if it's traditional marketing, you know, like Facebook, or if it's through Google, I'd say, you know, five to seven years is probably the average, you know, if it's through door to door, it could be a little less than that, because they got sold at the door. But even still, we like to see three to five years there. Um, but yeah, that'd be about some averages.

31:01 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, awesome. Something else you do, which I mentioned, you run the Pest Control Millionaire podcast, you've had, I believe over 100 episodes, you're a pretty big name in this phase, it seems like everyone knows you mainly because of the podcast. Talk about some of the benefits of the podcast. And should other pest control owners or home service owners start one?

31:22 Jonas Olson

Yeah. Again, the very like origins of the podcast is honestly, because a bunch of our friends and I, we're all in this group together. And then the group kind of got shut down. And like, someone's got to start a podcast, just so we can all like, hang out and like catch up with each other. And so I was just kind of waiting for people doing it. And no one was doing it like, well, I'm just gonna go do it. So I was like, I'm just gonna start a podcast. And I actually had just did a podcast last week, one of my really good friends, Brandon Peterman. And he was very first episode. Really? So it was kind of fun to see how we've evolved, you know, 140 episodes in. And yeah, again, I was doing it for fun. Again, I get to learn what's working out in the marketplace, I get to meet a lot of people. And then the influence thing just kind of came as a way, you know, like I didn't, didn't plan on it, but kind of expected it. I didn't know that the podcast was going to take off as fast as it did. I had no idea about that.

32:20 Jonas Olson

Yeah, it's been fun. Like I actually really enjoy it. I get to talk to people, I get to learn. And then everyone else just gets to learn as I'm talking.

32:27 Dan Leibrandt

So yeah, everyone. No, I know. Trust me, I love it. This is this is now my second podcast. I run my like, kind of more general local marketing one. And now this is my pest control one. So I absolutely love it. Like you said, I learned from all these people, it's networking, it's content. It's really fantastic. And I would generally recommend it to people. But you know, it might depend on, you know, if you're, you know, kind of still hustling, then maybe it doesn't make sense. Maybe you should wait for the next stage. But talk to me about some of the biggest lessons that you've learned from running your show of maybe these high level people that you're talking to, or maybe any just overall insights that you've gained across your 140 episodes.

33:04 Jonas Olson

Yeah, I would say the very first thing is that I didn't think I had enough credibility to run a podcast at the beginning. And even though we were fell over, I was doing big things, the majority of people, you know, less than, you know, seven, 8% get above a million. So that was a big thing. And then you get five, then 10. Like I still just didn't feel like I had enough credibility to run a podcast. So I think that's just I want to say that because like, anyone can do if I can do it, anyone can do it.

33:33 Dan Leibrandt

You know, I can too. Yeah.

33:35 Jonas Olson

So that's kind of where it started. Then the whole TikTok and YouTube kind of thing came in. Again, more things I didn't expect, but I think everyone should do it. Yeah. Like some of my best friends I've met through the podcast, like you get, you're sitting here, but you through the podcast, Jake through the podcast, so many people that I met the podcast. And I guess the authority that I built through the podcast and in our industry has been pretty impactful too. I get to talk with a lot of people that get asked to speak on, you know, speak on some stages last year, this year, speak at some more better. A lot of cool opportunities, make it pretty cool people. Uh, that's a cool vacation. And it's been fun for that too.

34:17 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. No, it is a cheat code for networking. Again, this is how me and you met. It's how me and Jake mad. It's how, how I've met a lot of these different people in the space. So, um, yeah, no, it's really incredible. And then, um, talk to me about the Pest Control Millionaires program. So I feel like not too many know about this. A lot of people know about the podcast itself, but talk to me about this program that you have with John or sorry, with, uh, Jake.

34:41 Jonas Olson

Yeah. So again, this is kind of started because I ran into the same issues over and over again. Uh, I've been through it multiple times. Uh, a lot of my friends have been through the same issue multiple times. And I just, it was so frustrating being, and that was working with agencies. And again, there's a, I'm not talking about about all agencies because I think majority of them mean well, and they do a really good job, but then there's some that are horrific and I've heard so many bad stories. So I was like, okay, this is such a pain point for so many people helped me fix it. And that's how it started. Like, I want to figure this thing out one, cause I want to do for myself and two, I want to save everyone else to go through the same shit that I did. And I was so frustrated with dealing with agencies. Again, they find an ad that's working on, um, hold on a second.

35:33 Jonas Olson

Okay. You can't do this right now. Take this back with you. I'll be up here in a little bit. I love you. Um, you run right down that time. It's 36. Okay. Um, so they found this ad and they found, they found one that works in a market and then they can use it. They take that same ad and they're deployed across every other company that's out there. They just white label it. They put a different name on it. And then especially like in my area where it's, this is where it gets hard because I hit like I such small markets that people can only see my same ad so many times. And then by the end of the month or whatever, when they're going back to look at it, I'm paying so much per lead because they're not watching close enough. And so not in this game, they, there's definitely a place for, for, for these guys, but I just wanted to make it better for everyone else. So the whole point of the course was like, I want to teach everyone else how to do their own marketing so that they don't have to hire an agency.

36:44 Jonas Olson

One, they're sometimes they're really expensive to not all good. And again, not all, but I found a couple that are really, really, really good. I'll say that. And there's some that are just absolutely terrible. So the whole, the whole reason behind the course was like, I want to help out everyone that I possibly can to not go through the pain that I went through. So if I can just teach you how to do your own marketing, it's way easier. Yeah. Then you have so much more control over it, you know,...

37:11 Dan Leibrandt

And talk to me about some of the top strategies that you teach in that program, not even necessarily to promote the program, but like, what are some strategies people need to make sure they're doing with their pest control companies?

37:22 Jonas Olson

Yeah. Like the ones that are so easy that people just don't do is just Facebook groups. That is, there's lots of groups out there. And it's so easy to post in those groups, mom groups, things like that. Facebook ads is another big one that in the home space, people just aren't really hitting out. Like it's old, but people just don't do it. And then they start doing it, they boost a post and they expect the magic to happen. And boosting posts are terrible. It's just, it's just a way to get you to spend more money without watching. So we really teach you how to dive deep into all your Facebook ads. Let me go through, and we have you on there now. So we're going through a lot of Google content. And then there's so much to unpack there. There's like, there's like 12 hour course just on SEO, right?

38:12 Jonas Olson

So there's 12 hour course just on SEO. There's Facebook ads, there's Google ads. We literally teach you how to build your own marketing machine. There's social media, like there's TikTok, there's YouTube. There's so many different strategies you guys can deploy that will not cost you any money, other than the course and then some ad spend.

38:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. No, that's actually a good point. I'm glad you brought that up that yeah, I've recently even launched a course in that program regarding SEO and everything Google. So yeah, if you want to check out that course, it'll be in the description. But regardless, something else I wanted to ask you, which is kind of general, so you can take this however you'd like is overall, like you've talked to a lot of pest control owners, you have the group and the weekly calls people are asking you questions. What is the main thing people are struggling with? And what do they not really get?

39:01 Jonas Olson

Man, again, there's, it's, I did a podcast last week of just like the top 10 questions that I beat. And it's simple. It's like, should I brand my truck? Should I wrap them? It's simple as that. Like, what should I be priced now? Should I be doing subscription versus quarterly versus bi monthly? It's what offer should I be put out there? Like, when should I hire my first employee? Which employee should that be? Like, those are like probably like the top main ones. Which, which backpack sprayer should I use? Which would like which one gallon sprayer should I use? Should I be marketing? Should like these are like, these are the main questions that I get. And they're all very, very, very simple to solve for sure.

39:43 Dan Leibrandt

Huh? Okay. So it seems like they're kind of asking about nuance about things that don't really matter. Like, how do you go about answering those questions? Is it just a simple yes or no? Is everything kind of nuanced?

39:57 Jonas Olson

Yeah. So again, like if I talk about the employee thing, right? Like I did a YouTube video just on this, like don't go hire a technician, hire a CSR. So you can take back your time. So you have accurate billing, you have accurate scheduling, and they're very detailed. We're typically not, you know, as operators, so bringing some of those detailed, you're going to buy back 20 to 30 more hours of your time of that week and go generate more revenue. So that's higher number one. And then your second hire after you start building out the second route would be a technician. Things like branding, like we already talked about that. Every single person that's listening should wrap their truck. Yes. Like 100% yes. There's no ifs ands or buts, wrap your trucks.

40:44 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. So those are some simple yes or no.

40:46 Jonas Olson

As far as the equipment, I get frustrated in this one too. I don't care. Find a supplier that'll treat you good. If something breaks and you can bring it back to them and they'll give you one to use for the time being, go with that person. I don't care what the brand name is. I could care less. Just find a reputable supplier that'll treat you good to help you scale. Yeah.

41:06 Dan Leibrandt

It seems like people are just thinking about things too much. They're getting caught in the weeds. Yeah, exactly. Whereas it's very simple, but regardless, you still make the videos, the YouTube videos to help out with those concepts.

41:19 Jonas Olson

Because I've been through, again, I have the class and I talk to many operators and there's some high level questions too. But these are the questions that get asked over and over again. So every time I see a question like, oh, this question keeps coming up, I'm going to go put out some YouTube videos for this. Because if these operators think that way, I think the majority of the operators think that way.

41:40 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. And maybe the last thing I'll ask you is we have mainly been tailoring this episode to pest control owners doing under a million dollars a year, because that's where the vast majority of people are at. But what advice and what would you recommend to pest control owners that are at around a million dollars a year and would like to get to 10 million plus like you?

42:00 Jonas Olson

Yeah, that's a great question. I would definitely look at your market. I fought my own market for way too long. Like my market here was just not scalable. And although that I thought I was a good operator, which I was, but I was fighting the wrong market, the wrong demographic the entire time and I just hit my head on the wall, because I couldn't scale anymore. So step number one is most people get caught up in the market that they're in. Definitely check your markets, your market penetration is see if your markets are scalable and your services are scalable.

42:33 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And last question I have for you. What is your just overall general message to pest control owners? What do you want to tell them? What is your call to action? What do they need to know?

42:47 Jonas Olson

Think bigger. It's all mindset. It's what between the years where you tell yourself at night if you can or can't. Again, I'm no different than any other operator. In fact, there's probably 90% of them are probably smarter than me. But what I tell myself every night is like, I can do this. I'm not telling this story. Yeah. Like I used to shake an eight ball. Like for the longest time, I remember every time I run into an eight ball, I'd shake it. Like, well, I hit, well, I hit a hundred thousand. It's a yes. And then I hit it, shake it again later on. Well, I hit a million. Yes. Well, I hit five. That's constantly telling me that stuff that and then also surround yourself with winners. Very, be very, very diligent of who you give your time away to. Again, something I had to learn the hard way. You have negative people in your life. Business is hard as it is. And if they want you to spend more time with them in the business, like the failure rate of business is high. So every time that they try to pull you away from it, wanting to spend more time, you're spending less time doing this thing. And it's really, really hard. Like I was in, I don't want to go into detail, but it's really hard to get those people out of your life.

43:51 Jonas Olson

And, but it's very, very impactful. So be very, very diligent of who you give your time away to and what you do in your spare time. Like I don't have any hobbies. I'd love to say that I do. This is, this is my, and I love it. So it makes it way easier to go to work every day. But it was a grind, you know, like I was servicing, I was doing sales. I did it all. I answered phones. I've done emailing. I've done billing. I've done every single role in the company that had to, but think bigger and then start yourself with really good people and people who are doing really big things. I know it's a cliche to you, but if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. I intentionally always try to put myself in rooms that I don't belong in. It was a hard to get into. It's so much fun when you get there because you learn so much. And those people know so many other great minded people that it's like a very small, it's a big world, but in our industry is really small. You can get into those rooms. It's pretty incredible what they talk about.

44:49 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Well, I think that was a great show. Jonas, thank you so much for coming on. We're first off, let's cover where can people find Pest Control Millionaires potentially join that program?

44:59 Jonas Olson

Yeah. You can email me at [email address removed]. You can find me on YouTube. Just look up Jonas Olson. I rebranded actually. So all the Pest Control Millionaire stuff is gone. It's all under my name, Jonas Olson. So find me there. You put a comment, you can drag recipe and Facebook is a good place. LinkedIn. I mean, I pretty much any social media, it's 2025. You find my name, I always respond. You can ask anyone that's around me. Like I always find pretty quickly too. So just hit me up and ask me questions and I'll be helping. Anyway, that I can honestly.

45:34 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And yeah, that's that actually leads in my next final question here, which is where can people overall connect with you? Like where are you most active? Where should they follow you?

45:43 Jonas Olson

Yeah, definitely most active on YouTube for sure. Follow me there. I have a person that in my own market, I posted something on Facebook and she commented on that. She like too bad that you that you're so close to proximate that I couldn't get help from you. I'm like, I could care less if you live right next door. I'm still going to help you. And that I didn't wasn't saying that to be like cool on social media. Like I truly meant it. And that one comment had so many likes. But like I met them at any event. They're great people. They're just starting out a business. I have again, that's why I have this YouTube channel. Like I want to give away as much free content as it possibly can to help out every operator out there.

46:24 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely. And that's what we're doing with the show here. So awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Jonas. It's been a pleasure and I learned a ton myself. So yeah, thank you. And I hope to have you on again sometime.

46:34 Jonas Olson

Sounds good, buddy. Appreciate it. Thanks.