Kyle Turner on building Pro Active Pest Control to 140 employees without door knocking

In his first 6 months running Pro Active Pest Control, Kyle Turner was dealing with a few lawsuits, didn’t have many customers and was thinking about selling them to his old employer so he could get his job back. Then one day, with the weather heating up, he sold and serviced about 10 accounts on a single street. He bought lemonade from a little girl out front, her family signed up, then the neighbor, and it snowballed.

Twelve years later, Pro Active has more than 140 employees and over 30,000 customers in California and Arizona. Kyle only knocked doors for those first 6 months. After that, the calls came from Yelp, Google and his reviews, so that’s where I started our conversation. Most of the rest was about his people.

Who is Kyle Turner?

Kyle Turner founded Pro Active Pest Control in Roseville, California, and runs it as CEO. He grew up doing landscaping for his dad and always figured his own business would be a landscaping company. His cousin was a technician and a buddy had started a pest control company, but Kyle pooh-poohed the industry until he saw the opportunity in it.

He took a pay cut to become a tech. When he asked that buddy for a job, with no experience, he was told to get his California license first. Kyle passed the test and called back, and his buddy seemed surprised he’d actually done it. After a couple of years in the field, Kyle started Pro Active in 2014.

Yelp is a game you can learn

Kyle told Allan Draper about his Yelp start on the Bug Bux Podcast, so I asked him to go further. More than 10 years ago, Yelp had little competition and no ads, and Pro Active popped up everywhere for free. Today you’ll scroll past 10 paid listings before you see anyone who isn’t paying.

Yelp is still Pro Active’s second biggest lead source, behind Google, which surprised me. When I asked about Yelp in our Facebook group about a month earlier, almost everyone called it the absolute worst. Kyle pointed out that Yelp started in San Francisco, so a lot of people in Northern California use it. He didn’t exactly defend it, though.

“Yelp does suck. Well, it’s interesting. It’s a game and you got to figure it out. And most people hate Yelp because they don’t understand it.”

You need a really good reputation and a five-star rating first, he said, or no amount of ad spend will work. Yelp also filters reviews. It can tell when you’re asking for them, and it drops reviews that look fake or too cheesy, or that come from an account someone opened just to leave one. That makes it hard to manipulate, which Kyle thinks is why so many owners hate it.

Speed wins a shared lead

About 70% of Pro Active’s Yelp leads are paid and 30% are free. A lot of them arrive as messages that go to Pro Active and 4 other companies at once, HomeAdvisor style.

To beat the other 4, Kyle said, be the hungriest, and that mostly comes down to speed. Reply as quickly as possible and give the lead something tangible to think about, whether that’s a price, a spot on the schedule or a solution. PCM’s guide to working paid directory leads makes the case that those sales are won or lost in the first 10 minutes.

Google is a way bigger source now, and Kyle keeps that side simple, with Local Service Ads and Google Business Profiles that really pop off. Since those first months, Pro Active has knocked doors for just one summer, about 5 years ago, when a team went out to kick off the Arizona office.

Growth is how he recruits

I asked Kyle where he got stuck. Not to toot his own horn, he said, but they never did. In his circle, owners usually can’t get past one technician, somewhere around $500K by his guess. For Kyle, hiring the right people early was crucial, starting with the first employee, and most of his early hires are still with him. Jonas Olson walks through that wall and the ones after it in his episode on the 4 revenue levels.

Pro Active keeps its foot on the gas without door-to-door, because once you lose momentum, it’s harder to hire and stay motivated. It grows every year, and that growth creates the opportunities A players look for.

“My product, the pest control, that’s not me, it’s my employees.”

Pro Active trains its own people and promotes from within. If Kyle were a tech busting his butt for a promotion and watched it go to an outsider, he’d lose motivation. He hires on attitude rather than the resume, because skills can be developed, and A players are magnetic and very positive. To keep them, he offers visible growth, a vision to buy into, good pay, incentives and recognition. “All simple things,” he said.

Everyone gets a shot at Cabo

A top performers trip is usually just for the sales team, especially at door-to-door companies. Two years ago, Kyle started one anyone at Pro Active can earn, with each team’s manager picking a top performer over 9 months.

There were about 30 people on the most recent trip, by Kyle’s count, and each winner got to bring a significant other. They spent 2 nights at an all-inclusive resort in Cabo, with a dinner and a day on a big rented yacht. Every technician team had a winner, and so did customer service, sales and management. It’s very expensive, Kyle admits, but a drop in the bucket for a profitable company, and winners bring that energy back to their teams.

There’s also a company event every quarter, with a spring kickoff at Topgolf in April, a family picnic in September and a dressed-up Christmas party in December.

Kyle never learned any of this at a big company. The biggest one he’s ever worked for is his own, and every job before it had 5 or 10 people. He just asks what he’d want as an employee. If he’d enjoy a Christmas party, other people probably would too. Everybody wants to be part of something, he said, which is what Howard Partridge, who I interviewed about a year earlier, calls a longing for belonging.

Termite work can wait

Kyle doesn’t remember exactly when Pro Active passed $1M, maybe year 2 or 3. After that, he kept expanding territory from the inside out, and without that, he told me, they would have plateaued. If you’re growing the same way, I wrote about building local SEO outside your core location.

For its first 5 or 6 years, Pro Active only sold recurring service plans. Once it had a really good base, it added termite work, rodent proofing and bird work. Kyle would tell small owners to wait too. A day on a termite job might pay well, but it’s a day you didn’t add customers who would pay you every month for the next 5, 10, 20 or 30 years. Offer them, he says, but don’t let them pull you away from building the base.

Pro Active is about 90% residential. When you’re paying a lot for ads, aim them where customers are likelier to stick, refer and pay their bill. Kyle’s ideal customer is a new homeowner who just moved in.

A backup for every seat

Kyle got out of the day-to-day by hiring good people and planning for the worst case, with a backup for every role so one resignation never puts him back in that seat. He trained the first wave of hires himself, on the idea that if you train one person really well, they can train the next.

Today he meets weekly with 3 direct reports: his director of operations, his HR and payroll manager, and accounting with his CPA. He’s a big advocate of the book Profit First and puts a good profit margin around 20%. Below 15% is too low and above 25% is a little too high. Jonas sets the bar a little differently in his profit margin breakdown.

Call your own office

Every day, Kyle looks at where sales are coming from, closing percentages and how the ads are doing. Most days he also calls his own office, both as a current customer and as a new lead.

I don’t know many owners of large companies who do that. He’s done it for years and actually enjoys it, since he often ends up chatting with a CSR about the calls she’s getting, though he isn’t sure his team enjoys it as much. The only other owner he’s heard of doing something similar is Luke Lewis of Native Pest Management, who mentioned it on a podcast. If you want to give customers a good experience, Kyle says, you have to go through it yourself, and a phone nobody answers is a bad one.

He gives his managers the field version.

“Go on a ride along with a technician. I guarantee you by the end you’ll have more than a dozen things to look at, talk about, or think about.”

Pride will kill everything

Kyle never thought he’d run a company this size, and he’s had to learn to set his pride aside.

“The worst thing you could do is be a prideful person, and ‘it’s my idea’ or this or whatever. Pride will kill everything.”

I told him I wasn’t sure I’d heard “setting your pride aside” before, and it reminded me of the 20 minutes or so Preston Peterson and I spent on why it can’t be about you.

Kyle added that you can’t be an emotional wreck, either. When something bad happens, like a lawsuit, put on a brave face so your team keeps believing in you.

To wrap up, he told owners to be profitable and figure out what they want, since a big company isn’t for everybody. If you’re starting out, he’d skip partners. Pro Active has none, and he thinks most people take one on because they’re scared.

My take

Kyle’s two best lead sources reward the same habits. Yelp wants a five-star reputation built on real reviews and a quick reply to every message. Google’s Local Service Ads and Google Business Profiles lean on reviews and responsiveness too, and that’s most of what my team works on with pest control owners. None of it depends on how many doors you can knock.

I’d add one step before his secret-shopper call. Pull up your company on your phone the way a new homeowner in one of your towns would. Read your newest reviews, check the hours on your listing, then dial the number Google shows you. By the time someone at your office says hello, you’ve seen everything a new lead sees first.

A lot of how Kyle runs Pro Active comes from asking what he’d want in the other person’s shoes. Calling in as a lead is the same habit, pointed at customers instead of employees.

Where to find Kyle

Instagram is the best place to find Kyle, on his own account or Pro Active’s, and he’s on Facebook too. If you want a job, he calls Pro Active the best place to work, with a spot on the top performers trip if you do well.

• Website: Pro Active Pest Control
• Careers: Jobs at Pro Active
• Instagram: @turnerkyle12
• Company Instagram: @beproactivepestcontrol
• Facebook: Kyle Turner
• LinkedIn: Kyle Turner