245. David Royce: From Pest Control to Power Moves, how being a door-to-door salesman led to selling his pest control company for over NINE FIGURES, the art of closing deals and entrepreneurial lessons

Summary

Podcast Summary: Trading Secrets – Episode 245 with David Royce

Introduction

In Episode 245 of "Trading Secrets," hosted by Jason Turcotte from Audioboom Studios, listeners are introduced to David Royce, a formidable serial entrepreneur renowned for building four highly successful environmental service businesses across North America. David is the founder and chairman of Aptive Environmental, a leading pest control company servicing thousands of cities across 34 states. His entrepreneurial journey has been featured in prestigious publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. In 2015, David was honored with the Ernest Young National Entrepreneur of the Year award. This episode delves deep into David's career trajectory, exploring how he transformed a modest startup into the third-largest residential pest control company in North America, achieving over $500 million in annual revenue within eight years.

Early Career and Entry into Sales [00:00 - 03:18]

David Royce begins his entrepreneurial journey as a broke college student striving to fund his education. Around 20-25 years ago, while attending BYU, he faced a pivotal decision: pursue the traditional investment banking path or seize an opportunity to become a door-to-door pest control salesman. Inspired by a friend's success, David ventured into sales, earning $25,000 that summer—a substantial sum then, now equivalent to approximately $50,000 today.

Notable Quote:

"I thought, that's damn good money. I'm gonna try that out." ([01:56])

Despite initial struggles—spending five days without a single sale—David's determination led him to a breakthrough. After a particularly disheartening weekend, he invested in self-education, buying six sales books from Barnes and Noble and dedicating 90 minutes daily to mastering sales techniques. This commitment transformed him into the top rookie in his company by summer's end.

Notable Quote:

"By the end of the summer, I was the top rookie in the company." ([02:57])

Mastering Sales Techniques [03:18 - 06:23]

David attributes his rapid improvement in sales to two key factors: the adoption of effective closing techniques and an unwavering work ethic. He emphasizes the importance of confidently asking for the sale, introducing the "option close" method, which provides customers with a choice between two beneficial options, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response.

Notable Quote:

"One of the key things is just learning how to close, like asking for the business." ([04:02])

Additionally, David highlights the significance of body language and tone in sales. He notes that the way a message is delivered—calmness versus panic—can significantly influence customer reactions.

Notable Quote:

"It's how you say it... your body language, your nonverbal communication, and your para verbal, how you say it, is critical." ([05:49])

Scaling the Business and Early Success [10:24 - 19:41]

David's prowess in sales quickly translated into substantial earnings. In his second year, he made $35,000, and by the third year, this figure soared to $60,000 by recruiting and managing a team of salespeople. Transitioning to a smaller company, David introduced structured training manuals, leading his Dallas location to outperform others by doubling sales. This success earned him a significant role where he managed a team of 100 people by his fourth summer, culminating in annual earnings of $225,000.

Notable Quote:

"Fourth summer I made 225 grand." ([11:35])

Despite these impressive revenues, David candidly shares the financial challenges of his early ventures. He explains that profitability took four years, and during the initial phases, he occasionally had to negotiate delayed payments with his sales team to maintain cash flow.

Notable Quote:

"Profitable is always, you know, when you're investing, you're trying to get all... it took actually four years." ([18:43])

Strategic Growth and Mergers & Acquisitions [23:03 - 30:19]

David elucidates the strategic decisions that propelled his businesses to national prominence. Recognizing the importance of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for rapid expansion, he negotiated asset deals that allowed him to retain valuable teams and leadership while acquiring necessary assets. This strategy facilitated the creation of multiple companies with robust equity positions.

Notable Quote:

"I negotiated a deal where they said, look, we'll let you keep the salespeople, the leadership, and then just give us what we want." ([24:58])

To sustain growth and maintain a cohesive company culture across 34 states, David invested in creating an engaging and enjoyable work environment. Drawing inspiration from companies like Zappos, he incorporated amenities such as basketball courts, movie rooms, and modern recreational facilities into company headquarters. These enhancements not only attracted top talent but also fostered a sense of community and loyalty among employees.

Notable Quote:

"Some folks came and said, hey, what is this place? I could tell that the owner cares about them. I want to be a part of this." ([27:10])

Company Culture and Hiring Philosophy [30:47 - 50:20]

A cornerstone of David's success lies in his meticulous approach to hiring and maintaining company culture. He adopts Tony Hsieh's principles from Zappos, emphasizing the recruitment of individuals who align with the company's core values. David believes that "C players drive away your A players," underscoring the necessity of fostering a positive and supportive work environment.

Notable Quote:

"A players are the ones you want, and C players are what drive away your A players." ([32:37])

David employs strategic interview techniques to identify resilient and solution-oriented candidates. Questions like "Tell me the hardest things you've ever done" help assess a candidate's perseverance and adaptability—traits essential for success in sales and leadership roles.

Notable Quote:

"What's really critical is like, figure out what job description one you're trying to hire for." ([47:01])

Philosophy on Success and Legacy [55:11 - 58:26]

When defining success, David emphasizes personal fulfillment over financial milestones. He advocates for setting individualized goals and celebrating achievements, rather than fixating solely on monetary gains. David believes that the entrepreneurial journey itself—character building, continuous learning, and overcoming challenges—is the true measure of success.

Notable Quote:

"You have to define success for yourself. It’s not just about the money at the end, but the character you're building along the way." ([56:36])

David also touches on the importance of leaving a legacy. He expresses a desire to donate his wealth to charity upon his passing, ensuring that his success benefits others and creates a lasting positive impact.

Notable Quote:

"I want to give all my money to charity when I die... they have the incentive to work hard." ([45:40])

Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs [53:07 - 56:36]

David offers pragmatic advice for those looking to emulate his success. He underscores the importance of preparation meeting opportunity—continuous learning, identifying lucrative opportunities, and taking decisive action. David recommends gaining hands-on experience through sales roles to understand the intricacies of business operations before venturing out to start one's own company.

Notable Quote:

"Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation." ([53:21])

He also advises entrepreneurs to stay passionate and obsessed with their ventures, ensuring sustained motivation and resilience through challenging times.

Notable Quote:

"You can be obsessed about it, but you can step back if you need to." ([42:35])

Managing Wealth and Future Plans [61:04 - 62:15]

Upon achieving significant financial success, David adopts a balanced approach to wealth management. He emphasizes wise investment strategies, akin to managing an endowment, ensuring long-term growth and sustainability. David steers clear of creating trust funds for his children, preferring to instill in them the motivation to achieve independently.

Notable Quote:

"I look at investing more like maybe an endowment would. Where, you know, half are going to be in alternatives, the other half might be in the stock market." ([45:10])

Looking forward, David contemplates exploring creative and philanthropic endeavors, aiming to leverage his experience to mentor and support upcoming entrepreneurs. He remains committed to lifelong learning, advocating for continuous education as a key to sustained success.

Notable Quote:

"Education is a lifelong thing... keep learning. It's a simple secret, but leaders are readers." ([59:41])

Conclusion and Trading Secret

As the episode wraps up, David shares a personal trading secret: the paramount importance of continuous education. He credits his extensive reading habit—diligently consuming two business books a month—for his ability to navigate and scale his businesses effectively. David urges aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace lifelong learning as a fundamental component of their success.

Notable Quote:

"Education is a lifelong thing... leaders are readers." ([59:41])

Final Thoughts

Episode 245 of "Trading Secrets" offers a comprehensive look into David Royce's remarkable entrepreneurial journey, highlighting his strategic acumen, unwavering determination, and commitment to fostering a positive company culture. David's insights provide invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, emphasizing the significance of sales mastery, strategic growth, effective hiring, and continuous personal and professional development.

Resources Mentioned:

• Books: "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh
• Companies: Aptive Environmental, Terminex, Orkin
• Awards: Ernest Young National Entrepreneur of the Year (2015)

Connect with David Royce:

• LinkedIn: David Royce

About the Host: Jason Turcotte continues to explore diverse industries on "Trading Secrets," uncovering the financial maneuvers and career strategies that drive success. His engaging interviews aim to provide listeners with actionable insights to enhance their financial and professional lives.

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Note: All financial figures and company details mentioned are based on information provided during the podcast episode and may be subject to change.

Transcript

[Jason Turcotte]

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today's guest is a serial entrepreneur who has built four of the most successful environmental service businesses in North America, Dave Royce. Dave is the founder and chairman of Aptive Environmental, providing pest solutions to thousands of cities in 34 states. David's companies have been highlighted in national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine. In 2015, David was awarded with the Ernest Young National Entrepreneur of the Year award. We are going to discuss David's entrepreneurial career and how he transformed a small startup company into the third, third largest residential pest control company in North America, with over $500 million in annual revenue in just eight years. David, thank you so much for being on Trading Secrets.

[Dave Royce]

Hey, thanks for the opportunity.

[Jason Turcotte]

You know, the cool thing and like, is my listeners are going to listen to this intro. They'll be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you just put 500 million in pest control in the same sentence? And the cool thing about this podcast for all my listeners back home is we get to explore all different industries and uncover where money's made, how it's made, and how we need to rethink what we're doing today to maybe emulate someone like yourself. So I want to take a trip way down memory lane. I read and saw in an interview you did, you talked about the fact you were in college, I think it was like 20, 25 years ago. And you get a call to possibly be a door to door pest salesman, pest control salesman. Right. And you're, you're on the track, you're at byu, you're killing it at school. Like you're thinking investment banker route. But take this opportunity. Talk to me about what that opportunity looked like that summer and how much money you made doing it.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So, you know, broke college student, kind of paying my way through school, had a buddy say, hey, I made 25 grand last summer. You know, there's a few of these summer jobs that you can go do where you can make really good money if you work six days a week, all day long. And I thought, that's damn good money. I'm gonna try that out.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And it turns out I was horrible at it.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

When I started, I went five days without a single sale and guys around me are going, you know, one to four sales. And it sucked.

[Jason Turcotte]

You're real quick. You're like, literally, like, not because I, there's, there's only so many, like, actual industries where people are still knocking door to door today. Pest control business was one of Them still is one of them. You were literally just knocking on doors.

[Dave Royce]

Knocking doors. Yeah, we'd. We'd start about 10 o' clock in the morning and then just go till dark.

[Jason Turcotte]

Unbelievable.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, so you suck at it at first. Then what happens?

[Dave Royce]

Horrible at first. That weekend I went out to a Barnes and Noble bookstore, bought like six sales books and then I just started reading. I like committed. Okay. 90 minutes a day. I'm going to study sales and just see what I can do because I'd already like, moved to Sacramento from BYU.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Drove 10 hours, had an apartment. I'm like, it's not an option not to make this work. I got to figure this out. And then. Yeah, by the end of the summer, I was the top rookie in the company.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. And so that was, you know, 25k back then. It's probably double today. So you're. How. So you don't have like a pot to piss in at this point. You make 50k selling pest control sales. That's, that's the reality of the situation.

[Dave Royce]

That is.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. I think people back home that are listening this. We're always selling, right? We're selling ourselves and social media for sure. We're selling ourselves. If we're in the dating world, we might be selling ourselves to our family. We're always branding and selling. What were some of the tech? Because I feel like selling door to door, especially at that age, is probably one of the hardest things. What were some of those things that you didn't do early on that you started to do that turned your business for you even way back in college?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So one of the key things is just learning how to close, like asking for the business. Right. It's one thing to kind of present, but if you just stop, the customer doesn't really know. Like, so are you asking me to close or what? Like, if you just kind of. So what do you think? As opposed to maybe doing some sort of an option close? Like, so we're here tomorrow, we're here the next day. You know, would three or five o' clock work better for you? Something that, it's a little bit of a tie down.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

You know, and it suggests that you have confidence. And most customers, they actually respond to that confidence. Like, all right, I'll give you a shot. Why not?

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, so tell like an option close. Because I just want to make sure we get this right. Option close is the idea that if you're thinking about a potential solution, you give them alternative.

[Dave Royce]

You give them alternatives that are both in your best Interest.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, give me, like, give me an example.

[Dave Royce]

So, like, right there. So. So just like I said, so if you give your presentation, right, let's say, like, you're asking for money from somebody. So would you guys like to pitch in 100 million or 200 million? Which one? Which one are you feeling best about?

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting.

[Dave Royce]

They're both in your best interest.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Right. And they feel that confidence, and they're like, well, if they're really feeling it, say we'll do 200. Or if not, they might do 100. Or they might say, hey, we'll do 50. And you're like, sweet.

[Jason Turcotte]

So instead of. Instead of wa. To get the answer on, like, yes or no, what you're saying is you're assuming in your sales pitch they're going to say yes and you're presenting two different options.

[Dave Royce]

Right.

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting. And that small tactic is what led you as a college student, to pop off, which then led to.

[Dave Royce]

I'd say initially it was like the first thing. And if you really get good at sales, part of it has to just do with work and determination. Are you willing to work crazy hours to accumulate more and more sales? Right. Because a commission job, the more you work, the more you're gonna make. It's just a numbers game.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And the other things, the one question I got the most from the other people around me when they saw me really getting was they would say, okay, go over the objection again. I hear customers say, oh, I've got pets or something. And it's, oh, yeah, we just. All of our products are family friendly or responsibly or they're responsible. Once the product's dry, pet can come out and they'll be fine. That sort of thing. And they would say, I say the exact same thing to them. But I would always tell them that I don't think it's what you say, but it's how you say it.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

That's the most important part. As far as, like, tone, Are you saying it's tonality? It's how fast you say it. Do you sound defensive when you say it? Like, so, for example, you could say the same thing like, but maybe add some desperation, your voice.

[Jason Turcotte]

Right.

[Dave Royce]

Well, all the products, they're pet friendly, you know, or once product comes, the dog comes out, it'll be fine if it, you know, that kind of thing. If you sound nervous, you have deer in the headlights. Your body language looks weird.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Really? Your body language, your nonverbal communication, and your para verbal, how you say it, is critical. And I think that's the difference between a top 1% salesperson versus, you know.

[Jason Turcotte]

We just had a Navy SEAL on who was the one that was responsible for taking out bin Laden. And he talked about like as a Navy seal and as a sniper, the two biggest thing is that calm is contagious, but panic is also contagious.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting. Those like things that are applying to Navy seals still apply in like the door to door sales business.

[Dave Royce]

Everything.

[Jason Turcotte]

One thing I want to, because we're going to get into your business and all the particulars of selling a company and building it up and scaling it. And if you're, if you're sitting right now and you're wondering like interview tactics and questions that might be thrown your way, like all the things you would know from a founder who has sold a company and built a company up to 500 million. We're going to get into that. But before we do, I think one of the hardest things, and this is like kind of a selfish question for me, once the doors open for me with anybody, I'm like, I can roll. Let's rip roll. I'll sit down there, talk to you for hours. Yeah, it's hard to like, it's hard to like cold call. It's hard to like make that first initial reaction scary. And I think doing it as a college student in door to door sales is probably the hardest because when you at someone's door, especially today, immediately the guards up like, like, who the hell are you? Why are you at my front door? You weren't invited here. What's going on? So what are some things you've seen your salesman do that you've hired and, or you did to like bring the guard down when you're showing up on someone's front doorstep?

[Dave Royce]

We used to always teach our salespeople that you've got about 10 seconds to make impression.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

Right. And so the way that you look, if you can look like a confident, competent service professional, you're calm, you know, the way you describe it, it's, it's very casual. You're there, you're taking care of a bunch of the neighbors. It's not a big deal. You're not nervous. You know, if you guys can be here, there's some sort of an offer, you know, get it done for half price or something like that. It's enough just to have them go, okay, keep, keep going. Or they're like, no, no, get off my doorstep. And I think it's really critical to read the body language too. If they're like, hell no, get out of here. Then, you know, just going the next door. It's not worth, you know, pushing and upsetting the person or whatever, but sometimes there's a little bit of a, you know, it's kind of like, oh, I don't think we're really interested. And we're like, oh, well, have you guys noticed the, you know, the spiders and the wasp nests along these eaves here? And they'll kind of come out and look, they're like, oh, okay. And then it gives you something to talk about along the way. So you kind of have to know whether to continue or just to go, ah, it's not worth, you know, pushing.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, forward. That's a good. I mean we already got two trading secrets right there. We got the first 10 seconds to make a first impression. The calm is contagious. And then I think we also have the option closed. So those are, those are three good ones. Telehealth has made mental health care more convenient and accessible for millions of people. However, critical challenges like finding a suitable therapist, scheduling appointments and the expensive out of pocket costs still keep many from getting the care they need. Rula is on a mission to make high quality mental health care from a licensed professional easy and affordable for everyone. Rula's got you covered. They take most major insurance plans and the average copay is only like 15 per session. You can now get the quality care you need when you need it at a price you can afford. Rula isn't just about affordability though. They stick with you throughout your journey, making sure you get the best therapy and that you're making progress. With Rula, every provider is carefully vetted and chosen from their expertise. You'll always know you're in the right hands of a quality provider who is dedicated to making real progress in your care. I'm a huge proponent of taking care of mental health. You think about all the things that we do to try and stay healthy. We go to the gym, we eat. Right. But the most important thing is between our, our ears and with Rula, you can do that. Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improving their mental health. And over well, well being. Head over to rula.com trading secrets to get started today. After you sign up, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them that we sent you. Just go to r u l a.com tradingsecrets and take the first step towards better mental health. Today you deserve quality care from someone who cares. Your first year you make the 25k, which then of course, in today's world, 50k, which is a ton of money for doing door to door sales. Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Three months.

[Jason Turcotte]

I think I then heard you. You went back the following year and made more than double than that.

[Dave Royce]

I did.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. What did that look like? And how much did you make?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, So I made 35 grand the first year, and I went back and made 60 grand the next year. And what I did was I recruited a few people to come out with me, and then I was a sales manager. And then I got paid a little bit of commission off each of those people that came with me and then off my own sales as well. And I went to work for a smaller company that second year. And when I got there, I asked the boss, I'm like, hey, do we have like training manuals or something? Like, my other company was big, $100 million company. He's like, oh, we don't really have any of that, but you know, we'll work with you guys and that sort of thing. So I asked, well, can I create a training manual for you? Yeah, because I brought friends, I wanted them to do well. And he was like, yeah, if you're willing to do that, great. And then our sales team in that Dallas location, they did about twice as much as the other location that he had. And he was like, hey, at the end of the year, he pulled me aside and said, if you will write, create training manuals, training videos, whatever you want to do, and then oversee the program, I'll pay you a cut on every single person in this company. So it gave me an opportunity at a very young age to go out and recruit, train, manage college students. Had about 100 people I was managing by the end of my fourth summer.

[Jason Turcotte]

Wow.

[Dave Royce]

Fourth summer I made 225 grand.

[Jason Turcotte]

Your fourth summer. How old are you at this point?

[Dave Royce]

I was a little bit older because I served a mission for my church at the time.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

But I was pushing to mid 20s.

[Jason Turcotte]

So mid 20s to how much you say? To what?

[Dave Royce]

225.

[Jason Turcotte]

225 grand.

[Dave Royce]

Half a million.

[Jason Turcotte]

So it's like half a million today selling pest control services. This is blowing my mind. Talk to me about let's. Let's flip roles here. I'm a consumer. Anyone that owns a house, even if you rent a house, you have anything to do with a home, you know that pest control services are like almost mandatory at this point, especially during certain seasons, depending on where you live. I'm kind of curious now, what does the commission look like, like when I'm working with, like what is my negotiation room when I'm a consumer buying, like, how much commission are they making per sale?

[Dave Royce]

So it can vary. Back then it was about half as much as it is now.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

They may have made somewhere between 20 and 30% off an annual contract.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

And so what they're doing is we would typically give customers maybe like half off the first service, which usually costs more because you're doing inside, outside. It's more of a clean out.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And then you're paying sales rep off. If we're going to go back to that customer's house, say four times in the year or six times in the year, then they're making a cut off all of those services just for the first year. But our expectation as a company is, you know, probably 80% of those customers are going to stick around more for the long term.

[Jason Turcotte]

Gotcha. So if you were to sell a year service, you'll get paid off that year. And do you get paid, I'm always curious, do you get paid right away or do you have to get paid once?

[Dave Royce]

You get paid over time because the company wants to make sure that the customers are sticky, you know, and you're not just signing people up and saying, oh, just try it out, see what happens. It's. Yeah, they're going to get paid over the course of anywhere from six to nine months.

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting. All right, now everyone listening to this, I think the brains are starting to turn a little bit and they're thinking something we've talked briefly about on this show, but not all the time that it seems like in today's world, it's the boring businesses that are becoming the most profitable, the longest lasting, and creating people like you to become some of the biggest entrepreneurs in the country. And it does feel like society from a society perspective. Everyone's so drawn in with social media and the glitz and the glam and the flex and this and that and the cool, popular, sexy thing. Just give me your take on your perspective on this idea that sometimes it's not the sexiest business that'll actually produce the biggest profits and the biggest success. And any other businesses that you've touched or invested in that are a little bit maybe call it unsexy. Like the pest control business.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So there's an article in the Wall Street Journal that just came out. It was last week. I think it was called the Stealthy Wealthy.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

And one of the stats in it was that the top 0.1%, not just the top 1%, but the top 0.1% of income earners, that's $2.3 million a year or more. 43% of them are in these boring kind of blue collar, unsexy businesses.

[Jason Turcotte]

And what are like, some of those are like, what? Like, obviously pest control is one, but like.

[Dave Royce]

So I think the example they gave of one of the people, he creates machines that rip up carpet in schools.

[Jason Turcotte]

That's insane.

[Dave Royce]

And the line was funny. It was simply like, turns out kids are really dirty. These carpets have to be ripped up every single year. And so it's just this model where people have to have them, but it's kind of the last thing people would ever think of, right? Yeah. People are going to need a machine to rip up all these carpets at the end of the school year.

[Jason Turcotte]

It's crazy. And even as I'm studying and preparing for this interview, I'm seeing that as of 2025, the US pest control industry is valued at $26.1 billion with an annual growth rate of 5, reaching $44.3 billion by 2034. Like, these numbers blow me away. As you were thinking about going into investment banking or getting into this business, were you doing this type of research or were you just like, wait, I can't, I can't replicate the money I'm making sitting at a desk crunching numbers than I am going door to door selling pest control services.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So like in school, I was setting finance like investment banking was the sexy job. You get that coming out, paid the most. You're gonna grind and work really hard. It was gonna be a great experience, you know, to maybe go on to MBA school or something. And yeah, I'd make 70 grand coming out of school, but I'd already made 225 and three, four months of work. And so, I mean, that didn't quite make sense. But my boss, he pulled me aside and he's just like, I asked him for a letter of recommendation. I'm like, I need you to make this pest control thing look good for me. And he's like, I don't get it. Why are you gonna work 81 hour weeks for somebody else? You're so good at this. You're like in the top 1% of 1%. You should just go start your own company.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, you start your own company, you end up blowing it up. Talk to me a little bit about what it looks like from day one. Did you take on other people's money? Did you raise capital? If so, how much? And Talk to us about what just the business looked like and how it grew.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So in my business classes, I had studied the statistical likelihood of success in business of a startup.

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

And back then, the stats were 80% of businesses go out of business in five years. It's like in 10 years, 95% are out of business. And I also had studied franchises and just the idea that a proven model, those numbers actually flip in five years. 80 to 90% of the franchises are still around. And it's like they already have the financial targets, the key metrics that you're supposed to measure. They have the whole business model all there for you, the training manuals. And I thought, I'm not sure I'm ready to go do this on my own entirely. My boss said, hey, I'll invest into you if you want to go start your own company. And I'd saved up about 300 grand, and then he invested 300 grand into the company. So I had a good amount of startup capital to get going. And then he had sold. He was selling his business to Terminex at the time.

[Jason Turcotte]

So you put all your savings, though, into the company?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, I was saving for MBA school and just maybe for a home someday or whatever else.

[Jason Turcotte]

And then. And put it all in.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, all in.

[Jason Turcotte]

And I know you're. I'm curious where you go from here, but when you put in your 300 and then he matches your 300, how do you then just decide how to split equity?

[Dave Royce]

He was a silent investor, and so he's like, I don't want to do any of the work, but, you know, I'll give you, you know, maybe give me 20, 30%.

[Jason Turcotte]

Gotcha.

[Dave Royce]

Okay.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

We negotiated that.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. So you got your 600k. Business is starting to run. What does it look like from here?

[Dave Royce]

It's what was really great about the business. It was kind of like a business on training wheels. Right. It was like. It was one location. I chose Corona, California. There was a reason for that one. I got married pretty young.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, good for you.

[Dave Royce]

My wife and I were college sweethearts, and she was going to law school in Malibu, and we were living in Santa Monica. I would drive about 50 minutes an hour every day to Corona to the location. But from that location, we could service all of Orange county, all the inlet empire, and all of, like, south and East Lake. So I had access to about 9 million customers out of a single location in my head. I'm going, hey, from an overhead standpoint, I can be there. I can oversee it, make sure it Goes well and we can build like the largest pest control branch possible. You know, in my mind at the.

[Jason Turcotte]

Time, how quickly did it take for you to take that $600k, invest it and then become profitable?

[Dave Royce]

Well, profitable is always, you know, when you're investing, you're trying to get all. By the time we actually got all the money out back then, it took actually four years. Four years. But after that, I never had a year where I was profitable, where I actually got my investment out of the. Until I sold it later on. Because the model became more and more expensive, sales commissions became more and more expensive, they doubled, and they're probably almost two and a half times what they used to be when I first got into the industry.

[Jason Turcotte]

So are there many times and someone who owns several businesses and I think about people that are in business development roles for businesses I own, a lot of them make more money than the actual ownership group does. Was that the case for your business too, that you would have people in sales actually making more money than you?

[Dave Royce]

Oh, yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

From a salary perspective and bonus perspective.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, it took me a long time to actually make money at it. In fact, I just kind of like said, hey, I'm gonna take a dollar per year.

[Jason Turcotte]

Right.

[Dave Royce]

The goal to actually get your investment out there just wasn't a way to do it after that first company because we're growing so fast.

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, you really gotta learn how. In fact, the first year, I almost bankrupt the company.

[Jason Turcotte]

How so?

[Dave Royce]

Well, so you pay the sales reps out. Although you're paying over six to nine months, there's still like a year of contract revenue that you're paying or you're paying a commission out on it. And when you start up, you have a lot of startup costs as well. And so I actually had to go to some of the sales reps when their payments were due on the very first, the very first year and say, hey, do you mind if I'll pay you 10% interest on this? But I just need like a couple more months. You guys did way better than I thought we were originally going to do.

[Jason Turcotte]

Well, so because you had to front some of the money before the cash flow actually came in. So you're at like, think about like.

[Dave Royce]

Digital marketing too, right? Like if you're, if it's like a recurring model, like when you sell something, but it's maybe like a service business, you're paying a lot more upfront typically to the mar to like Google than you're making. Right. At that point, if you were buying maybe a product that's a kind of a different story, but a service. We count on the idea that it's a subscription service. Therefore we're going to pay a lot more upfront so that we can maintain that customer over maybe say five years.

[Jason Turcotte]

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[Dave Royce]

Yeah, I had several advantages. So one, I'd worked at that large $100 million company, so I understood what a large company looked like. The second company was a small company and in a small company you're a little bit more of a jack of all trades as you're learning things because they don't have all the departments built out. And so you learn actually a lot more at a small company than you do a large company. However, a lot of their operations are not always as buttoned up as a larger company's might be.

[Jason Turcotte]

Right.

[Dave Royce]

The third advantage was I took finance. Not a lot of people in the pest control industry with finance.

[Jason Turcotte]

That's true.

[Dave Royce]

To understand the math. And even, even I almost bankrupt the company just because we I allowed everybody to keep doing better and better. And so I needed to pay close attention to that.

[Jason Turcotte]

Which is when you said allow you saying like cap on commission.

[Dave Royce]

Well, I never capped how many they're going to sell. So like, if I didn't want us to go bankrupt, I would have said it maybe the three month mark instead of the three and a half month mark. Yeah, they still had a couple more weeks ago. And it's like I wasn't going to go to them and say, hey, you know what, we're good. I don't have enough money to actually pay you guys. At that point, like I could kind were getting close, but I wasn't 100% positive. It was the first time I was running the business, so I actually didn't know.

[Jason Turcotte]

Wow.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

I'm where I'm curious is like, you start with the 600k, you say it takes four years to become profitable. In notes that I read online, it looks like you sold your companies to Termin X. I did.

[Dave Royce]

Three times.

[Jason Turcotte]

Three times, right. Three days. Moxie Pest Control, Eco first and Altera, notably, they're saying Altera was sold to termin X in 2015 for an estimated $135 million. This is online. Of course, we don't know exactly what that number is, but what is that? Is that relatively close?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, I mean, Forbes estimated.

[Jason Turcotte]

Forbes estimated.

[Dave Royce]

I have an NDA on every deal, so.

[Jason Turcotte]

Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Well, don't blink twice if it's 135. Just kidding. I don't want to get you in trouble, but like, what's the turning point from having a pest control company doing 50k as a student, then 225k, you start the company 600k, you're not profitable for four years, and all of a sudden you sell three of your companies. One of them that's estimated by Forbes for 135 million. Where'd this turning point happen?

[Dave Royce]

So I don't think it's so much of a turning point. So what happened was around the fourth year at Moxie, I was going, okay, if I really want to scale nationwide, I need cash to grow fast. And so, you know, these larger public companies, one of their ways of growth is M and A. And so they've got to do a certain amount of M and A. But what they wanted, they really just wanted the customer base. And then they wanted the technicians to go along with that customer base. And so I negotiated a deal where they said, look, we'll let you keep the salespeople, the leadership, and then just give us what we want. We just need the assets. So I structured an asset deal, got a bunch of money, and then started another company and basically just took a different name or put a different name on the company. And so I kept the golden goose that really created the value and then just kept going because I needed the cash and it allowed me to keep the equity in the company. On the second company, then my original boss was out. I had total 100% equity.

[Jason Turcotte]

Wow.

[Dave Royce]

And then we could just keep going. And so we grew that one and then a few more years down the road, sold that one again. But kept all the leadership, kept the sales team. And there's other things we did. Like the second company, we really focused on learning how to scale into more of a regional business. And I learned the importance of hiring the right managers, because the managers, they are your culture. And so you're trying to find guys that will religiously follow what made the first location and the second location so successful. And that's creating really great training manuals, great systems of processes, all that sort of a thing. And then on the third company, I was going, okay, we're getting big. I literally can't see the managers all the time and I can't see all my employees. How do we keep that, maintain that same family feel for the business? And so I thought about going back to MBA school, like at night. And then I started studying companies outside of the pest control industry. I started looking at companies like Google and Instagram and Zappos and studying, like, their company cultures, their office buildings, the types of activities and things they did. And the reason I did that is because in my mind, that was the toughest market to recruit, right? Because software developers were. The supply was so limited and they were fighting. It was very, very competitive. And I thought, I wonder if I could take that and sprinkle it into the pest control industry had never been done before and make pest control sexy that way, where if somebody walks into our facilities, they're like, what is this place? I don't care what it is. I could tell that the owner cares about them. I want to be a part of this. This looks really, really cool. So we had like a NCAA basketball court, golf simulator, movie room, ping pong, foosball, air hockey, all that kind of stuff. ESPN, like on giant screen TVs around the office all the time. We just made it in this really cool place to hang out, have fun. And it really worked to recruit people and then to maintain people because it was so different for our industry. Just nobody had even thought about that possible. In fact, I had one of the presidents of Orkin come out to take a look at us when I was selling Altera. And he looked, he walked in and Almost immediately looked around, he's like, they'll never buy you.

[Jason Turcotte]

Why do you think?

[Dave Royce]

I was like, why is that? And he's like, this is way over the top compared to what they have.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Like, there's no way. Because then everybody else is gonna want this same thing.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Just, you know, it's kind of crazy.

[Jason Turcotte]

Well, the first thing I'm thinking is, as an entrepreneur myself, is all of that. That costs a ton of money to do all that, right? To like make those experience.

[Dave Royce]

If you're, I mean, if you're a hundred million plus company, does it really cost that much to invest? I don't know, maybe three and a half million, four million into a building at the time.

[Jason Turcotte]

That's true.

[Dave Royce]

It's not that much. And then we'd have all these really cool activities we do. So, like our top 5%, 10% of income earners on the sales side or top operators we would take with us to trips. Like we do Hawaii or the Caribbean. And these trips were like legendary. We do like skydiving and diving with sharks and scuba diving and jet skis and all this kind of wild stuff. Just a really fun way to go out and like celebrate our success. And then also brain share ideas. You know, like best sales secrets. You know, you get the top guys together and they start talking and they realize they're not like being competitive with each other. It's more like, hey, how can we, like, share with each other so we can all do better as a whole? Same thing on the operations side.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. All right. If you're the kind of person who's always chasing growth, whether it's in business career or just betting on yourself, listen up. There's a podcast that just dropped a new season and it's right in that zone. It's called this is Small Business, hosted by Andrea Marquez. And season six is all about entrepreneurs who took massive risks to build something real. We're talking about raw, unfiltered stories. People who literally quit steady jobs, drained savings, or started with nothing but had an idea. It's the kind of stuff that gives you perspective and will help you fire at the same time. What I love about this is it's not just hype. It's real strategy, real grit, and real lessons from people who've done the damn thing. So if you're plotting your next move, maybe launching that side hustle, scaling a business, or pivoting hard, go check out this is Small Business. Season six is live right now on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Wherever you listen, it's one of those shows that actually pushes you to think bigger. And, you know, I'm all about that. And you did. I mean, obviously that's one of the things when you said, like, kind of making an unsexy industry a little bit sexy. Well, I kind of thought that when I saw in 2021, you announced that you guys would have the ambassador program by partnering with PGA pro Tony Fanu and NFL star Zach Wilson. And then in 2023, I thought it was so cool. The official pest control partner of Utah Jazz, Real Salt Lake, which is that MLS team, and then Salt Lake Bees, which is the MLB minor league team in BYU athletics. So it's kind of cool to get an industry that people wouldn't think is, like. Like you said, the sexiest. But then now you're partnering with, like, some of the coolest teams that are out there.

[Dave Royce]

And we had a suite at the Jazz Stadium.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Wow. It was a box of, like, 36.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And I think the record we hold that. We actually hold the record for the most full box suite in the arena, like, annually. We. We win that.

[Jason Turcotte]

Really?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. It's like. It's like 98% sent full all the time. Because anybody at our corporate headquarters, we. We just say, hey, who wants to go sign up sheet. And it's just a really great way to create. You really create a culture.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Where people are excited to be part.

[Jason Turcotte]

Of something that's genius. One of the other things I heard on one of the interviews you said is that you had been hiring a bunch of people from a management perspective, and then you kind of hit reset because one of your focuses was hiring smarter. And I think of people out there, either they want to be the person that's hired that's considered smarter, or if they are an entrepreneur, they want to know what smarter means. So when you did that reset in your eyes as a leader, what did you define as smarter? And then through interview processes, how did you figure out who those people were?

[Dave Royce]

You know, I. I'm a big believer that C players are what drive away your A players. And so that's so true. Coming up with so true. I think it's so critical, and I shouldn't take credit for this. So Tony Hsieh from Zappos, unfortunately, he's not around anymore, but a lot of the cultural ideas I had came through him. He wrote this book called Delivering Happiness, and I read that book, but that was the first aha moment where I had. I shouldn't be just looking at pest. Control. I should look outside my industry for ideas. But he talks about his first company, which is like an advertising company, and how as they were growing really fast, they were just hiring on anybody, you know, like, to bring him on. And it wasn't intentional about what type of culture they were trying to build. And so by the time they sold the company, they may have sold it for a couple hundred million dollars, but he was miserable.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And so when he went to start Zappos a second time, he said, okay, let's write down, like, what are our cultural values? Like, what are our core values going to be? What is our actual mission? And then when we're hiring, what are the key things we're looking for? They have to, like, check all these boxes in order for us to let them in. And so with Altera, we got very focused on company culture, created our 10 core values, and then tried to dial in hiring. And it gets harder and harder as you get bigger and bigger. Right. Because I'm not the one interviewing everybody at that point. People are spread out across Many, many states, 34 states now with Aptiv. And so the leadership has to be super committed to what that checklist is, what those core values are. And it's still hard. It's always hard because when you're growing at a super fast rate, you're looking at all the best candidates who've come in. And sometimes it's like, all right, well, these are the best, so we're going to choose the best. But if, you know, at the end of the year, sometimes you have to kind of clean house, you know, maybe to remove the bottom 10% or whatever it might be.

[Jason Turcotte]

It's interesting, it's so true, when you said the C players will, you know, deter the A players from being A players. And like we've also heard on this podcast, higher, Slow, Fire Fast, which I think is a good one. You know, when you said the Zappos thing, this is a, A, a case study I read a long time ago and I totally forgot about until you brought up Zappos. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember he talked about the fact that he would have issues with retention. And the cost of retention was so expensive. Right. That he would put people, new employees, through training program. And after the training program, if they were qualified to even get in the training program, it was pretty tough. But after the training program. Yeah. He would offer them a lump sum to not take the job.

[Dave Royce]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Jason Turcotte]

It was like, it was like five, 10, maybe 15 grand to be like, here's 15 grand cash. I'm gonna give you this to not take the job and. Because the people that took that money would take it and leave, but the people that were like, no were the long lifers. And he's like, the cost benefit of knowing that the people that wouldn't take it would be worth massive material amounts to the company, which I thought was kind of cool.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, it was such a unique thing, actually. I went and toured their facilities twice. So if you. I'm not sure if they still do it. They probably still do, but you can fly to Vegas, you can go tour their facilities. They have tours like every hour. They just walk people through and they talk about their company culture and why they created it. And then they even have. It's like a three day training session where you can learn all these secrets to their business. And I met with Tony when I was there and I'm just like, okay, I love that you're doing this, but you gotta tell me why. Because you're giving away your competitive secrets like your secret sauce. You're just giving it to the world. What about your competitors knowing all this?

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

And he's like, yeah, I just think the world would be a better place, you know, if everybody operated this way. And I'm like, it hit me, I'm like, oh, damn it. Like, I'm so selfish.

[Jason Turcotte]

This man is such a better leader.

[Dave Royce]

Totally. And it's like, it certainly made me think. I want to give back, you know, not just within my company because that helps the company do better, but that we really should get back to the world. We want to be that change that we want to see in the world.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, perfectly said. Your company today services 2.1 million customers, service more than 4,000 cities, like you said in 34 states, receive more than 125,000 five star Google reviews, and employs more than 2,600 employees. You sold the company for over nine figures. As an entrepreneur who's been met with all these accolades, where do you think the biggest misses are in today's entrepreneurship culture?

[Dave Royce]

That's a good question. I think I could probably go back to what we were talking about earlier. I think that the media only focuses predominantly on what's sexy or what's disruptive, what's almost like, scary or like AI creates a lot of. Yeah, so like AI is like what's hot right now. Before that it was tech and just. But very few people want to hear about plumbing or pest control or medical waste services or document shredding. Or all these other things that they may be subscription model businesses. Right. Which is very similar to SaaS.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And they're needed, but they're under the radar. And honestly, it's even better because I used to joke there's not a lot of MBAs running into pest control.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah. No, not at all.

[Dave Royce]

Right.

[Jason Turcotte]

And, yeah, that's why I think this podcast is so cool. Like, this episode is so cool.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. It's like a secret.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah. When else can we talk about pest control?

[Dave Royce]

I didn't even think about all these industries. Right. That, like, I would never think about going into. And it is true. It's a bit of, like, an ego hit. Right. When you come out, if you're in college, you're studying finance, and then it was a total 180 for me. But it's less sophisticated. It probably doesn't require a college degree, but, man, you can have competitive advantage in so many industries just by having gone to college and maybe studied business or having gone out and become really good in that industry. Maybe it could be in sales or operations, and then you've got to lay again and to go start your own business. A lot of times he doesn't require that much money maybe to go start that sort of industry.

[Jason Turcotte]

I think that's a good point for all entrepreneurs. When you look into yourself, obviously, we've talked about the accolades. What's the biggest mistake you've made in your career?

[Dave Royce]

Oh, wow, I've made a lot.

[Jason Turcotte]

How much time you can.

[Dave Royce]

I mean, really, like, almost bankrupting myself, definitely. And, like. And I've done it a couple times, like, where we grew too fast and I had to take the foot off the gas and go, hey, we need to rethink this. Let's go a little bit slower next year, you know, and work through it. But I will say that out of all the mistakes we made along the way, I was very confident in the team, like, for 20 years. And many of our team members were with us for that long. Whatever it was, we were going to get through it, you know, and that just gave me confidence that whatever the problem, you know, whatever struggles we'd had, if we put our minds on it, we stayed calm. We just knew we'd eventually figure it out. And we got lucky. Some people died.

[Jason Turcotte]

As someone who's been in entrepreneurship now for, like, five years or so, what I would say is, if. I don't know if you. If this connects with your path or not, but I honestly, some days I just feel like I'm Rocky Balboa it's like how many freaking hits can I take to the face, to the gut, to the liver, but just like making it one inch forward the next day. And then there are some of those days you have like the glory days, right, like where you're celebrating because you won, you won the belt. But like it's entrepreneurship, it's hard. It is hard.

[Dave Royce]

It's insanely hard. So I think I relate a lot of it like to being a gladiator. Yeah, right. Like if businesses go out of business that often, you really have to have something to prove. Like you're going into the coliseum and you think about how many people have died or are going to die. Like ultimately you're going to die in business. Like that's just what the statistics say. And so you've got to have something to prove. Like it's not a place for dabbling wannabes. You gotta be, all in all enjoy the thrill of solving problems and tackling really big challenges.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the toughest things is too is like when your name's on the founding group or whatever, whenever everything's good, no one's coming to you, you're doing your thing. But when there's issues, it's like the world will just come to you and you're just like, oh, floodgates are open. But it's, it's, it's a wild world. Business owners, when opportunity knocks, do you have the capital to answer? Rock Financial has help small businesses across up to $5 million in funding in as little as 24 hours. Whether you're expanding, upgrading equipment or simply need working capital, Rock will make that process fast, simple and personalized. With thousands of five star reviews, Rock Financial offers no red tape, no hassle, just real solutions. Visit Rock Biz TradingSecrets to get started and see what your business may qualify for. And just, just seconds. That's R. Ok. Rock Biz Trading secrets. One thing I want to connect your success to back to the people listening. You've made it. You exit for over nine figures. Company is clearly killing it. You got to start over. You're back to zero and you got that 300k in your bank. It's 2025. You do go bankrupt. What are you doing day one, you got 300k today. What are you doing?

[Dave Royce]

If I had 300k, that's a really good.

[Jason Turcotte]

It's all. You got 300k today.

[Dave Royce]

It's funny, people always say that if I just start over, I just, I get back in sales. Okay, I'd go sell door to door or I'd go get in real estate like in LA or something and sell like these super high end homes. You know, if you, if you're hustle, if you're willing to hustle and work really, really hard.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And then you're willing to work also on your personality and like sales skills. It doesn't really matter what you're selling that skill, you can use it your entire life. You know, maybe you go sell software, you go sell whatever, whatever it might be. It's amazing what people make money at.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, it is amazing.

[Dave Royce]

Random things.

[Jason Turcotte]

It is.

[Dave Royce]

And it's often the things you don't think of that people are just killing.

[Jason Turcotte]

It in pest control business is one of them. Exit for over nine figures. Is there any other place that you have taken your money and invested that has just provided massive dividends or returns to you outside of your core business? Business?

[Dave Royce]

You know, Buffett was always big on like concentrating your wealth at one area.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And you know, it can be really smart, it can be really stupid.

[Jason Turcotte]

Right.

[Dave Royce]

Because you can go really big and make it. And for me, you know, four times over, I was able to do it over and over and over again. Ultimately, I just, I just wasn't learning anything new. Yeah, I was, I was like ready. Like you'll know when you're ready. And I think the, the question you may ask yourself, oh, but the money's so good. Like, why would I. I think that's the moment, you know, Know, it's probably time to move on and do something different. Like I'm happy when I'm, I'm striving for my greatest potential and I'm learning constantly. And if I'm not learning, it doesn't matter how much money money I'm going to make. I mean, at some point you just get to that and you're like, I can retire if I want or I can go figure out whatever's next in my life.

[Jason Turcotte]

So it's. Is one of your investment, like trading secrets, would you say it's have a niche, stick to your niche and just crush that niche.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. So a professor once told me that the wealthiest people he'd ever seen, they have found an industry and they just kept sticking to it. And what's funny is I have a lot of friends that are not only entrepreneurs, but they're in like they're in Hollywood or they're in the music industry. And one of the things I was with, his stage name's Cascade, but his real name's Ryan Radden. And we're on vacation together. And I asked him, I said, so what is it that made you so great? Great, like famous? DH I probably. He makes many tens of millions of dollars a year.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And he's like, you know, I just stuck with it. He's like, there are guys that were even better than me, in my opinion, but, you know, over time, it just kind of faded for them. He's like, this is what I really love. And I just. Just stuck with it.

[Jason Turcotte]

There's something to that. Like, attrition, too. Yeah. You keep going, and you'll just continue to. Just keep going. Just keep going. Think, like, you have something differentiating. Just keep going.

[Dave Royce]

So as long as you're willing to continue to learn and just keep working at it, I think the question is, like, how long does the passion last? And can you be obsessed about it as opposed to just passionate about it? Like, where you're. It's almost like you can look at it objectively because you are obsessed with it, but you can step back if you need to. Whereas passion.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

You're excited for a while, but if you lose the passion, you're just out.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

So I don't know. It's probably a combination of the two.

[Jason Turcotte]

A mix of both. All right, this is a fun question. You sell the company for what Forbes says, $135 million. It's one of them. When you get that big first check, what's the most exciting thing you did? What'd you buy? Where'd you go? What'd it cost? Give me something fun. How'd you celebrate?

[Dave Royce]

Oh, gosh. On that one. So selling that one, it was more. Okay, we'll have enough money for the next company for however much we want to grow. And then it was taking chips off the table for my family and I. Okay, the first. Like, when I sold Moxie and I sold Eco first, it was really just dump everything into the next one. On the third one, it was like, okay, I had two kids. I'm like, this one, I need to be thinking about my family. And I, let's take at least half of the wealth off the table. We got plenty of money to be able to invest in the company. And a lot of people will talk about this one or this last company that I sold. This last company I sold. I have NDA for that one, too. But at 500 million, the average pest control company sells for anywhere, depending upon its size, anywhere from one to three times whatever the revenues are. To give you an idea. And I was with somebody else and they're like, so how does it feel in this last one? I'm like, well, the last one actually doesn't really matter to me. The one that made the most difference was the first one. Interesting, because that's when your life. Forbes said that one sold for 13 million.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

Selling going from like having nothing to 13 million is wild. Wildly different. Right. Like, you could retire if you wanted. You know, you just live conservatively off that for, you know, an entire lifetime. I was only 30 years old at the time, but yeah, it's. And that one, I bought a Lamborghini. I was living in a rental home because I was like, too cheap to go buy a house. And I'm like, I need all this money to throw into the next car.

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

So, yeah, that was my splash. I've always liked cars.

[Jason Turcotte]

What did Forbes say you sold your second company for?

[Dave Royce]

I think it's 30.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. Okay. So they sell, you sell for 13, 30, then 135, and then the last one, if you're doing an estimation based on revenue sales, anywhere from 500 million to 1.5 billion.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

You're not confirmed.

[Dave Royce]

That would have to be the math.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, just confirm. So I mean that, like, when you start to get to that type of wealth, what do you, like, what do. What did you do with it all? Like, is your thought process legacy? Is it? How do you protect it? How do you give it back? Like, what's your philosophy on how to manage that type of wealth in a lifetime? That is, on average, for your standard male right now, I think it's around 70, I don't know, five years. I feel like you live a pretty healthy guy. I feel like you're living to 100 plus. But, like, what do you do? Like, what's the thought process with all that money?

[Dave Royce]

For me, I would say I'm probably different than most people, although I've certainly met enough out there. But, like, I want to give all my money to charity when I die.

[Jason Turcotte]

Wow.

[Dave Royce]

I'm not huge in the idea of creating trust funders. I want my kids to have the incentive to work hard because they. They know, like, I'm not just going to give them a bunch of money someday. And so just investing wisely, I think is important. You know, having a balanced portfolio. I look at investing more like maybe an endowment would. Where, you know, half are going to be in alternatives, you know, the other half might be in the stock market or whatever else.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

But really investing for the long term term, that sort of thing, trying to maybe make 10 a year.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

They're just letting that compound over the next however many years I live.

[Jason Turcotte]

That's awesome. I know one thing that entrepreneurs and potential employers would want to hear from you is you talked a little bit about it hiring smart and. And looking through A players or C players, and we touched on a little bit. But I think those philosophies are great and it's easy to say those things. I think the hardest thing to do is to be able to qualify if someone has those things. Are there any, like, specific questions that you'll actually bring forth in an interview? Are there tactics you'll do as far, as, I don't know, like, looking at their. Their resume, like, what are some things a guy like at your level is looking for? When you say you're really looking for the right people, for the right culture, for the players.

[Dave Royce]

Hired thousands of people I've interviewed a lot. I'd say the what. What's really critical is like, figure out what job description one you're trying to hire for. You want to hire the right person for the right job. And different personalities tend to do better in certain types of positions. So if you're hiring somebody for sales, I love that they have some sort of experience in resilience, especially if door to door. Have they done anything in door to door before? Have they had some sort of a sales job? Tell me the hardest things you've ever done. I want to know how resilient they are as an individual. Certainly, you know, it's really easy just to look at a resume and go, okay, do they check the box in terms of the qualifications they need to have? You know, do they know how to, you know, work this program or have they done this type of operations in the past? But also, are they just good listeners? Most of our positions, because it's such a simple business model, I can bring somebody in and train them within two to four weeks and have them going in whatever position in the company that I need them to do well in.

[Jason Turcotte]

Interesting.

[Dave Royce]

So if you keep things really simple. I looked at my business as like the In N Out Burger.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Of pest control.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Some pest control companies, they want to get into everything, you know, like termite fumigation and, you know, wildlife and all this stuff. And for us it was. Or even just commercial. And we do a little bit of commercial if it came our way.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

But we just said, look, we really want to be good with families.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Like families who have pets, you know, they have kids and be the best at that.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

You know, an in app burger's just got a few options for burgers.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

That's a simple model to expand across the country. Let's do that and do it really well.

[Jason Turcotte]

When you keep it simple, you can scale. There was a question that I did see you did a CNBC interview and a question that you said you'd like to ask people to identify red flags. This one really landed with me. I have had a couple people that I have hired that are like the best hires. I will never be able to replicate that. And I have had some people that have fooled me and done the worst hire in my life. And this question really landed with me when you said, said you will ask the person to tell them about your previous employer and what are some things that they could improve. What I liked about that is I feel like again, the people that listen to this podcast, we talk about all things. We talk about financial matters, personal matters and professional matters. And I think that's a question again, whether you're like going on a date, you're interviewing or you're interviewing someone else or being interviewed. That's a great question. Yeah. To like see how they reflect on their previous employees or previous relationships or previous accomplishments, etc. I thought that was great.

[Dave Royce]

Well, think about it. You're actually inviting the person to essentially talk shit.

[Jason Turcotte]

Exactly.

[Dave Royce]

On the other person. But can they do it in a polite, like mature manner that provides maybe even the employer some good feedback to go. Okay, well here's, here's how you'd fix that.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah. Or someone that's doing less of finger pointing and more thumb pointing. Right. Like, hey, these are things I didn't really enjoy over there. But here's what I've learned from it and here's what I could have done better.

[Dave Royce]

Like, and that's in my point in that is if you have, if someone interviewed whatever position and they're constantly negative about every single employer in the past, you start to identify like a pattern and you're like, okay, I'm going to be the next employer they're going to talk negatively about.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dave Royce]

The next one that they're interviewing for.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yep, exactly.

[Dave Royce]

So it's more about personality and the way that they go about it because you know, you want a group of positive people. You want people who can be critical about the business but provide know feedback in a way that is helpful to the business.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

You'll be solution oriented.

[Jason Turcotte]

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[Dave Royce]

I'm trying to figure that out. Yeah, it was funny because like when I sold, it's like the idea of just saying retired. That's weird. I'm like 48. Why would I say I'm retired? You know, and what is retirement anyways? So I thought, well, let's just say sabbatical. So I told myself I want to take a year off and just really think about what's next. You know, maybe people look at life in chapters. You know, first chapter may have been scaling and building businesses. I tend to think that the next chapter for me is either something more creative or something more philanthropic. I really enjoy helping entrepreneurs. I love doing podcasts and sharing information, trying to help others. I've got mine. I want to help others get theirs. But yeah, people who are passionate. I just love being around people who are passionate about what they do.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, I love it.

[Dave Royce]

It's inspiring.

[Jason Turcotte]

All right, I'm gonna ask you this. I'm gonna end with this here. Right now. I'm very open with our trading secrets of stock numbers here. So I'm very open with it. I have one company that we just passed eight Figures in business. Business. We're scaling, we're growing. I have my own personal brand that's been doing like seven figures the last several years. So good cash inflow from that and growing this company. Like if you had 136, I have good amount of money saved up, but like nowhere at that level, like where you could retire, do anything like that. Yeah. If you were to give me a piece of advice, what piece of advice would you give me? What are some things you think I should think about? And it could be general, but just like, you know someone like in that spot, what would you say?

[Dave Royce]

I'd say like, I mean, you obviously, you have like a front row seat to learning about all these different companies and like meeting with such intelligent people. I would be looking. Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.

[Jason Turcotte]

Right? Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

That's like the famous quote.

[Jason Turcotte]

Of course.

[Dave Royce]

And so I would figure out, like, how do you identify the best opportunity or opportunities that you can apply to your industry? Maybe from the outside or maybe even, maybe it's another opportunity. You see it and you're like, you know what? I met with enough of these guys in these boring blue collar industries. I see this one, it checks the boxes for everything they've told me that I need to do. I gotta figure out how to get into that and, you know, seize the day. I think action's the hard part. Right. A lot of us read a lot, you know, and it's the question of, well, am I really gonna take this chance on this and go all in and work all these crazy hours to make it work, work?

[Jason Turcotte]

Right.

[Dave Royce]

I was very lucky in the sense that I was, I was young and I, my wife and I didn't have kids for ten and a half years.

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

And so we had a long Runway while she was, as she was an attorney. And I was doing this, working 14, 16 hour days together. And we just come home and meet for an hour before we went to bed. You know, we're just hanging out on the weekends.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

And so we could grind and grind and grind for a really long time. And we were really committed to that idea of like working hard. And I would say, seize the moment while you're young, maybe before you have kids or while they're still younger and they're not gonna remember you not being around.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, no, it's true.

[Dave Royce]

Just to build, build, build. Because your priorities, they start to change, they change drastically. And it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing for them to change and to want to be a part of their lives.

[Jason Turcotte]

All right. That's a heck of a trading secret. I love it. The last thing I got before we get into your trading secret. If someone listened to this and they're like, I want to get into pest control space now that I'm motivated by everything you said, obviously, the years are different. Competitions change, landscapes change. Would you recommend it? Would you tell someone, get into it today.

[Dave Royce]

If they have access to money, if they can get the capital. What I would say is one, go get the experience first. Go sell. Call aptifier. If they'll have an interview. They don't take everybody, but if you have sales experience or you're very driven, they can see that you can go sell. I always think that's the best entry point to learn a business. The operations. It is a different skill set, but you may be able to hire somebody who already has that skill set to help you along the way. And then the third piece is you'd have to have capital to be able to figure out how to do that. The private equity is doing a role in. Up in the pest control industry. Similar. They've done it in H vac and a bunch of other industries, obviously. And they're probably in the third inning right now. And so there's still time, I think, to get in. But, you know, at some point, kind of the. The opportunities for, like, the big multiples will probably run out.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay, all right. It's towards the. Towards the 9th inning, but it might be still time. You can get in if you got a little capital. And then one last thing. I. I said it three times now, but I do have one more curiosity. Question is, I think for entrepreneurs, they all define success differently. I think you might. Some entrepreneurs are just like, hey, I just want to, you know, if I can make more than I made in the corporate job, I can make 100,000 bucks and have freedom. That's what I want. Lifestyle, business. Right. Some people see everything you've done and they're like, that is the dream of. What I would define is success in your eyes. Like, what. How do you define success as an entrepreneur?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah, that's what I've learned as I've gotten older, is that's different for everybody.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Even for me, I could have stopped a lot, lot younger and still felt successful. I think you have to define success for yourself. And I don't think it's an end point. A lot of people like, oh, if you could sell a company for X amount of billion dollars or something, then I'd feel great. But yeah, the Truth is, you feel great based on whatever target you set and every goal you set in life, for the most part, you kick that goalpost further out. Once you achieve it, that's it. And it's just. It's never enough. It's never enough, you know, and that's a sad thing. I do think people have to take a moment and celebrate, and some of us are. So for whatever reason, the way maybe we were raised or whatever else, it's like, I'm not meant to be celebrated. I don't even like to celebrate my birthdays. But most people aren't that way. They want to be celebrated. They want to have an award. They want recognition. And it's amazing, too, employers, they got to realize recognition, for the most part, it's free.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, it's so true.

[Dave Royce]

Just like saying, hey, thank you to this person. They came up with this idea. They help the company improve this much in terms of efficiencies or whatever. Overall, it's making the company this much more. Just like celebrating somebody, I think is so critical. And yeah, I wish I had a little bit more of that. My life, where I valued that more.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, I'm just.

[Dave Royce]

I'm an odd duck.

[Jason Turcotte]

I like that too. I think that's a really good one. When you're defining success, whatever it is that you do, because it's got to be unique to what you define it as. Don't have it be an endpoint. Right. Like, don't have it be a number or a goal. Because. Because you'll always want more. Like, have it be more of something that's general material for you, the thing.

[Dave Royce]

That you take away. It's not just the money at the end, but really it's the character you're building along the way in that journey, like the entrepreneur journey, that is the reward. It's not just the end goal of whatever exit you have.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

Because a lot of people go, they get depressed after they sell. In fact, each time I sold old, the lull. This. This usually took us about six months until we could ramp up and get going again. That was the most boring time. And like, number one, like, you don't have all the dopamine hits throughout the day. You're like sending off emails. You're like animal of productivity. And so it's. It's tricky. I think you have to also separate your ego from the business where you're still that same little kid you know you were when you're growing up. You know, you're. You're more experienced. You know, you're more mature. Sure. But I'm still just Dave.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

At the end of the day, I'm not Dave the business owner or whatever else. And it's really hard when you no longer have that. And then you're like, wait, who am I now?

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

You know, Interesting. I'm the same person. You just gotta.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

It's in your head.

[Jason Turcotte]

It's in our head. The identity piece, that's. We could have a whole podcast about that, but we gotta wrap up. Dave Royce, founder and chairman of Aptiv Environmental. What an interesting journey it's been. Congratulations on all your success. But you gotta rap with the trading secret. So it's something that. That is specific to your experience. They couldn't get in a textbook. TikTok tutorial, YouTube tutorial. They could only learn from your experience what you've done. It could be financial, professional, personal, but just like a. An overall Dave Royce training secret. What can you leave us with?

[Dave Royce]

I'm going to go to. Education is a lifelong thing. I know there's a lot of debate right now about whether college makes sense anymore. Right. Because when I went to college, I mean, they had, like, a college library. The Internet was just getting popular, but the websites were horrible.

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

And so access to information like that was the reason why I went to college. I wanted to learn business, and I could go buy some books on my own, but the textbooks and just being forced to sit down and learn, I thought was really valuable today. The Internet's amazing. Right. Between the amount of podcasts out there, the YouTube videos, the TV shows, all these different things that can teach you how to do business. Business. It's incredible. And reading is one thing, like, for about 15 years from the time I got into sales, actually 20 years from the time I got into sales until maybe five years ago, I only read business books, and I would read about two per month. And it was everything from biographies to business books about marketing or whatever it might, whatever topic it might be, you can always be learning. You can always be getting better. And so if you really want something, you want to build a massive business, just keep learning. It's a simple secret. But, you know, leaders are readers. It's that common basic mentality.

[Jason Turcotte]

I actually haven't heard that quote, leaders are readers. That's a good one. I mean, it's a basic one, but I've heard a lot of quotes. Not that one. Leaders are readers. One business book you'd recommend. Is there one that comes to mind?

[Dave Royce]

I'm gonna go back to Tony Hsieh delivering Happiness.

[Jason Turcotte]

Tony Hsieh, delivering happiness.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. Be intentional about how you build your company with the right company culture so that when it does get big, you're still happy with. With it.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay. And then to follow up on your training secret, are you pro? Are you for college against college?

[Dave Royce]

I'm still for college.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

Yeah. I'm optimistic. I just think the whole thing needs to be redone. I think if you're paying for it, they should allow you to take whatever class you want. Because the first two years of generals, I hated college. And it sucks because half the kids drop out of college. Right.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

It's just. It's so hard to get through the first two years. So I'm taking all these classes. Being able to take. Yeah, I don't want to take. I already took them in high school for the most part.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah.

[Dave Royce]

So if I had just taken four or five years of business classes, how much better would I have been? And I would have loved it. I would have happily paid for that. I would have paid more for it.

[Jason Turcotte]

Sure.

[Dave Royce]

So I just think that college needs to be rethought.

[Jason Turcotte]

I respect art history, but that art history class, that was an Art History 101 that, I don't know, probably spent 10 grand on. I don't remember a damn thing from it. But, hey, here we are. We live, we learn, we grow. Dave, thank you so much for being on this episode of Training Secrets. Where can everyone find everything you have going on? Profiles, companies, companies, etc?

[Dave Royce]

Just go to LinkedIn.

[Jason Turcotte]

Okay.

[Dave Royce]

Pretty simple.

[Jason Turcotte]

Very cool. Go find Dave Royce on LinkedIn. And thank you so much for being on train seats.

[Dave Royce]

Thanks, Jason. Appreciate it.

[Jason Turcotte]

Ding, ding, ding. We are closing in the bell to the David Royce episode. A lot of action, a lot of business, a ton of success, and it's so good to have the one and only the curious Canadian with me on the recap. David, how we doing? What'd you think of the episode? How are all things?

[C]

All things are great. I got a lot to get through to the episode, including an old school throwback definition where I think I know what I'm talking about. About, but I might not know what I'm talking about, so I'm gonna kick it to you for that. But before we get into the business side, it's so nice to have an entrepreneur on the. On the pod on another episode. It brings us back to our roots, but I gotta touch on a little reality TV first. A little influencing first. You're in the Hamptons, you got some people staying at the house, you got some Love island. People staying at the house. It looks like you're on Love island right now with the shirt that you're wearing. I wish people could see it. But tell me about the Hamptons. Tell me how that whole thing works. Tell me how you got the conglomerate of people together. Together. Just, just, just educate the people a little bit because I know they're asking.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, for sure. So the house is. It's called the gallery house and that's actually owned by Gary V. And so what they do is they do brand collaborations at the house and then that justifies, you know, the price of the house, the cost of the house and all expenses. And then throughout the month of July, they have different influencers, creators, public figures, all different, different people within this space in certain capacities staying at the house. And they're hosting them here. Now this ho. This house isn't owned by them. They rent it out. I think I looked online. It's a 20 million dollar house and I think the monthly is like 200 to 250, 000amonth, which is crazy. And we at Rewired got one weekend to host. So we had, you know, my business partner here, we had one of our agents here, and then we brought creators and public figures that we work with and. Or are working on deals with and. Or are trying to, to work with. Right. So yeah, we had the, the Love island folks here, which are great. Taylor and Clark and Alandria were just awesome. We have Chiclet and Millenni here. They are creators that have the funniest, funniest content. They were just, they'll be on the podcast too. They were just at Kaisenet's streaming university, which is fun. We had Juliana here from Bachelorette, Tyler in T. Tate, Taylor, Cameron, Rachel, Kirkconnell, et cetera. We threw a party here on Saturday, which was part of the arrangement and got to see a lot of familiar faces there, which was great. And overall, just a really, really good weekend. So it looks like some of this stuff from afar is for fun and play. And while there is of course some fun, you're having some laughs and have a couple drinks. It's a lot of work too, right? But it was a very successful weekend. We had a blast being here here, great connections and it was just a good weekend, man. It was great. What did it look like from afar?

[C]

No, it just looked like there's a bunch of people and everyone's asking how the why, how these people know each other, how, how are they in the same house together? That's a really nice house. Who's paying for the house? So Gary Vee rents the house, you're saying about a quarter mil a month to rent it, and then are you 250, 250k? Are you paying for the house or no?

[Jason Turcotte]

Great question. So everyone that's here. Here is. Everything's taken care of as far as transportation, the food. I mean, this thing is stacked with food they have, and it's like just red carpet treatment. They'll steam your. You'll steam your clothes, they'll do your laundry. I mean, you name it, you want it, they have it. So no one's paid, though, to be here. Now, what's interesting is there's a lot of brands doing integrations here. So then a lot of the companies that are seeing the quote unquote talent here now have an interest in doing paid activations. Right? So, but no one is paid to be here, but everything is paid for.

[C]

So when you say paid for, paid for by Gary Vee, who owns a house. And if that's the case, what's his kickback? How is. How is he getting his ROI in the investment?

[Jason Turcotte]

It's a great question. So all the, like, if I look at the backyard, David, which of course, they have, you know, big pool and they have a tennis court and racquetball court, steam room, sauna, cold plunge, everything, I'm looking at, like a massive digiorno sign right now. Like, it is huge. There's a huge digiorno activation, you know, and if I continue, I'm looking at a massive Hendrix gin activation and many others. So they deck brands out in this house and they make sure that the house gets a lot of exposure and therefore the brand pay a fee to the gallery house, and this becomes an income generator for them, right? We get an experience, we get to network, we get to, you know, whatever, do content and meet people that are. They're doing brand work, they're being paid by brands. And then the long goal here, of course, is to then have paid activations generated through a lot of this networking. So. So. And then while, you know, while we were here, we did five podcasts. So we have Landria coming on, Tyler and Tate, Juliana, Chiclet and Millennia, everyone that I pretty much told you and Rachel Carcano all those episodes will be coming out too. So, yeah, it's great question. Super productive. It's been a ton of fun. Leave tomorrow and back to the grind.

[C]

I mean, look, we've been doing this pod for four years. You've been in this world since 2018. It's. Some of these things still surprise me. I can't imagine being one of those Love island contestants who's been off the show for two weeks, and all of a sudden they're in the hamptons in a $20 million house, and they' it for the first time. It must be information overload for. So for you to be there and to educate them on it. You know, they're probably super grateful for it, and it's obviously probably something that you really enjoy and are fortunate that you, you know, passionate about, that you get to do.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, the. I was calling choking around. Like, I'm the old man. I'm like, the kids here, I mean, they're. They're. They're kids and they're. They're so kind and extremely talented. And my gosh, I think we've been doing this for four years, David. You know, we've had almost every type of reality star on from every different show. And I've now seen and been in, I guess you call it the reality TV unscripted space since 2018. I will tell you with certainty, I've never. I don't think I've ever seen this type of hype in buzz. It's. It's. I mean, like, I've never seen it. Like, people are so into this show. The other thing they're really good at is, like, they're always working the phone. Like, they're. They're hitting. They're streaming, they're on lives. They're always putting content out. And it was interesting to see they did a live at 3am here, and everyone was just dancing and stuff. And then people will clip the live and then go to Twitter and there'll be like hundreds and thousands of thousands of tweets based on their live. It's just that show. We've talked about it before. We'll talk about it again. It's. It's done insane, insane things in this. In this space and industry, but Hamptons has been good. Nice little life update. We got to get to the. To the main event here. David Royce, what'd you think?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, David Royce, let's. Let's turn the page a little bit. Back to the roots. Entrepreneur, inspiring, motivating, and just, I gotta say, from my perspective, always love seeing you as an interviewer grow over the four years. But when we get someone that you are, like, the hairs on your. On your. On your arms stand up because you are like, wow, I'm. I'm active, I'm activated. I'm learning from this guy. I want to know more. I. I wanna. I'm a listener now. I'm trying to get tips and tricks. You're a little bit more on the edge of your seat. You're really asking really great questions because you're really intrigued. You're not necessarily looking to have to talk about a certain topic or something. It was a news or a clip or anything like that. You're just so invested. So I think, you know, differently when we have entrepreneurs on.

[Jason Turcotte]

Yeah, it's just a whole different style of interview, you know?

[Dave Royce]

Yeah.

[Jason Turcotte]

I mean, this is a guy who became a billionaire from the pest control business. So to have the. It's kind of like. It reminds me of the Emma Greed episode to have the opportunity to sit down with these people and, like, pick their brain and learn everything. It's like, I feel so fortunate that this is part of my job, right? So you probably hear it in my tone and my energy. You can tell I'm just, like, literally trying to get all the information out of them, not only for our listeners, but, like, just for my curiosities and benefit, too, because it's wild to see a space like this and to see someone become a billionaire in a space like this. And it reminds me of the Todd Graves episode, too. Right? Todd Graves is now worth $20 billion selling chicken tenders. Right. So to have the opportunity to speak to these people that we look up to and can learn from is truly, like, an honor.

[C]

All right, so we have influencers, reality TV people on. And business people on the reality TV people are easy to identify. Hey, we need. We need Olandria on the show. Right? Not everyone's saying, hey, can you get the pest control guy on the show? How is a pest control conglomerate mastermind, Business entrepreneur, mastermind, stumbling, tripping and falling his way onto Trading Secrets?

[Jason Turcotte]

Podcast.

[C]

Podcast.

[Jason Turcotte]

It's a great, great question. We always, like, kind of pull the curtain back here, so we give exposure and we. We really showcase the reality of that. He had a whole team reach out. So they put a full pitch together. They showed us exactly what he could talk about, how he can add benefit to the show. So, you know, like, imagine you go on Shark Tank, right? Like, you hear the people just pitching the sharks. We were pitched by a PR company that represents him as to why and the benefit. Benefit of his experience and what he's done could bring to the show. So. And we get those, David, just like, I don't know if you and I have ever talked about that. We get pitches like this. Probably. Probably 20 plus a week. Probably like 20 to 50 a week. People will, will reach out and, and ask to have whatever it is that they're doing on, on our pod, which is pretty cool. Like it's really cool to see those pictures come in.

[C]

It's so cool. And, and just to watch him like I watched the video of this before I podcasted. Sometimes I just get the audio, the video. Like he's, you can tell he's smiling the whole time. I mean he's so excited to talk about. He's got such a wealth of knowledge. I myself am a homeowner. I have pest control. I didn't have it for a few years, so I have it. So it resonated with me and I'm like, wow, like how much do you pay here you guys talk? So I pay, I think I pay 50 bucks a month.

[Jason Turcotte]

Month.

[C]

And I door to door salesman. He, he came and that's how I got it. And he was same thing I'm doing the neighbors in the home and I didn't do it for a year. And then that year I had the worst like wasp problem, wasp outside, B problem, wasp problem. They're making a massive nest in like the faucet of my outdoor roof. And I, I called the guy a year later and I was like, can you come in? And you know, I got hooked. He's like, yeah, he quoted me on like 350 or something to take care of it. But if you sign out for the 50 bucks a month, any of those big one time treatments were part of the package. So now if I ever have a B problem again, I just call them. It's $0. Like my shed outside. I hate mice. Every time I open my shed for the spring and summer, there's 10 mice. I just call them now. They set the traps, they do the things. I never see dead mice again. It cost me $0 cuz I pay the monthly. Tons of value for me. And like you, you guys talked about those blue collar industries. They're of value, everyone needs them. And someone somewhere behind the mice, behind the bees, behind the door to a salesman is someone making a ton of money and rightfully so.

[Jason Turcotte]

100. What would you say is your like when you listen to an episode like this? David, him and I were talking well after the podcast, like any minute I could get with him. I was asking him a million questions. It was actually, yeah, as it was interesting some of the conversations we had off camera. Such a smart guy. But what was, was like your biggest takeaway when you, when you Listen to an episode like this. Like what, what are your learning lessons?

[C]

I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just do some quick hitters here because I don't want to talk about too much of them in depth. I, I loved how at the end of the day he only got to the level wealthy got to because he ended up showing value. So he was a door to door sal salesman. He kept getting better at that. But then once he started the training manual and the, his boss was like, I'll give you a cut of every person that you can train under this manual. That's when he went from the, the 20 to 35K to the 225K over the summer. So showing value, not just like being like satisfied in your role, but always finding way to show value is how you, you, you're gonna really exponentially grow that wealth if you stay within that company. I loved that, I loved his just comment about like it's not just good enough. Sometimes to be passionate about something, you have to be obsessed about something. And then from the like relationship side of it, I love the dynamic that he had with his wife. Like for 10, they didn't have kids for 10 years. They were both, she was a lawyer. And he was grinding away at this. He was like, we would work days, we would, we would meet for an hour before bed and catch up and then we would really enjoy our weekends together. But because we were both supportive and passionate about building this life together, it allowed us to get to where we, where we're at today. And you know, I, I gotta end with the last thing. Like he shoved it right out my hoop. Like he loves to read leaders or readers. He reads two books a day, business books. I even have Tony Shade delivering happiness. Like I think it's about time that I just step off my little high horse course and I pick up a goddamn book and make myself better like David Rice did today. So that's a lot of takeaways right there. You know, some self loathing takeaways in there as well, but I had a bunch more. But I mean really, like these are the guys that I said and make the hair on your next end up. These are the guys where I come away from the podcast feeling like a better person for a listen. Listen to it.

[Jason Turcotte]

I love it. That's what Trading Secrets is all about. We change it up. We throw different people from different industries and different different stories. And hopefully it's something that everyone back at home can appreciate and learn something from. And if you have any ideas of guests or industries you want us to explore. Please go give us five stars and let us know what those are. And I promise we will do our best to have those on this podcast. We did say last recap, David. We were going to do a giveaway and I said it on the podcast. Four pack of love potion from Justin Clays. So I went to the reviews and we did a random drawing and it looked like. Looks like the account. Deb for sure is our winner. So if you get this, Deb, just shoot us an email. Trading [e-mail] and we will make sure we send you a pack of the love Potion. This is a great podcast. Justin seems so smart and down to earth. I enjoyed watching him on the Bachelor franchise and look forward to trying his love potion products. And David, we're doing pretty good, man. 5.7,000 reviews at a 4.9 out of 5 rating. So take it.

[C]

4.9 rating. That's great. We're honored. We're blessed. We're fortunate. It's, you know, I think it's sprinkling people like David Royson and entrepreneurs in with the. With all of our guests that we've had is what differentiate. Differentiates us, makes us a little different. You never know what you're going to get, but you always know that you're going to walk away learning something. And I think that that's the beauty of it.

[Jason Turcotte]

That's right. You're going to learn something. It's an entrepreneur this week and we have more entrepreneurs like the founder of LTK and many others coming on. But I told you, if we have some reality stars coming on too, and we have some stacked episodes with Rachel Kirkconnell, we have Landria coming on. We have Millennium Chicklet, we got Juliana, Tyler Tate, and many more. So continue to tune in to Trading Secrets. Remember to subscribe. David, got anything before we wrap?

[C]

Well, I said it. I teased it at the start of the recap. I did have a definition. I need answers, and I can't go without saying it. He said he got. He grew his business. By mna, I'm assuming he means mergers and acquisitions.

[Jason Turcotte]

You nailed it.

[C]

I'm right. Hit the ding, ding, ding, and let's sign this thing out of here. The curious Canadian, He's. He's growing up.

[Jason Turcotte]

Let me just make sure I heard that right. M and A. Not MMA day.

[C]

Yes, mma. I know.

[Jason Turcotte]

Very different. I love it. Well, that is a beautiful thing. The curious Canadian. You are just becoming, after all these years, the only. Probably the only hole in your sailboat is the fact you still haven't found your crypto.

[C]

And I got to read some books.

[Jason Turcotte]

And you got to read some books.

[C]

But here we go. It's all about learning. People, leaders, learning.

[Jason Turcotte]

David, thank you for being on this episode and this recap of Trading Secrets with me. I'm so excited for what we have planned in the rest of this summer and fall. Huge episodes coming and we will see you. We hope this was another episode of Trading Secrets, one you couldn't afford to miss. As a designer, you know, clients wanted a all a stunning site that runs their business and scales with their success. But tight deadlines shouldn't mean compromising your vision. Wix Studio is built for designers like you. Plan sites in seconds with AI powered site mapping. Then design starting in Figma or in the WIX Studio editor with precise layout tools. Then bring your vision to life with no code, animations, AI tools and one click responsive design. Design smoother and deliver sooner. Go to wixstudio.com.