1321: David Royce | The Blue-Collar Advantage in the AI Era (Bonus)

started a shopping trip.

“I'll tell you the first day of shopping.”

And the platform makes me no problem. I have a lot of problems, but the platform is not one step away. I have the feeling that shopping trip is a platform that could only be obtained. Everything is super simple, integrative and useful. And the time and the money that I can't invest in there is no other way.

For all of you, in Waxtum. Yet the cost in Los Testen of Shopify, punkto.de This special episode of the show is sponsored in part by the YAP Media Network, the number one self-improvement podcast network. This episode is brought to you by Lufthansa. Lufthansa Allegra is an innovative, elevated travel experience across all classes, focusing

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I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life, and those around you.

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Today on the show, you ever notice how the people who make the most money are almost never doing anything that sounds cool at a dinner party. Yeah, I built a half a billion dollar pest control company. Nobody grows up dreaming about termites. Nobody's lying on the floor at age eight thinking one day, I will dominate the cockroach

economy. And yet, my guest today did exactly that. David Royce turned "door-door" rejection into a machine, not just a business, but a system a lot of systems. In fact, something that scales, something that works even when you're not the hardest

working psycho-hustle culture guy in the room. Today on the show, we get into what getting rejected a thousand times actually teaches you about people. Why most top performers are useless once you remove them from the spotlight, how to turn skills into a system instead of a personality trait, and why follow your passion is probably

some of the worst business advice ever given, because it turns out the real game is not working harder. It's building something that works without you. And if you don't figure that out, you don't have a business. You've got a job with a God Complex.

Here we go with David Royce.

So you built a $500 million pest control company.

By the way, if I get any stats wrong, you've got to jump in, but that's not exactly a business kid's dream about when they're like laying on the floor staring at the ceiling. Usually it's rockstar, athlete, pest controls, like a distant 99th of the top 100 list of sexy businesses to create in exit. So why was that the right move?

“So I got in the industry the way most people do, accidentally, right?”

It's the last thing on my mind. I took this crappy summer job back when I was in college. I had a friend come in and say, "Hey, I made $25 grand last summer." Pretty good. Yeah, like three and a half months.

Do you want to go out with us? You know, we go out to Northern California, we surf on weekends, it was like, oh, all I heard was like $25 grand. And I'm working like, you know, a minimum wage job. Yeah.

Part time, trying to make it theater. Yeah, trying to work my way through school, and it's not great. So that's all I heard. And so I drove out to Sacramento about 10 hours. I was down in Utah and it was, I showed up and I literally couldn't sell.

I sucked. It was horrible out of. Do you want to buy this? No. All right.

Thanks for your time. Yeah, I had zero sales trading.

The first five days, zero sales.

And it's a commission only job. Sure. My only benefit is free cardio. Right. And all my friends are selling.

I'm one of four sales per day per day. Oh my god. So you're like, I'm dying. No, you suck. You know, it's not a hypothesis.

It's proven. Exactly. You can just look around and go, yeah, I'm not great. Yeah. So that weekend, I, you know, I was starting to get nervous.

I'm like, gosh, you know, I have an apartment out here. It's just kind of do or die. I need to make it work. Just want to have a bookstore, but half a dozen books. And then I just said, okay, I'm going to read 90 minutes every day.

Because I know this is my best opportunity as a college student to make this type of money and try to pay my way through school. So you bought sales books, yeah. Sales books. Okay.

Yeah. And it started to click like little by little. I started to figure it out. I realized I was horrible at closing initially. It'd be like, so what do you think?

It goes to maybe like, hey, we're going to be here in the morning and the afternoon, which will work best for you. Right. To be a summer office. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. What sales books? I'm curious. Because I remember those days.

This is a free get-a-mer books. Yeah.

Jeff, you get murs, zig-ziggler, Ryan Tracy, Tom Hopkins. Okay.

“So the exact same books that I bought to learn sales, right?”

I remember Tommy Hopkins tapes and he would be like, so my secretary said, some of the something. And I said, well, you're going to need three type renders. That's like, wait, this guy made all his money selling type writers and he just listened to these tapes and it sounds like a guy who probably smokes unfiltered cigarettes or whatever.

And he's just telling you this very sort of nowadays almost like, faint advice, but it's actually suddenly genius and you realize that, oh, my gosh, in the 60s when he was coming out with this, nobody had a, this was all like space age material. So, you know, the, the, the, when is morning or afternoon better for you? Meanwhile, people are like, what do you think?

You want to buy it and like, come on in, and if they didn't say, yes, that was it. And this guy is assuming to close and it's like, oh, man, so I think sales has come a long way. And there's so much stuff that goes into it too, right?

Body language is incredible.

That's like a whole other level. It's one thing to learn all the really, you know, sexy lines to be able to close somebody. It's a whole other level to learn how to like read body language and then also ensure your body language is putting people at ease and getting them to actually want to buy. What are you going into people's homes most of the time, we could just do the presentation.

I actually prefer not to, just because it was a time thing, the more people I could talk to the more I could do. Oh, true. You go inside, you tend to, you know, sit down, you know, have some coffee or have a drink or something.

Yeah. Yeah. It takes a long time, like, longer time to close. That's true. Yeah.

Like, we really try to be in an out maybe 10 minutes. Like, you kind of give your initial pitch for just a couple of minutes, you know, kind of nod your head, smile, get them to say, yes, and I got, yeah, I'll give you a shot when and were you selling past control or something else? Yeah, past control services.

Yeah. It's kind of like, you go out, you know, every other month or once a quarter or whatever. It's very much like gardening services, whatever, right? Like, you know, if you can have a gardener pull weeds once, that's great, but, you know, the weeds are going to come back, so you've got to go back out and retreat.

Yeah, the bugs always come back.

We hired past control company in my house in the reason we did it was because we had ants in the bed and they were counting you'd luck and they'd go, like, up over the headboard and then you just go, okay, there's no way to get rid of these. And the line went all the way to these vines and it was like, you can landscape my neighbor's yard and get rid of these or I can hire a company to come in spray a little protective barrier.

California, we got bugs, man. We got bugs for days. True. No one, your friends were making 25 grand a year. Nobody wants a line of ants through their old home and that's the best case scenario.

Ants, cockroaches, whatever. I've heard you say businesses are sport and I'm wondering what you mean by that in practice because what's the scoreboard, you know, what are you measuring the most founders aren't? Yeah, I think you just gave a fight, right?

“So for the sales side, it was exciting to sell more, like the best thing about commission job”

is that you are in control of how much you make, right? So you can study more, you can learn and by the end of that summer, I was the top rookie out of a couple hundred salespeople. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

It made 35 grand, right?

It's like, okay, like I want to do better and the next summer I went back, I was a sales manager

and trained other people and I got there, I went to a new company that was a startup and they didn't have a training manual and then I was like, oh crap, I brought all my friends out, hey, can I write a training manual before you want them to do well? And their owner was like, sure, this is awesome. Yeah, I've been told I need some sort of training manual and you're going to do it for

free so that you're not embarrassed that you brought your buddies to the company. Hell yeah. Totally, and he had one other location and it was like, okay, well, we got our location, they have their location, how can we beat them? It's like try to find a way, if you can create competition in some sort of a way, like a

friendly competition, everybody does better and so our sales team, we did about twice as many per rep as the other team did and then my boss was like, hey, do you want to like recruit for me and the future and be an entire, over my entire sales program, then I'll give you a cut off everybody. Yeah, that's great.

“And so that's what I did for the next two years after that and I was making my last summer”

made 225 grand. Wow. It was a pretty good for a college sophomore of junior, right? Yeah, that's like 20 plus years ago and today's my, it's probably more like almost half a million.

Yeah, that's crazy. I love commission only jobs. I mean, I shouldn't say, I love them for everyone, but I loved mine. And I remember my business partners at the time, I was making a base and then they were like, you're not selling very well.

And I was like, I don't know how to sell. I have no training. I'm just a Lord of Fearing this out. I'm asking salespeople how to do it. I'm reading the Jeffrey, get him or books or whatever all these are the zig-ziggler stuff.

I got the tapes. I'm in the gym on the elliptical machine or whatever bullshit non-exercise them, like listening to Tommy Hopkins on tape with the static in the background, so on typewriters. And then they were like, we're moving you to commission only. And I was like, this seems unfair and they're like, well, that was kind of the ideas.

They were like, well, we're not going to pay if you can't do anything. Even though it was my company, I just kind of got strong armed in this position. And I remember making like $42. One month and then I don't know, fast forward six, eight months later, I was making like a lot more.

I mean, add multiple zeros on the end of that. And then they were like, we're going to cap your. And I was like, absolutely. If you'd try to cap me, I'm there. Because I'm bringing in all of your money.

So no, there will be no cap. I'm in charge now. And then it eventually turned into kind of a problem in the company.

why are you making three times four times more than everyone? And then they bring in a consultant and the consultant goes, oh, the reason you're making

all this money is because this guy's generating $3 million a year.

And you, what, what is it you said you do around here again? You've managed all the spreadsheets. Higher a bookkeeper and fire yourself and remember like that sort of slowly started to faster. And I think I've read it and looked at a bunch of the stuff you've done.

It sounds like kind of that same thing. You eventually realized what? Why am I making this guy $10 million a year instead of me making $10 million a year? Yeah, somewhat. Like he was very encouraging.

Yeah. I actually went to him asking for letter recommendation. I wanted to go into a best way to have been setting finance at school. Mm-hm. Yeah.

He just looks amazing like why? Yeah. Right. 80. How do I reach for somebody else?

Doesn't make it a sense.

“You should really go do this on your own.”

You're really good at it. And I was like, uh, he actually wanted to invest in me. He wanted to go start my own company and then he told me he's like, by the way, I'm selling my business. Yeah, if you want to buy it.

You've only been doing it for four years and I've been here for three of those. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, well, how much are you selling it for?

He's like 10 million bucks.

I was like, wait a second, you only invested this much and you made that much. I was like, well, all right, well, maybe I'll think about it. How many houses are you hitting? And is it mostly in California, because California door to door sales, okay, Michigan door to door sales?

Yeah. You know, it just depends. That made the job. It's crappy, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Whether outside. It's just tons and tons of rejection. I mean, you're probably not going like 120, 150 doors a day. You're trying to close maybe two and a half for the average person.

I might be able to close, you know, third, two and a half. Yeah. Two and a half accounts. How do you close half on account? Just with the average is kind of come out to like the other day.

Okay. Well, it's a two day. That got to think. Some days is zero day. Another day might be five.

I was really good.

I could get like 13, 15 accounts.

Really. Wow. But you just, you learn him. Part of it has to do with time. So the average schedule, you wake up.

“You have a meeting at nine in the morning.”

And 930 meetings over. You drive out to the area. And then you're on the doors as long as you want. But most people would work. They take like a couple hour lunch break.

And they afternoon when it's hottest. And they go back on the doors and work until until dark. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area.

And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area.

And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area.

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And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area.

And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And then they go back to the area. And so they can watch maybe 15 different types of people selling in different ways.

“Like, how do you film that if they're going door to door?”

Do you get, because we do role plays. Okay. So I'm just going to say something. So we literally set up a whole act. And perhaps some of the tend to be the customer.

And they'll give like lots and lots of hard objections. And then, you know, the sales rep has to get over it. It's fine. Because you can see people like, you know, they're more assertive. You can see people actually a little more soft spoken.

There's a lot of different ways to sell actually. But the key is like your body language. It's maintaining control. And being calm and putting the customerties. And just, you know, having all the different lines, all the different rebuttals to be able to get through it.

You can take it to a whole other level. So I invented this thing. I call it the rack system, RAC. So resolve ace clothes. So have at least three different types of rebuttals.

In case the one rebuttal doesn't work for the customer. Next, you change the subject to what else can you offer that you haven't discussed already. So you lay down an ace. And usually I like to have four different things that I could bring up over time.

And then you close again and try to close in a slightly different way.

So it doesn't remind them of the previous clothes where they said no. Right. Yeah. And if they still could say, yeah, I'm still thinking, and they're like, yeah, I don't say you feel. And then you'll give another rebuttal a different ace than another clothes.

And so you can take sales to a whole different level. Like the people are the top one percent. They eat breathe and sleep sales and love it.

“So the next time because active comes, I would say, every other month, right?”

Or randomly three months. So if I say, hey, man, you're not following the rack system. Are they going to know what I'm talking about? Because I'm very tempted to screw it the next day. Yeah, they probably will.

Yeah. Very tempted. Because there'll be times where they come by and I'm like, that guy's got skills. Like, he's going to do well. But other times I go, that's it.

He's gone. Like, I just said no thanks. I already have whatever.

I don't even know who we have.

Yeah. But like, then he's like, oh, okay. So you have, there's an attrition right, too. It's like, yeah. Maybe, you know, a quarter of the guys who were out there are going to either switch

into like a technician position, or they might even go home and just say, you know, that's just pest control's not for me. I'm going to, I'm going to bail. So in the month of May, you may have some really poor closing skills. I see. I see.

Sales skills. But by August, those are your top people. I see. So the guy in May, he needs to be encouraged subtly. But the August guy, I can put him through the ringer.

Definitely. All right. That's good to know. If I mid June, you're in a good, good. Okay.

I'm going to remember this. Because my, as soon as you book this, my wife was like, oh, yeah, we see those guys all the time. And sometimes they give up really easily. And I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm definitely going to rib him about that. Like, don't give up easily.

Maybe it's because I'm a former sales guy, but I don't mind somebody who's like, oh, I'll handle that objection and I'll raise you this and I'll do this and how about that. I appreciate that. I respect it. I respect it.

Totally. And sometimes I'm like, that's actually a really good idea. I actually do want this product or service, which is even a better feeling. I love being sold something and it's skilled on a skilled level. Yeah, we respect it.

Yeah. I have a hard time not buying for something from a great sales person. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to reward this guy does what he's doing. I've definitely done. I won't say I've bought things.

I don't want our need from a sales person just because they were really good. I mean, I'm sure it's happened, but I will even say, hey, let me stop here right here. I'm not on the market for this at all, but you are a really good sales person. And I want you to know that this rejection is not because of your lack of skill. And then I'll be like, oh, thank you.

Because it's like, I would have loved to have heard that a few times when I was getting beat down, making phone calls, trying to sell stuff. Actually, what does getting rejected all day in person feel like when you're young and you're not really Callister or skilled yet?

“I think the thing is you just learned to build resiliency towards it.”

Or you're like, you know, it's not me. It's nothing personal. They just don't, maybe they don't have a pest right now, right? Or they already have a competitor service and they're happy with them. And it's cool. Like, it's not for me. I just knew, like, typically with about 10 seconds,

I knew if I was going to take that person all the way through the presentation. I could like read their body language and how they were perceiving me. And whether I could actually build a relationship with trust with them and be likable to get in that zone. Or I just be like, yeah, I'm going to go to the next door. Because they're beautiful thing about it. It's not like you only have one chance.

It's like, if you don't do well, you just go to the next door. You just keep trying. Yeah, you get so many reps in and yeah, it's not personal, I suppose. What patterns did you start noticing after you heard no, you know, 10,000 times, 1000 times? Actually, how many doors, you ever done the math? How many doors you knocked on? Yeah, because our guys that actually track every single home that they're going to.

So you know, what about you personally when you were starting to do this? Do you have any guests in it of how many doors you knocked on? Yeah, I knocked about 60,000 doors over the course of four summers. So average sales rep knocked about 15,000. 15,000 a summer.

That's a lot. That's a lot of talk. If you have 100 days in your summer, you're going to knock 100, about 150 doors for a summer. So how many noses that? Just tens of thousands of nos over your career. It's a post to nose, much of it, like only a third of the homeowners will actually answer their door.

So that makes sense. Either they're not home or they're just, yeah, it's another door to ourselves for some not answering that door. I see. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I, man, I always answer.

I'm always just curious. Yeah. Usually I'm not doing anything that important. I wouldn't answer when I'm on a show, but otherwise I'm like, please take me away from my email inbox.

I'm curious. Give me the spiel, man. Give me the spiel. What did going door to door teach you about human psychology that most people never learn. I mean, you mentioned the body language stuff.

“What other kind of concepts do you think you took throughout the rest of your career?”

Well, a lot of it's, if you're anxious, they're going to be anxious. One of the key things I'd tell by salespeople is, look, the script isn't bad. Because I had like a roughly a two-minute script that was written out. And it was very like vocabulary-wise and it was dialed in. It's like perfect script, you know.

And some sales reps still don't kind of freestyle and mix around with it. But for the most part, it works really well. And I would tell them, it's not the script. It's bad. It's your face. You're literally looking, I'm going, please don't hurt me.

You have like the deer in the headlights, you're like, "Hi, how are you?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're calm and chill, they can come out and be chill. And that goes way back to like our ancestry of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago, even like when we couldn't, when we didn't maybe even have a written language or have a language we could speak,

we would have had to figure everything out from body language. To know if somebody was a threat or whatever.

and the tonality of your voice, you know, the volume, the pitch, all that sort of thing. Okay. That's funny. When I used to teach dating stuff back in my 20s and 30s, there's the same thing. Two things?

Yeah, it was like focused onality, eye contact, body language. I mean, it was purposeed into slightly different way. But that was also, I used to say, like a sale, kind of a sales thing. You're putting your best foot forward, you're handling some objections in a way that's not hopefully creepy or unethical. Yeah.

And you're building trust. It's like, absolutely. This is the same thing, except at the end of the day, it's, you know, I don't get a pest control contract, hopefully get a girlfriend or something like that or a date out of it. I've probably half a dozen books about body language and I didn't read them until after I'd finish selling.

Like, there wasn't a whole lot out there about body language, specific with sales. There were some stuff just about body language. Old school guy from Australia named Alan peas. I know who you're talking about. Yeah.

It was called like the book of body language. The definitive book of body language. The definitive book of body language. Yeah. And I didn't even find that book until after, but I found some of this really old school books prior to that.

Yeah. It's funny because most of the books that are out there, they're actually geared towards dating. Yeah. It's probably a much bigger market than sales. It's a bigger market.

And also it's like, you want people to pay attention to this. Maybe don't constantly bring up office examples. Like, even, maybe about sex. The mayor's people still want to hear about sex and attraction in dating. I mean, at least so far, at least those episodes are still popular.

Yep.

“I wonder what point sales started feeling learnable instead of random?”

Because surely in the beginning it was like, well, that person said, yes, great. Don't know what I did. That person said, no, oh, well, don't know why really.

But it's just, and because early in the game sales people always think it's just a numbers game.

You just have to roll the dice 100 times and you're going to, one of them is going to win. And that's how it works. But then advanced salesmen are like, no, you're, you are counting cards. Yeah. It's pattern recognition, right?

And it's being conscious about what is going on and then taking notes. So for me, initially, just started out with objections. So like, I was not very good at understanding other company services. I had no idea what services did and what they didn't do. So I would just write down whatever the objection was.

You know, okay, they're with terminax or they're with or can. And I have to like study up and understand what the other companies were doing. And then I have to ask customers, hey, I was just curious. Do they do this for you? Do they do this?

If something our neighbor really liked is we do this and this. And they're like, oh, actually, I don't, I don't think they do that. Oh, that's really cool. Well, what else do you guys do? And then you're like, oh, okay, I'm going like I should.

Well, we take care of, you know, the yard as well. We like to do spider webs off the fence line. They're like, oh, yeah, they don't do that. That's funny. Okay.

You start taking notes and you figure out what different services do. And I can see that being a selling point. Because my wife was like, yeah, they spray this thing around the house. But then I still have to clean up all the webs. So she texted the guy or called the guy.

“And the next guy came over and that's why it's a good company.”

The next guy came over and he had this basically super long feather duster.

Right. And he was just like zip. And I go, that's all this guy had to do to basically beat out the other guy. I was like, I'm not going to clean your porch. It's not my job.

I just do the spraying. I was like, well, okay, we want the guy who brings a free confeder duster in the car. And just gets rid of the stupid spider webs. I'm not walking through it in the morning and having to stick to my face. Like, that's what I'm actually paying for.

I don't really care if the pests are dead. I just don't want them to be in my face. And you know, what we found is it's far more painful for the customer if it's visual. So, like, when I, what does not get 60,000 doors, I basically got at a Ph.D. And what people hate it about the pest control industry.

And you learn a lot about specifics with different companies. And so this is nerdy pest control history. But back in the 90s prior to that, there were no feather dusters. Nobody was doing that. But when we are on the doors, it's almost like, okay, this is my stage.

What can I point out to help the customer understand? It's also far more engaging when you're pointing and you're talking and you're, you're doing this. You're talking, you know, kind of looking interesting as opposed to just kind of sitting there and droning on and on.

“Speaking of pests, how about a word from our sponsors?”

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You'll be in smart company where you belong. The course again all free at 6 Minute Networking.com. Now back to David Royce. One of the things that we had the company.

We had a good company and they always took our feedback.

We were like, hey, you're an environmentally friendly, has control company. You're laying down these strips. These are really sticky strips. You're my gym, which is outside. Sure.

There's 10 lizards stuck to this. Don't they eat bugs and also they're cute and they were like, yeah, we're going to stop doing that right away. It's like, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be protecting the environment and getting rid of pests. And what I'm doing is killing cute lizards that eat the pests.

And I have to look at that. And it's like, I find one next to my weight rack and it's like half eaten by something. It's disgusting. It's funny because we're a pest controller standpoint. They would go, hey, that's actually a good thing for the environment because we're not laying down chemicals or something.

Right. You know, it's non-toxic. Right. But then, you know, inadvertently they're killing them. Yeah.

And it's like, no, those are supposed to be catching spiders or, you know, whatever. Yes, those are the guys are feeding all the spiders. Like, I love the lizards that live under my deck. There's probably far fewer insects under there creating nests because there's a fat guy that lives under my deck. And I'm like, I use well fed.

You know, I don't want that guy getting stuck to a weird orange stripe in my gym. And then I got to deal with that. What's the counter-intuitive sales lesson that most people get backwards? So I think a lot of people, they have this view of a stereotypical salesperson. Yeah.

Right.

“So loud, assertive, almost like you have to push your way through the sale.”

And we really teach our people the opposite. If you're pushing, they're going to feel that. Instead, like, be chill. Like, talk to them like you would a friend or your grandmother about the service. Like, really help them understand you're there to help.

As opposed to like, force something down their throat. Like, and when people put down their guard and they like you, they're much more likely to listen to. That's a far easier way to get a sale done. If it's just like a one-time sale, like, I probably think of like the use car sales dealer. It's probably like the stereotypes.

That's a stereotype. Right. It's just he's trying to get one deal done and get you out, you know, off the lot. Why did you start thinking beyond your own performance? I mean, the guy said, hey, can you train everyone else?

So, did you have to reach little things to teach? Not really. No, so I just was like, okay. Well, I'm already the top person. So how do I teach this to other people?

And having to write everything down and teach it is even a better way to learn it. And I actually got even better at sales from that point and forward. It was just creating processes for it. You know, writing out a script, writing all these different

“articles, kind of coming up with the rack system, you know, he, how do you teach body language?”

And then we took it to another level where it's like, let's videotape the sales people Giving their approach. And then we're going to throw it up. We're going to put a big screen in every office. We're going to mirror it up on the screen.

And then we're going to have the entire group where to go through it. And I'll say, tell me to press pause whenever you see something you really like or you say or dislike. And so you actually have the team, you know, edit and go through with the salesperson, what they can improve on.

And it's fascinating. We've done that word, like someone's gotten to like a rut. And they're getting zeroes for a few days. And then we'll put them up the screen.

You know, everybody will say, okay, this is the key thing.

Like notice how you're actually frowning here over and over. Or are you doing this thing with your forehead? It's really weird. Let's get rid of that. Just want you to focus on that and the smile thing throughout the day.

And then they'll sell seven. And it's like, whoa, this is crazy similar to the dating stuff that we used to teach.

We would hire, we had to hire the women because you're not going to film strangers

without their consent. That's a bad idea, especially now. But we would hire the women and they would do this in our workshop. And we go, how do you think that went? And they go, well, I walked up with a big smile and I said this.

And I said this and I said this and we're like, let's go to the videotape. And then it would be like him walking up, looking like you've just freshly shut yourself. Right. No smile, frozen in fear, acting really awkward. Through the headlights.

Look, kind of looking at the ground, not speaking up.

“And they're like, wow, that's what I look like.”

It's like, yeah, yeah, but don't worry. We're not done. We're going to build you back up from here. So then they do it like a dozen times. You're coaching.

And then we would send them out at night. Again, this is a decade ago. I don't do this anymore. But we would send them out at night. And then they were really confident when they approached because they were like, no, now I know what I look like on tape.

And I know I don't look like that. Right. And so you can see it. Yeah, you can see it. You're like, oh, I sound like that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you remember when answering machines were a thing and you hear your own voice on an answering machine. You go, oh my god, that's what I sound like. This is terrible.

The terrible news. So you have to get through that kind of whatever that is, that sort of self-conscious anxiety. And then you can really throw yourself into something like sales.

What was the first thing you standardized with the sales process?

The script. What do you got to say? Because when people first get out there, they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. And if they get a training manual and it's all, we do this, this and this. Well, that's not sales.

“That's just like technically telling people what you do.”

Right. And features don't sell. It's like bad marketing. You know, and how you explain the bad effects is what really gets people to want by. I assume you think that process beats talent.

It's a combination. What I love about processes is you can almost teach, I say you can teach them a majority of people. How to be in sales. You know, there's probably 20% there's it depends on what the product is. Clearly some products, you know, take a longer time and it's a harder sale.

The previous company I worked for, there is this wet rag mentality. It's like throw it through. Throw them against the wall. See who sticks against sell. Just let them go home.

That's most sales organizations though. It's an easiest thing to hire for, right? You can hire any warm body and they just see who doesn't blow it. Yeah. And I was like, that's a horrible model.

Yes. One for the person, like I felt like that. I'm like this sucks. And then too, it's horrible for the business. It's like if you train them how to do it, they'd all sell more.

Yeah. Yeah. We've been more loyal to you. And they'd come back each summer, you know, to sell for you or stay working for you. Yeah.

Well, you're investing in them. They're not because if you're selling people to see what sticks, then they just go. This place pays 50 cents more per hour on it. So I'm just going to go there. Or like this place is a base and a commission.

So I'm just going to go there. Where's if you're investing in people, they go, all right. This place might pay a little bit more. But when I every time I spend a couple of weeks working for Apsick or whatever, I come back better at this job.

And that's where I'm making my money as I'm closing more. Yeah. And a big part of sales, too, is keeping up with it. If you stop practicing, you know, eventually complacency leads a mediocrity. You just get bored.

I've found like we're happiest. We're striving for our true potential. And if you're constantly learning and you're keeping yourself fresh, you know, and so you can, you know, be at people performance. That's when you're going to be happiest.

It's when everybody's going to do better. Because sales is even though people are out doing their own thing, we would meet every single day and the vibe in that room, like the energy of how well people we're doing, really, on effect on other people.

And so we utilize those who were the best at it to work with those who were not doing well. And then, you know, film them and have them train them. So it's more of a team sport. Exactly. Exactly.

And then if you look at it, click that you are helping build a machine, though, because it sounds like you eventually get win. Okay, I'm building my own thing. This is a, I'm breading these processes. I can train like it's almost anyone to be able to do this.

I don't know, to the green belt level or something, which is good decent. When did that kind of realization hit? Because I'm assuming at some point this led to a ramp where you're like, wait, we can scale the crap out of this thing.

My boss finally convinced me to go do it.

And I, initially, I was, and I'm embarrassed to say this, I didn't think Pascal control was impressive. Yeah. So I just, there's no way I want to go do this. Like, I'm going to go work in New York, you know, in an M&A.

You know, I want to have like a nice office where suit all that kind of a thing. And when I realized the math on how well he had done, and then he helped me realize, he's like, look what you've already done. This is your, on this side. Boss, your boss.

Yeah. He's like, if you play all those skills that you just did on the sales side, and then you take it and you apply it to the technical side, the customer service side, like you really good at developing processes, you're going to make a ton of money.

So he finally convinced me to go do it. He sold his business. He actually kept his company name, moxie. And I asked him, I said, can I license your name? Because some of the people who were here will follow me to the next one,

if I go start up. So I went and started up down in Southern California. And I did it for four years. It he was a silent investor behind the scenes. And then I could call him, you know, once a month,

if I had questions about things. And before I left, I asked him, I said, okay,

“what are all the things he would change if you had the time?”

Because he was busy, he had three kids and, you know, four different locations at that point. And some ways that wheels were already starting to spin off. And I'm like, what would you change? And he gave me a list of about 30 different things.

And over those four years, it was kind of like being in a lab, just getting familiar with the business, learning the financials, KPIs, all that kind of thing. And at the fourth year, I'm like, okay, I'm really ready to go do this on my own.

And so I sold off just the accounts, the book of business to terminate. And then the terminate actually let me keep my sales force and my executive team and a key operators.

And so I just from there, my second cup of Iko first,

we went in a four different states all at once. And I said, let's see if I can actually scale this. Wow, that's a big bite for your first bite. It was, it was very ambitious. Yeah, I learned in the first cup of Iko,

we were in LA in Orange County, in Lynn Empire, and then San Diego. And I learned how to operate from afar that way, where I couldn't be at the business every day to, you know, be the manager and be running everything.

So I started to work through people.

“A lot of people asked to go, well, how do you scale a business?”

You know, to that size if you're not in every location. And I'm like, well, take a 30 day vacation. Yeah. And if you come back and it's still there, you got a business. Yeah.

But if you come back and there's no business, well, I guess you learned in the next lesson. Yeah, you screwed up. Hopefully you had a nice vacation. Yeah.

Right. Wow. Wow. How old were you at this point? I was in my late 20s.

Wow. Okay.

So you were kind of always pretty ambitious then,

because I, I remember working on my business in my 20s, and all these guys were 30s, 40s and 50s a day. You're the hardest working 20 year olds I've ever met. And I was like, we are, because I, by my measure, we're kind of doing a lot of dick and around.

Like a lot. A lot of spending our wheels. But the fact that we just showed up every day before like 10 30 AM, we were already beating everybody else in our niche. Totally.

There's so many industries that are like that, right? Where it's just a different breed of people. The fall into these things. And if you, for me, coming out of number one, coming out of the college grad, which is different for the industry,

probably, to add a finance degree. I mean, I could probably count on one hand, how many pest controllers have a finance degree. Sure. I had worked at a large regional company.

The first company was a, you know, a hundred billion plus dollar company. So I'd seen what a big company did. And then the small company actually gave me the lens into just entrepreneurship in, you know,

you kind of see everything and it's not perfect. And you're just like, okay. Like, these are the different sizes. How do I get this to this? Yeah, wow. I guess I was ambitious.

I really threw myself in. I did 16 hour days like loved it. Yeah, well, like for 10 years. It was like, go, go, go. I just, for me, I find an actual drama growing up.

We almost lost my parents almost lost the house. One was a kid. Oh, wow. It's got the shit out of me. Sure.

That's motivating. Yeah, it's motivating. So I just, yeah, so I learned how to save.

“That's why I saved only money thinking I'm going to go to MBA school.”

At some point, as opposed to going and blowing it all. You know, in a Lamborghini for example. Yeah, sure. In college. He's a college kid with a Lambo, bad idea.

So it's like, hey, if there's an opportunity, you've got a shot. Like, go, go, go, go. See if you can do it. The 16 hour day thing I can totally relate. I remember I was starting to sell.

It's probably like 2011. Yeah. And I've been in sales for a year, too. And they just had come up. There's no longer this was.

They just come out with the ability to put a chat box on your website, where somebody who visits who can be like, hey, do you want any help? But there was no AI. So people would be like, what is this? Yeah.

And I'm like, it's me, Jordan. And I was doing the podcast and generating leads and also doing sales. And people would be like, no, it isn't. And I'm like, yes, it is. Do you want information on our programs?

Give me your phone number. And I would just stay on there. And it would work on my phone, too. So I would just be like, watch and game of thrones or whatever. Doubt, you know, on Netflix.

And, or HBO, whatever, was. And it would just go, bling. And I'd be like, did it. And I had my scripts, all memorized. And I had shortcuts, and everything.

And I remember just doing that. From the moment I woke up, answering people who probably messaged up when I am and being like, he says, tab still open. And then all the way until 11 30 night. And I'd be at the bar, having drinks with friends.

And I'd be like, just the second guys, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling. And people would be like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm chatting with website visitors.

“And it was just, they'd be like, what are we talking about chatting with website visitors?”

And then you're so far ahead of the game. It was like, what are you talking about? And then I remember, we were, we have this account. And he was like, how did you guys go from making $180,000 a year to making $3 million a year?

And I was like, oh, I just sit on this website chat thing. And I get every person who responds to give me their phone number. Unless they are just not interested at all. And then I call them. And then I call them a dozen more times over the period of a year or two

until they're ready to give me, I think it was like $8,000 for the program. And people are like, what? And I was like, yeah, I don't know. This is how sales works, because nobody taught me like that it was quick. Yeah.

And nobody taught me much of anything. I was just like, well, you just do it until they say, yes, or they say, please don't call me again.

I'm never giving you my money.

And then you thank them for being honest with you. And you just, you know, that's it. Yeah, that's the best. Yeah, people just be a direct with you. But I remember, I still have people that I've called so many times

that I remember and like, they either eventually came through or didn't. And I would consider them like friends or acquaintances. Because I talked so much with these people. It's a high ticket item, man. So like 20, something 30 something year old guy in a $8,000 program.

I mean, that's like selling them a car.

Being able to hear the customer when they're, it's like a firm know. It's a hard note. Yeah. No way versus kind of a soft note. Yeah.

I don't think so. You're like, if I can push for you on there. Yeah. There's a bit of a rim where it's just like, no, I'm not interested. Yeah.

You're like, got it. I got the tonality of good.

“But the thing is, see, remember, these people were usually coming from the podcast,”

right, which is good lead gen. So they weren't like, nobody was offended that I call them. They were interested in the podcast. They wanted to talk on the phone. So nobody was like, why are you calling me jerk?

Don't bother me again. Everybody was like, man, it was really cool to talk to you for half an hour.

I will never have the amount of money I need to come to your program.

And instead of treating them like a disposable lead, as a treat of them like a listener of the show, we're actually cared about them. Yeah. I think that made a huge difference.

Because it was almost like caring about people's experience with your company, but at scale. And if you have their best interest in mind, people can feel that on the other side. And it's like you're trying to help them make a good decision.

That's going to increase their value or whatever. I think that's really important. I can't stand when you made a salesperson and they're like, yeah, I really bent the person over on that one. Yeah, what?

What are you talking about? I don't want you working. Perfect. I don't want any repeat business from that guy ever again, even though he was clearly qualified because he closed.

It's like, this is not. Yeah. You got to create the right culture. That's actually got to be kind of tricky. I've definitely hired salespeople in my old company.

We're not a good fit, but still close.

“And you have to fight your business partners and get rid of them.”

Because they're like, he made $10,000 last month. And I'm like, I guarantee you a bunch of those guys are going to refund. All of them had a bad experience registering. And all of them have a negative, a more negative view of our brand than they did when they made the call. And that's not good.

Like that's your chipping away at brand equity for dollars short term, not good. I learned that lesson really early. We had an individual on our sales team. He was one of the top salespeople. But he was just so negative around everybody else.

He had hard time working with everybody. And he would make comments like, I'm not here to make friends. I'm like, it sucks. I've just like, but I have to let you go. Yeah.

He's like, you're real at me. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I'll help you get a job in another company. But I can't have you here with us. It's just you're just not part of our culture. People don't understand the value of how important the team thing is.

I know a couple of trainers. I don't know what their exact role is. I guess they're like master chiefs in the Navy or whatever. And they train Navy seals these days. And they, I won't repeat the name.

But there's a very big influencer who's like a well known tough guy.

And he's always, his whole thing is how tough he is.

But he's also a jerk. He probably, he's, he went through buzz, which is the seal training program. And they kicked him out every time. And I was like, oh, why? And they would go, it wasn't even his athleticism.

But everybody hated him. Nobody trusted him. And it was almost like he went out of his way to be a terrible person. He couldn't help himself. And it was like, that's the last guy we want on the teams.

We'd rather have a guy who is a mediocre swimmer, a mediocre relative to the seals. Runner who's not charismatic, who doesn't. But he's going to play on the team. But we don't want an all star who's a piece of crap. And so they kicked this guy out multiple times.

Like he went to multiple times. He just can't control himself. And it's funny because it's like, wow, this guy actually met all of the physical and mental sort of tests that the US Navy can throw at you for the tough one of the toughest units around. And he still screwed it up just because he can't work with other people.

“Imagine having your life is in this person's hands.”

He's going to make a choice that makes him look like a hero or feel good as opposed to like, I don't know saving his comrades. The last guy you want watching your back is somebody who can't function like that. And the thing about the problem too, is those who are new that come in or rookies. They're looking at the top salespeople going, okay, how do I emulate right now? Yeah, I want everything there.

So I'm going to be this way. And the more of those that he recreates, the worse off that you're like, it's spreading against you. Yeah, it's a cancer. Yeah, that's a good point. The new guys and gals come in and go, well, I got to emulate everything about this person.

And it's like, oh, I tell people to take the good with the bad. They're new. They don't know what the bad is. Right. They think that your cocky arrogant annoying impossible to work with. Take no prisoners attitude is what needs making you successful.

They don't realize that this is your chief handicap and your vice that you need to get rid of. You're doing you're achieving all this in spite of this thing.

Right. So you're giving them your biggest handicap and that's the thing that they're emulating first.

And then they're trying to shore up all the other. It's like, no, this is not going to work. You're right. It's like a cancer. Yeah, hang on. The active pest control guys are at my door again. We'll be right back. [Music] This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa.

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If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code email me [email protected]. We're happy to surface those codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to David Royce. You mentioned a college professor who influenced your thinking.

And I'm curious what that person said to influencer or trigger you. As a few things, like one, I had a teacher in the sixth grade that really helped me to believe in myself. Some college professors, like I had one college professor that I was asking, like, what's the secret to wealth creation? I may have been asking the wrong type of person.

I'll tell you. I'll ask you guy with an essentially government job. What's the secret to wealth creation? If you find out, please tell me. His thing was, what I've seen is people who can do something to longest

and stick with it, those are the ones who ultimately make the most.

And there's a lot of truth to that, right? Like, a lot of people, they don't succeed because they just quit. They end up giving them to where they run out of money. That sort of thing. Yeah.

I'm friends with this famous DJ, Cascade. Oh, he lives down the street for me. Nice. And we went on a spring break together. I said on the beach and we're talking to each other.

I'm like, so what makes you great? I don't really listen to a lot of his music personally. Oh, it's like what makes you, like, great. Like, you're known and you make tens of millions of dollars as a DJ. And he's like, you know, just stuck with it.

Oh, my bad. Yeah, that's it. He's like, there were so many people who were better than me. But it's a hard lifestyle and a lot of late nights. Yeah.

And being on the road, you know, away from your family. And he's like, I just kid sticking with it. And he's like, it's my true passion. That's what I love. And I was willing to put up with, you know, the difficulties of the job.

Whereas other people that I really looked up to, they just decided to get out of it. It's so funny to hear somebody like Cascade say, and I just didn't quit. It's like, well, and also you seem to have a super natural sense of what is going to be like a great

hook or a great try for interesting sound by this sample. And you are constantly smashing hits. But okay, fine. Just don't give up. Maybe refine that if you're going to give a commencement speech.

Cascade. For sure. Yeah. It's up there with follow your passion. Just don't quit.

What if you suck? Uh, I haven't thought this far ahead. All right. So you start your own company. Obviously things start to scale.

But I'm curious at what point you start to feel real momentum.

“Or are you always in your head, the poor kid who can't let up off the gas?”

No, you know, so I learned my first year in business that you can be killing it.

And also dying at the same time. I was bankrupt the business by scaling. Yeah. By scaling too fast. Okay.

The way the commissions were you paid out the commissions ahead of the revenue coming in. Oh, even we paid amount in portions over time. It still wasn't enough to catch up. And I had enough saved up between myself and my silent investor. I'm like, okay.

We'll probably put on 4,000 or 5,000 new customers this year. And we're not doing 7500. I wasn't paying attention to the financials. Yeah. I'm looking at my bank accounts.

We, you guys, I'm like, oh, we just have all this big cash pile. Yeah. And they're just keeps emptying. And I'm like, oh, it's time to pay out the final bonus check. And I can't do it.

Right. Oh, my gosh. I was just killed because they isn't there. There's a phrase in Silicon Valley. And they call it like the warm hug of death or something.

And it's when you scale so much and you go to your VCs.

And you're like, look at what we have 10 million users.

And then it's like, yeah. But your bill for this LLM and the back end. Your Amazon server bill is $28 million. Yeah. How are you going to pay that?

“It's like, well, that's what I'm standing in front of you.”

Look at all of our users in their way. I'm not giving you $28 million. Yeah. I'm giving you 8 million. Where are you going to get the rest?

And it's like, oh, we are going to go at bankrupt because we are too successful. Yeah. You got to pay attention to both sides. You can't just be great at one thing. I can see how tempting it is to just go.

Look, I'm here to grow the thing.

Well, there's no, that's actually nobody's job. Maybe we should look into that. It really has to be a combination of both things. And it was tough. I had to go to them and say, look, I went to my main salespeople.

The sales leaders that made the boss.

“And I said, hey, can I pay you in two months from now?”

But I'm going to pay 10% interest on your money. I just, like, we did better than I thought. And they had such a great sum. They're like, yeah, that's great. I can't make that in the market or wherever else.

So yeah, I'd be happy to do that. I was lucky that we had a great summer to be in that position. It was good. It's a good problem to have. But also you are so lucky they said that that was okay.

Yeah. There was a German man. Man, I'm telling you, during COVID, this podcast network podcast one was like, We don't know what the ad market is going to do. I have a decent monthly sort of guarantee from them.

And they were like, can you take like a 40% pay cut? And I said for how long and they were like, I don't know, definitely a while. And they go in the owner back then. He's since passed with norm patis goes, you will be made whole.

And I was like, well, that's good enough for me. So I took this pay cut and then like three months later. He goes, actually we're still making a bunch of money. Here's all your money. Here's a bunch of extra interest.

And I remember being like, holy crap. That was close. That was the close call. But he told me everyone agreed to it. But I thought, what happens if I say no and Adam Karola says no.

Right. And I don't know. The other big show. Like, what if we just say, sorry, it's COVID. I need the money.

I've got kids. It's like, what do you can do? And he was like, go to a bank and put on my best behavior and ask for a fat loan. I don't know.

Like, what are you going to do? You don't want to close your company. You're successful.

“You just have to go to JPMorgan and go like, here's the thing.”

I can't afford to pay anyone. That's a tough sale. Yeah. You would have to figure something out like that. Yeah.

It's like, and if you can prove, hey, I got the customers.

And here's what the nutrition rate is.

But that was my first year. So I don't think anybody would have given me money. No, no. It's like I'm still proving the model right now. That's like one of those shark tank pitches.

Whether like, have you ever done anything businessy before? And it's like, no, but isn't this a great idea? And everyone's like, I'm out. I'm not touching this. Not touching this deal, even on TV.

So what started breaking first was it just that cash flow thing? Yeah, it was really just cash flow. And from there, it's very lucky. Like, it only got better from there. Like, we kept tweaking things.

We kept improving things. We kept coming up with new processes, new systems. And, you know, at the Fourier market, like, okay, I'm really ready to scale this. At least regionally.

You know, we're like, let's go kind of west of Mississippi. And we'll go into four states initially and start expanding out from there. And so we did that for another few years with ECO first. And things are going incredible.

“And then terminex calls me and says, hey, do you want to sell this company?”

I'm like, yeah, we could use more cash to, you know, grow even faster. I might not even have a choice, but to sell this company. So more.

No, it's just like, if the more, like, the first of my sold for a Forbes set.

I sold for 13, I have NDA, so I can't say, but yeah. Forbes has 13. So it's like, I've got millions of dollars now to spend on the next company. And then I sold ECO first for tens of millions, according to Forbes. And so it's like, all right, now I can, you know, just ramp up.

And then it was like, let's do some really cool shit. Like, let's get a head company headquarters with like an MBA basketball court. Golf simulator. So it began. You know, like, all this really fun stuff because I was watching companies in past control.

And it's just, it's just very boring. It wasn't exciting. Sure. It was, we are ramping up. It was going to be harder harder to recruit the right talent. Was this during the Google era where everyone was like, you need a slide.

Yeah, I need a slide at the office. Yeah, because initially 2000 when I graduated, one of the reasons I went and I was thinking Investment Banking and that I had a pest control was tech was like, an all-time low right then, right? Like, it's how up. How up.

Okay, well, it burst, you know, NASX 90%. And the early 2000s. It just wasn't great. I got an idea at something something.com and then like, get out. Yeah, get out of here.

Totally. And then, you know, by 2010, 2011, things that really turned around.

And they have incredible offices.

You know, the recruiting the very best talent, right? Yeah. Because there's only so many software developers out there. And I started going to these different company locations like these headquarters. And toward meta and Google and Nike headquarters, which is insane.

Exactly. So that was your apps walking around or whatever. Like, what? And it's like, okay, I need, I need what it was. It golf simulator was the other thing NBA core.

Yeah. Like a movie room. You know, not only like ping pong, football, all like pool tables. But it was just a really cool way to differentiate ourselves. And then the offices were like super tech, like it looked like a tech company.

So people would walk in and they go, oh, this is awesome. What is it? Like is a tech company? And they're like, wait, pass control? What?

Yeah. Tell me more. I know like the owner cares about these people. Clearly. And you guys have a cool company culture.

I'm at least interested. Tell me more. Or is it just pass control? Those people wouldn't, you know, get into it. That's true.

I knew what the actual offer was. Like, hey, you can make a lot of money at this. So we started looking for ways to differentiate. And we did like really cool company retreats. We had a MBA suite.

You know, we could take everybody to. I mean, hey, enjoy your money. I suppose, right? A little bit. Sure.

Why not? And all this stuff, it helped to stand out. But they're really like the perks are just sugar. Sure. Yeah.

The protein is really, it's like the sales program and the training and the sales program.

People become loyal to you when you, you teach them how to fish. Like, and they can, yeah, forever.

It's like, look, I will never go hungry at this point.

Like, I can do this. I can make tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. We have some guys that make a million dollars a year. Yeah. I mean, that's what we're doing.

They're like sales leaders and then they become regional managers over sales, because you can make commissions off everybody that's working underneath you. So it's wild. Like what it's become. That's really cool.

“I mean, I think sales is the coolest skill set.”

One of the coolest skill sets to have in business. There's a guy who teaches sales stuff online. I think his name's like, Jeb Blounterson or something. Does that name ring? I don't know.

I think he wrote a book called The 800 pound gorilla of sales. It was one of those things I got early on. Yeah. I was like, I need to figure this out. I need a podcast.

It was like five minute sales tips or something like that. The sales guy, whatever. And he said sales people are the elite athletes of the business world. So it's not like, yeah, you've got the CEO, right? You've got these people who are in the spotlight.

But they're going, okay, who's making the most money in any, if you look at any organization, the people that make the most money, sure the people in the C-suite. And then it's like, everyone else is a distant third. And the sales people are right up there.

And you know, even find that there's sales people who make more than people in the C-suite. And if anyone wants to complain, they just see. Sure. Look at that guy's sales force profile or whatever. Yeah.

And they're like, oh, he generated 11 million dollars in revenue last year.

Okay. Now it's really the understand why. Yeah. It's like, okay. Well, there's proof.

Yeah. This is valuable. We're so we're going to pay the individual X. Exactly. And it's like, I get emails from salespeople.

We have to do an advice segment. I'll get an advice right in from a salesperson. And they're like, I generated half a million dollars in revenue last year. Or five million dollars in revenue last year. Some of these tech guys.

It's like 30 million dollars in revenue. And they're like, my boss is doing, and I go, dude, you know, I don't think you've realized since you've been at this company the whole time. You can go anywhere on planet earth. Exactly.

And they will hire you in a New York minute if you have generated this much revenue. And if you threaten to leave, your boss isn't even going to be in the meeting where they decide to give you the raise. There's going to be like, you stay. You don't, you don't report to that guy anymore.

Like, they can't afford to lose you. I don't think you'll realize this. It's just it's one of the most powerful skill sets you can have. Can you just write your own ticket? This is how it goes.

It really is. The other thing we got into is tech. So like, 17 years ago. Like, there's no pass control company creating their own technology.

“There was maybe, what did you maybe terminates or work in like the tech?”

Very biggest. But it's like we had extra money. So we're like, well, what can we do to kind of standardize things? And like, well, if we had technology, you know, on a website, the guys could go on that was private or an apps.

Eventually, you know, we could have all the training videos there. So they could see him anytime. And then we started thinking, well, you can create sales tournaments.

Because the problem is in each location, you know,

you might have they 15 sales people or whatever. But the very top, they're not really competing against anybody. Because they're so good. Right. They have a big middle section.

And then the guys at the very lower end. And so we said, well, what if we get the top guys from this location to compete with these guys and they could see it in real time? It's like a NBA. My sit more March match.

Yeah, March match. Yeah, exactly. So that's what he did. We created individuals where we would say, okay, our system could figure out. Okay, who sells about the exact same at the same rate as someone else in another place anywhere

in the country? And then we would team them up. We'd have all these brackets. And then there was all these different, you know, like leaves or whatever that the guys could go do.

And it got really crazy. Like now you can like, when a car. I was going to have a crisis or if it was just all these different prices, they're going to see each other in Vegas and the annual conference and glowed in the overdring. It's like totally.

Because that actually is still worth it. It's worth it for us. Yeah, because sales will increase like 30% on tournament days. Really. So we make way, money is a company just by incentivizing them.

For some of them, it's funny. Like swag can even be exciting for money on the lower end. They're like, oh, I'm going to get shirt or free hat or whatever. But, you know, that it goes up to laptops, right? Sure, sir cars.

Sales people don't like this though, right? Like it's you mean I get a chance to beat David.

“And then when I see him, I go, oh, tough March, huh?”

Tough March, David, tough March. And I get to drive away in my Cadillac escalator, whatever. And it's like a rounding error in the company revenue. But yeah, I made $13 million in extra revenue here. Because I worked 17 hours instead of 16 hours because it was worth every ounce of effort

to be able to pull one over on my like rival across the state. I mean, I respect each other for it too. Of course, like you drove me to make this much more. Thank you for being competitive with. Right.

Yeah, no, it's totally scratches this weird itch. And I think a lot of people have this right there. We typically do it more towards the second half of the summer. Sure. When, yeah, some guys that made a much money already and they're like,

ah, they kind of start slowing down. Yeah. We see the slowing down. It's normally this week. We're going to pick it up.

We're going to do this kind of term in here. We're going to make the term bigger the next week. And that's smart. Yeah. You kind of almost gamified it.

We did. Yeah. It goes back to your question. How do you gamify business? This is one of those ways we did it.

I like that. You're right. If I made, I mean, I'm a motivated guy. But if it's July and I've been out there for two months, and I got my super I'm already peeling under my peel from last month.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just getting sticky chased by alligators or whatever.

Yeah. I've got mosquito bites. I'm thinking, you know what, maybe I'll take a week off. Maybe I'll go to Vegas with my friends. Maybe I'll go up to New York and hang out.

And then it's like tournament. When a car and brag forever, at least until, you know, next quarter. Yeah. It's like, now, stick around another couple weeks. I can handle this.

Gotta distract him with something. Yeah. Something flashy. That's so funny. That would totally work on me, man.

I love this stuff. All right.

“Did the competition stuff ever create maybe bad incentives?”

There's any backfires like, oh, we got some throat cutting going on. There's probably a few times where you wondered if somebody was giving somebody else sales because maybe there was such a big tournament. And someone might be like, here, use this sales so you can beat the other person. We had to watch that.

That's a kind of close. Like, hey, if I get three more sales, like, I'm going to get a car. I'm going to get an SUV. Hey, do you mind me of me one of yourselves? I can beat this other guy.

Yeah, give me 600 bucks for that sale, man. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

I never thought about that.

When you put a lot on the line, you start coming up with. Yeah. Exactly. Especially clever people who really, who really want that car. One of the things we did is we actually started to film the very top people.

Because everybody throughout the company would want to see the very, very top dogs that are like fighting for, you know, maybe like a BMW or whatever the car is. It was really cool. Like they would have someone walk around the whole day filming. So people got actually see them closing.

How many did they did? Because a lot of people, like, it's almost hard to fathom somebody selling, like, 20 in a day. Yeah. Pesticatrol, it's just like, I'm used to selling two a day. How on earth is somebody to do 20?

And you just hear them and you see it. Yeah. Positive. They are the whole time. And how many hours they work just while the risk is off.

The charts of your selling 20 a day. Right. He's got to be. It's got to be. So actually, I'm curious about this is totally another here there.

But so someone's filming them. So I'm answering the door. Is somebody off by my garage filming? Yeah. A lot of times they'll be off the side.

Like filming. And then they'll ask the person after they're, hey, we're filming this because it's a sales term. Yeah. Are you okay with us? I don't mind that at all.

I just thought everybody's like, yeah, we don't. Yeah. I just wanted the logistics of that kind of like, I don't know.

“If there's a camera when I open the door, then I'm like, what is up?”

I'm like, you tube prank show. Get out of here. Yeah. Then technically, legally, I think there's 13 states. You have to tell them, no matter what.

But we always tell people, because we don't want to.

Yeah. You don't have them on our film. They don't want to be. Yeah. I'm private.

I don't know. That way to start a customer release. Yeah. Hey, by the way, we, we wire taps you. We, we broke the federal wire tapping.

Our state wire tapping was everything. I know you haven't. Sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry.

Exactly. It'd be more like, I suppose there's people who like, hey, I don't really want the whole world to know I have a Lamborghini. And where my address is in the shot. We only keep that's only for internal stuff, too.

We never like put it outwards so that people could see it. I think might freak some customers out. For sure. What the hell, they do this. My house is blurred on Google.

And I don't want a video of a sales guy selling my house control with my address in the shot. Yeah. Although I don't have a Lambo. So I have nothing to worry about. Sometimes the best pest control is just the fast forward button.

But don't even think about it. We'll be right back. Hey, we've got our newsletter that I've told you about a thousand times. We bit wiser. It is specific.

It's practical. It'll have an immediate impact on your decisions. Psychology and relationships in under two minutes almost every Wednesday. I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show.

Jordan Harbinger dot com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with David Royce.

“Well, I guess how do you game a five is without turning the place into Lord of the flies?”

Like you said you had to police some of the sales. But was that really the only kind of thing? Like nobody there wasn't really for the most part. Like that's it. There's not a whole lot you can do to screw this up.

Like, you know, people have to have a sign to agreement. When we go to the doors or whatever, there's a checklist. So the customer goes through everything with a different person who doesn't have the same incentive to get the sale. So it's like you understand, you know, it's a one year agreement. You understand these things are going to be done at the home.

You're that kind of thing. So the salesman can kind of gloss over. Yeah. When you're agreement, you know, I'm not going to say that that's going to be I'm just going to hint that or maybe I'll just did I forget to mention it's a one year agreement. I'm so sorry about that anyway.

You did sign it. So because I I looked up some reviews and I had in my wife was like, look at the reviews for active and I was like, Well, this person just didn't read the contract. Yeah. You might want to read the thing that you're buying.

Like I get not looking at every bit of fine print, but surely that's not that hidden. If they're going to be back. It's impossible. It's impossible to get through because we always have a second person when the technician shows up that person goes through and that person doesn't get any pay but there's no commission for the technician. Right. I get it to go through and we do that intentionally because we don't want a customer who's not going to we're not going to be able to retain long term now.

And so maybe like somebody this maybe the salesman wasn't as clear, but the technician stopped them and so then maybe they want to do a review. The most reviews we get there negative though are people like this idiot knocked my door. And I don't want people coming to my door line of it. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I know some people are annoyed by it. Yes, you don't have to answer the door. Like some of them were like, yeah, our neighborhood has a no soliciting sign near the gate.

And it's like, well, okay, but no.

It's not a gated community. They're not like a. Well, unless it's a gated community has a no soliciting sign on it has like penal code or whatever.

Like we always tell our guys respect that.

Yeah, if there's no soliciting sign on the door, don't knock it. The person clearly doesn't want you there. Why would you knock and then if somebody off, it only gets this bad reviews. Don't do it. Yeah, I don't even, like I said, I don't even, it doesn't even bother me.

Like I'm not so important. I can't answer the door. I hope that day one arrives at some point. But maybe my time's not that valuable. I like a lot of no soliciting sign in my house. Yeah.

And if they knock, I'm like, I'll the real first thing I say. I'm like, oh, so you didn't, you've avoided the no soliciting sign. This must be really important. What's so important that you would see how they react. Because I want to see if I can throw them off.

So confident they're going to work around them, like, all right, you're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I wish I could have followed that rule. But this deal we're having right now is too good for you to pass up. I knew you'd make an exception.

If I told you that you were going to get 40% off post control for one year. For this, you've transferred this playbook several times to different companies. I mean, it seems like four times.

“I mean, that's, are you sick of founding companies?”

Yeah. I'm actually done. I'm officially out. Okay. I just a little bit company last year or whatever, you know, it's 20 years in the industry.

Yeah, 24 if you include my wild sales years. We might have to go public on the next round. And I just didn't want to be the owner of a public company. I also got to the point where I just didn't feel as it's learning anything new. It's like we were in 5,000 cities and 34 states.

You know, we're the third largest residential pest control service in the country, probably the world. And I just thought it's just time to get time to, yeah.

That's what I've always wanted to do other things.

And the next thing will probably be something more creative or more philanthropic. I decided I was just going to take a year off, you know, and just kind of get out of my system. Okay. And then just think. Now I'm like in this just the exploratory mode.

Yes. I look at different ideas. Friends will bring business ideas to me. Sure. I'll get on chat, GBT and just start setting different industries.

It's not a fun. It's somebody rabbit holes you can go down, especially with chats. Amazing. I do wonder because a lot of people I know that you have exits. They're like, for me, if I were doing a company that I don't know, like a SaaS company,

I don't think I would be in a hurry to start something else. But they'll start like a podcast or they'll do something where they're starting another business. They'll start investing in businesses. Other people jump right into founding the next thing, which to me sounds kind of exhausting. I don't know.

“So what it is, I think it's like a dopamine addiction?”

Yes, I agree. They're addicted to it.

And like when you go from 100 miles an hour to zero,

you're like, yeah, freaking out. Go, what am I going to do with all this time? Yes. But I had slowly started wanting to down. I became chairman of my last business.

And I was really just involved in more strategy and hiring key people, and eventually helping find a buyer. And I, you know, replace myself the CEO because even then I was starting to get bored with them. Just like I'm not. There's nothing really new.

Like I want someone who's animated and excited about it to continue it. Yeah. So little by little, it's like I went from 80 hours down to 40 hours. And that was the hardest thing. Because I really love working, you know, really long days.

And I started to have my family. And that's why I was going to build girls kids. So yeah, my wife was like, hey, can instead of, you know, 10 o'clock at night, can you come home at like eight, you know, seven. You know, just kind of started working back.

Why do you think it's hard to hear me out here having dinner at home once or twice a week? Yeah. And I wanted to watch my kids grow. Sure.

“I created a life for us that I could, you know,”

and it's my fault if I'm not able to be around. That's a really good realization. I kind of had this same thing. Look, I didn't sell a huge company, but I built this life, it's a lifestyle business in that way.

It's right, I work from home. I can choose to go to LA to do something like this, or I can say, you have zoom, I have zoom, whatever. And so, and I can write off cool trips, like I can get a speaking gig and an eye.

And it's like, okay, time to go to Disneyland. You know, I can do that kind of thing. And so like you said, I really did come to the realization. It's like, oh, look, my parents were busy. They worked outside the home.

My dad were for Ford. He came back late. He left early. And then he retired early and we hung out after that, but it was a little bit like he was gone a lot early in my life.

But it's like, I don't have that problem. So you're right. It is totally my fault if I end up missing my kids growing up when they're young. That is 1,000% on me. I don't have the luxury of going.

I work in an automotive factory. I cannot work from home. I have to commute long with distance, because I got to drive to Detroit from the suburbs. Like those are pretty decent excuses to not see your kids as much.

I'm still sucks, but you have a reasonable excuse. If I'm just in my office a lot with the door shut, man, that's kind of a pathetic way to screw up the relationship with your kids. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

You know, they don't need any more trauma than maybe. You're right, huh? You're right. Forever. Exactly.

It sounds like a hallmarker, but like love is spelled TIME. Yeah. Like for kids. Exactly. We're constantly talking about exit values and like financial forecasts and like our kids.

They just want us home for dinner. Yeah. Did you have a moment where you were like, wait, I have enough. Because you said you grew up with financial uncertainty, and so that's hard for guys like.

So my dad was an executive. He was a CEO of motel six, and then a private equity group purchased it after things there for about four and a five years. And then they had a disagreement about how they were running things. And so about six months into that transition.

He was out. And then he thought, I'm going to go try to work for other businesses and kind of take some equity. And the different businesses, but he didn't spread himself around enough businesses in my opinion. I think that's what happened.

When you're kid, they never really tell you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But all I know is my mom. She really leaned on me around the house because my dad was gone traveling five days a week from fifth grade through almost 12.

Dude. And so I just never saw him. So my mom had to get a job so that we had medical insurance. And she's working full time. She wake up at five in the morning.

“Had this brutal schedule where you should make us lunches.”

You know, work all day, come home, do laundry, clean the house. We didn't have housekeepers or anything like that. And so it was, it was a lot and she leaned on me, you know, to be able to help out around the house because I was the oldest. Yeah. And it's funny because now I look back and I'm like, you know what?

That was really a gift. She got worried. Some ways I was probably a surrogate dad. You know, you have a bunch of younger siblings. I too younger brothers.

Okay. How much younger? Just like a year and a half. Oh, three years younger. You just have a little closer.

You just have a little closer in the house now. Yeah. But it was just like, right here, you're going back in the house. You're going to do the dishes over and out. You're going to help me with dinner.

She just leaned on me because it was easier. That was your first CEO real. Yeah. It's like that. Did you get, right?

Like someone could say, oh, it's traumatic. And then she told me something. She shouldn't have.

“I was like, yeah, I think we're actually going to lose the house.”

You're freaking out. Oh, my God. Yeah. She has a really tough time. But yeah, I look back now.

And I'm like, as opposed to like being frustrated with it or going, oh, it wasn't fair. You know, through that. It's like, no, that was a gift. Like that made me work really hard. Good question is what I have even done what I did.

I always wonder then about people that come in here.

I know for me, I also saw my parents working so hard at jobs that they did not love. I was like, yeah, even if I have to make less money, I'm not working a job that I don't like. No way, not doing it. So I started this creative thing, which was like a terrible way to make money. I mean, whenever people are like, oh, podcasting, you make so much money.

I was just like, I can actually not think of a worse way to make money than podcast. Maybe. And this is a maybe bold underlying. Maybe writing a book that nobody wants to read is a slightly worse way to make money. Then podcasting, but podcasting is like, if I had a rank shitty business ideas,

this is like one of the top shitty business ideas is make a podcast because you almost always never make money. It's like, there's 3 million of these and 2.98 million of them make zero dollars. And that's a good one. There's this is only so many. It's like, you got to be the top 1% 1%.

I bet you it's not even top 1% you're right. Probably is the top 1% of 1% that make like a nice amount of money doing it. And then there's like the top half percent make a living doing it. And it's living asterisk, not an a major metropolitan area inside the United States kind of thing. It's like, it's pretty rough.

Passion is one of those things where if you're really trying to make a lot of money, yeah, don't follow your passions. No, right?

“Because everybody else is following their passions or a large majority of people are following that path because that's what's exciting to them.”

And I get it totally understand. But you know, the reality of like going out and be like a famous rock star or an actor or a restaurant owner or whatever is a creative. It's a really tough sell in my mind. And then I think a lot of times too, it's like, you don't have experience. You really got to be in the top 1% 1% 1% to make it in that industry.

And then a lot of people do it. They don't have any experience before they try to go do it on a much bigger level. Yeah.

And it's like this idea that if you challenge LeBron James to basketball, but you never played basketball.

You just watched it your whole life. Right, right. I love basketball. It's great. I should go do this.

I'm passionate about it. Yeah. You go and you get into it. But you're clearly going to lose playing LeBron. Like nobody would make that that and invest their life savings into that business.

Except for LeBron. Right, right. I think it was Scott Galloway. You know, Scott Galloway? Yeah, he's great.

He said something like the person standing on that podium at the commencement speech telling you to follow your passion. Made their billions an iron smelting exactly. What do you do? Yeah, so I feel like I think he says the only people who tell you follow your passions are those who already are rich. Right.

Because then it's kind of like me now. I'm like, oh, I want maybe I want to do something more creative. I'm a philanthropic or do something else. But I've kind of like earned that. You earned that.

I went to work to kind of boring business. And I tried to like put my spin on it and make it fun. You're going to tell you to blue collar businesses. A lot of people are like me where they initially look at him. Like, no, I don't want to go to that.

But the crazy thing is the margins. The secret is that unsexy businesses often have sexy margins. Really? And if you look at the average restaurant, the margin like the net profit margins only like three to six percent. The best in class is 10 percent.

Whereas if you look at like a porta body business and they're at like 25 percent. Really? Yeah, it's so money is on. Not only are your odds so much more difficult because everybody likes this idea of starting a restaurant. It's just really hard to make money.

Because there's so many people trying to do it. Whereas a lot of people don't want to go to like plumbing or whatever else.

I was just going to say AI is going to replace all the lawyers that we're looking down and all of the tradesmen and the tradesmen. Totally. Yeah. I will take fries with that.

I'm on that way to my next job. Damn you lost school.

“Yeah, I love people worried about like, well, the white collar work, right?”

Yeah. So you'll software developers. AI can code now legal documents. You can do a lot of entry level work and it'll continue to progress. But it ain't clogging your toilet.

No, it's not going to get on your roof. It's not treating termites inside your walls. It's right. No, AI will not anytime soon crawl down in my crawl space and take the rag that my kid flushed down the toilet.

Right. No, that's on that. I got a higher real professional. So yeah, the irony is all of, I went to like one of these is the leadist. And I don't, not a lead, leadist.

Schools, law schools and people are like, oh, you know, these guys. Uh, and they all went and worked on Wall Street and we, they're all into your point. Investment bankers. Right. But now, yeah, they're getting automated.

Man, first year associate. So that sounds kind of expensive. We have an LLM that does that now. So we only need three, not 30 or 300 or whatever. And yeah, all the guys that are out there welding and stuff.

No, that demand is going up instead. Yeah, it's almost like shifted. I see the same thing in construction, right? Like we have this massive housing shortage.

And so we probably need at least a million more construction workers that we just don't

have. You know, the 2008 crisis just killed that. I didn't know it. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. It's one of the reasons. Housing so expensive right now. I just thought it was because of zoning laws not letting you build anything anywhere. Oh, if you go look at a chart just online of, you know, where we're at in terms of housing needs versus what we have.

Yeah. It's crazy how much more homes we need. Well, I know we need more homes. I just thought it was because we couldn't build them due to zoning laws, right? Like you can.

That's some places make it more difficult. Yeah. California. It's more just, we don't have enough people.

I think we're at least a million people short.

If only there was a way people could freely come into the country to work here. Yes. Blue collar. Oh, you should be the one. Yeah.

Huh. There's an idea.

“Maybe you should run for president David.”

Yeah. Thanks for coming in, man. This is fascinating. I didn't expect to go to the sales ground, but I'm so glad that we did. Because I just, I'd love this psychology that whole thing.

Yeah. For sure. I love a lot of fun. You're about to hear a preview that may completely reframe how you think about nuclear power. What if the energy source we've been taught to fear is actually one of the safest and cleanest tools we have?

What very familiar with electricity, you get home, you turn on the lights, you charge your phone, charge your computer, do all the things that we do without thinking twice about electricity, right? But electricity is a secondary source of energy. The primary source of energy that we use are coal, oil, methane gas, solar wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Nuclear is actually the largest source of clean energy in the United States. It's the second largest source of clean energy in the world.

And what I mean by that is that whenever we make electricity with a nuclear, we're not releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or even particulate matters. So there are no emissions that happen whenever you're creating electricity with a nuclear. So it's just to say, you know, everything that's related to nuclear accidents and Chernobyl is completely overblown. Because we will then to think generally, like everybody died and it became this wasteland and nobody can go in. And so it's interesting, right, that we have all this weird fear about nuclear when the facts and the reality just point to it being actually extremely safe.

The biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dem collapse. So entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200,000 people died. He would need like at least 200 Chernobyl's pepning every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels.

“What about the 4 million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels?”

Why are people so afraid of nuclear? Here the science behind the stigma with Isabel Bumke on episode 1277 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Big takeaway here, business is not just about effort. It's about design. You can grind for years and still be stuck, or you can step back, build systems, track the right numbers and create something that actually compounds. That's the difference between a top performer and a builder.

One burns out eventually, the other scales.

In the scary part, most people never make that transition.

They stay the hero in a story that only works as long as they don't stop running. I should probably take some of those advice myself. So if you've got something from this one, think about where you're still relying on effort instead of structure. Because the scoreboard just doesn't care how hard you tried. It only reflects what actually works.

All things David Royce will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers deals discount codes, ways to support this show. All at Jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. 6 minute networking is at 6 minute networking.com.

I'm @jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, aka Facebook for adults. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jason Sanderson, Robert Furgity, Tata Sadelaskas, Ian Beard, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

The fee for the show is you share it with friends and you find something useful or interesting.

In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in business, scaling systems definitely share this episode with them.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time.

“This episode is sponsored in part by something you should know podcast.”

Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard to let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carrothers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask.

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Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested and what makes people like you or not.

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Smart ideas you can actually use in real life.

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So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people on the world really work, it's search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Ask. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.