Interview with Greenix President Andrew Barrows, recorded live at PestWorld 2023 in Honolulu, Hawaii on October 18, 2023, as part of the "Off the Record" series with Paul Giannamore. The video is part of week-long live coverage of the pest control industry event and touches on themes such as mergers and acquisitions, business valuation, and the pest control services market. # Channel Presentation Observations — "Greenix President Andrew Barrows, Live from PestWorld 2023" ## Video Format & Demonstrated Scope - **Interview show format**: The host interviews an industry executive at PestWorld 2023. The host references a prior relationship: *"Andrew it's great to have you back good to be back we on the buzz a few times now you're on pic TV so steep the game up."* - **Long-form, unscripted conversation** covering business strategy topics: door-to-door sales culture, compensation, customer retention, pricing, contracts, acquisitions, and capital structure. - **Deep vertical focus**: The entire conversation is about the **pest control industry**, with insider references (PestWorld, PCT, PCOs, ACH vs. credit card retention, solicitor general complaints). ## Demonstrated Audience - **Pest control industry operators and executives**: Discussion of branch-level attrition curves, CAC, LTV, EBITDA, "per rep average," and multiples assumes a sophisticated industry or investment audience. - **Owners/investors evaluating door-to-door sales models**: Questions like *"what's the risk adjusted return on each of these Avenues"* and discussion of valuation ("*valuation comes down to attrition curves*") target listeners thinking about capital allocation in the space. ## Observable Claims About the Channel (from host statements) - The host demonstrates ~20 years of industry experience: *"in my experience over the years 20 years doing this seeing pretty much almost every door to door company under the hood."* - The host has owned/run a door-to-door business himself (references Pro Force in Raleigh, *"that's where I got my mini MBA"* per the guest, and the guest says he *"got to learn from you"*, i.e., the host). - Recurring guest relationship: the host notes the guest has appeared multiple times before ("*you're on the buzz a few times now*" — likely referencing a show called "The Buzz"). ## Guest's Explicit Self-Descriptions (claims, not verified) - **Andrew Barrows**, President & Chief Strategy Officer of Greenix: *"I'm the president and chief strategy officer."* - Scale claims: *"we're the 12th largest Fest control company at the end of this year uh we'll clear 120 million Revenue,"* operating across **16 states**, majority-owned by **private equity**. - Career history claims: 33 M&A deals at EPS over ~5.5 years; prior roles at ESP and a brief stint at "renck Hill" (Renck Hill). ## Demonstrated Tone & Positioning - **Conversational but data-oriented**: The host repeatedly pushes toward metrics (retention methodology, contract length trade-offs, debt/capital structure). - **Industry-advocacy framing**: Both speakers emphasize quality over "bad actors" — the guest: *"we wish everybody would cuz it's better for the industry."* - **Collegial, peer-to-peer register**: The closing exchange about a years-old dinner bet (*"you owe me a dinner in Tampa from a bet"*) signals a personal-network interview style rather than journalism. ## Identity Evidence Summary | Dimension | Evidence | |---|---| | Content type | Executive interview at industry trade show (PestWorld 2023) | | Vertical | Pest control (residential, door-to-door sales focus) | | Implied audience | Pest control owners, operators, investors, M&A watchers | | Host credibility signal | Guest: "got my mini MBA in door knocking... got to learn from you" | | Naming clues | References to "the buzz," "pic TV" (likely PCT TV) suggest an industry-media channel context | **Note**: No curated metadata was supplied; all observations derive from title and transcript. No channel-wide conclusions (subscriber base, upload cadence, channel name) are inferable from this single video beyond what is quoted above. # Delivery Observation: Greenix President Andrew Barrows, Live from PestWorld 2023 ## Format - **Interview/conversation format**, two-person exchange at a trade show (PestWorld). The interviewer drives topics; Barrows gives extended, multi-part answers. - Ends on a **casual personal note**: a joke about a owed dinner and a bet — > "I do owe you dinner... it may have been pineapple." ## Tone - **Conversational and candid**, mixing executive-level strategy talk with self-deprecating anecdotes. - Willing to admit failure publicly: > "I couldn't close them... I think I'm a pretty decent salesman but fell apart." - Occasionally blunt/colloquial: > "piss poor retention rates," > "I'm losing my shirt on lead cost," > "you paid the piper." ## Vocabulary & Framing Devices - Heavy use of **business/finance jargon**: CAC, LTV, IRR, EBITDA, attrition curves, cohorts, multiples, "white space," "allocation of capital." - **Analytical framing habit** — he frequently answers questions with "yes and no," then decomposes: - > "uh yes and no right so the yes is... so it it all go comes down to the quality of it" - > "I think the 5% Mark is probably going to be I think the 10% days are probably done" - Repeated **quality vs. quantity dichotomy** as his core rhetorical theme: - > "quality versus quantity and the balancing act" - > "quality first" - > "selling quality with quantity" - Likes **hypothetical contrasts** to make points: - > "would you rather have a $20 lead for a bed bug onetime treatment or... I rather spend $70" - > "sometimes it feels good to sell 300 accounts but if only 150 make it to your commission" - The Toyota Camry analogy: > "for a toyo Camry that's awesome to spend $90,000 on it doesn't make sense" ## Recurring Phrases & Verbal Habits - **Stuttered openers / repeated words** appear throughout, suggesting spoken, unrehearsed delivery: > "it it it's re it's it's the number one most important part," > "I I I door knocked last year." - Frequent filler: "yeah," "uh," "um," "right," and tag questions like > "you're well aware," > "as you're more aware than anybody." - Habit of qualifying himself mid-sentence: > "for lack of better term," > "I don't want to say a stagnant year but," > "candidly." - Repeats words for emphasis: > "learn and relearn and learn and relearn," > "steady Eddy" (twice). ## Teaching / Explanatory Habits - **Uses personal stories as lessons** — e.g., the Detroit door-knocking anecdote with the Tampa Bay Lightning flag house, told to illustrate why salespeople cut corners: > "they're not bad people making bad decisions trying to harm people they're just trying to do their job." - **Credits mentors and prior experience explicitly**: > "that's where I got my mini MBA in in door knocking," quoting a private equity figure: > "in God we trust with all others bring data." - **Answers by structure**: enumerates channels ("Service Pro Sales inside sales uh door knocking"), cohorts ("0 to 12 month segment uh 13 to 24"), or trade-offs ("cash versus Equity versus longterm interest"). - Frequently **pivots questions back to the framework** he's building rather than giving a short answer. ## Positions & Communication Patterns - Consistently **advocates "doing it the right way"** and frames ethics as business strategy: > "none of us win when we have Bad actors." - Willing to **concede counterpoints**: > "I'm not saying I don't I'm not against that path." - Cites data and systems repeatedly (data warehouse, Domo, Workday, PestRoutes) when making claims — a **data-invoking habit**. ## Stable Patterns vs. Isolated Moments - **Stable, well-evidenced**: the quality/quantity theme, "yes and no" decomposition, finance vocabulary, personal anecdotes as teaching devices — each appears many times across the transcript. - **Isolated**: the Detroit anecdote, the Toyota Camry analogy, the pineapple-dinner bet, and the Harrison Stain quote — single occurrences; no repetition exists to confirm these as habits. # Position Extraction: Greenix President Andrew Barrows, Live from PestWorld 2023 ## Speakers - **Andrew Barrows** — President & Chief Strategy Officer, Greenix (identified via curated title/transcript) - **Interviewer** — host of the PCT video series; unnamed in the transcript --- ## 1. Career Background & Greenix Scale - Barrows previously ran M&A at **EPS**, doing **33 deals over ~5.5 years** (EPS did ~100 over 10 years). - Greenix is "the 12th largest pest control company," expecting to **clear $120 million net revenue** by end of year. - Role: president and chief strategy officer; oversees support systems, CX, finance — "everything but operations and door knocking." Chairman/CEO is **Bob Nielsen**, ex-president of Burger King. ## 2. Lessons Moving from Non–Door-to-Door to Door-to-Door - First door-knocking exposure came via **Pro Force in Raleigh, NC**, a company EPS bought from the interviewer; he credits learning from the interviewer and **Spencer Morgan**. - **Key claim:** the "faceless persona" of door knocking (a big sales machine about itself) is misleading — it's actually "a lot of good leaders... young, impressionable," where success comes down to **granular relationships and culture from the moment recruits join**. - **Culture contention:** if reps learn "sales at all costs," you can't unlearn it later. "Culture really matters dramatically." - **Good vs. bad door-to-door (his definition):** knocking at right hours, saying the right things, quality controls that prevent a tired rep at end of day from saying something inaccurate to close one more sale. - **Personal anecdote:** he door-knocked in suburban Detroit with no training, sold 2 accounts on day one, including nearly failing on a fellow Tampa transplant (Lightning flag on the house) — "I couldn't close him... it's a hard job." ## 3. Quality vs. Quantity & Industry Reputation - After 4–5 hours without a sale, "the urge is to say something that will get you over the finish line" — reps making inaccurate statements "aren't bad people... just trying to do their job"; it's on the company to train, incentivize, and control quality. - **Incentive alignment claim:** aligning incentives with quality has produced "phenomenal results — not perfect." - ~50% of sales are customers **new to pest control** — "attacking white space" grows the industry pie rather than trading existing customers. - Customer trading happens legitimately when customers are unhappy; the line he draws is reps "saying things they shouldn't." - **Interviewer's stated position:** some door-to-door companies do it right with high retention (Pro Force as example), but the market average is "piss poor retention," driving industry negativity. ## 4. Customer Retention Practices - **Retention is "the number one most important part of our job."** Spending heavily on acquisition makes churn unacceptable. - **Welcome-call process:** before accounts are commissionable, reps must call in to confirm terms — one-year contract, monthly billing explained — educating customers and salespeople up front. - Service differentiation: **five-step process** (vs. some doing two–three steps), granular treatment, de-webbing with two lengths of Webster. - Commission framing: better to sell 200 quality accounts with 190 reaching commission than 300 with 150. - Network effect claim: higher quality → better retention → better Google reviews → short- and long-term gains. ### Retention: door-to-door vs. traditional — "Yes and no" - **"Yes" side:** retention depends on branch/sales manager quality and control — bad branches spike attrition. Best branches "I'd put up against traditional any day." - **"No" side:** first-year attrition is always higher, then curves down; door-knockers growing 50–70%/year simply have a **young customer base** — "an actuarial nature to it" vs. a 30-year-old, 3% growth company. - Analogy to acquisitions: 10 acquisitions handed to subpar managers → attrition skyrockets; slow, well-managed integration → retention looks good. - Greenix tracks cohorts (0–12, 13–24, 25–36, 37+ months) by branch and channel, using both run-rate and base attrition, with a **data warehouse** to "learn and relearn." He especially values the 25+ month bucket. ## 5. Compensation Economics in Door-to-Door - Comp has risen dramatically from the historical **15%** commission baseline. - Barrows attributes this to: rising acquisition multiples, industry tailwinds (boomer retirement, Millennial non-DIY outsourcing, dual-income households, suburban migration, COVID essential status), and the reality that **>10% organic growth requires M&A or door knocking**. - **Silver lining claim:** higher cost "forces you to focus on quality... forces us to treat these customers like gold." - **Caution (his own):** "I feel like we're getting really close to a level though that won't make Financial sense going forward" — every asset has a breaking point (Toyota Camry analogy). - **Interviewer's corroborating claim:** David Roy told him that starting at today's prices, "I would have never been able to do what I did." Barrows agrees: smaller firms need deeper pockets or slower growth. - Ownership structures (cash vs. equity vs. long-term interest) can fund people investment without immediate cash outlay. ## 6. Capital Allocation Across Growth Channels - Framework: **dollar allocation across four channels — door knocking, M&A, inside sales, service pro sales — whichever has the highest IRR.** - Over-throttling risks: service pro sales (mainly cross-sell) can cause churn; inside sales scrapes bottom of lead barrel; door knocking can hit wrong zip codes. - **Lead example:** prefers a **$70 lead** searching "preventative pest control" in an attractive zip code (5-year LTV potential) over a $20 bed bug one-time lead. - M&A: passes on most deals; prefers to "spend up" on the right fit. Also, "you can't have conflicting teams in the same market" — new markets are needed partly to give sales managers their own territory. ### Acquisitions - **First acquisition:** five new markets plus a tuck-in; historically door-knocked business on PestRoutes, integrated day one, name changed in six months without disruption. Attractive mainly for **new geographies**, not density. - **Second (about to close):** a density tuck-in. - Prefers **adjacent-market jumps** (Chicago→Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Des Moines) — Milwaukee is "a great market from the data"; Arizona would require a different talk track and technical approach. - Third-party recruiting: used, but "mainly... people that used to work for us." In-house advantage includes non-competes/non-solicits, cultural integration (leadership meetings, retreats); third parties retain legal freedom to work where they want. ## 7. 2024 Demand & Pricing Outlook - **Market prediction:** growth along with GDP, "slightly above it... just like historical" — not a boom, not a retraction. Lead volume down, offset by inflationary pricing. - Tailwinds he cites: suburban migration, dual-income households, Millennial homeownership, "global warming... great for pest control companies," remaining white space. - **Price increases:** "the 10% days are probably done"; industry norm heading to **~5%**, likely reverting toward 3% in 4–6 years absent sustained high inflation. - Greenix takes a **customer-specific approach**: modest increase (e.g., 3%) for a well-priced $55/month customer in year two; up to 10% for an undersold 6,000 sq ft home at $44/month. - **Timing:** before the summer season — raise prices "right when you need us the most" (95° and humid vs. snow on the ground). ## 8. Contracts (12 vs. 18 vs. 24 months) - **Interviewer's position:** the real questions are what you concede to get a two-year contract, and that contracts are "not worth the paper they're printed on" unless enforced — enforcement triggers bad reviews and attorney-general letters. Contract length barely affects valuation; **valuation comes down to attrition curves**. - **Barrows' position:** - 18 months is the "nice sweet spot"; 12→18 is an easy sell, 24 is a bigger jump (harder over the phone than on doors). - Contracts are a **quality/discipline mechanism**, not a trap — they force reps to sell long-term preventative service rather than one-and-done deals. - Trade-down flexibility ("aces in the places"): lower contract length in exchange for a higher initial fee, and vice versa. - Greenix releases customers with legitimate service failures. - **No contract-free recurring service** (phone callers): "you can't" — customers can buy a more expensive one-time service or sign an agreement; no in-between. Consistency across channels is required to avoid channel conflict. - Both agree low attrition beats long contracts: interviewer — "no contract and 1% attrition a month, I'll take that" over a 36-month contract with 3% attrition; Barrows — "valuation comes down to attrition curves." ## 9. Payments & Scale Trade-offs - Greenix takes ACH and credit card but is **mainly credit card** — checks/ACH are "clunkier" over the phone/at the door; he acknowledges (and interviewer asserts) ACH retention is much higher. - **Trade-off philosophy:** at 16 states and his sales volume, "you can't have it all every single way across all markets" — scale requires accepting some constraints outside of quality. ## 10. Growth Outlook & Capital Structure - Market is "arguably 15 to 20% penetrated"; he believes Greenix can grow **20–25% annually in a healthy way**, faster with acquisitions, slower with more profit. - Revenue path stated: **$66M → $88M → $107M → $120M, targeting $145M next year**. - Customer base seasoning: when he started, ~70% of customers were within their first 18 months; now **~35%**. ### Why no debt - Not debt-averse ("we have a $10 million line of credit with JP Morgan"), but: 1. The market has said it doesn't want a **negative-EBITDA door-knocking business** — it wants cash flow, stability, a seasoned book. 2. Acquisitions (the logical debt use) can add seasoned 25+ month customers "overnight," which organic growth cannot. 3. Conservative posture counters the industry perception that door-knockers "go Full Throttle." - Platform-building investments: QuickBooks → **Workday (HRIS and GL), Domo (BI), data warehouse** — "building the bones" so scaling harder later "produces a quality result." - **Interviewer's pushback:** all-equity is arguably "a very poor capital structure for the current environment" (citing Gary Rollins' no-debt stance at Rollins during low rates). Barrows maintains it's a deliberate market-signal choice, not inability. - Aspiration: be the **"Blue Chip player"** in door knocking — "quality first" with quantity; cites Bill Parcells-style framing of "allowing ordinary people to do extraordinary things" through process and data. ## Unresolved Tensions Preserved - Door-to-door retention is genuinely worse *or* comparable, depending on branch quality — Barrows does not resolve this; "it depends." - Contract length as customer trap vs. sales-discipline tool — interviewer and Barrows approach from different angles, converging only on attrition being what matters. - High rep compensation: simultaneously a threat to financial sense and a forcing function for quality — held without resolution. - Optimal capital structure (debt vs. equity) — interviewer challenges; Barrows' defense is market-perception-based, not purely financial. # Speaker & Provenance Observation Record ## Video: Greenix President Andrew Barrows, Live from PestWorld 2023 ## Speaker Inventory | Speaker | Role | Evidence | |---|---|---| | **Andrew Barrows** | **Guest** — President & Chief Strategy Officer, Greenix | Self-identified: "I'm the president and chief strategy officer" | | **Unnamed interviewer** | **Host/Interviewer** — pest control industry media personality ("Pest TV" / "the Buzz" host, former owner of Pro Force, Raleigh NC) | Conducts all questions; references his prior business bought by Barrows at EPS | ### Secondary roles mentioned (non-speaking) - **Bob Neelson** — Chairman/CEO of Greenix, ex-president of Burger King (per Barrows) - **Spencer Morgan** — associated with Pro Force (per host) - **David Roy** — industry figure; host quotes his recent private remark on today's economics - **Harrison Stain** — former owner of Concentric, EPS's private equity (quoted by Barrows: "In God we trust, all others bring data") ## Provenance Facts ### Barrows career claims (unverified, self-reported) - EPS: 33 acquisitions over ~5.5 years; EPS did ~100 over 10 years - Brief stint at "Renck Hill" (transcript spelling) post-acquisition - Greenix: 12th largest pest control company; ~$120M net revenue this year; 16 states; second acquisition closing ### Referenced sources & data - Greenix internal **data warehouse**, Domo BI platform, Workday HR/GL, PestRoutes; retention cohort analysis (0–12, 13–24, 25–36, 37+ months) - Company growth figures: $66M → $88M → $107M → ~$120M, goal $145M - ~$10M JP Morgan line of credit (used and paid down) - Greenix owned by private equity (unnamed) ### Third-party claims (attributed, not verified) - Host: "50% of sales" being new-to-pest-control customers; retention higher on ACH vs credit card at some companies; 2023 price increases of 5–20%; historical 15% door-to-door rep commissions - Barrows: door-to-door LTV ~4–5 years; Greenix <50% of sales from door knocking ### Uncertainty notes - Interviewer name never stated in transcript or metadata - Several company/brand names appear garbled in transcript ("EOS Shield," "Renck Hill," "concentric," "mcau services," "WD," "the Mexican" — likely mis-transcriptions) - No curated metadata supplied beyond title ## Promotional Segments - **None flagged.** Interview is editorial in tone; no sponsor or product promotions identified in transcript. ## Availability Limits - **Comments:** No comment availability information supplied - **No timestamps** present in transcript; quotations above are paraphrase-level Andrew it's great to have you back good to be back we on the buzz a few times now you're on pic TV so steep the game up you did so we've talked about your EPS era and now you're in a new era greenix so you went from the non door too guy who was running the m&a program doing how many deals did you 50 60 so EPS did 100 over their 10 years I did 33 about the same size just bigger deals uh over that 5 and a half years and now you're in one of the largest door to-door players in the country so how big is greenix now yeah so we're the 12th largest Fest control company at the end of this year uh we'll clear 120 million Revenue uh net rev so yeah we're proud of it what what's your role over there so I'm the president and chief strategy officer so we have a chairman CEO Bob neelson ex-president of Burger King and then me and another president report to him and split out the reporting structure I handle pretty much all the support system CX Finance uh everything but operations and door knocking one of my biggest questions for you today and you and I have kind of chatt a little about this over time offline but you know what are your again you came from a non- door to door world yeah what were some of your biggest surprises and learning experiences now being thrust into a company that really drives growth on the doors yeah it's a good good question so my I I'll go back to my EPS days um the first experience I got with door knocking was actually the the business we bought from you I remember that which uh he was just here just saw him by yes so coincidentally uh it was a company called Pro Force in Raleigh North Carolina and that that's where I got my mini MBA in in door knocking and got to learn from you and then Spencer and really just got to understand a lot of it and so I I tried to learn as much as I could before jumping deep into it and I got introduced to the old president of greenix and we talk almost weekly for two years straight yeah um the that being said living it and being in the business you learn a lot more um I I think the intricacies of it is there's there's a bit of a faceless Persona to door knocking oh it's these big engine of sales people that are just about themselves and they're going selling and it and they're they're not uh they're just a machine that goes out and does it um what what I learned and have learned it's it's a lot of little uh a lot of good leaders people that want to do good things being led by others but they're young impressionable and uh for lack of better term success comes down to those relationships at a granular level and from the moment they come into the fold of a sales organization what what's the ethos what's the objective What's the culture what kind of uh quality metrics you're trying to put around them because if they learn it right from the get-go you can build a really good sales organization but if it's come with the Persona of we're here to make money sales at all costs do anything you can say anything you can and they learn that you can't unlearn that later on and so I think one of the biggest lessons I had just like many uh businesses is just culture really matters dramatically and the success of that sales organization when you're looking at quality versus quantity and the balancing act so this is the large I guess this is the distinction when you talk about Good Door too versus bad door to door yeah so from from my perspective good door too is knocking at the right hours saying the right things um having quality controls in place that a 20-year-old that's good at sales knows that they can't at the end of a long day say something that's not really accurate to just get one more sale in that's not the culture we want to breed um that being said you can see it I I I door knocked last year just to get a feel for it and did you sell in any accounts I sold too okay is is that good or bad um I was petrified I would sell none and I'll do a quick story I showed up is that that suburbs of Detroit um I walk up on a house I'm from Tampa Florida it's got a Tampa Bay Lightning hockey flag on the house guy says he wants pest control everything he lived he lived in Tampa two blocks from me in my current house I was like great perfect sale get it I couldn't close them why um I'd love to say it was cuz I was uh it's just hard it's a hard job and so and and and candidly the better sales people probably could have got it done but day one I just I don't know I think I'm a pretty decent salesman but fell apart I I call my wife I was like oh I'm going to Bagel today I'm not going to get any sales sold two after that felt like I got some credibility um but two for first day is pretty good uh had you had training no no I just went went and ran it but I think I've talked Pest Control enough that I can communicate it effectively but um the the difference was after four or 5 hours of not making a sale which a lot of these people do the urge is to say something that will get you over the Finish Line with these objections and so you understand why they're not bad people making bad decisions trying to harm people they're just trying to do their job and so how do you build a culture where you train them effectively to to close effective deals in the right way and that's upon the company to spend the time and energy and resources and not all companies know that path they just know that they want sales and so they'll create a lot of uh uh incentives that aren't necessarily aligned with quality and so if if you can align with quality we've seen just phenomenal results not perfect but phenomenal results selling quality with quantity um versus some that have really push the quality or quantity over quality and and in that you can get a a different culture and a different product than there pretty quickly when you do one of you go you both go both directions and so um and a lot of people see this and they come in their neighborhoods and they you'll see a lot of traditional Pest Control owners that are frustrated with door knocking because it they can say things that aren't true on the doors and it happens and we squash that um but some companies don't and we wish everybody would cuz it's better for the industry you and I were talking about attacking white space if 50% of our sales which approximately are are customers new to Pest Control well now we're making the proverbial Pest Control pie bigger versus everybody just trading the existing customers and growing along with GDP and we see that as a positive and if you're trading customers with others usually and you're doing it the right way it's because that customer is unhappy yeah and that's fair it's when people are saying things they shouldn't and that's that's something we don't stand for what you learn about customer attention at greenex versus I mean look you spent years at EPS was roughly 70 some odd million in Revenue you spent a short stint at renck Hill after the acquisition so you clearly understood the traditional organic approach to growth how does customer retention shake up yeah it it it's re it's it's the number one most important part of our our job um we spent a lot of money to sell it MH you you you got to keep it to make a makes sense it feels good to grow your business $30 million but to see half of it go away is not something we want to sign up for and so we put a lot of time and energy and resources like I said into training we have a lot of quality metrics in a welcome call aspect of it so after the sale or before they can move on they have to call in and confirm all aspects of it this is a one-year contract those are the terms explain monthly billing to people that may not understand it and so in that get we educate our customers up front we educate our salespeople educate the customers and then consistently show up and Delight them with a great quality service we're not trying to skimp we're trying to do more than others uh we do a five-step process when some may do two or three steps we do granular we do a wrap we we do uh take two lengths of Websters and go around and we're trying to make it simple yet highly effective where the customer feels like they're getting a great quality um and and for us we've seen not only the sales individuals benefit from higher retention because we have that model um because sometimes it feels good to sell 300 accounts but if only 150 make it to your commission well that's not that's not great we'd rather you sell 200 quality and have 190 make it to commission you make more money but that's tough to educate some of the the the younger salese on that so if we can do higher quality our business lift up we're more efficient we're more effective you're not wasting time selling either subpar accounts or communicating something that's not accurate and frustrating the customer getting bad Google reviews so the network effect of higher quality and better retention is is just good not only in the short term but obviously in the long term as well so let me go back to the original question yeah having done all the things that you guys do in order to attempt to on board effectively and retain the client yeah is there a difference between retention rates from door too versus traditional uh good question uh yes and no right so the yes is um it it depends one I'll compare it a little bit to Acquisitions so if we acquire 10 companies in a very short period of time and we hand them to subpar managers attrition is going to Skyrocket if we do them separately over a long period of time we integrate them well we slow to convert with a good manager TR rates will look really nice it's the same thing with door knocking if you get a good Branch with a good sales team and uh a good manager and and you staff it effectively and you do all thetion rates are really good um but if you go too far or you spread out too far and you have a bad branch manager or a bad sales manager selling wrong things then you'll see a spike in attrition so it it all go comes down to the quality of it so in many ways yes you'll see the same as traditional in the fact of um first year attrition is always higher second year depending be a little higher and then year three and Beyond it gets into this nice attrition curve um but most door knocking companies also are growing 50 60 70% a year so you just have a really young base so attrition is definitely higher compared to a 30-year old old 3% growth Pest Control business that just has a really nice season base so there's a little bit of an Actuarial nature to it but the the easy answer is a yes or no the the complicated one is well it depends on branch manager sales manager relationship quality control and how you can hold that all together at once cuz yeah our our our best performing branches I'd put up against traditional any day our lower performing branches that maybe we needed to change the branch manager which is very normal for any of these businesses yeah it's going to be a higher higher Spike um and and then I absolutely can see you you get the wrong sales manager not necessarily doing the right things on the doors selling the wrong demographics on the wrong verbiage yeah you're going to have a bad year the next year in that subset of customers and and we've got a data warehouse to track all that and try and learn and relearn and learn and relearn to communicate when we see things going positive or negatively you know it's interesting you just brought up Spencer Morgan with Pro Force I think that's a great example of a business that was doing door too right if you recall they had relatively High retention rates specifically compared to other door Todo businesses right and so that was a great example of a small company doing door to-door right I I in my experience over the years 20 years doing this seeing pretty much almost every door to door company under the hood I mean there are absolutely door too door companies out there doing it right that have very very high retention rates sure there's a lot that have piss poor retention rates yeah and unfortunately that seems to be kind of the market average um but there are there are ones out there doing it right it it's definitely it's definitely part of the you you walk around here you meet PCOS the the vibe is a lot of negativity around it for because because of some of those poor performers or uh there's been some deals that have been done and with with high attrition post close and you know I wouldn't have come to greenix I like growth I I don't like stagnation uh what I liked about EPS was we were we were trying to get bigger and batter every day and and and grow a really quality company um the ethos of a greenix is to do it the right way I I wouldn't have wanted to be here any other way um and so I I My Hope Is that we can continue to be a I don't know we'd love to be the Blue Chip player in this space that sets a bar for Quality um with quantity but quality first uh unfortunately just historically there just a there's a lot to overcome reputation wise and that that's good and bad right that's uh that's an opportunity depending on the way you approach it um but for us we we I think attacking the white space in a quality way is really good for the industry and I I hope that's uh proves true in the long run so I think when I look at door to door there's there's two broad dynamics that are in conflict with each other to a certain degree on the one hand I think many door to-door companies over the years have gotten better with onboarding customer instead of just being sales organizations they are service organizations right and they use door to-door as a tool so those companies have gotten more sophisticated yeah the opposing Dynamic is door too's gotten way more expensive yeah when when I first got in the industry I mean sales reps were paid 15% yeah that's not what they're paid anymore and so there has been a lot of competition there's been I think a decent amount of companies out there making very shortsighted business decisions yeah in rates and bonuses and sign on and so on and so forth I mean what's your perspective of what's going on now in 20123 in the door-to-door space with regard to compensation yeah it's it's a really important conversation um when I came into the industry in 2015 uh I think multiples were at a different place than they are now very much so in general pest control has become a I think people have had their eyes open to the value that this industry can provide in a in a a tough economic climate over the last 10 years and so people are seeking safety and stability and I think as you're more aware than anybody the the micro uh conditions for the macro conditions excuse me for us as a as a business there's a lot of Tailwinds uh you have the baby boomer generation that's retiring you have the Millennials the non DIY they want to Outsource generation two income households move to suburbs with coid essential um business there's a lot of positive to this and people have seen that um and so in that they've seen okay well this business business can produce a lot of free cash flow it can be really valuable and so that's lifted uh the the multiples and Acquisitions and and then transfer that into door knocking because it's tough to grow more than 10% organically unless you're doing m&a or door knocking and so if you want to make Leaps and Bounds growth you have to pay for it in certain ways and that's become comparable there there are people that have been able to do a little more economical but compared to 15% yeah it's definitely jumped up um now the good thing about it which businesses used to be buil on door knocking to sell them boom I want to build it sell it build it sell outside of the original you know Clark Pest Control that got built on door knocking the origins of pest control is around door knocking but these teams of young um college kids or afterward taking Summers and going selling that that aspect of it um is relatively new when creating a sustainable business and so the good thing about paying a higher price is it forces you to focus on quality cuz if I'm going to pay 15% ah whatever falls off falls off so be it when but that's still a negative in my opinion from the perception of the customer perception of the business Etc like it's a lost opportunity at a higher cost it forces us to say okay we got to treat these customers like gold and we can't just sell accounts we need to sell a business that's repeatable that can grow and has high retention rates and so yeah it's Troublesome but the opportunity is now it's forcing you to cherish every one of those customers and if everybody in the industry within door knocking can approach it that way because of the cost well then everything gets lifted up from a pest control perspective because it's better Google reviews better reputations stickier customers everybody wins none of us win when we have Bad actors whether in the door knocking space or traditional because yeah the pre-treat market has its own issues y uh fumigation has its own issues even traditional pest control companies at times WD others have their own issues so the the more we can lift up on quality I think the better you can justify higher cost um as much as obviously as a r running the company I'd prefer to have more flowr on on cash but in general we see the value and what we can do longterm especially when you look at from pest controls and LTV um in the four to 5 year range range and Beyond um and what you do from cross- selling and building the network effects um still makes a lot of sense but I feel like we're getting really close to a level though that won't make Financial sense going forward and and I'm interested to see if you agree with that or not there there's always a Breaking Point yeah right right um there uh whatever kind of car you drive there's a point where it's a great car for this price and it can be an absolute phenomenal car but for a toyo Camry that's awesome to spend $90,000 on it doesn't make sense right and so even though it's a great asset and a great thing there's always a price point where it doesn't make sense to continue in that path and um where that breaking point is I mean I've got my own internal math um it also just depends on when you're starting right if you're starting a door knocking company from scratch and you're starting at the high end of the range and you're not bootstrapping yourself I wouldn't advise that right cuz you can do it at a lower cost by putting everything together and doing it yourself now at our size and scale we need systems we need leaders we need processes and so that creates some more cost but then we have leverage on purchasing power and other things that that help us out with that um yeah I don't know when where that breaking point is in p uh uh in particular um but it's it's definitely something we think about and talk about often and and hopefully sales managers understand that I I do think a component that makes a difference is um uh there there's ownership structures that allow you to invest in people without having to give them dollars immediately and that's really important in the space as well um ver you know there's cash versus Equity versus longterm interest and so how do you balance those out to make it the the right uh in incentive structure while p&l and balance sheet uh manageable that that's you know upon us to figure out how do you do that sustainably for years to come so I think you've seen this is a new age of door knocking you've got active that's 4 500 million you've got us at 120 million you've got EOS Shield that's large you got a lot the biggest I think the the largest uh amount of sustainable door knocking companies that are out there in the space right now than ever been from my perspective so how do you keep that going do you have to diversify like for us we we've we do less than 50% of our sales in door knocking so that diversification drops our overall CAC um while allowing us to do all by B by by being Diversified to me that's one of the most important parts of diversifying in your channels and and then how do you change the how do I get a longer more profitable customer if I'm paying pay more now I need to increase quality cuz I could pay you 15 cents on the dollar but if I have 50% uh if my LTV is 1.5 years 1.75 years well I'm willing to pay way more for something that's 5 years with a higher margin profile so how do I get more out of it if I'm spending more up front that that's a lot of the way I think about it you know I caught up with David Roy last week and he told me if he were starting today he would have not been nearly as successful as he's been you starting with today's prices he's like I would have never been able to do what I did that's right period and so I I think it is a more challenging environment for the smaller firms out there I I 100% agree with that I mean it's just you you have to have you have to have deeper Pockets um compared to what he did now he grew so fast yeah um that I think You' have to grow slower or you have to come with more Capital up front in order to do what he did so I I agree what he did was unique for the time um at the same time the the the the valuation space has changed so it also depends on what you're planning to do with the business on the long run yeah I mean look I I you know in years past doored door was used to build accounts on build up a book of accounts turn around and flip them yeah now folks are using it to build long-term sustainable assets so over at greenex you're focused on is is what you guys are doing on the doors come under your strategy part how much you'll allocate to door to door versus other and how much time do you spend looking at you know your return on invested capital and door to-door vcv what you would do through other channels uh is that a daily analysis for you not daily I mean it it's definitely annual in the fact of what do we want to subscribe for next year are we going to be over subscribed unders subscribed it's very difficult as you're well aware to hit your sales Target exactly that's in any sales Channel especially in door knocking CU there's the amount of people you're recruiting you don't know how many people are actually going to show up to the market and then you don't know are their managers going to have a per rep average of 100 or 75 or 125 are they going to stay longer are they going to come earlier and so you have to have a range and be willing to manage through that range um if not you have to have an overflow option and that's complicated but it's possible um so we spend the full year talking about it and then come budget season which is right now you have a lot of conversations of okay what do we want it buy which market and we actually break it down into zip codes and somewhat neighborhoods as to what are what are the target areas and where's the the best opportunity for us to grow um what what I found is is demographics matter almost as much as who's selling what they're saying hitting the right neighborhoods is is so important from a sales perspective because the the size of home and the socioeconomic status of of the customers you're selling to like this is a this is a it feels like a need business we all need to manage our pest but to have a professional service serving you it's a it's a want it's a part of your discreption but you got to get those bugs out of the house who's really good at doing it well it's there there's a certain subset of customers that just hold on to the C the the customer base longer and so how do we enable our sales professionals to understand where to go in the right markets to to do so but yeah we we have a lot of conversations of do we want 20% more you want flat do you want 40% more and it's a lot on just who we're going to be next year and the years after because you're spending a lot of money to build that but that creates another base to make you have a bigger year next year so if I spend more on door knocking this year my p&l looks worse from an Eid do perspective but then my next year the flowthrough looks better which I like to equate to okay if next year I could acquire 10 million of recurring Revenue VI an acquisition or via door knocking obviously the two are going to operate differently but I'll have a bigger base next year in either situation do I want that base or do I want the money in my pocket that I would have paid to do either the door knocking or or the uh or the acquisition and that's a that's a board level ownership level discussion of allocation of capital which you get better than anybody so two questions that popped up what you said you talked about the demographics of the end user yeah does that inform your decisions both on the door too side which you mentioned it does as well as non-d doorto door advertising yeah absolutely so we we live uh there's a phrase the old um uh owner of concentric who is eps's private Equity Harrison stain you said in God we trust with all others bring data MH so for us uh data is the driving force which which customers perform the best um for what we're looking for um and then how do we attract them and and get as many of those customers when they're available as possible so but we do that across all of our channels so there's Service Pro Sales inside sales uh door knocking and then we've we've done we we we're about to close on our second acquisition not nearly as many as we did at EPS but still something we want to have as our grow Channel and that was going to be my next question we'll take a quick second here Dylan is not open I wanted to try to order a drink Andrew um Acquisitions now you guys guys are closing your second acquisition what sort of discussions does a firm like yours have in allocating Capital between you know traditional marketing door too and then of course you've got acquisitive growth so when you guys start to think about are you looking at it saying well we've got a door Tod door team we can deploy or we go out and do a deal what's the risk adjusted return on each of these Avenues or how do you think about that yeah I think of it from a a a dollar allocation perspective I've got four different channels I can throw dollars into which one is going to have the highest irr and so sometimes that's door knocking sometimes that's m&a sometimes that's inside sales sometimes that's Service Pro Sales because if I if I over throttle Service Pro Sales it's mainly cross sell related I may start causing churn with my customers so I push that too hard I may become value destructive if not done right if inside sales I may start scraping the bottom of the barrel on on leads that I'm not as excited about with door knocking I may hit zip codes I not so every Market every situation and way I think about is it's it's a constant rejiggering of where am I getting the best return from a CAC perspective and a quality perspective in that time frame because I think the the the idea that spending more great example would be would you rather have a $20 lead for a bed bug onetime treatment or I rather spend $70 for somebody that searched preventative Pest Control in my neighborhood in a really core attractive zip code I'd rather spend $70 which is more than 3x that of the $20 bed bug lead because now I'm going to get a 5-year LTV on that customer if I can close it versus a onetime shot on bed bug in a in a in a uh probably a non-recurring customer base so when I look at the dollars I think there's uh the shortterm idea of what's most expensive and you've had this kind conversation right this is why some Acquisitions are a lot more expensive right they're they're a quality asset I see the same thing with leads and so when an acquisition comes up um I look at a lot of deals um we pass on a lot because I know what we're able to handle what fits within us and then when that right one comes along for us I'd rather spend up on that one than and then go wide on doing a lot of deals that may not fit for us particular and that's the benefit of having the Diversified sales Channel growth Channel approach is I can redistribute dollars when necessary if we can be really that's the theory behind it when you guys do Acquisitions then are are you focused on buying any particular capabilities or is it just a density play um right now I would say no so so the first acquisition we did was five new markets one tuck in but there were markets we wanted to go to anyways and and and it was a historically Door kned business so they are in our system we we were integrated day one so like in in we're in pest routes um that got the day of closing we had done all the work they're in our system we're in our system so our call center had access to the data routing had access to we got re it was a really efficient integration and so that fit really well for us because we didn't need to spend a lot of time having them out of our system for 2 years running separately it fit rid in our model yep changed the name in 6 months Without Really any disruption cuz we were slow and methodical about it and we now had five new markets to go do door knocking cuz eventually you run out uh ZIP codes that you can send teams to and so by add you have to add new geographies at times and so we got five new geographies that really valuable to us cuz we needed new geographies and I got them overnight so that was a really attractive acquisition for us even though it didn't add density I knew that I could then do door knocking inside Tails field tails to grow density over a long period of time and so was a longer term play this this acquisition this year is going to be more of a density play it's a tuck in for an existing area um but the next couple years we'll balance between I'm always interested in density in the right markets if I have a good branch manager and good fit and feel and if it's in the right zip codes and good quality customers um but we're looking for really adding into um uh adjacent markets so we we went to we we were in the midwest we went to Milwaukee from Chicago we went to Minneapolis Minnesota de Mo Iowa just like little jumps from where we were you know when you think about you talk about new geographies and you're going even knock so much but you know a market like Chicago Metro so why would you why would you jump from Chicago up to Wisconsin when it's such a massive Market oh I I still want to grow Chicago so it's just if I have a market that I feel is but you can only send this is is some of the the learnings of door knocking this would be back to the original question you can't have conflicting teams in the same market so you kind of have to give a market to one team and let them manage it and run through it so you can partial out a little bit but like one sales manager that has a big team they want Chicago they want to share with somebody else because then you have kind of internal fums it can work but it's not perfect and so if you have enough managers you can then now I can open up a new market for a Wisconsin for a new manager to go prove himself or to to generate more in that area without conflicting with the others and so there's a little bit of to your first question which is what are some of the learning aspects of it it's the it's the people management aspect of door knocking it's not to say morphous blob of sales that just goes anywhere it can go anywhere it can be managed but it's not also as simple as like hey you deploy this into this market and you move this market like you have to get Apartments you have to move them like the logistical aspects of it is sometimes thought of as like this black box of door knocking well it's just like any other sales organization there's people there's relationships there's feelings of going to one wants to go to Minneapolis because their aunt lived there and he loves it and he wants to go there and so do you send them there and so just the the people aspect of the door knocking is is where you kind of win or lose and it makes a big difference on why you want Wisconsin also Milwaukee and Chicago aren't far from each other and Milwaukee is a great a great Market from the the data we have it's really attractive from a customer base and hey EPS was the southeast right so I knew Florida Georgia North Carolina I got that Midwest is not completely different but different and so we've know that customer based we know the winters the communication everything is really scalable moving into Wisconsin if I went to Arizona it's a very different talk track so now I'm I need to create a different scripting system I need to have a different uh technical aspect of how we're solving the problems there a lot of our bug issues are very similar which creates scale and efficiency and do you guys do all the recruiting in house we both um so we have some third party teams that we do but they're uh the mainly the third parties are people that used to work for us so it's still very familiar we don't have um really any groups that don't have roots with greenex what's the pros and cons of Your Mind of a firm using a a completely third party vendor versus doing it all inh house yeah it's a good question so there's some legal aspects of it um third party can go where they want when they want internally you have nons and non-c competes so there's legality aspect of they can't go take a 50 person team and go to some other company without violating a non-solicit right because you're you're investing in their ability to build teams and build downlines and and to work together on that um and there's just the the tightness of relationship um are they in your leadership meeting are are they eating greenix food are they going greenix Retreats is it is it what's that culture aspect of it whereas third parties sometimes it's their business working with us and it's the in-house versus third party aspect of almost anything right you can do an IT management right in-house versus Outsource sometimes better sometimes worse um there's just different pros and cons and I think it's a caseby casee basis when you look at the overall customer demand side of the market I'm not talking about door too I'm just talking about in general mhm where do you think we're going to end up in 2024 I mean we we've seen kind of the co boom yeah across the board numbers are beginning to decelerate sure so where are we going to be in 24 yeah I think it's interesting for for greenix or just in general the market in general yeah it's different when you run a door to-door business you can go out and actually kind of create that demand so to speak um but let's talk about in general yeah I mean pest control again I I think the the Tailwinds behind us outside of the headwinds of Co right cuz I think we can all agree when everybody went home they saw bugs it popped everybody lead genen went up um that's definitely a headwind I think the Tailwinds for us you're still having a flight to the suburbs you're still having a lot more dual inome households you have a lot more Millennials with homes than ever before that don't want to do it themselves uh you have uh global warming back for the environment great for pest control companies uh and and in general you still have a lot of white space uh even within those demographics so I think we'll grow along with GDP I don't think we'll have a retraction past GDP I think we're still in that sweet spot of at least growing I don't think it'll be as big of a boom as uh you just hear from people that lead lead leads are down um but unit changes but there's also inflationary increases so I think you'll still get some bump from just uh cost of sales like the the the pricing is still going up because of inflation but I I think it'll be a I don't want to say a stagnant year but I think it'll just be a nice Steady Eddy growth year I don't see us dropping back a lot I don't see us jumping up huge but I do still think we'll grow along with GDP and slightly above it just like historical I I'd love to hear your thoughts on it yeah I mean I I think it's going to M A GDP plus business clearly like you said there's a lot of Tailwinds and we see I think it's pretty easy to see penetration rates continue yeah to increase um I was going to ask you was the question Andrew I just had it at the tip of my why you think of that oh yeah price increases yeah you just mentioned price increases I mean you know we saw price increases in 2023 of you know 5% some were doing 15 I saw 20% price increases obviously it depends on what base you start from that's right you know how are you guys start as we start to approach the 2024 season a lot of people will do price increases in the early spring yeah where do you think that'll shake out in 24 as a percentage yes yeah interesting I I think I I think the 5% Mark is probably going to be I think the 10% days are probably done yeah um across the board I think if you've got our approach which I'll speak to is more tailored to the customer themselves if I have a customer with a 12200 foot home and they're paying $55 a month for Pest Control yeah I'm not going to go hammer them right I'm going to go nominal and they're and they're in their second year of being with us yeah hey 3% increase sounds great right do I want to Jo now if they're uh have a 6,000 foot home and they're at $44 yeah I may hit them with a 10% and say hey you you can afford it house is big enough we actually probably sold you under sold you and so getting really specific about it I think landing at that I think as an industry that 5% range and I bet over the next four five 6 Years it'll come back down to that 3% range unless we continue in a excessive inflationary environment if so then I think it'll tag along with what inflation represents which is still well above the 3% Mark you guys so you mentioned it's kind of individual you're actually looking you're running an analysis on individual customers I mean do you guys is there a specific time of year that you do price increases or is it AAW throughout uh spefically every time of the year usually earlier prior to summer season so the idea of it is in our mind is I want to increase you right when you need us the most yeah um so you can wait until people are coming out of contract but if you sold them in late of the year you're not going to get in your fiscal year um and the customers going to go go into winter time it's a little more susceptible to attrition again attritions are Guiding Light if we hold on to our customers cash flow comes and everything looks really good and so we try and pick it at a time frame of year that maximizes the return also maximize the uh time period where they call in say hey what's with this cancel hey we're coming every season you going to need us let's see it through and it's it's a better conversation than hey there's snow on the ground why are you increasing my rates even though the pest don't die they're still there they still need the service they don't see the need as much as they do when it's 95° out and uh sunny and humid when you look at retention rates are you looking at like you specifically are you looking at monthly churn are you looking at kind of that open and closing portfolio method where you'll take customers on the books beginning of the year end of the year how do you look at it both yeah so I think there's a run rate attrition and then there's base base cancels and then we look at it by Channel and by year so we'll break it out into 0 to 12 month segment uh 13 to 24 and then we'll break it out in two more years of 25 to 36 and 37 Beyond I really like to look at the 25 plus category so anything that's made it past the two years because we do 12 and 18mth contracts and depending on when you're sold and how it all works we've seen it to really Shuffle out after 2 years and once you're with us that's when the big drop and so we like to look at it by Branch by sales channnel by those different cohorts um on a run rate as well as a base attrition perspective but historically base attrition has worked in door knocking because that's when it's commissionable yeah right you've paid you paid the piper so what are you going to do to keep that customer and that's that's that's an important factor for us as we're if anybody calls into cancel or we're willing to do anything to keep them uh if you're we do everything we can up front but we'll be especially aggressive when we're post commmission just last week the Mexican I debated the topic of 12month contracts 24mth contracts I mean he and I had an entirely different opinion and I'll tell you what mine is in a second but I'm wondering what yours is I don't get to hear yours first we'll start with you um it's Unique because most people in the industry know that contracts are very door KN specific and the main it's just the sales people want to know that you're not just going to let Mrs Johnson out through months into it because she agreed and then got cold feet but she signed on for it so it it's Unique to this space um we've seen not much difference in the ability to sell 12 and 18month contracts and it's a little bit bigger of a jump on 24 so I'll throw a curveball I think 18 has been a nice sweet spot um that we try and push at a higher clip uh if you're if you're willing to sign up for 12 most likely you're willing to sign up for 24 on the doors over the phones you get a lot more push back because they're they're calling and Price shopping a lot more so I think it depend it depends on the channel um but I lean towards 18 to 24 as the as the as the default and then you have the they refer to them as Aces um but they're aces in the places but what are the things you're willing to trade down in exchange for this oh if you have a $250 initial and $49 a month and a 24mon contract they say ah 24 is tough okay well keep your initial keep you at 49 I'll drop your initial drop it down to 18 or 20 or 12 but then I got a higher initial so what you're willing to trade depends on each of the situations so I don't know where you land but to me I started the 1824 do we let them out of the contract if they've got viable reasons that we've we've if we haven't done our job we let them out I mean you don't want solicit general issues um but people sign up for contracts and especially if they're getting a lower initial which we do at times there's a reason we have a 24mth or an 18mon is cuz we're kind of going backwards for the first year we need you to go beyond that in order to make it Financial sense so we try and communicate that with the customers this goes to the transparency and quality up front of saying hey you get a $99 initial or 149 initial because you're signing up for this long-term contract and it's actually something we did at bugout um at EPS we would do 12 24 month contracts with centrion with a low initial and people understood it so it depend if you train them right and you teach them right you can get the longer contracts but it's usually a tip fortat yeah no I I mean look I I if if you're making concessions to get the two-year contract I mean look the problem I always have everyone always asks hey should I do two-year contracts and my question is always okay what do you get giving up number in order to get that 2-year contract and then you also have the same you know the issue is that the contract's not worth the paper it's printed on unless you're really going to attempt to enforce it that's right and then when you try to enforce it then you your reviews get traed people are writing letters like you said the attorney generals and it just so I I tell people I mean look if you can get to your contracts great but at the end of the day I don't it for me it doesn't really impact valuation much oh sure it well I think I think valuation comes down to attrition curves exactly so does does the does the 12 if you have no contract and you have 1% attrition a month I'll take you'll take that over right I'll take that over that over 36-month contract with 3% attrition because either way it's it's a it's a method to get you to a better attrition um we I also look at it from a quality perspective if I'm reminding you at the point of sale that this is a long-term contract well then that dissuades salespeople from saying hey just take a onetime service just take a two-time service and saying no I need to get them to commit this is a this is longterm best control this is for the life of it and so I also see it as a quality metric more than it is a trap for the employees it it requires and pushes quality of sales even more than the conversation of am I trapping that customer I don't I don't like the Trap conversation I don't think that's the right way I approach it it forces my salespeople to be disciplined to self quality long-term preventative Pest Control versus the inherent nature of hey we'll solve your problem or just take two Services just get me past commission it's like no I need you to communicate that this is a contract that has rep repercussions if you don't and if they still sign it well now they're signing up for the right reasons if they call me up and say hey you didn't show up to my house you didn't do a good job you're soling hey okay let's work through it we'll let you out of the contract you're you're disatisfied blah blah blah and sometimes in that approach we'll actually say them or avoid a bad Google review or bad solicitor general and that that's something us as an industry within door knocking any companies that do nor knocking have to be very very conscientious of making sure the professionalism of our sales doesn't create a bad ripple effect with solic generals and uh in States because we want them to like us they want us to see as people are happy that we're in their neighborhoods as happy as they can be selling a service that they value about somebody calls you up CES you online calls up greenex could I get pass control without a contract yep is that standard or no or am I meaning okay I got I got a pest problem I call you up I I you sell me over the phone yeah can I get recurring pest control services for greenex without a contract no you can't so it' be a onetime service um or you have to sign up for an agreement the problem is it's either you're in it or you're out right like to scale it with different unique situations once you open that door everybody has and and we haven't seen it as a hurdle we haven't seen conversion rate to be problematic for people Sig up for 12month contracts if it was it' be more of a conversation but it's it's that's where the the the sliding back to 12 months is got to be on the table because there are some people that will put boundaries up but for the most part people you're sign up for recurring Services you you're going to want four Services you want it that way or you really just want a one time so you can get a one time it's going to cost you more you can but it's going to cost you more and that's fine but if you want with us hey if we're going to do this initial for you we're going to come out and do all this stuff we want you committing if not do the one time so like the cost benefit is saying okay pay a higher price for the one time or be a part of our 12-month plan but there's no in between I don't want you to sign up for 6 months I'm losing my shirt on lead cost on conversion on commission and all that stuff I need you for 12 months in order to make sense for us and if you're going to do it in one sales Channel you need to do in all the sales channels you don't want Channel conflict so we're a little unique in that EPS never had contracts outside of the two two-year agreements with bugout but all sales channels were uh pay pay as you go kind of methodology where you could cancel at any time but then you have to charge a much higher initial yeah and and so that's the trick off that The Balancing Act are you guys doing both credit card and a we do but it's mainly credit card the a aspect I would love to embrace it there's still a cost component to it that a lot of people don't understand um and just people are just not nearly as prone over the phone or somebody in front of you at a stand to get checks it's just it's clunkier it hasn't been as smooth and so we give up some percentage in order to make a more fluid process but we'll take a yeah I was just curious about that you know there there are companies that have tested retentions on a versus credit card sure and it's much higher I believe that problem is is like you said it's much harder to get yeah I think I think one of the things greenix is figuring out in general is there are Niche businesses that can be one 2 three 510 million that attack and do things really uniquely when you're going across 16 States yeah and you're putting on as much sales as we are there's certain trade-offs you just got to figure out what are you're willing to do in order to have scale if if I wanted to be tighter in in all ways in all things you can't have have it all every single way across all markets and so when I look at tradeoffs of which strategic initiatives I'm going to go after I want to build a platform we want to build a platform that's got legs to go from 120 to 150 to 175 to 200 and the more constraints I put around sales outside of quality um the more that's going to limit my ability to kind of take it to that that next stage you know in closing Here Andrew how big do you think greenex will become when it's fully matured can you define mature what do you see over the next five years with that business yeah it's interesting so there there's a lot of competition but there's still a lot of white space but we're arguably 15 to 20% penetrated from a market perspective so if we do our job improving quality every year um from a sales perspective a density perspective um I think we can grow that 20 to 25% clip in a healthy way I think there's with some Acquisitions or the right investment we grow faster M um we grow slower with more profit uh it's a lot on what is our what does the investor Community want yeah and what options do we want to exercise we've done a pretty good job of opening up different Avenues we can be high growth we can be low growth we can be with high profits we can do The Balancing Act I know what I would want to do um right now we're trying to be that really nice Balancing Act of profit we have no debt no we're kicking off cash but we're we're growing 20% we from 66 million to 88 to 107 we'll do 120 goals to do 145 next year so it's it's not explosive but when you're it's not not explosive why do you have no debt um great question I think it's more along the lines of not being debt averse but the idea is most the perception in the industry as you're well aware of is door knocking companies they can grow but can they kick off cash can they be repeatable and the only way you do that is you build uh a season book of business and the only way you build a season book of business the thing I can't do with greenix is make us a 30-year-old pest control company can't do it so what I can do though is hopefully give all of the great customer experiences that an Orin a Terminex uh a Cooks the historical businesses that try and do it right every single day the Regionals the mcau services that that go about it in a really good way to give that great customer experience and then work as many customers into that 25 plus bucket as I possibly can while still growing but one of the benefits of Acquisitions is you can add customers that 25 plus bucket overnight with an acquisition organically I can't I can't season that book without Acquisitions it doesn't mean that that organic customer is a bad customer they just can't get into the fold quick enough so by slowing down growth when I first started we were 70% customers within their first 18 months now we're at at 35% so we're getting a more seasoned book which creates a better attrition curve which creates more stability um and uh by doing that we we've got a a less risky asset in the long run and so there's the argument of Are We kicking off more cash or are we building a more seasoned um steady yey business and I would argue that we're more season steady Edy business that then secondly kicks off cash and uh we're owned by private equity uh private Equity loves iida and so the idea that we can prove the the model that we can be a consistent cash flow generating asset that does door knocking at the same time is a little bit of new found territory in a lot of ways now there's others doing it but it's historically everybody's negative iida or low really low single- digit iida and just really young base of business we're trying to say okay how do we keep growing while having our k needed to I just I guess my point was I would imagine your financial sponsors look at this and say why do we not have an optimal capital structure when I made the point about debt oh you you feel like adding debt would increase our well you're all Equity financed I would imagine sure it would make sense I mean look Rollins for years Gary Rollins used to get up there and say we have no debt and like we've got historically low interest rates so it's a very poor capital structure for the current environment right I I think it goes to the allocation of capital um if we were going to do I think the best place to place it if you're going to go with the debt process is to go do Acquisitions yeah um but I also am a firm believer in there's a lot of growing up that greenix has done to grow into a true platform where we feel feel like we have when I first got here we on QuickBooks yeah they were doing a great job from a data- driven perspective but we rolled out workday HRS and GL we've got Domo as our ba BBA platform form we've got a data warehouse we just launched so building the bones of this business so that when we do press go harder um it produces a quality result we we need to do some investing at that time period you also have higher interest rates coming um but for us the dollars we could have easily invested in were door knocking but the market isn't asking for a a negative ebit do door knocking business they've said hey we don't want that I don't I don't so we're trying to say I'm not saying I don't I'm not against that path if you can do quality while you're doing it like I'm I'm fine with that but if you're talking on the broader financial markets they've consistently spoke of we want Eid do we want cash flow we want stability we want season book of business and we couldn't do that by continuing to be 75% first year customer base and that's where I'd probably put the debt to so then I would have to go to Acquisitions and and that's a possibility but you want the hope is that we've built a blueprint in these last 3 years of a business so not just it started day one when Bob neelson came on and invest in the business and and building a great ethos of a of an operator business first door knocking as a secondary Y and the take from there is saying are we are a true platform where we have a greenix difference and we we actually do things different the non-c commoditized version of what we are we don't want to be everybody else what makes us different than others and in and number one is the people finding great people training developing them motivating them and retaining them if we can do that at scale well when we do an acquisition we can roll out the greenix difference and we needed to build that Playbook and that's what we doing the last little bit and roll out our data to them and say hey it's really easy to run your easier to run your branch cuz we giving you everything you need to see to go attack this problem that problem this problem whereas historically a pest control business from my perspective is did the BR is the branch manager Dynamic enough to do all the things inside their head running reports doing this feeling that feeling that we're trying to make it so simplified for them that it's it's a uh uh I think it's Bill par talked on it of allowing Ordinary People do extraordinary thing extraordinary things and so how do we create processes and data driven approach that allows them to do that that allows us to be truly scalable so by not using debt I think it's not because we couldn't I think we wanted to take a more conservative approach one I think it's a it was the right time as a business to do it but secondly I also think that's what the market was asking yeah first then to the second um doesn't mean we're not against that we have we have a I think a $10 million line of credit with JP Morgan we used on the acquisition paid it down we're not averse to debt it's just got to be the right opport opportunity and we want to make sure that we're uh again door knocking business has been known to go Full Throttle we we wanted to make sure people saw us as a balanced approach to business understand that and so going harder in with more debt just made us look more risky well Andrew I always enjoyed chatting with you as you were talking and made me I just remembered you owe me a dinner in Tampa from a bet some mod years ago four or five years ago when we supposed to get what pineapp pineapple I don't remember the name some kind of pineapple drink I do owe you dinner I forget what the BET was it was you wanted me to throw sort of a word into a PCT presentation I can't remember what the word was you did it I thought it was pineapple it may have been pineapple I'm going to have to come to Tampa to collect I will be there towards the end of the year so oh good let you know all right I love that brother I appreciate you coming man great see for thanks feel nice you