← The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
From Broke College Kid to $500M Pest Control Empire — David Royce Explains
00:38:00
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- [00:00]
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- [00:15]
David Royce
We've done really well on the sales side. Our company would grow 7 to 10 times as fast as the traditional business model. The key aspect of this growth model is the salesforce. If somebody came over for another company, they would sell 70% more with us the next, you know, that summer than they had the previous summer.
- [00:31]
Paul Alex
What advice would you give those startup founders or entrepreneurs on how to stand out in their market?
- [00:38]
David Royce
Most entrepreneurs, they get focused working in the business instead of on the business. You have to learn as an entrepreneur to either be a jack of all trades or to hire somebody else to do that if you want to scale. But the true test of scale is leave for 30 days on vacation, and if you come back and your company's still there, that's how you know you have a business that can actually scale.
- [01:05]
Paul Alex
All right, guys, welcome back to Love All Podcast. This is Paul Alex, and today we have another great guest. He goes by the name of David Royce, who is the founder and chairman of Aptiv. So here's a great, great business model, especially in 2025, guys. Okay, let's talk about the trades. Let's talk about boring businesses that people don't look at, right? When we look into businesses in 2025, what are we looking at? We're looking at, oh, okay, we're. We could go ahead and work a remote lifestyle. We want to work that laptop lifestyle. But no, we have an entrepreneur that chose a different path. He's been able to expand to over 5,000 cities across 34 states. And within eight years, his company, Aptif, grew from a startup into the third largest residential pest control company in North America with over $500 million in annual revenue, guys. Phenomenal, right? And when we talk about entrepreneurs, what makes a true entrepreneur? Guys? Having a team? Well, David has been able to lead by example and have over 6,500 employees. David, welcome to the show, brother.
- [02:14]
David Royce
Hey, thanks so much, Paul.
- [02:16]
Paul Alex
Absolutely, man. So, David, tell us why pest elimination? Why did you decide to go through pest control, brother?
- [02:25]
David Royce
You know, so it was never on my radar. I never grew up thinking about bugs. You know, it was just one of these random jobs I took in college. I was a broke college student, and I had a friend come to me and say, I made $25,000 last summer. You know, three months, four months working this summer Job. You have any interest in coming with us out to Northern California and selling pest control services? And I didn't really know what pest control was. I just said, Hey, 25 grand, that sounds awesome. And then maybe we'd go surf on the weekends down in Santa Cruz. And so I signed up for it and I drove out from my college about 10 hours up to Sacramento, California. And it turns out when I got there, I was not very good. In fact, I sucked. I was horrible. The other sales reps around me are selling maybe one to four a day. I sold zero for five days straight and it was commission only, so I made nothing. And that weekend I went and, you know, I bought a bunch of sales books, you know, from a bookstore. And I just committed, I'm going to read 90 minutes, you know, every single day over the course of the summer to try to get good at this because I'd already got an apartment. It was kind of do or die. And, you know, by the end of that summer, I was the top sales rookie in the entire company out of about 200 guys. So it was that experience. And then the next year I came back and I went to, actually to a different company. I went to a startup and I became a sales manager, oversaw training and that sort of thing for other sales reps. And there was no sales manual there because it was a brand new company. And the boss, I go to the boss, I'm like, hey, can I write a training manual? I'm really worried. I brought friends out, I want to make sure they do well. And he was super impressed by it. And by the end of that summer, we had the top sales team. Our sales team doubled about what the other office did. And he's like, hey, why don't I give you a cut off? Everybody in the company, if you want to help me scale this, you can make money too and get a piece of the action. And so great opportunity in college. I did that for the next two years. By the end, I was managing about a hundred, over 100 salespeople and making 225 grand a summer, which, you know, today's money, it's like 500 grand. And so it was, it was a great experience. And then I was supposed to go do investment banking and I was going to ask my boss for a letter of recommendation and he says, what the hell are you doing? Like, why on earth would you go work 800 hours for somebody else? You should go start your company like your own company. And so that's how I got into it.
- [04:44]
Paul Alex
I love That I love that. And would you say that that one person was your first mentor that gave you that piece of advice?
- [04:51]
David Royce
Absolutely, yeah.
- [04:54]
Paul Alex
Wow. And was that the game changer for you compared to like, let's say, your, your, your friends, your family members, when you told your parents, hey, I think I'm just going to go start a company instead of going to work for someone else? What did they tell you?
- [05:09]
David Royce
You know, they, I think they were skeptical, but they had seen how much success I had had in that industry. And even myself, I was, I was somewhat skeptical of, you know, can I go do this? So there's a few things I. A few things that made me successful in the industry. So, one, I worked for a large $100 million regional pest control company the first year, so I saw how a bigger company operated. And then two, I went and worked for this small startup that had only been in business for a year. I got to see things at the ground level. And a lot of times when a brand new startup, you start to become this jack of all trades, you' you get to see a lot more going on than you would maybe just in a single department at a larger business. Three, I had a finance degree. I was studying finance, going to investment banking, and most people in pest control services do not have a finance degree, so that was helpful. And then fourth, I actually asked my boss, I said, hey, if, if you had the time, because he had a young family, he was super busy, we'd expanded to a bunch of locations. I said, if you had the time, how would you fix the business? Because he was working in the business as opposed to on the business. And he gave me a list of about 30 things and said, here's all the things I would try to figure out how to do better and improve. And so I had somewhat of a blueprint to go, okay, I can go work on these things. And then, you know, if I had questions, I actually had him invest in the company. Initially, he tried to get me to just go do my own thing. And then the key was selling his business. He actually said, by the way, I'm selling my business. I'm going to sell it for 10 million bucks to Terminix. And I kind of was like, wait a second, you've only been in business for barely four years and you're going to sell the company? And he's like, yeah, he's like, you know, it's kind of time to cash out. We've done really, really well. And I thought, wow, that's like an amazing opportunity. So if I go start a company, if I can do something similar, even if I don't like it, maybe I can go back to MBA school and then transition into something else. So he was very helpful. He was a silent investor in that business. I'd saved about 300 grand. He had 300 grand that he put in and you know, he took a little bit of equity. And then if I had a question, you know, occasionally I could call him and say, hey, you know, what do you think about this or that? You know, it was great. Just, it was almost like training wheels initially, just getting going.
- [07:16]
Paul Alex
And would you say the experience was the major needle mover for you to have such a successful startup? Yeah.
- [07:25]
David Royce
So I'd taken business classes in college and I read this book called the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And it just talks about the importance of creating systems with best practices and how much you can eliminate your risk by, for example, going and buying a franchise or doing something that you already know. A lot of people jump into an industry they've never even been a part of before. So I'm a big advocate of getting experience, and not just experience to know if you like it, but to also like develop some sort of a core competitive advantage in that industry. And so because I was really great at sales and like top 1% of 1% in sales, I wasn't passionate about pest control, but I could get really passionate about the sales side. And I loved helping other college students. I mean, it was really life changing. I mean, we literally created one of the very best jobs any college student could do in the entire United States, you know, in a three or four month summer. And so that, that's what I got passionate about. And then I was able to transition that passion into know, sales, management and then entrepreneurship operations and then scaling nationwide.
- [08:29]
Paul Alex
And before starting your company, I know you mentioned that you were leading about 100 employees with that current employer. How did it feel being a manager, being in a position of power like that, over 100 employees at that age. If you were to go back right.
- [08:44]
David Royce
Now, you know, I would say I try to stay really humble and try to be like a servant leader. And there was something about that experience that as opposed to just focus mostly on the money because it was certainly like in my best interest because I was paid commission only of how well everybody did. There was something in me that really loved giving back and training new sales reps. And it was so fun to see them when they, it clicked like when I was teaching them some sort of a principle as a principal we would videotape them and, you know, put it up on the big screen on a tv and I'd show them like press pause when I wanted to show them some aspect of body language that maybe they were struggling with or the way they were saying something and it would click. It was like, oh, that's what I'm doing wrong. And then, you know, I'd have them go practice in the mirror, you know, until they really, like nailed it. Yeah, it felt really, really good to help, like thousands of salespeople. We had a Salesforce, about 3,000 college students, you know, at our peak.
- [09:46]
Paul Alex
I love that. I love that. And something interesting about your journey. So why did you decide to start four different companies in the same industry? And how was each one of those companies different? I've spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs and one thing I consistently see them struggle with is their sales process. It's a total mess. A bunch of scattered information spread across tools and systems with no clear view of what's moving. That's where today's sponsor, pipedrive comes in. The number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses, Pipedrive brings your entire sales process in one simple centralized space, giving you guys a crystal clear, complete view of the sales process and customer information so you stay in control and close more deals faster. Guys, teams are using pipedrive to close an average of three times more deals per month. Every team does things a little differently. And I love that you can fully customize pipedrive to fit my team's unique sales process and strategy. And we can all work from one platform. It all centers around the visual sales pipeline, where you can see every single deal, what's the stage they're in, and what needs to happen next. Since everything is in one platform, Pipedrive makes it easy to unite your team, keep track of sales tasks and stay on top of your leads. It's so powerful. It's a simple CRM built by salespeople for salespeople. So join the over a hundred thousand companies already using Pipedrive right now. When you use my link, you'll get a 30 day free trial. No credit card or payment needed. Guys, just head over to pipedrive.com.
- [11:17]
David Royce
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- [11:17]
Paul Alex
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- [11:23]
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- [11:53]
David Royce
Yeah, so that's a great question. So there's something very unique that I did that isn't always possible in every industry. In some blue collar industries where you're just trying to create or you're trying to buy a stream of revenue, you can do these asset deals. So I've seen it done in pest control and alarm systems, some other industries, like home services industries before. So if you think about the big public pest control companies like a Terminix, who I sold to three times before ultimately deciding to sell somebody else in the last one, they grow. About half of their growth is M and A. And so each quarter they have to hit certain growth targets. And they buy up companies and what they really want is not the brand. They just want the customer base with the corresponding technician. And so what I was able to do was I didn't have a lot of capital. In fact, I was bankrupt my first company. And I realized, hey, if I have more capital, I can expand a lot faster and I'm not going to be limited in my growth. And so that was the primary reason why I did it. And I sold. So I sold the first one, just sold off the customer base. And this course might technicians. But I kept the golden goose, which was the salesforce, the executive team, and a key operator in each location. Then I started my second one, Eco first, and that was more of an experiment of, okay, can we scale? Can we go into four different states immediately, right off the bat and have it still hold itself together? Whereas before I was just in Southern California and I would go back and forth between each location. And so I was still there and able to see it, and I could feel comfortable with how the business was operating. But I took my four very best managers and had them go open up locations. Things went really well the first year, said, okay, let's open up four more, you know, and then we just kept opening up states. I think we were in nine states by the end of that business. But it was a great way to learn how to run a regional company and how to operate from afar with people and provide a lot more opportunity to my operations managers. And so then the third, I sold that one, they came knocking again, said, yeah, we'd love to Buy you again. And then the third one, it was like, okay, well what can we do? That's exciting because sometimes people get scared if you sell a business. They're like, wait, what's going to happen? And what I would do is I would pay all my managers and all my people to stick around for the next six months as we prepare to open up the next venture. And on the third one, I started studying companies out in Silicon Valley, like pest control. It's blue collar, it's like pretty boring, you know, not very sexy. And I wanted to take more of a white collar approach, the pest control industry. And we'd done really well on the sales side. Like our company would grow anywhere from 7 to 10 times as fast as the traditional business model. Most companies are going at 5%, we're going at 35, 50%, sometimes 100%. Like in the beginning when we were, you know, we could scale really, really fast. And so studying Silicon Valley, I went and toured Facebook and Instagram, toured Tesla's facilities, toured Nike, toured Google. And I got a lot of ideas about how to create, how to build a really great facility, like in order to recruit the right talent. Because talent was my biggest fear, going, okay, the key aspect of this growth model is the sales force. How do we attract the right talent so that we can create this machine and continue to grow nationally into 5,000 cities or whatever. So we built a killer headquarters. We had an NCAA basketball court, we had a golf simulator, a movie room, ping pong, foosball, air hockey, all that kind of thing, Pool table. And we started doing like these really cool events. Now we had a space that we could have like Dan Reynolds from the Imagine Dragons come play for us. Or we could do a charity event with an NBA player that might do a three point shootout or something. We could have really good all hands on meetings, you know, have like professional author business authors come in and speak to us. And then we started doing things like we got a jazz suite, you know, with 36 spots, you know, so we could have people from our company sign up to go watch the NBA games and then retreats. That was another thing we got really crazy with. So we would initially start out just off in Hawaii. And then we're like, all right, let's do Caribbean. And then it became like, well, what about Thailand or what about Egypt or Africa? And so we would take the top 5 to 10% of salespeople out or our operations managers to these places and we just, we learn one, we set goals and learn best practices from each Other. But then, like the second half of the day, it was like, all right, let's go skydive. Let's go swim with sharks. Let's go scuba dive, cliff dive, you know, drive Ferraris around a racetrack. And so it was just outside of the box thinking in an industry where it had never been done before. Nobody had ever seen it. And so it really attracted the very, very best talent. They're like, gosh, it may be pest control, but this company really cares about its people, and they're having a lot of fun.
- [16:38]
Paul Alex
So your secret to success on obtaining the best talent in pest elimination was building that culture. That's what I'm getting from this man. I mean, you're really good at being a visionary, obviously, and it seems like you're going ahead and you're building that phenomenal culture where people want to work for you.
- [16:59]
David Royce
Definitely. And a lot of this came. I read a book by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos. He wrote a book called Delivering Happiness. And in the book, his first company, I think he built like 250 million and sold it. Initially, the first 10, 20 employees, they were really tight and had a great company culture. But as they were growing, they just kind of started hiring anybody. And they weren't as focused on culture just because it was a new business. And he was new to entrepreneurship. And by the time he sold, he just really didn't enjoy going to work anymore. He's around a bunch of people that didn't share the same values. And so when he came up with Zappos, he's like, okay, we're going to be very strict about who we hire. We're going to have this set of core values. We're going to hire towards those core values, and we'll even pay people to leave after their training if they're not totally on board. So it's this really cool idea. And I just learned a ton from this book and implemented a lot at our company as well.
- [17:52]
Paul Alex
I love that. I love that. And it seems like culture is one of the pillars that makes your company stand out. Pest control is a very old industry. Everyone knows that. With over 20,000 competitors just in the U.S. right. So what would you say would be your other pillars when it comes to having a competitive advantage that made your company stand out?
- [18:15]
David Royce
Yeah. So the salesforce, you know, is very key. When I got into it, the industry had been around, or not so much the industry, but this form of marketing, you know, the direct to home, door to door concept, they've been around for at least 10 years. However, it wasn't, it wasn't really dialed in. You know, it was more of this wet rag mentality where it's like, let's bring out whoever out, you know, throw the wet rag against the wall, see who sticks. And if the other guys go home, so what? And the training just wasn't that great. And so I really got excited about the training because I had such a bad experience initially where I knocked for, you know, a whole week and sold zero. And I thought, gosh, there's no reason somebody else should have to go through this. So let's develop sales training manuals, let's create training videos of like the top 5% of salespeople. Let's, you know, create a program that they have to go out with a trainer and then they can follow the trainer and then the trainer can go out with them and watch their sales approach. But we had a whole program, it was like a three week program for them to really get dialed in and become the very best that they could be. And my philosophy on this sort of marketing was if we are really the best, over time we can scale that more and more students will want to come work for us. So because there were a few other companies out there at the time that we're doing this, but if we're selling more and the sales averages are better, then we can scale that. And so like to give you an idea of how much better we were than our competitors, if somebody came over for another company, they would sell 70% more with us the next, you know, that summer they had the previous summer. So we worked. Now part of it was we worked really hard. We worked extra hours, we trained really, really hard. And it's, it was a lot like, you know, like a World Series team. Like we may have worked harder and trained harder. Everybody, and it's not for everybody, but we were the winning team. That was the mentality. And so the sell side was number one. The second thing was service. So I had knocked at least 60,000 doors myself as a college student over four summers. And I heard a lot about what people liked, what they didn't like, what they missed or wanted in a service to improve it. And so we started experimenting because we really were a. For salespeople, by salespeople company. And we're thinking, well, if customers keep asking for this, why don't we try it? Why don't we include it in the service? It'll help us sell more and the customer will be happier, we'll have better customer retention. So we started implementing lots and lots of different ideas. And it's funny because the traditional businesses now have copied some of these things and they're standard today, but they were 20 years ago when we first were getting into it, and then other things. Software. That was probably the third differentiator like we, our industry was. It was one of the last ones to really get CRM software and customer management software. And it just wasn't that great. It wasn't cutting edge. And we realized that early on and we said, okay, well, how can we boost sales productivity if we had better software? How could we increase operational efficiencies if we came up with our own software? So these are some of the types of things. We ultimately ended up having a software development team, about 60 people creating our own thing. So in some ways we became a tech business, but it was really just an appendage to the larger business. So that was really helpful just to get one thing that was really great was this. On the sales side, we created sales tournaments because if you think about it, you have one sales office, maybe you have 10 or 15 people in a sales office. And the thing that's tough is there's only so many that are relating to each other that are competing, right? And you don't just want one individual who's really, really, you know, this top dog to always win everything, you know, if you're doing some sort of a sales incentive for the week. And so we said is okay, especially towards the end of the summer, the guys would start to get tired and in August. And so we said, well, what if we do like these sales tournaments? Think about it like March Madness. We'll do tournaments from maybe like July, mid July on to keep everybody engaged. And they can compete with anybody in the entire country who's literally just as good as they are, you know, right on the edge of how good they are. And what we found is we could drive sales an extra 20 to 30% on sales or tournament days. And so the company was able to make more. The sales reps were able to make more. They would compete for all these different prizes. There were brackets and say, that just made it a lot more fun.
- [22:39]
Paul Alex
I love that. I love that. And then it contributes back to the culture and being able to go ahead and push your teammates and your employees up on to present them as, hey, you guys are the bread and butter of the company. You guys deserve this. It's almost like an atta boy. And I always tell people that it's just like, you know, employees, teammates, whatever, you want to call them at the end of the day, they just want to, to feel like they're cared for. Right. And it seems like with everything that you did, that's exactly what, what you were able to, to, to present to your employees. So, David, what would you say for a beginner entrepreneur or somebody who's a little bit more experienced in traditional boring industries, just like pest elimination, what advice would you give those startup founders or entrepreneurs on how to stand out in their market?
- [23:38]
David Royce
Yeah, so one, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, like for example, if you think about mom and pops businesses, like small businesses, they maybe got one location. I think our country is probably two thirds small businesses and there's a unique competitive advantage that they have. Right. Because it's them in person. Like they really care about the company and their incentive is it's stronger than any employee that you would hire because it's coming to their family at the end of the day. Right. They can sell something extra or keep somebody on for a little bit longer period. And most entrepreneurs, they get focused working in the business instead of on the business. And for me, when I started my company, I just said, I'm never going to service a house on my own. I'm never going to sell another door. I'm going to create systems and processes. And it's not. That isn't very sexy, right? Like taking the time to write out policy and procedure manuals, to write out best practices, create training programs. It's, it's not everybody's skill set. And you have to learn as an entrepreneur to either be a jack of all trades or to hire somebody else to do that. If you want to scale, and, you know, it's nice, you can usually maybe go into a second location and just see if you can do it. But the true test of scale is leave for 30 days on vacation.
- [25:04]
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- [25:41]
David Royce
And if you come back and Your company's still there. That's how you know you have a business that can actually scale. Right.
- [25:46]
Paul Alex
So I love that.
- [25:48]
David Royce
Yeah. It's just thinking how, how am I working on the business? I have some brother in laws that are dentists and I'm like, you guys got to get your hands out of people's mouths, you know, so you can focus on building the business and scaling it.
- [26:00]
Paul Alex
No, absolutely, man. And that, and that makes a lot of sense. Working on the business, not in the business. So let's go back to the actual, I guess, mindset of someone who was back where you were at in college. You thought that you were going to get into finances, man, and you decided just to take this route instead. Which worked out just like it fit. Just like a glove. Right? So what would you tell for anyone that's listening to this and watching this right now, if they were to go ahead and pick an industry? How would they go ahead and pick an industry? And how would they go ahead and succeed in it?
- [26:43]
David Royce
Yes. The most amazing thing is the time we live in. You know, when I was in college, you know, the way that you mainly got into business, maybe you could read some books, but most people went to school, you know, they went through a business program to learn business initially. And there weren't even a lot of entrepreneurial programs back then. Today there's more. It's almost like the market demands it. But in today's world, think about it like a podcast, right? There's so many business podcasts out there. There's so much information online now with like chat GPT, you can literally, you know, ask, okay, what's a, what's the profit margin of pest control? What's the best profit margin in a blue collar industry? What is private equity buying? You know, you know, and what industry has the margins where they're actually increasing or multiples where they're increasing? And so there's so many ways to learn about business. I'm still long in college. I think it just needs to kind of be redone. I think they need to tweak it a bit. But yeah, so the first thing I would say is if you, if you want to learn an industry, study it first, find an industry you think you might want to go into two, go get experience in it, because the experience will make you that much more successful when you go to start your own business. If you think about franchises, franchise models have an 80% success rate, whereas if you start a brand new business on your own, you have a 20% success rate. It's actually flipped. You're that much worse off. Within five years, you're out of business, or at least 80% are in 10 years. Most businesses, I think it's like 95% are out of business. So those are some pretty tough odds. So it's like, go get experience. It's like, you wouldn't want to go compete in basketball against LeBron James. Right. It's like, you may love basketball, but the idea of like, hey, I think I'm going to go get the mba. It's like, all right, well, how much experience do you have and how good are you? You know, you got to build up to that. And some things are hobbies maybe, right. They're passion driven. But what I found is a lot of the passion industries, you know, you literally have to work for free because so many people want to go work in those industries. So, you know, might be music or film, you know, it's really fun. Or you see a lot of people get into restaurants and, you know, the margins are really, really small. So yeah, go find something, get experience, and then develop a competitive advantage where you're really good at something. And then if you can take that and go start, not only will you do better, but you're much more likely to get investors behind you if you need the money from somewhere else. If you get in sales and you know, you can accumulate money, then you can, you know, build up your war chest and then go start your own thing as well.
- [29:22]
Paul Alex
Yeah. And let's say you're in college right now in 2025, and you had the opportunity to get into any industry. What would be your personal choice right now?
- [29:37]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
David?
- [29:38]
David Royce
Oh, man, that is a tough one. You know, I don't know that there's one particular industry. Like, you know, the news would have you believe it's AI Right. And because that's, that's disruptive, it's crazy. Like it's, it's brand new and it gets lots of clicks. But I would argue look somewhere else. You know, where everybody's running. If everybody's zigging, you want to zag, try something different because it means that, like, it's just not as popular. So you're not going to have many, as many people competing. So there was a, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this last May. It was called the Stealthy Wealthy. And there's a, there's a professor out of Princeton that has done a lot of research on blue collar businesses. And what he identified was that the top 0.1%, not the top 1%, the top 0.1%, meaning you make 2.3 million or more a year. 43% of those people are blue collar. And you wouldn't, you would never know it because many of them, they're not that flashy. But they interviewed several people. Like, I think the person they interviewed, he created a machine that ripped up carpet. And they asked him, well, how did you know that was going to be a big deal? He's like, well, all schools have carpet and the kids are so dirty they have to rip it up almost every year. And so this guy, he's living this amazing lifestyle where he's like in the south of France for a month every year, his kids are going to private schools. He has an amazing lifestyle. He's a little more low key on average. But yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity in these businesses that are overlooked, you know, that most people are running into and that it'd be wise to take another look at them. Especially because private equity and the strategics are buying up a lot of these, they're rolling up a lot of these businesses right now. So try to find an industry where it's early, you know, maybe say it's the second or third inning as opposed to maybe the ninth inning and a private equity roll up. See if you can get into that.
- [31:40]
Paul Alex
So it's safe to say guys start looking in the trades. The trades is a pretty good industry to go ahead and get into, whether it's plumbing, electrician, roofing. I mean, I have several people in my network that tell me the exact same thing. It's just growing. And they're looking for operators, they're looking for entrepreneurs. Right. Don't you agree with that?
- [32:00]
David Royce
Yeah, there's a, some people call it the silver tsunami, where you have a lot of genetic or a lot of. Shoot, I'm trying to forget the name of the generation now off the top of my head.
- [32:13]
Paul Alex
Baby boomers.
- [32:14]
David Royce
Yeah, baby boomers, they're retiring, right? And there's a lot of them, they're in these blue collar trades and they don't have anybody to sell to. Like their kids don't want to go into the business maybe because it's not as sexy as the news you know, wants to report. And so they're, they don't know who to give it to. So you can do like your own roll up. And that's what a lot of these private equity companies are going in and they're buying all these up. And so, yeah, I think, I think there's A great opportunity to buy at a good price, get in, learn the business scale if you want to, and roll up yourself and then, you know, sell the business down the road for a much higher multiple.
- [32:49]
Paul Alex
Oh, absolutely. And what do you believe holds most smaller entrepreneurs back from going into a large business, David?
- [33:01]
David Royce
Yeah, I think it's that as opposed to working on the business, you're working in it, and it's a function of time. It's not the big things that hold us back. It's actually the little things. It's feeling productive. I like to divide up my time in A's, B's and C's. An A would be something that's important but not urgent. A B is something that's somewhat important and somewhat urgent. And then a C is. It's urgent, but it's not that important. So a C might be paying your bills. You got to do it. But you could really set all those up on autopay, right? Like, you don't have to do it yourself, or you could hire somebody else to pay them for you. A B might be hiring, like key people. You know, it's somewhat important and it's somewhat urgent, but you probably, over time you'd be able to train somebody else to be able to hire the right people. Now in A, that's where it really moves the needle, right? Like that's how do I. That's strategy. It's how do I increase price, how do I reduce costs, how do I become more efficient, you know, and help the company. How do I help the company grow and scale? And a lot of people think doing Bs and Cs just doing busy work is important. It makes them feel good, but you're not really moving the needle. And so you got to get out of that mentality of, okay, how am I focusing on the right things to be able to grow as large as I can? If you want to. Not everybody wants to do that, and that's okay. Like, some people want a lifestyle business. Some people really want to scale. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you're busy and productive if you're not working on your A's.
- [34:35]
Paul Alex
I love that. I love that. So, guys, work on your A's. I'm actually going to take that. That's a good framework to use, man, because I hear that all the time. It's just like, how can I manage my time better, you know? And everybody has their own strategy and will work for them. But I really like their concept of, of actually separating from a B and C. That's good. So, David, what would you tell the audience right now? Okay. If you were to go ahead and speak to David back in college, before you started all of this, what would be some words of advice if you were to able to go back into the past and give yourself some advice to level up before you went ahead and you blew up these companies?
- [35:25]
David Royce
It's a great question. You know, I'd probably say go work your ass off and it's more than likely you'll figure it out. Like, if you're willing to work really, really hard and focus and become obsessive at what you do, you've got the best chance. Like, if you look at the very best athletes, the very, you know, the biggest rock stars you could think of, like a Taylor Swift or whoever, they actually, they work really, really hard at their craft. They're obsessed about it. They have a process, they're engaged, and it creates passion. Like, I found that most people love what they're good at. And sometimes it's not about the widget, you know, that you're selling, but it's about being great at something or helping other people. You can find happiness and joy in something else. And when you're constantly trying to get better, I really believe that we're happiest when we're striving for our true potential. And you're never going to regret giving your best. It feels good. And I used to love working 14, 16 hour days. There's times and seasons and the thing I would actually tell myself is work really hard now, because when you have family and you have kids, you're going to want to slow down and take some steps back because your priorities change. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. You know, it's another phase of life and there's more opportunities for growth and learning on that side of life.
- [36:48]
Paul Alex
I love that. That's some great advice, man. Guys, always chase the greater version of yourself. I love that. So, David, where can my audience find you, brother?
- [36:59]
David Royce
Yeah, they should go to LinkedIn. I'm there if they got questions or something. Feel free to reach out.
- [37:04]
Paul Alex
Love it. Guys, make sure to reach out to David Royce on LinkedIn. And that wraps up our interview here at the Level up podcast with Paul Alex. Guys, we are currently rec top three on business podcasts and Apple podcasts. Make sure to leave a five star review for this interview. And if you guys want to share this with someone that you care about, that needs to level up today in 2025, going into 2026 David, thank you again for your time, brother. This was a phenomenal interview. Best wishes to you in the holidays. And that's the level up guys. Take care.
- [37:34]
David Royce
Thanks for the opportunity. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited war Wireless for 15amonth. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [38:23]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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