Dave Royce on Pest Control, Private Equity, and Purpose

Summary

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The Money Mondays: "Dave Royce on Pest Control, Private Equity, and Purpose"

Date: June 23, 2026
Host: Dan Fleyshman
Guest: Dave Royce

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Episode Overview

In this special episode of The Money Mondays, Dan Fleyshman dives into the journey of entrepreneur Dave Royce, who built and sold four pest control companies and a solar energy business. The episode unpacks how Dave leveraged an "asset deal" strategy, scaled his companies, mentored a new generation of high-earning salespeople, and ultimately became one of the largest players in the US pest control industry. The conversation naturally branches into personal finance, investing, and philanthropy, with actionable takeaways for anyone interested in business, sales, and finding purpose beyond profit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Building & Scaling in Pest Control

• Dave’s Background & Asset Deal Strategy
  • Started as a college student, sold pest control door-to-door.
  • Used “asset deals” to sell off customer bases and reinvest in new ventures, maintaining equity & control (00:52).
  • "I figured out this thing called an asset deal, where I could sell off just the customer base, basically the book of business. I could sell that off, take all that money and throw it into the next company." (00:57, Dave)
• Sales & Recruitment—Door-to-Door Model
  • Industry started with around 500 reps, now thousands.
  • Sales training is everything; Dave self-taught sales through books after early struggles (01:53–02:38).
  • By end of first summer: Top rookie, soon managing and training others, earning up to $225k per summer by graduation (02:45).

2. Incentives, Upward Mobility, & Company Culture

• Earning Potential and Realities
  • First-year reps: $25k–$30k; second years: $40k–$45k.
  • Sales managers: Easily $100k+ for the summer (07:04).
  • "We have a few [reps] that even make a million dollars a year… if they've got several hundred people underneath them, then ultimately they..." (03:02, 07:27, Dave)
• Recruitment and Retention
  • Rigorous, consistent schedules and strong team culture fueled by training and camaraderie (08:26).
  • 25% of new reps typically quit, of whom about half switch to technician roles (06:15).

3. Unique Company Perks

• Creating "Cool" Headquarters
  • NCAA basketball courts, golf simulators, foosball—fun culture to attract and retain top talent (05:57).
• National Scale
  • Operations in 34 states, knocking doors in 5,000+ cities (06:35).

4. Personal Finance & Investing for Young Earners

• Mindset Shift from Spending to Saving
  • Encourages using windfall earnings to pay off student debt, save for life milestones versus flashy spending (12:57).
  • "I just saved, save, save, because in my mind I wanted to graduate debt free." (13:41, Dave)
• Company Education on Wealth-Building
  • Brought in speakers to teach about investments and prudent cash management.
• Investment Philosophy
  • Emphasis on S&P 500 Index investing, tax loss harvesting, and diversified access to alternative assets as wealth grows (14:03–14:39).
  • Host Dan shares the 40/40/20 investment rule: 40% low risk (S&P 500, bonds), 40% medium risk (real estate, stocks, cash-flow businesses), 20% high risk (startups, crypto, moonshots) (14:39–15:57).
  • "It's all about access, getting access to the right things," e.g., private pre-IPO deals via high-net-worth networks (16:34, Dave).

5. Wealth, Inflation, and Liquidity

• Managing Excess Cash
  • Keep 12 months of expenses in cash; invest surplus to beat inflation (19:27).
  • Warning: Savings above what you need loses value due to inflation (19:27–21:37, Dan).

6. Philanthropy: Giving Back with Money and Time

• How to Choose a Cause
  • "It doesn't matter what charity you're after. It all goes in the same bucket." (22:54, Dave)
  • Find causes that personally resonate—education for Dave, including significant gifts to the United Negro College Fund.
  • Direct engagement through company and individual initiatives (bed net donations for malaria prevention, local school scholarships).
• Company-Wide Charity Initiatives
  • Employees suggested and campaigned for causes; contribution mechanisms in sales process raised millions (25:02).
  • Peak engagement comes when causes align with employee passions, leading to greater impact (26:47).
• Dan on Accessible Charity
  • Charity isn’t just financial—volunteering, social media advocacy, and physical presence matter equally (21:38, Dan).

7. Purpose, Family, and Legacy

• Leaving Wealth to Children
  • “Mine is going to be pretty much zero. Yeah, I'm very committed to giving it all away.” (29:40, Dave)
  • Belief that inheriting too much can create "trust fund" issues: addiction, depression, lack of purpose.
  • Wants kids to find their own passion and purpose without depending on inherited wealth.
• On Finding Purpose
  • Both Dan and Dave stress that lack of purpose—especially after major business exits—can be destructive; purpose can come in many forms (charity, creative work, etc.) (31:26–32:18).
  • "If you want to be happy, serve others right. It's one of the key components for me; I found it's growth and serving others." (29:09, Dave)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sales Comeback
  "I went for five days with zeros. Everybody else around me selling one to four per day. And it's a commission only job, so the only thing I was getting out of it was free cardio." — Dave Royce (01:53)
• On Earning Potential
  "We have a few that even make a million dollars a year… they're freaks of nature." — Dave Royce (03:05)
• On Asset Deals
  "I could sell off just the customer base, basically the book of business. I could sell that off, take all that money and throw it into the next company." — Dave Royce (00:57)
• On Why He Chose Pest Control Over Wall Street
  "My boss said, 'Why on earth are you going to do investment banking?'... he was selling his business for $10 million." (04:59)
• Charity Philosophy
  "It doesn't matter what charity you're after. It all goes in the same bucket." — Dave Royce (22:54)
• On Not Leaving Wealth to Children
  "Mine is going to be pretty much zero. I'm very committed to giving it all away." — Dave Royce (29:40)
• Dan on Inflation and Cash
  "A lot of times we have this goal, like, I'm going to save up all this money and I'm going to put it away into my savings account. Please. You're already ahead of most of society. I want you to do that, except at least have it doing something low risk or no risk. So you're fighting with inflation." (21:37)
• On Purpose
  "If you want to be happy, serve others right. It's one of the key components for me, I found it's growth and serving others." — Dave Royce (29:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Dave’s Career & Asset Deals: 00:52–02:38
• Sales & Recruitment: 04:05–07:56
• Company Culture & Scale: 05:57–06:47
• Earning Tiers & Career Progression: 07:04–08:15
• Retention/Attrition: 06:15
• Sales Success Stories: 11:59–12:23
• Wealth-Building and Investing for Salespeople: 12:38–16:34
• Investment Philosophy & Access: 16:34–19:27
• Inflation and Liquidity Management: 19:27–21:37
• Charity: Choosing a Cause & Impact: 21:38–26:47
• Corporate Philanthropy & Employee Engagement: 26:15–26:47
• Purpose & Post-Exit Life: 29:09–32:18
• Plans for the Next Chapter: 32:18–32:47

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Where to Find Dave Royce

• LinkedIn: Dave Royce (Professional Updates)

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Additional Resources

• For Door-to-Door Sales Opportunities:
  • AptivRecruiting.com (Mentioned at 35:11)

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Episode Takeaways

• Sales industries like pest control can unlock rapid wealth and personal growth—if paired with discipline and long-term vision.
• A strong company culture, grounded in education and camaraderie, drives both performance and loyalty.
• Smart investing takes precedence over flashy lifestyle inflation—start with financial security, then allocate to diversified growth.
• Philanthropy and giving back—in time, money, or influence—fuels a sense of purpose that not only impacts society but brings deep personal fulfillment.
• Legacy isn't about leaving money—it's about inspiring and equipping the next generation to find their own meaning and impact.

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This summary captures the full arc and key lessons of the episode, making it a valuable resource for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money. How to invest money. How to give it away to charity. Our guest has built a humongous company in a very unique category that every one of you has dealt with. Things that happen inside of your household or right outside of your household. You might be thinking, what is he talking about? Is it my alarm system? Is it the pest control situation? Is it my roofing? My garage? What is it? We're going to dive right in. What I want you guys to keep in mind, these podcasts are under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure. Because the Average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 36 and 40 minutes. For you guys, we're going to dive right in. Dave, give us the quick 2 minute bio so we get straight to the money.

[B]

Yeah. So built four pest control companies and a solar energy company.

[A]

Four.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And part of that strategy was I figured out this thing called an asset deal, where I could sell off just the customer base, basically the book of business. I could sell that off, take all that money and throw it into the next company. And so it was a way to basically get investment and still being able to have all the control and all the equity of my own.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So I did that for about 20 years, roughly every four years. The first four years, I would sell, get money, rinse and repeat, same thing over and over. And then, yeah, became the third largest residential pest control company, third largest in the United States.

[A]

So how did it start? Were you working in the space? How did the first one start?

[B]

Yeah. So I was a starving college student working minimum wage, and I had a friend come to me and he says, hey, I made 25 grand last summer selling pest control services door to door.

[A]

Just knocking on doors. Yeah.

[B]

And I was like, okay, I don't really even know what that is, but I'm in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So I drove out to Sacramento, California. It started selling and there was a big problem. I sucked.

[A]

Sure. Sales.

[B]

I went for five days with zeros. Everybody else around me selling one to four per day. And it's a commission only job, so the only thing I was getting out of it was free cardio.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. So I went to a bookstore that weekend, got like half a dozen sales books. And then I said, I'm going to read 90 minutes every day and just keep learning and try to learn how to sell because, you know, this is my best opportunity at this point. In my life. By the end of the summer, I was the top rookie of the whole company. I was hired salespeople. I went on, I went with a different company the next year, became a sales manager. And when I got there, they didn't have any training manuals. And so I actually asked my boss, I said, can I write a training manual for you? And he was super impressed. Ultimately, he said, I'm gonna give you if you'll keep doing this every year because we sold twice as much as his other location.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

If you keep coming back, I'll pay you a cutoff, everybody. And so by the time I graduated college, I was making 225 grand a summer.

[A]

Summer?

[B]

Yeah, that's 20 years ago. So it's like almost half a million at least.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so we cover these different topics of how to make money, invest money, give it away to charity. On the make money side, you're saying that these 22 year old, 25 year old kids can go make 25 grand, 50 grand plus in one summer?

[B]

That's right. We have a few that even make a million dollars a year.

[A]

A million dollars in one summer?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Oh my God. Just knocking on doors.

[B]

Yeah, they're freaks of nature. But you know, if you have like say 3,000 salespeople, you start to get these anomalies where some people are just really, really amazing. And almost all the sales managers are like a six figure income for the summertime. But there's a few guys where they'll do it for maybe they'll expand their summer to maybe five or six months and they'll make a million bucks and then they'll go surf the rest of the year.

[A]

Is it summer because of the weather or is it because that's the right time to do it?

[B]

It's kind of the right timing. That's when pest pressure is the maximum, is in the summertime. And because college students are out in the summer, it's just kind of how the industry originally started. At least this spec marketing technique started.

[A]

Is anybody going out in December in the rain?

[B]

There's a few, yeah. But most people, if they do that, they're probably in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona,

[A]

where it's not that heavy on the

[B]

weather side, so it's not quite as intense. Right.

[A]

Wow. Okay, so how do you get 22 year olds to 25 year olds to show up and work and stay consistent all summer?

[B]

Yeah, so we recruit them. I was originally recruited. There were probably only 500 salespeople in total in the entire pest control Industry when I got into it. And the idea had been around for about a decade, but what I noticed is that the training just wasn't great. Like, there was still a lot of room for improvement. And because of my really bad experience, I didn't want my friends to go through that. And so we just started developing that. And really, from there, then it became like, okay, well, how can we recruit? So I got really good at recruiting. I had about 100 people coming out to work for me in the summertimes. And then from there, when I. Ultimately, it was my boss that said, why on earth are you going to go do investment banking? Like, because I was. I had a finance major. And he's like, you really should go do your own pest control company. And I'm like, yeah, sorry, that's. It's embarrassing to say, but it just wasn't impressive to me. I thought, you know, I'm gonna be a college student. I'm gonna go to New York. You know, I wear a suit.

[A]

All that kind of work on Wall Street.

[B]

Yeah. But he's like, by the way, I'm selling my business for $10 million. And I was like, wait, what? And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna sell it to Terminix and I'm gonna take some time off. And, yeah, I made, you know, I put a few hundred grand into it. He was like, you should really go do the same thing. And that's when the light bulb kind of came on for me. I thought, huh, well, maybe if I went and did this, if I didn't like it, I could go back to MBA school. This would be my experience or whatever. But, yeah, it just never stopped. It just kept going and going. It's kind of like each level of business, the first one was really figuring out, what is the business, how does it operate, understand the financials, the metrics. The second business I did, it was, okay, how do you scale. How do you go into different states and scale with lots of people? The third one was like, how do you make it a really cool, unique business and recruit thousands of people with unique talents? And so that's when we got like, crazy headquarters and NCAA basketball corps, golf simulators, ping pong, foosball, that kind of stuff.

[A]

We did our toy drive there, like two years ago, three years ago. We drive toy drive in your. On the basketball court?

[B]

Yes. You know what I'm talking about.

[A]

Okay, so let's say 100 sales reps show up. Let's call it Salt Lake City. 10 or 20 of them. They suck. And they fade away. Like they're not cut out for it. Yeah.

[B]

Usually about 25% of the reps go, this is just too hard. You know, long hours, you know, you're in the sun all day knocking doors, tons of rejection. And then of those 25%, we usually get about half of them to stay where they'll transfer into a technician position. Sure. And then the others just are like, you know what, I'm out.

[A]

Sure. Yeah. And then the bullet, we'll get apartments

[B]

for them, you know, all across the country. Oh, cool. We knock over 5,000 different cities throughout the country. In 34 states. Yeah, we're in 34 different states. There's over 5,000 cities that we actually knock doors in.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

So we get apartments in every single state, set it up for them, and then literally they just can move out, stay in the apartments and, you know, work six days a week.

[A]

All right, the middle tier guys, that 25 to 80%, what are they doing? How much are they making? What's the general concept?

[B]

Yeah, first year rep, maybe it's like 25, 30 grand a second year rep. Someone who's already done it, has experience. They might be around 40, you know, 45. And then a sales manager. If they're recruiting friends, they can make a cut because they're recruiting and training all their friends and they're managing them over the course of summer, that might be around 100,000. Just like for averages.

[A]

And then your superstars, that top 10 or 20%, what happens there?

[B]

And then those. Yeah, some of those guys make up to a million. It might be like if someone's just on their own and they're not managing a company, but they're going to sell like 1,000 plus accounts. They might be at half a million or something. But then what the guys will do is they'll. If you have. If they're a sales manager, they'll try to create other sales managers underneath them. Yeah. To create like a region. And then they'll try to create a division. And then if they've got several hundred people underneath them, then ultimately they.

[A]

So they're almost making their own company under your company.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's similar how most companies would operate with the salesforce, but yeah, it's just like they're able to make a little bit. We really stick it to numbers. It's just easier to calculate. As opposed to just giving people some sort of a salary or whatever. They're much more incentivized if they can really. It's almost like owning a piece of the company in the way or owning a piece of the business.

[A]

So with a lot of other brands that are out there, other competitors first, what attracts them to your brand and then what makes them stay when they're probably getting headhunted and recruited by competitors.

[B]

Yes, our sales training program by far was the best. To give you an idea of how good it was when sales reps would come to work for us. If they'd work somewhere else, and then they came to work for us the next summer, they would sell 70% more than they did at the previous company. Right. And part of that is it's sales training, part of it is work ethic. When you're surrounded by other people, like on the winning team.

[A]

Yeah, let's go, let's go.

[B]

Yeah, they're gonna want to work more hours. Whereas a lot of the other companies is kind of like, eh, we'll get out there and work and we won't. Some days and us, it's like, hey, we gotta a solid schedule for you guys to work. You know, ultimately you can choose whether you're gonna work it or not, but when everybody else is doing it, it's a lot easier to do. Yeah.

[A]

So I have a fun story. There was a tech company called Mo Pro many years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My dear friend, he was like, I want you to come join the advisor board with me on this company. I just raised like $18 million. I said, no. What do you mean no? We're like dear friends. Like, this is like a brother.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was like, no. And he's like, what do you mean now? I'm like, we don't sell anything yet. You're like an artist that just keeps painting for seven years. You're doing all these different things and you've got all these different divisions. Like, yeah, let me build a sales division and if I hit a certain number, 5 million bucks in revenue, then I get double the equity and I'll give the other half the equity to charity.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

He's like, okay, so me and my girlfriend at the time, we go hire 40 sales reps. Literally just posting on the Facebook. This is a long time ago. Yeah, posting on the Facebook. That's right. And hundreds show up. Forty get picked. And we put them in the guys in doctors outfits and the girls in nurses outfits. And they're your digital doctor. And I had to invent door to door. Like when I say invent, I didn't invent the industry. I mean, like, I didn't know it, I just heard about it. For years. And so on weekends I would get them convention booths at like the doctor's convention, the lawyers convention, the restaurant convention. And we made like digital doctors. You'd walk by, we're like, hey, can you give us two minutes to give you a checkup on your website? It's fair, right?

[B]

Yeah, that's great.

[A]

They walk by, they stop in, and it's just like a bunch of like 22 year old to 28 year olds, same concept. And they would just look at the website. And I taught them like, find out if the email address is wrong, find out if the date is wrong, find out if the address is wrong. Does the link not work? Is it not connected to their Facebook? Like just basic things to find is. Sure, if you find two or three problems, they'll pass. And so, and then on the weekdays we'd go door to door and we'd go. But again, I didn't know the industry or what was legal or not. We'd like show up to strip malls and just walk into businesses, you know, soliciting. We're probably why they created soliciting signs. And so we created 1100 accounts at $5,000 each. So I hit my 5.5 million in sales. And how long did it take you to do? Four months.

[B]

Not bad. Geez.

[A]

But I had no idea. I had no context of any of this stuff. I just knew people needed websites. Yeah. And we'd walk in and say, for 200 bucks a month, $5,000 over the course of two years, we'll fix your website, we'll make you three videos, blah, blah, blah, blah, like it's quick, quick spiel, right? Nice and easy. And people just got it. And that company went on to raise $70 million. And then the rest is history. And so I say the story because that door to door experience was like, changed my life watching these people go, go visit 20 to 30 accounts a day, try to get four to eight appointments, close one to four of them. That was my like basic math for them. I said, if you do that, I'm going to pay you 200 bucks commission per. So you can make 200, 800 bucks a day. It's good money. And I just broke it down that very simply to them so they could get it. And they just. Some people faded away and some people crushed it.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

There was one kid, Rodrigo, I still talk to today. Sometimes he would outdo everyone at the same convention. There'd be 15 reps. I would do all their numbers combined in one weekend because he would just, he's the animal. Morning, noon and night. When he'd get back to the hotel room, he'd call every business card, every single one of them, hey, come, come back over tomorrow. Could you bring any of your friends or associates over? Like, so he'd show up in the morning and there's like a line waiting for this guy anyways.

[B]

That's tough performers though. Like they eat, breathe and sleep. Sales. And the beautiful thing about sales is you'll never go hungry. Right, Right. Like once you go out and sell and master it, you realize, you know what, at any point in my life, I can always come back to this and make money and survive. It's such a beautiful thing.

[A]

All right, the investing side. Yeah. You got a 24 year old kid, he just made $100,000 in one summer. How do you prevent him from not just going, buying another Tesla, two Rolexes and going to the nightclub and buying his girlfriend a purse? Like, how do you prevent the hundred grand to just get lit on fire?

[B]

Yeah, part of it. Like for us at the company, we had a, we had much more thrifty mindset. We would actually have people come in and teach them about investing. We would pitch to them like, hey, this job pay off your schooling before you graduate, so you don't even have to have school debt. If you save money for a wedding ring or for a house, don't go blow it all on a car. Certainly we have people who blow it on a car for sure. And part of it they might have justified, like, oh, this is part of recruiting. People see the car, they want to know more. But I was super thrifty myself. I think you gotta live it right in order for people to want to follow it. But I just saved, save, save, because in my mind I wanted to graduate debt free. I wanted to go to MBA school. I got married towards the end of college, believe it or not, I married my college sweetheart. And yeah, she was going to go to law school. And so I'm like, I got to save for that. So I saved up about 300 grand before I graduated, if you can believe that. And then when I got pitched this idea of, hey, you should go start your own company, that's when I was like, okay, I actually have money.

[A]

You have a little cushion.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I have it saved. So it's kind of like being prepared for the opportunity to know when to take it. But as far as investing, for me, it took me a while to invest because I was the bank and all the cash I got, I kept thinking, I'm Going to throw it into the next one because I don't want to have to go get investors and lose equity on it and then I can maintain the control. But yeah, clearly like investing into like A S&P 500 index or into like a tax loss harvesting vehicle like that, it's probably the safest thing you can do. And we've got a lot of guys too where, you know, they're all about the Magnificent seven or just, you know, AI as that's coming up.

[A]

And very cool. So you guys have heard me talk about it. I'm going to give you the quick synopsis. It's called 40, 40, 20. I like to recommend 40% low risk. You're just trying to make between 5 and 9% for the year. Like the S&P 500. He just mentioned medium risk. I want to make between 10 and 30% for the year. This is real estate, stock market, cash flowing, businesses, high risk. This should be about 10 to 20%. This is my shot at glory. If I get this right, I want 7x or 12x or something crazy to happen. And if I get it wrong or just takes a long time, I hope that the medium risk and the low risk covers the high risk. On the low risk side, The S&P 500 you might think is medium risk over the last 93 years, has returned 11% on average over the last 20 years, has only actually had three losing years. Can the S&P 500 go down this month? Of course. Can it go down this year? For sure. But over the course of time, 93 years or 20 years, it survived depressions, recessions and everything crazy that's gone along, wars, etc. And it's fought through an 11% average. If you take a compound calculator and put an 11% and you throw in 1,000 bucks, 5 grand, 2 grand, 10 grand, whatever. Every single year it will be staggering what happens 20, 30, 40 years from now.

[B]

Okay, it's like that thing on the golf course, right? Like you start out and you say, hey, you know, why don't we play each hole for a dollar and we'll double it each time we go up in the pitch. By the end you're like, oh, 18th hole.

[A]

So with so many different options now, right? Take off the 25 year old cap now build up all these companies. You've had multiple exits. You could invest in crypto, real estate, stock market, private companies, the SpaceX, IPO, private company. There's so many things that could be boring. Medium risk and high risk. How do you Decide for yourself with unlimited options, what to invest into.

[B]

Yeah, Sophie, what I learned is it's all about access, getting access to the right things, right? So like SpaceX is about to IPO, right? I have friends who invested in SpaceX, you know, years and years.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Right, because they had money or they had access through somebody, right? A fund, you know, and they're going to 40x their money. Like it's wild how much they're going to make.

[A]

Yeah, 40 times anything is a lot.

[B]

So I realized, you know, that's really the key and you have to have a certain amount of money. Like for example this group I use, Iconic, you have to have $100 million just to even get in with them. But, but they have pooled together a bunch of different people. Like Mark Zuckerberg was the original person who worked with these guys and then I think Jack Dorsey and Reid Hoffman. But they have a lot of the tech guys there, but basically they pool their money to be able to get access to whatever it is. So I've invested in the last three series of anthropic because I had access. In any other instance I never would have had access to that. So it's a little rough, right, because the rich get richer in that sense. You have to have a certain amount of money to do it. It's the same amount of legal paperwork for them to. So they need bigger checks. But yeah, it'd be interesting to see if somebody actually put together something. Clearly like in the puppet markets they have that. But if there was a private way to do it where people could put in lots and lots of money to fund something and then so everybody could participate in it. What if there's a good business idea there?

[A]

So as someone is sunsetting right there towards the end of their door to door career, now they've got $1.3 million saved up. They bought their house, they got their two cars and a wife and the picket fence, you know, like they got everything set up, now they're bombarded by options. What would you say that they can try to learn or figure out for themselves? The way I describe it is to figure out what type of investor are you? Like when I talk about low risk, did you like that when I talk about 10 to 30%?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that what's got you excited or you're like no, no, no, I got to have 8x or 12x. What would you say to someone that's trying to figure out their life for the next chapter after they're done? They can't knock on doors anymore, maybe they're becoming a manager, et cetera, about how they can find out what they might want to invest into.

[B]

Yeah. The question is, how much money do you have and how much do you need on a monthly basis? Right. So especially as you get older, you may need more security, so you might have more fixed income at that stage than you would have when you were 18 years old. So if you need a certain amount, you have to really think, if the stock market goes down, I need something like I need an inverse relationship maybe between fixed income and S&P 500 index. Whereas for me, it's different, like, I don't need that much money. So what I do is I put away four years of what I actually need in case we have another Great Recession. Great Recession. When it crashed, it took three and a half years for the market to come back. And so I've got that cash there. Everything else, I'm like, let it ride, baby. All s and P500, tax loss, harvesting funds or alternatives, Right? So private equity, direct investments, real estate, you know, private debt, whatever.

[A]

I'm going to say something to you guys very bluntly. Once you've saved up 12 months in your piggy bank, let's say you have five grand a month overhead. Once you've saved up $60,000, the cash above that, you are physically losing money on the value of that cash sitting in your savings account. Now, I'm not saying go invest into SpaceX and buy Bitcoin, et cetera, and take risk with the money. Let's say you've got 200 grand saved up, but you need 5 grand a month. So 60,000 is your core base for 12 months. The extra 140,000 spends like 128,000. Next year it spends like 114,000. Next year, it spends like 102,000 the next year. Four years from now, it spends like 92,000. It still says 140,000 in your savings account extra, right? It still says it. You still see the number, but it spends like 128, 114, etc. Because of 9% a year inflation. That isn't a theory, that isn't political. You try to buy a Ford truck that was 50,000 and now it's 54,000, and then it's 58,000 and then it's 63,000. Then it's 67,000. Go try to buy muffins. Right? Now, muffins are $6.50. Five years ago, they're four bucks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

$4 becomes four $44.40 becomes five bucks, five becomes $5.50. Do you think they're going to go decrease the price of muffins? Never. They don't go to your local hotel and pay for parking. Right now it's probably $35. Remember when it was 30? It was 25. It was 20, it was 15. So I say this because the extra 140,000, I'm not saying you have to go buy a bunch of crazy things, invest in a bunch of crazy things, but at least fighting with inflation, CDs at your bank, that'll pay you 4%, 5% for the year. That 140,000 making 5%, that's a lot of money. $7,000 a year. You now have some fight in you because you're 140 now it says 147, 155, 162. This is very important. A lot of times we have this goal, like, I'm going to save up all this money and I'm going to put it away into my savings account. Please. You're already ahead of most of society. I want you to do that. Except at least have it doing something low risk or no risk. So you're fighting with inflation.

[B]

Definitely.

[A]

All right. On the charity side of things, you made money door to door. You sold your company, or let's say someone becomes a manager and they start to become an executive for your company, they got some stock in the business. Now they've got a liquidity event. One of your exits, for example. Now they're thinking about philanthropy. And along the way they could have done it as well. Right. I wanted to keep in mind we're inside of Hubble Studio now, where we created the trina's Kids Foundation 12 years ago. Our first events were eight volunteers. There wasn't a bunch of money involved. You can do charity with your cell phone, your social media power, rolling your sleeves up and showing up, or your time and energy. You going to a children's hospital, you going to a senior citizen's home, you going to a homeless shelter is just as good as him and I putting in ten grand to that charity. You spending eight hours there is the same concept of doing value. So don't feel like you have to donate money to do charity. There's plenty you can do without cash. So someone's making money within your company. They've had liquidity event. They've got over a million bucks saved up and they want to donate 25 grand this year split up amongst different charities. How do you feel for Someone to decide if they're going to have a charity component to their life, what matters to them.

[B]

You know, I once heard somebody say that it doesn't matter what charity you're after. It all goes in the same bucket, that concept. And really what that means to me is everybody's different in terms of where their passions are and where they want to help. For me, education's really my thing. In fact, when I die, the majority of my money right now is actually going to the United Negro College Fund. I just, I've never liked the idea that, you know, so much of your success depends on where you're born.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You know the zip code that you're born in. And so wanting to give people a chance who maybe they didn't have the same mentors or the same access or the same financial means, but if they've worked their tail off in school, I want them to be able to.

[A]

I love that.

[B]

To me, that's like evolution. We want the smartest people rising to the top. Other things too, just. I do the same thing at my kids school. At a private school, there's certain people where they need access. They're very bright kids, but maybe they don't come from the same financial background. I lived in Pacific Palisades. So now fires. Yeah. So now it's like reinvesting into the community. You know, how are we going to fix this and rebuild it and build it back even better, you know, than it was before? So, I mean, those are things that are very personal to me, you know, for some people. Another thing too, this is probably a random one, is the most dangerous animal in the world, believe it or not, is the mosquito, because it passes malaria to people. And so almost a million people a year might die from malaria. You know, it's not like a lion or a shark. There might be a few hundred deaths from that.

[A]

This is a quick.

[B]

Yeah. So we, at my company at Aptiv, we would donate a certain. In fact, at all the different companies we've had, we would donate money and we have days where we would. With the sales guys, where we get them excited about going out and getting people to donate. And we eventually got to a point where on the app, you know, when people were checking each customer out and signing them up, there was literally a place for them to say, yeah, I'd like to donate X amount to this charity. And we raised millions of dollars. It was the United nations nothing but nets group.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they donate bed nets to people because most people, like for example, Africa or South America, they get bit while they're sleeping.

[A]

Yeah. So to find out what charity you're going to be passionate about, it's typically be something that either impacted you or someone you're close with. What will happen is if you are passionate about it, you are going to put in more energy, like we talked about for social media, rolling your sleeves up, putting in time and energy into it because it impacted you or someone around you. If someone in your family went through breast cancer or someone was homeless or someone had leukemia or Alzheimer's, etc. You're going to be much more passionate about that topic. So think for yourself. Doesn't have to be overnight, what's something that might have been impactful in your life? Or it could be a family member or friend and you know that it hurt them or it's impacted their lives, you might dive right into that subject. And then you're going to be more passionate when you're talking about it, when you put the effort. Because charity is not overnight, when you find the right charity that you're passionate about, you're typically going to be involved for the rest of your life. Okay. Do you think it's important for companies to have a charity component for their employees, customers, vendors, et cetera, to see them active in charity?

[B]

Yeah, I think it's a good thing to do culturally. I think trying to find something too, that resonates for the majority of those people who are there is great. I've just seen so much camaraderie be built around it. Is it every company's job to, you know, take care of everybody else? You know, like some people have, you know, differing opinions on this, where it's like, hey, there, at some point, maybe it's too much, it's too intense. But yeah, like, we loved it. Like, we had a lot of fun with it. We got involved too, with human trafficking, which is a difficult, very difficult subject.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But I don't know, I guess the idea of exterminating pests, we like that idea. Felt like that fell in with our culture. But ironic is ironic because, you know, we've been doing the nothing but nets group forever, and when we added this other component that raised more money than I'd ever seen before, like tripled, quadrupled what we would normally get. And people were very passionate. So I think it's important to listen to your employees, like, what are they passionate about? Because that's how you're going to have the most success.

[A]

Last night I went to a charity for sex trafficking, actually on the front seat. Of my car right now is the big folder from last night's dinner. It's a group called Child Alive. And it was intense.

[B]

It's so intense.

[A]

The numbers were staggering. Like, I couldn't. Like, I thought about it all night.

[B]

Like, gut wrenching, too.

[A]

It's mind boggling what is happening, especially overseas, but. And also here in America. But yeah, it's when you find something like that. And I could hear the voices of the people speaking. And they had the girls from UCLA that went through the huge. The Olympics trial thing. Like the gymnast. Yeah, not teacher, but the gymnast. Physician had the largest case of all time. And then the attorney, John Manley was there, who's the number one sexual trafficking, sexual assault attorney in history. And so the three of them were speaking like, it's burning my brain. It literally was last night. And watching them speak and then watching the people that create the charity tear up on a charity they've been involved in for 10, 15, 20 years and still get emotional. A random Thursday night. Like, it makes you want to support them because you know they care. So when you guys are thinking about charity, find people that care. It will change the way you look at charity. It will change the way you act. It'll change the way you post about it on Facebook and Instagram. It'll change the way you want to show up on a Saturday morning to that place where people care. If they care about homelessness or they care about child trafficking or they care about Alzheimer's, leukemia. I promise you, once you find that thing, it adds purpose into our lives. And sometimes we go through the hardest times in your life. And you might be down out on your luck financially. Finding something that you can put some passion and time into will literally change the outcome of your life. When you find something that you can put your passion and energy to, it literally changes your mindset, your actions, and your entire daily life. Because you found a purpose.

[B]

If you want to be happy, serve others right. It's one of the key components for me, I found it's growth and serving others.

[A]

So there's only one question that I ask on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer ever. In history of, I don't know, three, 400 episodes now, many, many, many years from now when it's finally time that Dave passes away. But you've built four pest control companies now. You've built 40 zillions of dollars. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children?

[B]

Mine is going to be pretty much zero. Yeah, I'm Very committed to giving it all away. Part of it has to do with. Again, it probably goes back to, like, I want there to be this great equalizer. I wish education was that great equalizer for everybody. And I've also seen it be crippling to a lot of people where the kids get the money and they go, well, it doesn't matter what I do in this life, I will never make this much. And I see people fall into addiction, depression, all kinds of different things. I want my kids to look for a sense of purpose. I want them to find that passion, that thing that really drives them, Whether it's in charity, whether it's in something, the private sector, public sector, whatever it might be. I just think it's a better way to live. Nobody gave me money, so why should I give them any money? I don't think most people think it's fair either. I think a lot of people. I remember when I was in college, I might see somebody and they roll up in this super nice car, and I'm like, I'm not sure the parents. It's like, I'm not sure it's the right thing for the child. You know, it's like, let them go out and earn that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, don't take away that joy from them about going out and working.

[A]

Yeah. The concept of trust fund babies and trust fund kids, like, it's very real. Yeah. You know, I throw 200 events a year. Sorry. I travel 200 days a year, and I throw 42 events a year. And so I'm seeing people in every city and state and all different tiers and price points of events. And so I see a lot of the trust fund kids and what happens with drugs and traveling. And the purpose part that we talked about earlier is really important. There's a famous theory about, like, in the backyard, if a dog doesn't have purpose, what does it do? It digs holes. Right. It digs holes in the backyard.

[B]

Runs around like a crazy person.

[A]

Yeah. Because it has no purpose. And so when it has a purpose, dog can be an amazing creature. A dog can be one of the most amazing things in our. Our lives. Yeah. When it has no purpose, it digs holes. Humans do the same thing. That could be addiction, that could be gambling, that could be porn, that could be depression. Things that they're just digging, digging, digging, because they don't have a purpose. They're trying to find something under the ground. And I say that because oftentimes we go down those same things as people where charity could be that thing that solves that just by dedicating yourself to going and helping senior citizens, children, homelessness, et cetera. Okay, last question. What's the next chapter for you? Right? You've had these multiple companies, you've built, these thousands and thousands of employees working with you. What's the next chapter for Dave?

[B]

Yeah, so the last company I did, I'm 100% out and I'm done. I just said, you know What? It's been 20 years. I think I've learned everything I'm gonna learn from this industry. I'm good. And so for me, I've taken a year off to really think about why I did what I did, what do I want to do next. And I think the next phase is something more creative or more philanthropic. It doesn't have to be just about money. If it can be, that's great too. But I think it's going to be more passion oriented at this point.

[A]

Where can people find you on social? Are you active on social?

[B]

I'm kind of private, but I'm on LinkedIn. All my professional stuff's on there. I'm kind of the odd duck where I. My Instagram's like, for me, my family, and my very close personal friends.

[A]

All right, guys, these podcasts, usually I say this at the very beginning, are not just for you. It might be for some of your friends, family and followers. It might be for someone from your past, present or future. They might say something that you heard here and they're like, oh, I want to get into solar or pest control or door to door. You're like, oh, wait, you should listen to this episode. They might say, oh, I'm really thinking about charity stuff. I don't know what to do. How do I figure out what I want? You might be like, oh, listen to this clip. There's four minutes where they talked about X, Y and Z, about charity and finding your purpose. These podcasts are not just for you. The reason that we have such a large listen through rate is people find topics that they care about and they listen all the way through. And some people go back and listen multiple times because there might be something Dave said that you might want to show to your husband, your girlfriend, your dad, your kids, et cetera. Those moments are important. We have to have discussion about money. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's ridiculous. Money is not the root of all evil. Is there a small percentage that do evil things with money? Of course there's a small percentage that do bad things in every category in every industry. Medical, music, television. Everyone has that small percentage. But the other 99.9% of money is for your bills, for your food, for your travel, for your parents, when they got to go to the hospital, when they want to just pay for normal things. Like it's part of your. It's a tool, it's a utility. We have to be able to have these discussions about salary, credit, finance, should I lease, should I rent, should I buy? We got to be able to talk about it without feeling like it's rude to talk about it. So I appreciate you guys. As you guys know, we are sponsored by fanbasis.com I'm not going to read some long affiliate code of that. Fanbasis.com is a company I actually use for my entire back end and Go high level multi billion dollar company. Go high level has powered all the things you see with the Money Mondays. They are the back end system that powers all of that. So check out Fan bases, check out GoHighLevel, check out Dave across LinkedIn. And if you're thinking about maybe you want to work in the door to door space or maybe it might be your son or daughter that might be getting to that 18, 19, 20 year old, maybe they should research it because you've heard something could Crush it. Making 25 $50,000 in just one summer.

[B]

That's right. Aptirecruiting.com activerecruiting.com A P T I V

[A]

E Recruiting is a powerful company. Obviously you've heard they're in tons of cities all over the country. Appreciate you guys. We'll see you guys next Monday here@themoney Mondays.com.