Tony Hoffman and Greg Lake on Taking Rumble Pest Solutions From $40K to $12M

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host Dan Leibrandt and today I'm with Tony Hoffman, co-founder of Rumble Pest Solutions and Greg Lake, Rumble's CEO. Anthony, or rather Tony, started Rumble in Springdale, Arkansas back in 2017. Nine years later, they just hit 12 million in revenue and landed on the PCT Top 100 for the first time. Tony also runs several other brands, each doing millions of their own. On this episode, we're going to talk about how they scaled from a single Arkansas office into a tri-state operation, what it actually took to crack the PCT Top 100, and how a founder and an outside CEO divide the work in a fast-growing pest control company. Now without further ado, Tony, Greg, welcome to the show.

00:45 Greg Lake

Hey, thanks, Dan. Looking forward to it.

00:51 Tony Hoffman

Thanks for having us Dan, we really appreciate it.

00:51 Dan Leibrandt

Of course, guys. So, Tony, I want to start with you. How did you end up getting into Pest Control and then starting this company?

00:59 Tony Hoffman

Sure, so like a lot of guys in this industry, I was a broke college student who was trying to make money and get through school. So one of my friends said, hey, why don't you come do summer sales for the summer in Utah? And my brother-in-law owns a pest control company. And you can make pretty good money. I met. A lot of people know Lenny Gray. He had a company in Utah. I went and did summer sales for him. The first summer, I did really well at it. I was the top salesman in the company. And I swore I would never do pest control ever again. I said, I did well with it. I'm never going to do this again. And now this will be my 21st summer in pest control.

01:45 Dan Leibrandt

Hahaha...

01:55 Greg Lake

No.

01:55 Tony Hoffman

Spent a lot of summers doing door-to-door sales and then got into the operations side over the last 15 years running branches, managing branches, managing salespeople, and then ultimately starting my own pest control company about 10 years ago. So I've kind of been done all the roles, finance, operations, sales, and I've... I've loved all of it. Definitely always tell people pest control is not sexy, it definitely helps provide a great living for your family. So let's get on my journey.

02:29 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, of course. That's funny. I didn't know you were connected with Lenny. I've interviewed him twice on both my podcasts. Really good guy, course. Top guy in door-to-door, especially for pest control, but maybe all of home services. But you said you swore you were never gonna get into pest control again?

02:48 Tony Hoffman

Well, you know, when you do a summer of door to door, it can be really taxing on you mentally. And so every year you get to the fall and you're like, man, I'm never doing that again. And then by the time the spring rolls around again, you're like, all right, I'll do it again. And it's kind of a vicious cycle. But it's been a great journey for me. And it's definitely been a wonderful experience and provided a great life for my family.

03:16 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, definitely. I'm curious, what did you learn from Lenny working? What was the relationship? You said you were working under him and getting coached by him?

03:25 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, I was a door to door guy and Lenny trade me in door to door. So I mean, I learned a great skill set of communication. Lenny, he is a great communicator. And he taught me great communication skills, great sales skills. And I've used those in my career as I've had other capacities as well. So it was a great mentorship.

03:48 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, awesome. And then I want you to explain how you started the company and then we'll get to Greg.

03:55 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, so I had run an office in Springdale, Arkansas for another company. And they ended up selling their company to a big national provider. And so I always had my eye on it. And so my partner and I, Austin Harris, had started a company down in Dallas. We ended up selling that company. And then we had some sales guys that wanted to start a pest control business. They wanted to do it back home in Utah where they were from. And they wanted to do one time services. And I took them out to lunch one day and I said, that's the worst pest control program I've ever seen. That would be an epic failure. Why don't you guys go to Northwest Arkansas? We'll start up a company there and we'll see how it goes. So they moved to Northwest Arkansas. Their names are Devin Cluff and Colton Miller. Sight unseen had never been there before and we started the company and it was all organic growth, door-to-door growth that we started with and we're able to take a $40,000 investment and now turn it into a $12 million business.

05:12 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, so $40,000, that's going into door to door, you're saying?

05:17 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, we started with $40,000 that we had each of us put in 10,000, the founders, and we were able to cash flow in about two months and be profitable in about six months.

05:29 Dan Leibrandt

Wow, that's awesome. And the first million, was that all door to door or anything else?

05:37 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, primarily door to door. Over the last three to four years, we've been able to make some new channels with primarily upsell and digital leads. And so that's been an engine that we've been able to have some, a fair amount of success in over the last couple of years. But up until that point, it was primarily door to door.

06:01 Dan Leibrandt

It's so funny because I've been interviewing a lot of pest control owners doing over $5 million a year. And I swear almost all of them, you included, are doing door to door. So it seems like there's some overlap there. Do you think door to door is required to be a successful pest control company?

06:23 Tony Hoffman

I think it's a, I guess you could put an arrow in the cap or, you know, it's a good opportunity because you don't have any cost associated with it until you get the sale, right? So for companies that are starting out and they want a sure bet, mean, door to door is a sure bet, right? Because you're not having to have any costs associated with it until you get the sales. I think primarily what we've learned over the years as we've done door to door is it's one of our things that we can utilize. As we go further, we need to utilize digital, we need to utilize cross sale, we need to utilize more traditional methods as well. But it's great to go into a greenfield and build route density and get your customer base and then start the process of refining the sales process. So I would say that's probably the best way to do it in my book.

07:20 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. Cool. Now, Greg, I want to get to you. You are the CEO of Rumble Pest Solutions, super successful company. How did you originally get involved in this?

07:30 Greg Lake

Well, if you go back to like the early beginnings, Dan, over two decades ago, I started with ChemLawn before it was even TruGreen as a part-time telemarketer. Why quote unquote, looked for a real job. Little did I know that was going to be the real job for the next 20 years or so. And it was really the real job for the next 20 years because of the growth that we went through. Went from, you know, $200 million to then partnering with TruGreen and then the quick ramp to a billion dollars in size. And over the course of that time, right, if you show up to work on time or early and stay late and are willing to relocate, you typically get opportunities. So literally over the course of those 20 years, held every position from, you know, part-time telemarketer to sales rep to technician to branch sales manager to branch manager to region manager. Over those years. And then I departed and went with a private equity group to run a company on the East Coast called DeerTech. And it's a unique pest control company where we kept deer from eating people's plants through patented ultrasonic sound and then a monthly recurring revenue spray model. We sold that company to SavATree. In fact, our my private equity group that own that is Concentric Equity Partners, who also went on then to start EPS. They also own Aruza Pest Control today. And so had that pest experience and then I went back to TruGreen as VP of Sales and very traditional door-to-door model at that point. Know over our 200 branches we were running close to 3,000 door-to-door sales representatives again scaling the business and adding customers. And so I left there and then was really looking for the next opportunity and you know how the world works. It's like all networking who you know.

09:24 Greg Lake

And our current investors, Dynamic Core Capital Partners, had an acquaintance and they said, hey, we're looking at this pest control business. Do you have anybody that can help us with due diligence? And so my name floated, they called me. And so I really started to lock arms with these guys almost a year ago to today and went through, you know, really four months of due diligence. Looking at the business and I could explain why I was impressed, but it really came down to three levers. One was the founders. What Tony and Austin and Colton and Devin built is really truly special, right? You don't find many companies that can scale that fast. What I would also say is not only are companies doing door to door as you mentioned, but I would say very few of them understand that it's easy to sell it. It's very difficult to service it. And what I think these four guys got right early on was there were two operational mines, Tony and Austin, and two sales mines, Devin and Colton. And that balance between the two not only created revenue and sales, but more importantly, created some great customer relationships. And so when you look at our business, it really doesn't have the indicators of a traditional door-to-door company. Our retention rates are better. Can they improve? Sure. And we think we can do that through some operational efficiencies as well as getting a little bit more depth in digital marketing. But these guys really got that right. And so the founders, great, great individuals, the company, check the box. And then Dynamic Core, our investors are just a really class act private equity group and private equity groups run the gamut. But I think what Tony and I like, in fact, we're sitting here today as I speak, going through our five year plan, but what we really like is they're very supportive. They give you a lot of latitude and a lot of room to do what you feel is right. And they almost err on the side of what you believe is the right thing to do and then underwrite that strategy as long as you're performing. So we feel really good. We've got a lot of capital, but we also have the ability to kind of maneuver and build the business or continue on the business that Tony and the team started.

11:45 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, awesome. Such an impressive journey. I appreciate you explaining that. I'm curious, this is super general question. You could take this wherever you want. You got involved in Rumble fairly recently. I'm curious across your whole tenure and all these different pest control positions, and what were some of the top lessons that you learned and then took to Rumble?

12:10 Greg Lake

Yeah, I think, you know, it's all about the people, right? It's all about, you know, not only your sales team, but your service team, the frontline, they really drive the business. And so if you reverse the reporting relationship to where your frontline is really running the company, and you're just down there doing whatever they ask you to do to support them, I think is key, right? Keeping that in mind, like every decision has got to be run through the eyes and the funnel of does it serve our customer? And at Rumble, we have one of our core values is customer obsessed. And so we look at customer and I always say to my team, who's our customer? And without a doubt, they can all answer today, it's our internal customer and our external customer. So if we're customer obsessed, both on our internal customers, as well as our external, that helps. So every decision needs to really be run by them and really rooted in the field. Second, what I would say is autonomy, right? As you get into a multi-branch location, giving the individual branch manager the ability to make decisions in their branch, giving them the latitude and the resources, but also knowing that they're going to make mistakes, right? And having a lot of grace for them as they go through that learning curve and grow. No one knows the home market like they do. In fact, Tony and I just had some conversations around that today. Those to me are the biggest pieces. It's really about the power acquiring good talent, giving them the resources and staying close to what they're feeling and seeing out in the marketplace.

13:48 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Love that you mentioned... Yeah, go ahead.

13:49 Tony Hoffman

One thing I would add, Dan, is one thing I think Greg has always stressed to us, and I'm a firm believer in it as well, is there's no secrets in pest control. It's all in the execution, right? So there's no secret sauce or some magic spray that makes you better than anybody else, but it's your people and your execution.

14:13 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, totally makes sense. I hear that across the industry, even across other businesses too. It's mastering the fundamentals, just getting really good at all the basic stuff. Everyone wants the top five secrets, the things that no one knows. And it's like, you know the stuff, but you just have to get really good at the stuff you know.

14:17 Greg Lake

Thanks...

14:36 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Well, one thing you mentioned there, Greg, that I really liked is customer obsessed. I've, I feel like I've gone kind of down a rabbit hole watching a ton of Jeff Bezos interviews. And he says this all the time. That's how he grew Amazon is by being customer obsessed. So I think, I mean, you're, you're following one of the top founders in the world. So obviously that's, it's a, it's a great principle, but what does that look like in action for you guys?

15:47 Greg Lake

Yeah, Tony, you want to start and I can always fill in?

15:51 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, so I think for us especially is when we're making decisions, first and foremost is how is it going to affect our customer. Both internal and external, right? So is this going to make the life of our associate better? It's really something that we always have to take into consideration. And then second is how is the external customer going to be affected by it? And so, you know, we talk about, you know, price increases, we talk about, you know, benefits that we're offering our people. Those considerations, you know, are always first and foremost before we make those decisions. And when we do that, mean, just, our culture is greatly influenced by those decision making process. You know, for our company, our culture is extremely important. And that's why we have those five core values is we want to create a wonderful company culture.

16:51 Dan Leibrandt

Love that.

16:53 Greg Lake

Yeah, and I would say,...

16:54 Dan Leibrandt

And yeah, Greg.

16:55 Greg Lake

Dan, Tony hits it on the head and, you know, we've just established these core values recently, right? I mean, we just entered into this relationship in August of last year. And so we're on our journey and where we're at today won't be where we're at tomorrow. As it relates to this, it takes a while to impregnate it into the culture, right, of the organization. But literally every meeting we open up with our core values. And then also, as Tony mentioned, It's every decision that we make, we try to run through it, as well as many of the committees that are working on projects that are affecting either our people internally or our customers externally. We'll actually have one of our frontline individuals sit on the committee and give input. And we run things through just a pressure test before we launch. That's mission critical. And then it's just a little things, right? It's we're rebranding our offices. We're looking for new office space that really speaks to the culture of who we want to be, right? Do you want something to be a straight lace corporate looking environment or do you want something fun? You know, not to say that we'll have foosball tables or pool tables, but like who are you as a brand and are you living that, right? And so people feel it. And I believe if they feel it, then they go out and act it, right? And so. It's not only what you say and the SOPs and the things that you do, but also what's the environment that you're creating and then how are your managers living that and acting that out. But it's an evolution, right? Again, we're very fresh into this and so like literally every day we're learning more and more about how these resonate with our team and how we can bring them to life and make it just a part of who we are, right? So it's not necessarily we're thinking about it, just subconsciously happening in the back.

18:49 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, got it. One thing I want to get clear on, which you guys have mentioned several times now, is internal and external customers. I don't know if I've heard that before. Can you explain that?

19:00 Greg Lake

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's simple. The people that are on payroll are your internal customers. And that's dynamic, right? That's not only boss to superior. I mean, a boss to subordinate or subordinate to boss, but it's also just as a team together. Think Tony, we do a really good job of like, you know, we have titles, but it's almost like, don't ask me what my title is because we're all in this and we're all equals. And we really believe that. Not just saying that, but it's like, we all have different roles and responsibilities. And alone they don't really mean anything but together. Think that's really our Rumble strength is the synergy of the talent together. And then obviously the external customer is just a paying customer. Tony, I don't know if you have anything.

19:44 Tony Hoffman

No, I think that's spot on. I think for us, mean, the decision making in our day to day is all about the internal and external customers. There's not a decision that's made in our organization right now that doesn't factor those two things. It's all about the customers internal and external.

20:04 Greg Lake

Yeah, I'll give you a crazy example, Dan and Tony, you remember this one, it was winter time, right? And it's time to get jackets. So we started looking through, you know, what jacket are we going to get? And obviously, the cheaper ones are thinner, right? They may not be as water repellent or as wind resistant. And, you know, naturally, right, your mind goes to, okay, how much are these cost to me? How much times X amount of employees? And I think the natural thing would be, okay, they're going to just rip these, spill things on them. So like, don't invest a lot of money. And we all sat around the table, right, Tony? And we're like, you know, how, how is that going to look if we present this jacket to the associate versus if we spend an extra 10, 20, 25 bucks on a jacket and people are really proud and they're like, wow, this is a nice jacket, right? Like, how's that mindset then when they go out in the field? And so it's little decisions like that, even that. Again, if you have the core values and you can bounce your decisions that you're ready to make against those and say, does that line up or doesn't it? That's just one example of just like how granular we get with our beliefs.

21:14 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, awesome. Yeah, I had Ryan Marshall on my podcast before this. He runs Vinx Pest Control, another pretty big operation. And we were talking about the same thing, investing in your people and everything then comes downstream from your people that you guys do a great service and they stay on longer and people are willing to pay more. It's when you treat your people well and now they really like your company, just everything's downstream from that, right?

21:44 Tony Hoffman

Absolutely. And the inverse is relevant as well, right? Mean, a technician is your frontline person. And if they go home and they're happy at home and their wife's happy with what they're doing, everything runs smoothly. The worst thing that can happen is that person gets unhappy and then their wife gets unhappy and says, you need to get out of here. Like, don't want you. Here anymore. You know, we always have, are they going to be proud when they go home or are they not going to be proud when they go home? That's a big pressure test for us.

22:19 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, definitely. Had Preston Peterson on the show too, you guys might know him. He said, you know, exactly to your point, I've never heard anyone mention this, that they would send like care packages to all of their workers' wives and maybe a note with it and showing like tons of care for the family. I mean, that's how you get someone to stay forever. So cool. I wanted to jump back. So we talked, Tony, about growing to one million. So that was mainly door to door, but now you guys have blown past eight figures. How did you go from one to 10 million?

22:59 Tony Hoffman

So I mean, primarily our sales teams were the biggest growth driver of that. However, I mean, anybody can go out and get sales like Greg spoke to. I mean, I can hire a third party. I can usually find a way to get those door-to-door sales. What we really put a focus on is retaining the customer because... In our business, mean, you're going to lose a certain percentage no matter what you do. And those are sales that you have to put back on every single year just to stay where you're at. And so if we can keep a customer from canceling, it's like getting a sale, right? Because now I don't have to replace it. So a big focus that we put on our business as we started to scale was...

23:43 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm.

23:50 Tony Hoffman

How can we keep customers and how can we retain customers? And we made big investments into our operations team. We made big investments into our customer care team and making sure that the experience of the customer was positive. And it set a precedent like, hey, how do we continue to resell our customer? Because when a customer calls in to cancel service, It's because they've basically lost the value in what you're doing. And so how do we continue to reestablish that every service and then resell them on the value of the service? So I think that was a really key part of how we scale our business.

24:32 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So what are some of the specific things that you did to increase that retention and keep customers longer?

24:40 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, so mean, one of the key parts of that is just the customer experience, the notification. Hey, we're coming out to provide service at your home and giving them advance notice with the technology that we have through the software that we use. But the big thing is the follow up. Each of our customers gets a notification of service, but then also, you know a few days later, there's a personal call that's Provided by our CSR team to say hey here's what we're doing Here's what we did at your home. You know, are you happy with what was provided, right? So that's just going that extra mile to say hey, are you happy with what was done? Had served us really well, especially on those initial new accounts, which primarily over the first couple of years, that was a big driver was those new accounts. And then we were able to cross-sell. So that's kind of the biggest thing that I would point to on the retention piece. Greg, anything you want to add?

25:52 Greg Lake

No, I think that's really kind of what got you there. And as I mentioned, they've got great retention rates as it relates to door to door. I think what I would call Rumble 2.0, right? We're working really hard now that we're moving in the five branches at creating SOPs. And it's what I tell the group, right? The French fries in Springdale have to taste like the French fries in our new location. And so it's like creating the SOPs that give the internal customer the same experience as well as our external customer. So that again, we could transfer tech from branch to branch, they would be able to fit right in. The trucks are loaded the same way. The service steps are the same. The program is the same. So creating consistency, right? Then creates consistency for the customer. Because as you know, a lot of times you'll have technicians that show up at a house and then the next technician shows up and if they do the visit differently, right? Then the customer begins to think like, okay, was I not treated right the first time or this time, like what's right?

26:57 Greg Lake

So if you can create the expectation and then fulfill that the same way every time, to Tony's point, that begins to add the value, right? Consistency adds value.

27:08 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, got it. Okay, so staying consistent with the service too. That actually is a really good point. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone put it quite that way. But if you do several services different, then now the people are like, wait, well, I mean, maybe you did one of them right, but maybe one of them was wrong. Maybe one of them was better than the other. Why are you doing a better service now? Or why are you doing a worse service now? So it's probably best to just keep it the same throughout.

27:36 Tony Hoffman

And that even goes as deep as the look, right? Does the uniform always look the same? Does the truck look the same? When they come to the door, do they have a similar dialogue, right? So it even gets more granular than just the service. It's the appearance and the brand as well.

27:55 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely. Greg, I'm curious for you, when you stepped into the business, I feel like, Tony, you've been running the business for 10 years now, but sometimes you need a fresh set of eyes on the business and how things are going. So I'm sure, Greg, you had that of you stepped in and now you can see everything with a fresh set of eyes. Were there any errors or any opportunities that you noticed right away?

28:22 Greg Lake

Yeah, so that's one of the things I did first day during the due diligence was to make sure that the company was sound. You know, I always say this in a sincere way that, you know, I couldn't have asked for a better platform to come be a part of. There areas for improvement? Sure, there always are, right? But this business was so dialed in. And things that I saw as I started to go and really do like an audit of each department and each process. Every question I asked, was like, yeah, we got that. Yeah, we got that. And so I was blown away with the level of sophistication of the business and the things that they tracked and the data that they had and in the procedures. And when I say I was surprised, I always say I shouldn't be surprised because how else are you going to get a business to scale that quickly with the fundamental metrics as strong as they are? Well, I say I was surprised it shouldn't be because again, just go and look at the core metrics of the business and that should tell you that something's happening right. So I was very fortunate to step into something that didn't need an overhaul. And that's been Rumble's biggest strength, or one of the biggest strengths is once we decided to join forces, we were able to go concentrate on the growth, right? And to talk about what we want to do moving forward. And I think one of the reasons, and Tony can tell you if I'm right or wrong, one of the reasons why I believe that the team, meaning Tony and the team, and Dynamic Core selected, my experience is, believe me, I'm no stronger of an operator than Tony is or the rest of the team, but what I do have is I have experience running these businesses at scale, right? So just go back.

30:15 Greg Lake

To my last roles VP at TruGreen with 200 branches, you understand how those things are rigged, what the right manager ratios are, how you begin to build out the autonomy and how you go and build out the processes and procedures that you can scale. And so I think that that's really what I bring to the team, one of my skill sets, but I can tell you that that alone, isn't going to get it done. You got to have the other people on the team that have skill sets and an appetite to go after it. And again, I think that's what makes the Rumble story so special is again, one of us alone, right, couldn't accomplish nearly what we've done in the last eight months, let alone what we aspire to do, but it's who we are collectively. So really when I came in, it was just learn as much as I can. Give a lot of respect to the past, but then let's now put our cap on that. Okay, we've got resources and we've got an ability to go scale it. So how do we go scale in a meaningful way, both organically and then through acquisitions?

31:26 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. So most of the people watching this show are probably pest control owners that are either under a million dollars a year or maybe they're looking to start in the next few years. So with you having that unique perspective of running those 200 TruGreen branches, what advice can you give to the smaller guys of maybe how those big companies operate and what they can learn from that?

31:54 Greg Lake

Yeah, well, I think Tony and I should both answer that because we have different perspectives because Tony's been there, done that, right? And he's been the guy that's gotten over the hurdle. So, Tony, why don't you go first and then I can kind of fill in from my perspective on where I see folks having opportunity.

32:13 Tony Hoffman

So I think for me, my advice would be to focus on several KPI indicators that are really important. And that's different for every operator, depending upon their business model. A lot of times with our KPIs, we'll try to pick like 12 or 15 that we want to focus on. And that's great, but if you're good at a few and you can focus on that, then you can start to move to more of those. And so I would pick two or three off the bat that you really want to focus on that are really important to the core business that you're trying to accomplish. And then the second thing is I think comparisons are really hard in our day and age, right? So if I'm a guy doing half a million dollars and I'm looking at Rumble and they're doing 12 million, it's really easy to say, man, I'm never going to get there. You know, hey, like, you know, that doesn't apply to me or whatever excuse you want to make. You are focusing on what you can do and you're not in a competition of what your other companies are doing. So just try to focus in on what you're trying to accomplish and your goals. And that's going to serve you a lot better than trying to compare yourself to the people around you.

33:30 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Really good advice.

33:32 Greg Lake

I think that's spot on, Tony. And then I would say, Dan, and you've probably heard this from people, you know, it's really tough to scale at certain levels, right? And, you know, call a million dollars is one. And I think a lot of it is, you know, people try to go it alone for as long as they can, whether it's they're afraid to make an investment in the next person, or they're afraid to give up control because nobody can do it as well as I can. Tony and I never have really had this conversation, but I think, you know, if you talk to Tony, one of the reasons why they were able to scale so quickly is there were four of them, right? And I would say that four guys that are capable of running businesses, more than $12 million as well. So a lot of firepower on the business and it was kind of divide and conquer. So they were able to go out and accomplish a lot. You probably, does that resonate with you? But. You know, having the ability to go out and create more of you, right, as quick as you can. So you're not working in the business, you're working on the business, you know, that's an old cliche, right? But it's so true. If you're not spending a major part of your time, you know, thinking about six months down the road, like I'm already thinking about 2027. That's where I'm spending a lot of my mental thought is 2027. What do we need and how do we set up for that? And it's really tough when you're seven million dollars, right? You have a decision to make. Do you stay up until midnight at the dining room table, know, pushing invoices out and looking at your route for the next day? Or are you getting a good night's sleep and really thinking about, you know, next, you know, six months down the road? And so to me, that's where I see the biggest hangups, not only for small business owners, but also managers of branches, right? Because when you have like 200 of them, they're not all successful. And the ones that are are the ones that know how to delegate, right? Not give up the responsibility, like follow up. But you gotta know how to delegate. You gotta have additional resources. And sometimes that's punitive, right, to your profit. You gotta investment spend and bet on the come. But that's a big piece. You can't go it alone and at some point you have to delegate out and build a team.

35:55 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Yeah, Tony, I loved your point of, you have to, you shouldn't compare yourself to all these other guys. I mean, there, there's so many companies that are crushing it, but there's just an endless game of comparison. Mean, you could take it all the way to Elon Musk. Mean, Elon has a trillion dollar net worth. I, even though I think I'll be pretty successful and maybe people watching the show think they'll be pretty successful. I don't know if anyone watching this is going to hit trillion dollar net worth. It's just. That's really tough. I like that point of, you know, just focus on yourself, focus on your growth, play your own game. And then Greg, what you were talking about, you know, don't do it alone. That's something that we really preach in our group is like seek out mentorship, read more books, talk to more people, and, know, also rely on your staff more and invest in A players, all those different things. Totally agree. And I want to ask Tony kind of related to that. Actually, Tony, to be clear, do you have one co-founder or do you have several co-owners? What is the situation there?

37:00 Tony Hoffman

There's four of us, yeah. There's myself, Austin Harris, and Devin, Colton.

37:03 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, so for the other owners out there that are listening, what are the pros and cons of having co-owners or co-founders?

37:14 Tony Hoffman

So I get this question a lot because I have a lot of partnerships in pest control companies. I think there was a statistic that 80 or 90 % fail within three or four years. I can't remember where I heard that. But I'm sure it's close to that. We've obviously had lots of disagreements over the years. And, you know, we're definitely not perfect. But the one thing I think we got right is we always treated our partnership like a marriage. And we always put the needs of our other partners above our own. And we could trust that that was going to happen. So our decision making was based on, we know that at the end of the day, the decision being made by that person in that department is for the greater good of the partnership versus the greater good of that person. And so that's the best advice I think I can give people in partnerships is you have to treat it like you would, you know, a marriage and, kind of have that selfless attitude.

38:18 Dan Leibrandt

How do you know someone will be a good partner?

38:22 Tony Hoffman

I think for me, it's the traits of humility. If you were to meet my partners in person, they're really humble and they have... Teachable attitude and they're always adaptable to learning and growing and so humility for me is a really big concept of a partner is knowing that they're they're humble and teachable and they don't think they know everything about everything...

38:49 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, cool. Staying humble and teachable, growth-oriented, all that stuff. Love it. So something else I wanted to cover is you guys are going to expand. I mean, you're already growing super fast, but I believe, Greg, you said you guys are expanding from three branches to five. Can you explain kind of the strategy behind that and what you're going to do there?

39:08 Greg Lake

Thanks. Yeah, Tony won a couple of them.

39:16 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, so I mean, our growth strategy is we have organic growth, is our, we call them our greenfield markets, and then we have acquisition growth. So, you know, growing through acquisition. So our organic growth mechanism is we identify markets where we think we can go heavily in door to door for two or three years. And then after that, gain a customer base and then start our cross sale process and add on acquisitions for more route density. So that's kind of our playbook that we're using in the two greenfields that we're about to start here in May.

39:57 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha. If you don't mind sharing, how many acquisitions have you done?

40:02 Tony Hoffman

Just one so far, yeah, so we're hoping to get two or three more by the end of the year, but we've just had ones thus far.

40:13 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. So for those new two branches, are you buying those or you're opening from scratch?

40:19 Tony Hoffman

So those will be our greenfield. So we refer to new branches as greenfields. So we have no revenue in those markets currently. And we'll start from zero.

40:29 Greg Lake

No trucks, trucks arrive in a week. So it's literally, Dan, it's from scratch. Sign the lease, get a manager, start hiring technicians, ship the trucks in, send in the door-to-door crew, sign the first customer on May 1 and service it on May 2.

40:56 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, love it. And I think, I mean, I'm not totally sure I should have asked you before the interview. Are you guys getting involved with private equity? I saw something with Dubin Clark. What's going on there?

41:10 Greg Lake

Yeah, so in August, right, when I joined, that's when Dynamic Core Partners, formerly Dubin Clark, they had a name change, purchased the Rumble Pest Solutions from Anthony and the three other guys. And so it's been since August, so a little over eight months since we've been under private equity ownership.

41:36 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. So what does that look like moving forward? Are you guys gonna do more acquisitions or what's the plan?

41:44 Greg Lake

Yeah, in fact, as I mentioned, we're actually in office today talking over the five-year plan and we definitely have an appetite for acquisitions, right? They've got to fit our criteria and we have a scorecard that we run every opportunity through and, know, like any business right now, not every opportunity is a good opportunity. In fact, you know, we probably look at two or three deals a week. And so we want to ensure from a cultural perspective, a service mix perspective, a geography, you know, being in alignment with where we want to be. But yeah, acquisitions for sure is part of where we want to be. We're not like desperate for them. So again, we want to make sure that they fit in with what we want to achieve. But I anticipate that, you know, we'll be acquisitive along the way. And I think you'll see those plays be concentric to our current footprint and then complimentary to the overall business.

42:48 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And you mentioned you have a whole criteria checklist and you kind of covered some of the items there but is there anything you know that maybe for other owners out there that they should make sure they know about a business before they buy it?

43:02 Greg Lake

Yeah, Tony, you kind of run the whole acquisition side of the business. So you want to talk about those?

43:09 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, mean, so we're looking at some key KPI indicators. So gross margin, percentage of GPC customers versus termite, percentage of reoccurring customers versus non-recurring, if it's a creative to where we're at. So some of the basic things that would be important in your business, we're looking at as well. And we've got a list of others that we score out and if it hits a certain score, we move forward in the process. If it doesn't, we move on like Greg always says, sometimes the best decision is no, right? So just because something comes across our desk doesn't mean that we're gonna look at every single one of them. We have a scorecard and we kind of stick to our scorecard.

44:02 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. And we've talked about door to door several times. I asked about the pros and cons of having a co-founder. What about the pros and cons of doing door to door?

44:13 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, so I mean, obviously for door to door, primarily, especially if you're using a third party, it's the cost of acquisition, right? So the cost of acquiring that sale can be very expensive, just as it is in other avenues, though. I digital is getting expensive as well. But then probably the biggest challenge that you run into is traditionally door to door has a higher churn rate than maybe a digital customer or a traditional advertised customer. So that's probably your biggest concern is making sure that you can handle the churn of the door-to-door customers. For most companies, if you can get them to that 18 to 24 month mark, you've got a lot better chance of keeping that customer long-term versus prior to that 18 month mark. So that's a big push for us as we do door to door.

45:09 Greg Lake

Yeah, and I would say too, Dan, that, you know, depending on what you want to do with your business, right, if you're in the position that you want to sell it, right, grow to sell versus grow to hold it and pass it on to your grandkids, those are radically different pieces, right? Because how you engineer your business for a sale is different than how you may engineer your business to run it, right, in the investments that you make. I will say if you want to sell it, right, traditionally the private equity groups, they're going to look at retention rates, right, of your customers. They're going to look at your margins and your EBITDA. And traditionally door-to-door companies trade at a lower multiple than what a traditional pest control business that grows organically through, you know, digital or inside sales reps as an example. So while you'll get accelerated growth with a door-to-door model, the value of your business may be considered less because of those attributes that Tony mentioned.

46:15 Dan Leibrandt

Interesting. Yeah, that does make sense. I never gave it much thought, you would think, I mean, private equity is all about numbers. So if you're keeping customers for less, that's going to be less valuable. Tony, you said that if customers stay for 18 to 24 months, they're more likely to stay in for longer. Is that something you guys noticed internally or how do know that?

46:40 Tony Hoffman

Yeah, I mean, think we've done some studies and that's we call it the cliff. We got to get them before they fall off the cliff. And so if we can get them to that 18 month mark, statistically and what we've seen internally is they stay at a much higher clip than previous to that. That's a big focus of what we have on our.

46:49 Dan Leibrandt

He...

47:06 Tony Hoffman

Attention is making sure from that, you know, call it 12 to 18 month mark, we're doing whatever we can to get them across that, that cliff.

47:16 Dan Leibrandt

Gotcha, cool. And I want to go back to these branches that you guys are opening. So two more branches and not acquiring them, you're starting from scratch and you're gonna be pushing door to door pretty heavy. And what does that door to door strategy look like? How many guys and what does that look like?

47:38 Tony Hoffman

I mean, for us, mean, we typically have smaller teams. We're not a company that where we bring in 50 door to door guys or we try to go volume versus value. So we're very much we're gonna take a 12 to 15 person door to door team. We're gonna be really picky about those people that are on that team and we're gonna focus on really growing them. Making sure that they're really successful in that market. That's always been our approach to door to door in greenfield. We don't have large teams traditionally. We try to keep our teams small, but try to make them really effective in the market.

48:17 Dan Leibrandt

And where are you finding your door-to-door guys? Are they employees?

48:23 Tony Hoffman

Traditionally we found them through more of a you know like a college internship process. They're coming out during their college semesters and that's where we found traditionally most of our door-to-door. So that's what we've used in the past. We might be changed that in the future depending upon the market but that's what we're using.

48:47 Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. Usually college guys. Are there any traits in these people that you typically look for that are going to be promising door to door guys?

49:00 Tony Hoffman

I mean, we've traditionally focused on trying to find kids from smaller towns that maybe had to do manual labor jobs. Traditionally, door-to-door guys, a lot of people want the big flashy guys that are really good talkers and big personalities. They are doing really well, but the guys that we've found that do really well at this job are really hard workers that grew up. On farms or grew up in small towns that they had to work their whole entire life. So we can teach them the skill set, but we can't teach them the work ethic. We've traditionally focused on those types of people and backgrounds.

49:42 Dan Leibrandt

Got it. And then what about employees? So what are you looking for, maybe for managers, for leaders, for people in the office? What traits are you looking for?

49:55 Greg Lake

Yeah, so, you know, we've we've changed the way we recruit Dan in our interview process to really interview around our core values. So it's asking questions around, you customer obsessed, right? Do you pursue excellence in our, our thought on excellence is we agree not to be mediocre, and that we strive to get better every day. One thing that Tony always preaches one of our core values growth mindset, right? So are you always being intellectually curious around things, right? And always questioning things and willing to grow. The other one is integrity, right? And it's not necessarily a good person or a bad person, but are you doing the right thing every time, right? Which is sometimes hard to do, right? Especially if it's a Friday at 530 at night and you want to go home, do you pull out the pole and dust, you know, or sweep the, you know, the eaves? Or do you say, just pass on that and just, I want to get home, right? So we really focus around the core values around that. And then adaptability is our last one, right? So it's, are you adaptable? Because anything you'll learn in pest control is what you think the day is going to look like at eight o'clock in the morning when you walk in isn't what it's going to be like, right? And so not only are you able to change and adapt, but are you doing it begrudgingly? And with a lot of animosity and being upset, or are you doing it with a lot of grace and just, hey, we'll get through this, not a big deal, so do you have a positive attitude? So we're trying to incorporate all of our interviews around those questions and trying to find people that can articulate how they've demonstrated those traits in their previous work, right? Now we're not gonna get it right 100 % of the time, but when you hear our managers who have gone through the training on this, talk about the change in the way they look at an applicant, we feel like we're starting to make inroads on making better selections of associates that line up with who we want to be and how we manage the business.

52:02 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Love that. So we've covered a lot about people in the business, why that's so important and finding the right people, training them up. One word that came up earlier in the podcast that I wanted to revisit and you guys know how important this is culture. So I'm curious, how do you think about culture and how do you build culture?

52:29 Greg Lake

I think about culture as, you know, what's the personality of the organization, right? And is it bleeding through? Like you could just be a delivery driver for UPS and walk into the office and you feel something, right? You don't know what it is necessarily, but you just feel it, right? As a customer, it's just a different feel on the service that you get and your interactions. So it's really the personality of the organization for me, right? And then it's, you know, how do you bring that alive? It's just trying to be consistent, right? In your approach and in your message, in the way that you the difficult times, right? But then also making sure that you're handling the successes and having the celebrations. So for me, it's around creating consistency in messaging, right? Aligned with. You know, the core values and the core principles. And again, it's that consistency, right? Externally, right? It does great for retention of customers, but also internally, people are encouraged to show up every day. They're excited because they know what they're gonna get. They feel value. They feel like they're adding value and they're being recognized for that, right? So to me, it's just, what's the personality of your organization? Tony, I don't know if.

53:49 Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, love that.

53:50 Tony Hoffman

One thing that I would add to that, yeah, one thing that I would add is, you know, is there a sense of pride in the associate? You know, because... They get off work, are they ashamed to wear that logo to the soccer game for their kid? Or do they have to quickly take their shirt off because they're not proud of the culture? Or do they wear that pridefully to the soccer field, right? So to me, that's the big pressure test is, hey, when push comes to sub, are they proud of that logo on their shirt or not?

54:24 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, that's great. I've never heard it put I don't think either of those ways Greg you're talking about the personality of the organization there's it's almost like a collective consciousness of the organization like of all all the people combined what is that personality and that's your culture and then Tony your point is that People should be prideful. They should be happy to wear the logo all around and people maybe it's even a status symbol, but people see you with the logo, they're like, you work for Rumble? Wow, you guys, you guys do such a great job, and you're such a big company and you know, all this so great. I really like both those points. So cool. We'll start to wrap up the show here. I've got one more question for each of you that I asked all of my guests. And that is, what is your message to the pest control owners out there that are listening to the show? What do you want to tell them? What do think they need to know?

55:19 Tony Hoffman

Think for me, the struggle is always real. Struggle in each of us that you know, we can we can all relate to and You know a rising tide raises all ships, right? So we can all help each other out I think in when I got into the industry a lot of owners were really hesitant to share information To share, you know their secrets their secret sauce or what they were doing and At the end of the day this industry there's no secrets, right? So we can all help each other and don't be afraid to ask for help and mentorship. I think what you guys are doing is a great thing that you're helping mentor a lot of the young operators. And so don't be afraid to ask for help and help the industry. Don't hurt the industry because, you know, especially in our world, the door to door, most of the guys are great, but there's a few bad apples that kind of ruin the whole. Whole industry sometimes so be a good Apple not a bad Apple.

56:29 Dan Leibrandt

Absolutely, I appreciate that. And Greg?

56:32 Greg Lake

Yeah, I'd say it's twofold. One is, you know, we're providing a service that is, you know, a major benefit and need for people to live a protected, you know, environment and lifestyle. And so don't lose sight of that. Like you have an opportunity to go build a business around doing good, but then also you have an ability to impact a lot of people's lives, meeting your associates and create opportunities for them that they may not have been able to do in other type of organizations. I mean, it's a pretty recession proof. It's pretty AI proof to a large degree. And so we have a great opportunity to just build something special. And the last thing I would say is dream big, right? Don't let your fears and don't let your pursuit of perfection slow you down. This is a resilient industry, right? You can make a lot of mistakes and come in and you still got your customers, right? People are forgiving. And so I would just encourage people to be bold. And don't let yourself hold yourself back, right? Delegate, have wild ambitions, right? And take some risks and just go out and just do it. And you're going to make mistakes along the way, but believe me, I always tell my team, no matter what mistake you make, it's not going to sink the company, right? We're not going to go bankrupt because of a, you know, everything we do is a $50 transaction. You're not going to sink it by doing something. Just go out and do it. And we can learn from it and grow moving forward. That's what I would implore folks to do.

58:04 Dan Leibrandt

Amen. Well, that was great. Thank you guys so much for your time here. This has really been a good podcast. And where can people find you online and connect with you guys?

58:17 Greg Lake

Rumblepestsolutions.com. The other cool thing, Dan, is when we rebranded recently, our theme and really our whole message around what we do is called Unbeatable Service. That URL was available. I won't tell you what I paid for it, but it was available. So you can go to unbeatableservice.com, which we think is kind of cool. People can feel free to even email me direct. It's [email address removed]. As Tony said, there's no secrets in pest control and we're willing to take phone calls from owners, which we often do and share experiences. So anybody that's getting started and just want to get our take or our experience, we're happy to give free advice.

59:04 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Tony, where can people find you? And also, feel free to plug your social media so guys can follow you.

59:11 Tony Hoffman

Yeah. So they can reach me on LinkedIn or on Facebook and then [email address removed] is my email. But to Greg's point, we're an open book. We'd love to help any, any operators that are in need of any advice.

59:30 Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. Well, sweet. All those links will be in the description. Again, this has been a great show. Thank you guys so much for coming on and yeah, hope to stay in touch.

59:38 Greg Lake

Sounds good Dan, we really appreciate it.

59:39 Tony Hoffman

Thanks a lot, Dan.

59:41 Dan Leibrandt

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