Paul Alley on Under 1% Churn and Building the Largest Pestmaster Franchise

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm joined by Paul Alley who is the president of Pestmaster Services of the Hudson Valley. Paul has 39 years of hands-on experience in pest management. He's an associate certified entomologist and he's been a bedbug detection canine handler since 2001, actually deploying the first entomological scent detection canine in New York State. He leads the number one Pestmaster franchise in the entire system. With a team of 42 professionals delivering everything from general pest control and wildlife services to aquatic pest control, vegetation management, and even aerial pesticide applications by helicopter. So I'm super excited for this episode. I've heard tons of good things about Paul. Yeah, without now without further ado, Paul, welcome to the show.

00:48 Paul Alley

Well, thank you, Dan. I appreciate being here.

00:52 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So I was actually listening to a podcast of you recently and you were saying, like most people that you kind of fell into the pest control industry. But can you talk about how almost 40 years ago you got into pest control?

01:06 Paul Alley

Rewinded rewind the eight track tape player. I was just a kid in college and here in Florida actually and just it just kind of like I need a job and you know we've even gone so far as to ask our staff say how did you get into pest control? You and anybody I talked to very few people will say yeah I planned on being here you know I didn't plan on being pest control I was actually trying to go become a police officer. Thank God I didn't. But yeah, so here we are 40 years down the road and my wife and I have built a pretty successful pest control business.

01:46 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, I mean, talk to me about those early years. So were you a technician or what exactly were you doing?

01:53 Paul Alley

Oh, absolutely. I started from the ground up. You know, I remember, you know, doing baseboards spraying back in the 80s and just spraying baseboards, doing 10 to 15 houses a day, sprayed baseboards, which obviously, you know, the we don't do that anymore. Some companies still do that model, but, you know, my company model, we don't do that. Know, that spray baseboards and just running around, ran a trout in Miami. In a stick shift Toyota Tacoma with no air conditioning. That's how I got my teeth. I got the broken truck with no air conditioning.

02:34 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, dang. Okay. And now, fast forward to now, you have the biggest franchise, or yeah, the biggest location, I guess, franchise in the Pestmaster franchise. So, yeah, so when did that start? When did you get involved in the franchise?

02:46 Paul Alley

Correct. Correct. Got about 50 locations. We got involved in late 2000, like December 2000, we bought the franchise. We opened our doors in March of 2001. And our first year we did like $35,000. So from March to December, we did $35,000. It in a brand new market. So it wasn't as if we knew people in the market. We literally moved from Texas. Where I was doing pest control as a technician for a company called Metro Guard Pest Control. And where I was a senior technician, moved from Texas to New York. And that's where my father was and he asked us to move there because we were his only family. And just, we start opening the doors by doing a home show the first day and got a few customers and it just, you know, just built from the ground up. No salespeople. We have one salesperson now, which you've only been using an actual outside salesperson for about a month. And you know, been in business for 20 going on our 26th year. And this is the first time we've ever used an outside salesperson where they're actually just going out and do it other than myself and my manager who, but we're also, we at the time we were also doing rallies. So that's how we got where we are.

04:09 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. So talk to me about those first few years of Pestmaster then. What was working, what wasn't, what was it difficult?

04:20 Paul Alley

Pestmaster is very unique in the fact that they go after a lot of government contracts and that's where a lot of my forte comes now is just we do have to go after a lot of government contracts in addition to our standard residential and commercial pest control. But it is a, it's a portion of our current book of business. Mean, we've been doing, like we do West Point Military Academy. We've been doing that for 26 years, know, and that small government, city, school, state, know, hospitals, anything like that, we go after that. And that's where the Forte came in from Pestmaster. So they helped us secure West Point back in 2001. And we've had it ever since.

05:06 Dan Leibrandt

What are the pros and cons of having a government client or government contract?

05:14 Paul Alley

Well, there's a lot of regulation that the bidding process can be arduous at best. You when you go to a pizzeria or a small hotel or even residential, you can just go and shoot them a price and write it on a contract or service agreement and you call it a day. This is totally different. Between the FAR, which is the Federal Acquisition Regulations, and just filling out the paperwork correctly, it can be a daunting task for any company. And that being said, it's not unusual for a federal contract to come out, it's a 150 page contract. But you better understand 150 pages of that 150 page contract. And then getting paid is a whole other thing. You would think that if you're working for the federal government they'd have one pay system. Well they don't. If you're working for the army, that's one type of system that you have to import your invoices in. If you're working for the Veterans Administration, that's a whole other set. If you're working for schools, for the government, that's a whole other set. And then that doesn't come into play, your state contracts, things like that. And that's where my wife, Amy, excels. She absolutely just kills it with learning how to do what we call specialized billing. And we have an entire team that's dedicated. That's all they do is the specialized billing is there because it's that tedious. You miss a penny or you are off by a penny, they kick it back and then the and they don't tell you why they kicked it back. You just have to figure it out. And so that's just been, you know, it's just something that we've learned how to deal with and how to do and just make sure you know that everything is correct every time. But. Know, the program, that's the cons. Know, it's a lot of tedious bookkeeping and compliance. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a nice thing to have. It's nice for me to be able to say, I do the pest control at West Point Military Academy.

07:02 Dan Leibrandt

Really?

07:23 Paul Alley

I do the Governor's Mansion in New York State. And I've had that one for quite a while as well. So it's a nice reference to say, okay, if the best military trusts us, and if the governor, we can go in the governor's house, obviously we're doing something right.

07:42 Dan Leibrandt

So I'm not familiar with government contracts. Am super surprised. You said you have a whole team that's just dedicated to billing. Can you talk more about that?

07:51 Paul Alley

Yeah, between searching for them, between searching for the government contracts and then putting the whole bid together. Because you have to pull all the licenses together. Have to do the licenses. The insurance has put everything together and you've to write the scope of work for the contract. A lot of it's not just filling the price. You have to tell them how you're going to get to describe what you're going to do to solve XYZ problem. Whether it's disease on a golf course on the grass on the turf that we take care of or if it's, you know. What's the best way to treat for the spongy moth that we treated last year with helicopters? How are we gonna do that? We pulled that and having the technical knowledge of being an entomologist in addition to having my wife who understands the contract side of it. And then the team that puts it all together and being able to facilitate a special request for special work in a matter of two or three weeks is, it's, you know, it's pretty, it's a pretty niche business, you know, where there's not a whole lot of companies out there that can kind of do what we do.

09:10 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, I would think so. And what also blew my mind is that having contracts up to 150 pages, I mean, what does that even consist of?

09:20 Paul Alley

Well it consists of the schedule like how all the list of buildings the square footages of buildings all the description of every service that you're going to provide so it's not just hey you're going to do pest control and you're going to charge them $100 a month. It's we're gonna do this type of pest control for stored product pests. We're gonna do this type of pest control for turf damaging insects or aquatic vegetation removal. So everything has its own particular line item and it's required to its own separate price and you have to understand and write the scope of work how you're going to do it, what licenses you have to do it in addition to being able to provide them the list of approved products that you're going to use.

10:09 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

10:12 Paul Alley

Yeah, mean, know, pages of that. And in addition to, know, there's special pay rates that you that you're required to pay. Can't just pay normal twenty dollars an hour to a technician. Have the government sets you what you have the minimum that you have to pay them. So you have the set of the prevailing wage price, which varies by county or state or both. And then you have to provide health and welfare benefits on top of that, which would be copying your insurance and the uniform allowance and overtime pay and holiday pay and basically your benefits package. Have to put that separately on a separate paycheck. And so it's very, very tedious. And thank God my wife does all that and is in charge of all that department because I lose my mind.

11:04 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely, me too. Yeah, you've mentioned your wife several times, Amy, and I was just mentioning before the call that a lot of people in our program, it's usually the, not usually, but oftentimes it's the husband and wife running the business. It's not just the husband or maybe it's just the wife. So how do you balance that? Also being married, having a relationship with your wife, but also building a business together.

11:30 Paul Alley

I just do what I'm told at the end of the day. We have a very good relationship. We've always worked together. We've always, even before we did the pest control thing, when at one point we had a business, an ice cream parlor candy shop here in Florida. Again, we work with each other. We're around each other 24 hours a day. It takes patience and a lot of love and thank God she's got both of that.

12:03 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm. Yeah.

12:04 Paul Alley

We would not be where we are now without Amy. 100%. I'd probably still be on some antiquated software system or if I was even on software at all. And that makes all the difference in the world for these guys that want to grow.

12:21 Paul Alley

You gotta get the bones of, you're building a house, you gotta build a foundation first. And part of that foundation is whatever CRM you're gonna use. You wanna make sure that that CRM is gonna grow with you. It's one thing to buy into a CRM because of what your needs are now. But you need to be able to forecast what your needs are in two years, five years, 10 years down the road. Because we've changed CRMs in the middle of our growth. It's a pain in the butt. It really, really is. Amy, we're on FieldRoutes, no secrets. We're on fields. I even had Amy go out to McKinney, Texas and train in their office to sit with them for like two days and just let her learn the system. And then she brought all that knowledge back to us. And so we were able to do it, to put it to its best uses. And we're still learning. We're still, I still think like we're, it's a sports car. We're still stuck in like second or third gear. In it. We're one of their first customers. We're like eight years down the road now with FieldRoutes, which is about the life of is about how long they've been.

13:37 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. So, okay cool. Yeah, as most owners know that CRM is crucial, need to have something in place. FieldRoutes is one of the more common ones. So you guys use FieldRoutes. Is there any other software that you guys use that's like...

13:52 Paul Alley

Yeah, we use Smarter Launch with but from Eric, Eric Fletcher, amazing product, absolutely amazing product. Everybody that I've talked to about it and they've gotten on it, they're like, he's like, send me a gift certificate for a restaurant because they're so happy with getting on board with that company. That's a game changer for the industry. For the proposal software that we use. We use Applause as well. Our technicians can get some reviews and get some, re-numerated through the customer, some tips and things like that through Applause. And it helps our build our Google reviews, which is always a big thing, good thing as you know. So.

15:14 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so Smarter Launch and Applause. Yeah, I've heard many good things about both those platforms. So cool. I just want to make sure because a lot of people are always asking about software. And then another thing I want to ask you, Paul is, you mentioned that you guys started this company about 26 years ago. And I want to know if you were to start a new company or even just open up another location.

15:42 Dan Leibrandt

How do you go about opening up in a new market? Because I feel like, I mean, when you open up for the first time, like you guys did 26 years ago, there's bound to be tons of mistakes and problems. So what would you do if you were to start over or start another?

15:56 Paul Alley

I mean, at this point, the games changed so much, With SEO and the internet and everything like that. We didn't have the benefit of that back in the day. I mean, it was there, but it wasn't like, you know, we use phone books. We Googled, you know, we were in phone books and people would look us up and that's how we got. So we're paying, we're like 15 different phone books and that's how we got our new business. Now it's totally different. So I'd have to open up Zip Code Kings and probably read that book again. It's probably what I'd have to do to start a new brand. Luckily, I don't have to do that. I don't have to open a new brand branch. But that's kind of what, you know, it's just, you know, using the tools that are available to us at the time. Clover leafing, whether, you know, we're doing postcard mail outs, you know, trying it again this year. I don't know if it's going to work or not. We'll see. But a lot of just learning and using the social media aspect of it is the way I would be doing it now. Mean, but everybody's door knockers. We didn't have door knockers back then. So everybody wants to be, you know, use door knockers. I'm still on the fence with door knockers because of my personal experiences with them. So, and we won't go into that.

17:11 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I know that there's definitely mixed opinions about door-to-door in this industry. I know a lot of the eight figure owners that I've talked to have grown through door-to-door, but a lot of people I also talk to say it's unethical or they don't like it. So I understand both sides.

17:14 Paul Alley

40 years you replace that.

17:33 Paul Alley

Right, mean, you know, I mean, but again, the pricing structure, you know, and, cause I've had, I've had, I've had door knockers bad mouth my company to me, not knowing I'm the owner of the company. So that being said, you know, that, door knocking, they don't come in my neighborhood anymore for some reason, I don't know why. But you know, it's just, it's not a, if you're gonna, I don't have a problem with anybody selling.

17:45 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

18:01 Paul Alley

Sell with ethics and integrity, that's fine. But when they're not, when they're just selling to sell because they're not getting paid unless they sell, that's the problem that I have with door knocking companies. And I haven't had any experience other than those type of companies. So.

18:18 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, yeah, that makes sense. What I also wanted to ask you, which is, I guess, kind of the thesis of the show is just generally helping pest control owners grow. For you, for your company, what is working best in terms of generating leads and sales?

18:37 Paul Alley

Probably just the social media and the LSAs is probably our biggest spend. And with a good ROI is the LSA stuff that we do. We're dropping, we drop a lot of money into LSAs.

18:53 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, got it. So LSAs and social media.

18:56 Paul Alley

And then just provide quality service. Yeah, we just provide quality service. We're asking for reviews and we're posting those reviews and things like that. And then the other companies in my market are not that strong. So that helps us as well. From a from a... From basically a training issue where we're training our techs and all our techs are licensed and background checked and everything like that versus you hire somebody, you put them in the trucks, now you have a truck and a truck and they're just going to spray. We don't even spray, we apply. It's just the different differentiators that we like to point out to the customer, make sure they're aware. There are a lot of differentiators between us and the other companies that are in our market.

19:48 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, so you're you guys are getting a lot of natural referrals then or organic referrals just from doing a really good service.

19:54 Paul Alley

Oh yeah, Yep. Mean, my customer, you know, my customer churn rate is under 1 % and, you know, my customers are staying with me for, you know, anywhere from 7 to 10 years on average. You know, the door-to-door customer, the door-to-door companies, think that you have to, they're churning, you know, almost 100 % over a very short two-year period that the clients are moving on because of unfulfilled promises. It's what I'm told. That's what I'm told. And so you have to recreate that.

20:28 Dan Leibrandt

1 % churn. Well, 1 % churn is incredible. So talk to me more about how you retain customers and keep them that long.

20:37 Paul Alley

Customer service, at the end of the it's just customer service. Under promise, over deliver. Don't park your truck in the driveway, bring it into your trash can if it's out by the street. Don't park in the driveway because if your truck leaks oil, now you leaked oil on their driveway and they're gonna be pissed off. Go beyond, under promise but over deliver is what I call it. Show up in a nice clean uniform, clean truck, presentable. There's a lot of companies that are killing it out there, killing it out there with their branding, with their presentation to the customer. Believe it not, it makes the difference. Become friends with your customers. If somebody passes on, we send a condolence letter. If we know if it's a kid's birthday, drop a card. We used to send handwritten thank you notes. To the customers, know, something that people don't do anymore. We don't do it anymore. We should, but we just don't, we don't have time, you know, but so now we, you know, our software will send out a thank you letter to them and that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's just old fashioned, good customer service is what it boils down to. Know, you know. We tell our technicians, okay, treat this house as if it was your own house or your mother's house. And then when you get done, ask yourself the question, because they're out there by themselves, right? So they're their own police. We ask that you say, just before you get in a truck and pull away out of that driveway, ask yourself, would you pay for that service that you just provided? You know?

22:15 Paul Alley

And just ask that question yourself. And if you say no, go fix it before you leave, because the customer is going to know it anyway. You're always on camera. You know, we're always on camera. No matter where we are, there's camera somebody's watching, whether it's inside or outside. And, you know, if you're going to take a shortcut, you're probably going to get caught. It's not worth it. Just ask yourself when you get in the truck, was the service I provided today worth XYZ price that we're charging them? And the technicians say yes, then they don't get, the guys that say yes almost every time never get complaints, don't get callbacks. It's the guys that take the shortcuts, the callbacks come.

22:54 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, now that is such a powerful frame shift. I surprisingly actually haven't heard someone say, you know, maybe treat it like your mom's house. I mean, obviously you would go above and beyond for your mom's house or maybe a close friend or relative. So instead of just, it's another house. I just have to get through another day of servicing. Like, no, actually take pride in your work and make sure that not only just morally and ethically, but also, mean, you are probably on camera. Make sure that you're doing a good job because you're you're being watched somehow. But maybe someone's watching you through the window across the street.

23:29 Paul Alley

Yeah, especially in Northeast. If we're doing a service, you know, checking rodent base stations, and let's say we just had a fresh snow, you know, obviously we're going to see if there's footprints in the snow. You know, and I'm not saying my guys are perfect. Okay, I've gotten the call, hey, you just charge me for exterior rodent service and check all the base stations, but there's no footprints around. It just sends me pictures. It's like, okay, so now we have to, now it's a teaching moment, provided it's the first time it's happened with tech. It's a teaching moment. Dude, you're on camera. So then now you have to go back and tuck tail, go back and meet with the customer and do the service the right way.

23:41 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

24:11 Dan Leibrandt

And I think this directly ties into who you hire in the first place, right? Because ideally this kind of thing never happens. The service is always great because you hire great people. So talk to me about that. How do you find great people to staff on your team?

24:30 Paul Alley

It's a chore. It's a challenge. I mean, straight up, it's a challenge. Especially this time of year. Any time of year. Because the workforce is not what it used to be. Don't have the... Ever since COVID, people don't want to work. You can get free money by going through unemployment. Why am I going to have to work? Do to work? Do to 12 hours today or 10 hours today? It's hard. We are very picky in who we hire. And that's, you know, that makes it difficult. We kind of create our own problems by being that difficult. Want you, before we even interview you, we have, you have to give us your driver's license. We run your driver's license. Before we even offer an interview, we run your driver's license. So that costs us like $15 just to do that out of the gate. Go down to literally fill out the paperwork, go down to the DMV and get a motor vehicle abstract. Cause if they're going to If the insurance company is not going to cover them, then we get back that their license, they have been suspended or they have a DUI that they didn't tell us about. So now we know they're driving history. And then, you interview them and find out what they want. We've hired now more for morals. And ethics than we do for integrity than we do for experience because there's a lot of bad techs out there that just you know they know they know how to do shortcuts and things like that and at the end of the interview we walk them out to their car all the way out to the car because now we get to see how they keep their car if they keep their car you know if you go out there and the cars just you know full of garbage and cups and stuff like that, that might not be the right fit because you want your truck is your office and your truck is the moving billboard. So if they can't keep their own stuff in good shape, working condition, clean, how are they going to keep your stuff that they don't have to pay for?

26:11 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

26:38 Paul Alley

So it makes it a more difficult to find the right people. But then we run a background check on them and that weeds out a bunch of people and all that stuff.

26:47 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, interesting. I've never heard someone go to the links, but again, it makes sense to run their driver's license and get a full background check and also maybe to see if they're lying. I think that's, there's a quote I pulled from you, which is, if you lie to me, you're fired. Can you talk about that?

27:08 Paul Alley

Yeah, we have three rules. Don't lie to us, the management team. Don't lie to the customer and just do your job. If somebody's sick, right? So if you know the night before, if you're gonna come into work that day, unless something really weird happens. You know by seven or eight o'clock the night before. If it's in the middle of summertime, you could just be like, listen, you could just pick up phone and hey, Paul, listen, man, tomorrow's Thursday, I am just shot. I've been running 14 hour days, the last two or three days. I just, I don't think, I just, burned out. I just need a break. Okay, fine. Then we'll work the schedule to accommodate you. But don't call me at eight o'clock in the day of and say, I'm sick. You did not just get sick at 8 o'clock in the morning. You didn't feel good either the night before. There's always precursors to it. We've had in the past, we've had staff that would historically, the day after a big game, they call out. Or a certain day of the week, they brag that, oh yeah, I'm going out to play darts tonight or throw horseshoes or whatever. And then the next day, yeah, I'm sick. I came down with a stomach bug, but it's like every week. I mean, just tell me, I need be off on Wednesday or I need to be off on Thursday, whatever. And we'll work with you. It's that simple, be honest, tell me, tell me the truth. You're very rarely, people get sick at the last minute that you know in advance if you're not gonna be able to come into work. So we just ask for transparency and honest communication in both directions.

28:50 Dan Leibrandt

Is there a story that comes to mind pertaining that where someone told you like a horrible lie and you had to let them go?

29:01 Paul Alley

I just had let somebody go the other day because he lied to me. Mean, it's, don't have to, I don't have to go that far back. You know, I'm in Florida right now and, but my operation is in New York. So I go back to New York like once a month. So I was in, I was in the office and this isn't about lying about being sick. This is just about, it just lying in general. But you know, I saw the kid and I said, he wasn't in uniform and uniform, it's a big deal for me. And then we're in the middle of transitioning to new uniforms. So I said, well, where's your uniform? He it doesn't fit. I said, okay, which uniform does not fit? Well, the new ones. Understandable, because mine don't fit either. So, and I wear a uniform too. So I said, so where's the old uniform? Well, they're in my closet. Well, why are you not wearing it? Because they don't fit. I said, okay. So I kind of left us. Let's actually at that point he hadn't told me they didn't fit. I just said, make sure you're in uniform the next time I see you. Well, he didn't expect me to be there like two days later when he showed up. He was in the same down uniform, know, muck rucker boots on cause it was raining out, but, you know, black jeans. Should have had tan pants on. It's wearing one of our sweatshirts and he could wear a sweatshirt, but you have to have our uniform underneath it. Wasn't wearing that. I'm like, we had this conversation, why are we still having this conversation again? And at this point I'm getting aggravated and I don't ever yell at anybody, but at this point I was getting aggravated because we were just in an endless loop of, well, you said this and I said, yeah, I said this, you're right, but you didn't do this. So he's going back and forth, uniform still fit and come and find out he'd never put on his other uniforms, his old uniforms. He just never told anybody they didn't fit.

30:52 Paul Alley

So at that point, I just like, you know what? This is not going to work. And say your last day. So he called me three days in a row after I let him go begging for his job back.

31:05 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Dang. It's ultimately it's...

31:08 Paul Alley

So Dan is not that hard. Just do your job. At the end of day, it's just do your job. I mean, we're giving you a truck.

31:15 Dan Leibrandt

What I was gonna say...

31:17 Paul Alley

Gas card, I'm giving you uniforms to wear. I said the only thing I'm basically not giving you is your underwear. Other than that, you can wear everything.

31:24 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah yeah, definitely. Yeah, what I'm noticing here is that it really all boils down to trust. And you shouldn't have to baby them, babysit them, and tell them every single day. Yeah.

31:37 Paul Alley

Absolutely not. Right, not gonna, if you're not gonna be, will never hire, I trust but verify, but the minute you lose our trust, then it's just a matter of when you're being fired or being let go. And don't get me wrong, we don't go through a lot of people. We don't have, our employee churn rate is as good as our customer churn rate. We don't lose a lot of people. So I can't complain, you know, my operations, or I'm sorry, my COO. Is phenomenal and he spends a lot of time training and setting the expectations and making sure every employee understands the expectations and can meet the expectations. We never want to set somebody up for failure. Absolutely not because that's not fair to them and it just cost us money so why would we do that? So it's just a matter of just if they know the expectations coming in from day number two they understand the expectations. And if they can't meet them, then they move on. But luckily, our hiring process is so rigid that when somebody comes on board, they work out great. I've got company, I've got technicians that we've hired that we were told, they came with experience, this one in particular, came to us with experience. And he told us the honest truth. He said, yes, I was fired from this company. And this is why I was fired. And then we go back to that company because we have a relationship with them say, hey, so and so is applying here. What's your thoughts? Oh, he was the worst tech ever. And he's actually we sat him down. We went through the process of the expectation. It wasn't a him problem. It was a it was a it was a them problem. And he's one of our best and most highly recognized technicians. Customers absolutely love him. So, yeah.

33:38 Dan Leibrandt

That's awesome. So I guess you can't always trust what the other companies say then.

33:43 Paul Alley

Of course not. Because if they, you if you trust but verify.

33:50 Dan Leibrandt

Definitely. One other thing I want to note was, so you've mentioned your company is based in New York, but yet you're in Florida. So how do you balance that? And how do you run your company yet you're not there?

34:04 Paul Alley

Quality staff, highly qualified and quality staff. This is our first year down here. We are in Vero Beach, Florida. It's where I grew up and we just bought a house here back in October with the plan of being spending winter down here. My wife has been down, she's pretty much stayed down here the whole time. I've gone to New York I think twice. In the last four months, maybe three times in the last four months. But when I go, I go in, I go in, I'm out, I'm quick. You know, I'm there for like three or four days. I drive up and grab whatever I need from the house, do the work that I got to do and come back down here. And so far it's working. Mean, I have a full office remote office desktop here, the same exact one that I have at my office in New York. You know, so and everything. So with the Internet. You know, everything so I can look at the bank account, I can do a QuickBooks online, I can look at the schedule, I can run credit cards if somebody forgets to do that. I can run AR reports, I can do everything. I log into my CRM from here. You know, can do a customer still call me. They're like, hey, I need that proposal. So I can do proposals with through Smarter Launch from here. And it has the same ability to look, jump in and work with the specialized billing if need be. I can look at the ADP payroll. I can do in Kingston short of going out and actually visiting the customer. Other than that, I can do everything I need to do from remotely. And it's fantastic. Fantastic. It's like a...

35:36 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, no, I agree. Run two online businesses. I agree. Sometimes I'll be traveling, I'll be maybe overseas and I can still get all my work done. It's awesome.

35:50 Paul Alley

Yep, I get all the work done. Get up, my wife, she likes to get up a little later than I do. I get up, I get on the computer, I do everything. I have all my meetings set early in morning with my team. And then as I told you when we jumped on before you actually started recording, five minutes before this recording, I was literally had a hook and rod in the water fishing on a dock. I do that for about two to three hours a day. Go out and go fishing and it's just me and the pelicans and the dolphin and the fish. And just sit out there, take phone calls. I can do my business even sitting on the dock.

36:29 Dan Leibrandt

That's a life and I feel like a lot of people either get like too caught up in the grind where they're just working non-stop where I feel like a lot of people that that ultimately is what they want or at least what they wanted is you know to have some freedom and be able to do what you want with your time right...

36:48 Paul Alley

Oh, absolutely. Mean, you know, you know, I'm going, we're going, we're going to Tampa next, next couple of days just to go have dinner with Seth from Pest Daily. So we're to have dinner with him. We'll spend a night and drive back over here. We're three hours away and my dad's two hours away, but it's. Once you get to a certain point of working, you gotta work on your business, not in your business. And if you're in the day to day grind, in your office every day, and you're running routes and things like that, you're working in your business. Where the owners, once you hit a certain point, and don't get me wrong, working in your business is part of the deal. It's part of it. I saw somebody, actually it was on the Pest Control Millionaires, had asked a question about marketing. And how to do this and how to do that. And as I'm looking at it, because he posted a picture of his location. This is like a week and a half ago. He posted a picture of his location and I'm like, I know where that is. That's right here at town. So I DMed him through Facebook. We connected and Amy and I went over there and sat with him and his, his, his sister for like two hours and just went over. This is what you need to do. Stop doing this. Look at this software. This is what you know, you can do this with this software. Look at this nuance with FieldRoutes, get this fixed and things like that. And so we're going to try to hopefully we're going try have another meeting to help them at war. But I do know they signed up for Smarter Launch. So that's cool. So but that's because your Facebook group, that's because your Facebook group, know, the Control group. So yeah, so we're just, you know, I like to help people just like you said, beginning, you know, you want to help people grow. And that's what I want to do as well. And whether you're a pest, whether you're a Pestmaster, which is, you know, obviously...

38:26 Dan Leibrandt

Mm. Yeah, no, that's so awesome that, yeah.

38:50 Paul Alley

We are the largest out of like 50 locations. But anybody who calls me, I'm gonna try to help them. Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's just, you know, I'm a student of the game of pest control anyway. So, you know, I have a lot of contacts and I'm going out, I think going on Wednesday with one of our industry icons to help to watch him do a lot of termite inspections and things like that down here in South Florida. Just because you know what? I'm still a student of the game. So I want to still learn even though it's probably going to be on dry woods, which I don't have up in New York, but it's always, it's fun to get back into it and stuff like that.

39:27 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, no, there's never too much you can learn. There's always more, there's always bigger fish out there, there's always people that you can learn from. And yeah, that's so awesome that you were helping that person in the group. Yeah, I see you pretty active. You're always helping people there, so I really appreciate that.

39:46 Paul Alley

Yeah, yeah, no, it's fun. Like it. You know, it has nothing to do with size either. So I learned a valuable lesson. And I'm not going to say names just because I don't want to boost his ego, but I don't want to hurt anybody else's feelings either. But I'm dealing with a pest control business issue. And he and I were talking, and he's much smaller than I am. He's like, well, listen, this should handle it this way. I'm like, and it was like, because I wanted to do it a totally different way. I just wanted to just do what I want to do and be done with it. He's like, no, you got to do it this way. So, and I'm like, see, that's just to show you. I don't know everything. I even though I'm doing a very healthy business, I'm not perfect. And I need somebody from an outsider's perspective. And this guy's probably, you know, two trucks or three trucks. And I got 25 or 30 trucks on the road. He taught me something. That was valuable information. Maybe really think of it from a different perspective. So I'm like, okay, so we're gonna try it that way. See what happens. So anybody, it doesn't matter if you're a $10 million company or a $250,000 company. Everybody can earn, learn equally. And that's why I like the industry. And I love going to different conferences, whether it's Pest Daily, whether it's Eagles Desk Mastermind Group, whether it's a PJB group or Paul Bellow group, things like that. I wanted to go to Bug Bux, but I didn't make that one this time. And it's just, you can always learn from somebody.

40:51 Dan Leibrandt

Sweet, yeah, never.

41:23 Paul Alley

Whether it's in NACOA event or whether it's AAC, there's so many different events and networking opportunities. And I try to tell that to even our franchise when they have their own internal meetings. I say, it's not about who's sitting up at the podium telling you how to kill a spider or an ant. It's about the sidebars that happen during dinner on coffee breaks when it's the one-on-one communication and conversation. That's where the value comes in. You know, I'm great friends with the people at Pest Pros of Michigan. Fantastic company, fantastic people. I learn from them all the time. Maria Sorrentino, she's awesome. Anthony's awesome. You know, that kind of stuff.

42:04 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, I totally agree on the conference perspective. I remember the first year I went to PestWorld, all I did, because I didn't know anyone, was just go to all the different seminars and listening to people speak. And then this most recent year, which was like six months ago, I didn't go to a single seminar. And the whole time was just meeting people that I'd been connecting with online. And I don't know, maybe people running into me and that kind of thing. And I got way more value out of that, which I'm not saying like don't go to seminars, seminars aren't valuable or they can't be. But like you said, a lot of it is getting that interpersonal relationship and learning exactly from people's experiences and what's working for them.

42:45 Paul Alley

Absolutely. I agree 100%. I haven't been to a seminar at PestWorld in probably like four or five years. We go for the all the sidebars, the dinners, the meetings and the show for the vendor show for is what I go for. I get all I get all my credits online. I'm not worried about the credits, you know.

43:08 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, 100%. Something else, which tying back to the working in or on your business before we wrap up here. So at least what I was understanding from what you were saying is that there's a period of time where you have to work in your business before you can work on it. Is there like a level of business where you get at or maybe you hire your COO?

43:30 Paul Alley

I think it's set in stone like it's, when you hit this revenue mark, now you have to work on your business. No, every day I'm working in the business, but as I put people in their places, I'm able to more look from the bigger picture and kind of delegate and things like that. My operations manager, owner, I'm sorry, it's a new title. He was my operations guy, now he's my CIO, Chief Operating Officer. He's got his head in the game so much. He's like, hey, this is what I want to do. I want to this, and this. And this is what the ROI is going to be. So I'm able to sit back and just kind of contemplate what he's telling me instead of just saying, yeah, let's just throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. He's coming at me with data and numbers and everything like that, which is really invaluable in trying to work on the business versus in the business. So when I say you're in the business, you're in the truck every day and doing and then going running a full route and then then trying to sit down and do the bank deposit. That's your working in the business. When you're working on them on the business you're able to strategize and say okay I have a meeting at 10 o'clock or 9 o'clock every Tuesday morning that we're strategizing our marketing. That's why marketing meeting is 9 o'clock every Tuesday, 930 every Tuesday morning. I meet with my business consultant at 9 o'clock on Tuesday morning and then just so everything just kind of dovetails together and then we have the game plan for the week. Okay, we're going to meet this expectation. We're going to do that and things like that. So then I'm able to circle back and say, okay, what do I need? I need to work on this. And then I have time dedicated that I can work on this project, whether it's a marketing, you know, working with my marketing team directly, or if it's, you know, concentrating and running all the numbers for the, for a bid that we're putting together, or if it's go so far as if it's helping another branch that's putting a bid together.

45:47 Paul Alley

So I can help them so they can be successful. And that's what I call by working on the business versus in the business. If you're working through a windshield, running your business through a windshield of a truck, you're in your business. If you're able to sit and look out the window of an office, you're working on your business.

46:00 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

46:07 Dan Leibrandt

Got it, that makes sense. Okay, so you have to get out of the truck at some point if you really wanna grow and then it seems like there's kind of a constant balance of working in slash on the business.

46:18 Paul Alley

It is a concept now, but it's gotten easier because know virtual assistants have really changed the game drastically from an office standpoint because everyone's like do I hire another tech? Do I hire an office person? Well you want to hire tech because the tech is going to make you the money whereas the office person is going to process the money so you really have to figure out what's going to work best for your model but now with the technology and whatever it may be, PES AI or SOS, whatever the different phone systems are and the AI integration and then on top of it having a virtual assistance out of the Philippines or Mexico or another country, that changes the whole game because now I have six VAs that answer the phones for us. So having the VAs, I'm paying five VAs essentially what it costs me to have one person in the office. Have five, three or four, three of them. Yeah, they're $8 an hour, $10 an hour, whatever it is versus a $20 or $30 an hour employee that sits in my office and doing the exact same thing.

47:31 Dan Leibrandt

Where are your virtual assistants based?

47:34 Paul Alley

Philippines and Mexico. Get them...

47:37 Dan Leibrandt

Huh, yeah, because a problem I see there is sometimes they'll have too strong of an accent.

47:42 Paul Alley

To... No, because I mean I've had one instance that a customer got pissed off and fired us because they didn't want to talk to a... Insert racial slur. So it was like fine. You can go away. You're not the type of customer I want because you're not going to disrespect my staff. I'm sorry that you don't like the fact that we have somebody from the Philippines answering the phone. But at end of the day, that's who's answering the phone. They speak, and it's a running joke that I when I described this conversation, I've had it numerous times, they speak English gooder than we do. So.

47:57 Dan Leibrandt

You...

48:22 Paul Alley

You know, so cut people some slack. Don't be a racist idiot. Know, we have a gentleman that works for us out of Mexico. Fantastic. You don't know, he lived in the US for like 20 years. You know, he does. Speaks, he's bilingual. That's fantastic. You know, I think it's fantastic. And we've hired five. We've never had to fire any VAs. Ever. You know, they show up, they do what they're supposed to do. You could do a whole podcast on that and pull Seth Watson into it from Focus VA.

49:03 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I did some work for him last year.

49:09 Paul Alley

Yeah, that's good people.

49:12 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, so that's awesome. And yeah, I totally vouch for VA's as well. I've got several VA's in my agency.

49:19 Paul Alley

Well then you know the deal.

49:20 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So cool. Paul, I know we're almost at time here, so we'll start to wrap up. I've got one final question that I like to ask all of my guests, and that is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there? What do you want to tell them? What do think they need to know?

49:43 Paul Alley

Wow, I don't have that much time. Stop asking stupid questions on the internet. Stop using the word spray. We don't spray chemicals, we apply products. That's probably one of my biggest pet peeves is just dumbing down our industry. If you guys wanna get paid like a doctor, you gotta act like a doctor. Straight up.

50:06 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. So have to take it more seriously is kind of what I'm getting there. Paul, this has been a pleasure. I really appreciate your time coming on the show. Where can people find you and, you know, contact you?

50:19 Paul Alley

Well, obviously on social media, I'm Paul Alley Sr. Because my son is one big share differentiated on social media and you can email me at [email address removed] if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance in government contracting or anything like that just shoot me an email [email address removed]

50:45 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So yeah, make sure to go follow Paul on Facebook. He is one of the legends in the pest control industry. And thanks so much for coming on Paul. This has been awesome.

50:54 Paul Alley

Yeah, my pleasure, Dan. Anytime.

50:57 Dan Leibrandt

Sweet.

50:57 Paul Alley

Now I'm going to go back to the fish.