An interview with Spenser Morgan, owner of ProForce Pest Control, filmed live at PestWorld 2023 in Honolulu, HI on October 19, 2023, as part of Paul Giannamore's "Off the Record" series. Based on the supplied hashtags, the conversation likely touches on the pest control industry, mergers and acquisitions, and business valuation, though the description does not detail specific topics discussed. # Channel Presentation Observations — ProForce Pest Control Owner, Spenser Morgan, Live from PestWorld 2023 ## Format & Presentation Evidence - **Interview format with a single recurring host.** The video is a long-form, one-on-one interview conducted at PestWorld 2023. The host (addressed as "Paul" by the guest: *"Paul we we all have problems"*) leads with structured, researched questions and follows up on details (e.g., dates, revenue figures, rep counts). - **Business-founder interview genre.** The conversation traces a guest's full entrepreneurial arc: origin story (missionary work → Alterra door-to-door sales → founding ProForce in 2015), exit ("sale of the Raleigh operations"), and current operations in Charlotte. - **Deep operational depth.** The host explicitly notes: *"I think I've gone deeper into the mechanics of door to door with you than I have with any other guest"* — indicating the channel pursues unusually detailed operational content. - **Host demonstrates industry expertise and connections.** The host references M&A figures (*"I was talking about you yesterday when I had a discussion with Andrew baros… who now is president of greenex"*), cites comparable transactions (*"we did a transaction some years ago called inspect all services"*), and makes introductions for the guest (*"I appreciate you making the the introductions"*). ## Observable Audience - **Pest control business owners and operators.** Questions assume industry fluency: North Carolina licensing difficulty, account attrition, contract value, commission structures, and door-to-door market saturation. - **People interested in buying/selling pest control businesses.** Discussion of the EPS acquisition of Pro Force Raleigh, investor structures (mezzanine loan from the guest's father), and valuation-relevant metrics like retention: *"you would not have been able to sell that business had you not had the… fundamentals been different."* - **Sales leadership / door-to-door practitioners.** Extended tactical discussion of rep recruiting, callbacks, review management, pitch structure, and commission benchmarks (*"reps making 140% Commission on the first year"*). ## Claimed / Observable Scope - **Scope demonstrated:** pest control industry entrepreneurship, door-to-door sales operations, acquisitions, and cross-service diversification (mosquito, termite, pressure washing, home inspection). - **No explicit channel self-description appears in the transcript** — no tagline, channel name, or subscriber pitch is stated by the host. - **Geographic/market coverage:** U.S.-focused, with concrete market analysis of Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, California, and Texas. ## Distinguishing Claims from Demonstrations - **Guest claims (about his own business):** low attrition, few bad reviews from door knocking (*"I've got very few bad reviews for knocking on doors"*), majority of accounts as switchovers, 1,500 accounts in year one, ~7,000 accounts at sale. These are self-reported and unverified within the video. - **Host characterization:** the host frames the guest as *"an example of a pest control company that's doing door too but was doing it the right way"* — an editorial judgment, not a neutral fact. - **Demonstrated pattern:** the channel provides long, unedited-feeling interview content with knowledgeable follow-ups rather than promotional or short-form material. ## Identity Context Available - **No curated metadata was supplied** for this video, so all observations derive from the title and transcript alone. # Delivery Observations: PestWorld 2023 Interview with Spenser Morgan ## Format & Structure - **Long-form conversational interview.** The host (Paul) drives with short, sequential questions; the guest, Spenser Morgan, responds with extended narratives. - **Chronological walk-through:** the conversation follows a timeline — entry into the industry (2012) → founding ProForce (2015) → first-year struggles → sale of Raleigh operations (2018) → current strategy (2023). - The host periodically **summarizes and checks numbers**: "so 1,500 accounts is roughly 600k in recurring Revenue," which the guest corrects: "a little shy of there." ## Tone - **Casual, warm, and informal** on both sides. Frequent backchanneling: "yeah," "okay," "yep," "MH/Mhm." - The guest is **self-deprecating and candid about mistakes**: "I definitely didn't do it right you know... part of that was just luck and and just determination and grit." - **Humor surfaces repeatedly**, often at the guest's own expense: > "we were eating food that said the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints on the box because couldn't... afford the food sometimes not because it tasted great no no didn't taste that great" ## Guest's Communication Patterns ### Storytelling with concrete specifics - Nearly every answer includes **exact numbers, names, or dates**: "November 9th 2015," "seven that first year," "over, 1500 accounts that that first Summer," "$300 Grand," "2.38 accounts per person per day." - Anecdotes feature **named people**: "my first team leader his name was Eric," "my license holder right now is Charles Major," "Alex one of my sales guys he was the one that did it the best." ### Reconstructed dialogue / live role-play - A recurring habit: **acting out scripts verbatim**, shifting into a sales voice: > "hey I'm with Pro Force we're a home services company we're taking care of a few of your neighbors down the street like Mike and John" > "are you the you the queen of the castle you the king of the castle" - The host even requests a live demo: "so you come to the door talk to me for a minute" — and the guest performs it. ### Self-correction mid-sentence - The guest frequently **restarts or corrects himself**: "I was I was talking to..." — "it I I think at least..." — "I I had a customer." This suggests unpolished, thinking-out-loud delivery rather than rehearsed answers. ### Repeated framing devices - **"The right way vs. the wrong way"** contrast: "the wrong way is talking poorly about the other company," "you just got to do it right," "doing door too right and doing door to door wrong." - **Borrowed aphorisms attributed to mentors**, used as teaching points: > "Dave Royce was the one that kind of taught me that... statistically the best customers aren't the customers who have never had a problem... it's the customers who've had a problem and you fixed it the right way" > "I kind of take this from Elon Musk that everything that we do in this business is wrong" - **Motivational slogan**, delivered as something he tells his team: > "if you can breathe in that means you're still alive right if you're still alive that means there's fight left in you why not go out there and just keep fighting" ### Vocabulary clusters - **Sales/door-to-door jargon** used fluently and without glossing: "call backs," "switchovers," "knocking," "contract value," "attrition," "mezanine type loan," "WDS" (WDI reports), "creative leads." - **Money-first framing**: revenue, commission rates, and costs anchor most stories ("140% Commission on the first year... that's too much... it defies economics"). ## Host's Communication Patterns - **Short, stacked clarifying questions**: "so what year was this," "how long did you stick around at Altera," "so you're not a technician you were a sales guy." - **Checks and challenges gently**: "so your research methods were not that comprehensive I guess" — "they were not no no." - **Echoes and compresses** guest answers to confirm understanding: "so 10 and 10 that's that's my goal this year." - **Closes with evaluation and appreciation**: "I think I've gone deeper into the mechanics of door to door with you than I have with any other guests." ## Teaching Habits - The guest **teaches through narrative example rather than principle-first explanation** — e.g., the termite-standalone pitch is taught via Alex's cousin dialogue rather than abstract strategy. - He **demonstrates lived-cost framing**: "you knock on the same door every year for four years and you just start beginning to expect they're going to say no and that's not good for your mental state." ## Stable Patterns vs. Isolated Moments - **Stable (repeated across the interview):** exact-numbers storytelling; verbatim script role-play; "right way/wrong way" framing; self-corrections; naming real people. - **Isolated:** the Elon Musk "everything is wrong" philosophy, which the host explicitly notes is new to him ("it's the first time I've heard somebody say everything that we do is wrong"); the callback-humor anecdote ("I've got these five call backs"). Insufficient repetition to call either a signature habit. ## Uncertainty Note - Transcript lacks punctuation and speaker labels; some attributions (especially rapid back-and-forth exchanges) were inferred from conversational flow, so a small number of short quotes may be split differently between speakers than presented here. # Position Extraction: ProForce Pest Control — Spenser Morgan at PestWorld 2023 ## Participants - **Spenser Morgan** — founder/owner of ProForce Pest Control (Charlotte, NC) - **Paul (interviewer)** — host; also Morgan's former advisor/consultant ("which is when you came into my life") --- ## 1. Background & Path into Pest Control - Served a **2-year Spanish-speaking LDS mission** (2010s); contacts from the mission were doing door-to-door sales for **Alterra**. - Recruited into Altera in **2012**; **dropped out of college** to pursue door-to-door sales, citing "a lot of money to be made." - Left Alterra **November 9, 2015** — "right before they sold." ## 2. Founding ProForce (Raleigh, 2015) - **Motivation for leaving:** wanted more control, wanted to offer **mosquito and termite services** Altera didn't sell. Recalled asking **Dave Royce** why Alterra didn't sell mosquito; Royce said they were the fastest-growing pest company and didn't need to change. Morgan felt he was "missing out on opportunity." - **Chose Raleigh** partly because Alterra had never operated there — he respected Dave and didn't want to be a direct competitor. - **Financing:** father invested ~$300K under a **mezzanine-type loan/equity agreement**. Morgan notes family complexity: parents divorced; his half-brother Sterling (from his mother's side) was an early recruit; the investor was his father, whom he didn't grow up with. Describes growing up poor, near government-assisted housing, eating LDS church food boxes. - **Start:** first account sold **May 2015**; **7 reps** year one; ~**1,500 accounts** the first summer. Morgan concedes he wasn't optimized on **contract value** ("we weren't doing the best on contract value"). ## 3. North Carolina Licensing & Lawsuit - Calls NC possibly "the most difficult state in the Union" for licensing. - Before the first customer, a prospective **service manager/license holder** threatened to sue — Morgan had issued a **letter of intent**, which the man took as a contract. The man couldn't get licensed in time; his attorney pointed out the license deadline voided the claim; suit dropped. Morgan attributes the lawsuit push partly to the man's wife. - Found replacement license holder **Charles Major** by cold-calling licensed names from the Department of Agriculture list; met halfway at a McDonald's. ## 4. Financial Trajectory (stated figures) - Year 1: ~1,500 accounts (~$600K recurring revenue per Paul's estimate; Morgan said "a little shy of there"), **cost $300K**. - Year 2: 14 reps, more than doubled sales, **another $300K loss**. - Year 3: 4,000+ accounts with 21 reps, **another $300K** — **$900K in the hole** after year 4. - Sold Raleigh to **EPS** (Andrew Baros was the M&A contact) at ~**7,000 accounts**. Paul characterized it as door-to-door "done right" due to **low attrition rates**; Morgan agreed he couldn't have sold otherwise. - Regret stated: he'd told himself he'd never sell — calls that "a mistake" because he "predicated my happiness on certain things instead of just being happy"; selling Raleigh, keeping Charlotte, and buying out his dad was "the best thing." ## 5. Retention & "Doing Door-to-Door Right" - **Growth discipline:** "you can only grow as fast as you're willing to put in the effort and energy... to maintain those accounts." Retaining an account is more valuable than the next new account. - **Practices:** - No bait-and-switch — "they got exactly what we sold them." - Heavy sales training to prevent **overpromising** on the doors (e.g., promising crawl space entry, oversized eave sweeps, granulation a tech doing 20 stops can't deliver). - Customer check-in calls; worked until midnight ("caused a lot of sleep problems"). - **Photo documentation** of every service component. - Acknowledges tension: "some would say maybe I grew too fast." - Credits Altera's training but says his first team leader Eric focused only on motivation, not product education. Anecdote: his first sale ever — he inverted the pricing ($99 initial / $33 quarterly), customer spotted it, stayed anyway. - On effort: "part of that was just luck and just determination and grit... I definitely didn't do it right." Paid himself **commissions only, at the lowest rate, for 2–3 years**; began paying himself once siblings entered the company and his father discussed giving them equity. - Philosophy borrowed from Elon Musk: "everything that we do in this business is wrong" — everything can be improved. Paul had not encountered this framing and said he'd try it. ## 6. Charlotte Market & Saturation - **Opened Charlotte 2018** (same year Raleigh sold) mainly because **sales reps get tired of one market** — knocking the same doors for years breeds expected rejection, bad for mental state. - Saturation now severe: solar companies, **Aptive**, others; reps daily report encountering competing teams knocking the same neighborhoods. "This was a really tough year for us." - Overwrites/knock-offs after a sale: mostly a **morale issue**, not usually lost sales, since typical competitors aren't elite closers. - Raleigh will face the same saturation — "absolutely." Response: "if you can breathe... there's fight left in you." - Saturation **hurts new customer acquisition and increases cancellations** from competitors' overpromising ("snake oil") — some customers return after realizing. ## 7. 2023 Demand & Pricing - Demand exists, but **inflation is taking a toll**; ProForce is premium-priced (~**$49/month**, i.e., ~$150/quarter, vs. $75–80/quarter competitors). - Switched to **monthly price framing** this year — easier to swallow, raised average contract value, less discounting. Paul: odd that "$49/month" feels better than "$129/quarter"; Morgan agrees. ## 8. Diversification into Home Services - ~12 months of offering **multiple services**; ~18 months with a **home inspection company** (ProForce Home Inspections, run by a partner). - **ProForce Pro Wash:** house washing, pressure washing, gutters, Christmas/permanent lighting, crawl space encapsulation. - **Cross-sell pitch:** lead with pressure washing (less saturated pitch), bundle a 20% discount to switch pest control — "it's an easy sell on the pest control that's not even about pest control." - Sees **commercial** as low-hanging fruit via inspections. - Learned bundling stickiness from **ABC Pest (Bobby Jenkins)** — ABC customers in Austin wouldn't cancel because of multi-service discounts; Morgan had 15–20 Altera signups who kept ABC. - Consulted Patrick and Seth (via Pest Daily) on cross-marketing after WDIRs. ## 9. Sales Model Transition - Moving **away from summer-only sales** toward treating summers as internships and hiring **year-round reps**. "I'm chasing the million dollar a year guy, not the $100–200–300K summer guy." - Target: **10 reps Charlotte, 10 Raleigh**. - Winter services (gutter cleaning, Christmas lights, gutter guards, encapsulation) keep reps productive year-round. - Recruiting mix: **3–4 experienced reps per 5–6 inexperienced**; targeting graduated college athletes. - Will supply company leads alongside self-generated ones. ## 10. Rep Economics & Day Structure (industry observations) - Heard of reps earning **140% first-year commission** — "it's too much... defies economics." - Typical good first-year rep: ~**$6K/month** over a 3-month summer (~$18K); top performers **$100K+ in a month** short-term; some sell 1,500+ accounts in 4 months. - ProForce 2018 baseline: **2.38 accounts/rep/day** first-year average. - Typical day: ~1-hour morning training (9 AM), on doors by ~10–11, knocking until ~3, lunch, resume, knock new doors until dark, then **call-backs** after dark. - **Call-backs:** not statistically easier; often a soft "no" or a preset spousal veto. Advice: identify the decision-maker early ("queen of the castle" questioning) and don't over-pitch non-decision-makers. **The wife is usually the decision-maker** (with cultural exceptions). ## 11. Reviews & Reputation - Few bad reviews from knocking — Paul confirms Morgan avoided the review damage that deters other owners. - Reps must be professional and understand the incentive: bad reviews kill sales to neighbors. Customers with objections frequently check reviews on smartphones before committing. ## 12. Account Switching Ethics & Technique - **Wrong way:** bashing the competitor. - **Right way:** identify unvoiced dissatisfaction — many customers have unexpressed complaints their current company never hears — and solve problems. Sales reps knock existing customers' doors for "quality control checks." - Dave Royce lesson: the best customers are often those who had a problem **that was fixed well**, not those who never had a problem. - Don't ask "are you happy?" — ask what benefits/gaps exist; listen for problems, watch body language (e.g., eyes when ants are mentioned). - **Majority of ProForce's new accounts are switchovers** — surprising to Paul. Morgan's logic: existing pest buyers already have it budgeted; it's "an easier sell." - **Standalone termite on the doors** works — rep Alex's approach: don't ask customers to leave their current provider (e.g., a cousin), just sell the termite gap. Non-pest-holding homeowners with existing termite bonds are very tough; new neighborhoods are the easier non-switchover target. --- ## Noted Contradictions / Qualifications - Morgan both defends his growth pace ("you can only grow as fast as...") and concedes "some would say maybe I grew too fast" and "I definitely didn't do it right... part of that was just luck." - He vowed never to sell the company, then sold Raleigh — and frames the vow itself as the mistake. - Charlotte opened to reduce rep fatigue while he simultaneously sent his **biggest team back to Raleigh** that year to densify. - Home inspection arm hasn't helped door sales ("we're not selling that on the doors"). # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record **Video:** *ProForce Pest Control Owner, Spenser Morgan, Live from PestWorld 2023* **Video ID:** `01a168c8-a52e-73f5-b45a-1e86e21baa07` ## Speakers ### Primary Guest — Spencer Morgan - **Role:** Founder/Owner, **ProForce Pest Control** (Charlotte, NC); former Alterra Pest Control salesperson/recruiter; former owner of ProForce Raleigh (sold 2018). - Spoke in first person about: LDS mission background, 2012 start at Alterra, leaving November 9, 2015, founding ProForce Raleigh in 2015, sale of Raleigh operations (~7,000 accounts), Charlotte launch in 2018, diversification into home inspections, pressure washing (Pro Force Pro Wash), Christmas lights, gutter services. - Transcript spells the name both "Spenser" (title) and "Spencer" (spoken). ### Interviewer / Host — "Paul" (unnamed in transcript) - **Role:** Podcast/video host conducting the interview. - Identity implied only by the guest's direct address: > "Paul, do you do have any any problems outside of pest control that I could solve for you?" and > "you've solved a lot of problems for me... That's what got me into business with you." - No host name, channel, or affiliation stated in the transcript. ## Third Parties Referenced (Claims by Speakers, Not Verified) | Person/Entity | Context | Attributed By | |---|---|---| | **Dave Royce** (Alterra) | Alleged remark on not adding mosquito services; retention advice | Morgan | | **Andrew Baros** (now president of Greenix; formerly M&A for "EPS" which bought ProForce Raleigh) | Cited in prior conversation with host | Host & Morgan | | **Charles Major** | ProForce license holder / branch manager | Morgan | | **Eric** | Morgan's first team leader at Alterra | Morgan | | **Sterling** | Morgan's half-brother, first recruit | Morgan | | **Morgan's father** | Investor (~$300K/yr mezzanine-type loan over 3 years) | Morgan | | **Patrick** (Pest Daily) | Cross-marketing after WDIR inspections | Morgan | | **Seth** (Pest Daily) | Consulting advice on inspections | Morgan | | **Bobby Jenkins / ABC Pest Control (TX)** | Example of multi-service retention | Morgan | | **Elon Musk** | Cited as source of "everything we do is wrong" philosophy | Morgan | | Companies: **Aptive, Altera, Terminix, Orkin ("Orin"), Inspect All Services** | Market/competitor references | Both | ## Promotional Segments - **None explicitly flagged.** No sponsor reads, calls-to-action, or product promotions present in the transcript. - Soft promotional content: Morgan describes his own companies (ProForce, Pro Force Pro Wash, Pro Force Home Inspections) and sales methods in detail. ## Metadata / Availability Limits - **No curated metadata supplied** — no channel name, publication date, description, or speaker roster provided. - **Comment availability:** Not stated. - **Setting note:** Title indicates recording **live from PestWorld 2023**; PestWorld referenced once in dialogue. - Speaker identities beyond roles above are **uncertain** — host name inferred solely from in-dialogue address; not independently confirmed. Spencer it's great to have you here today thanks thanks for having me so you're coming up on the 5year anniversary of your sale of the Raleigh operations is that right correct I can't believe it's been 5 years man I know wow so you run Pro Force in Charlotte now you sold off Raleigh years ago yep how'd you get into the space yeah back uh actually before I got into the space is what got me into the space I went on a mission from for the church that I attended back then um I grew up LDS so I served a 2-year Spanish speaking Mission and people that I met on the mission ended up doing door to-door cells uh they worked for Altera okay and so that's what got me into it they recruited me there's a lot lot of money to be made dropped out of college to to pursue that oh you dropped out of college sell on the doors yeah so what year was this what that was 2012 okay yeah so you started in 2012 with Altera how long did you stick around at Altera 3 years yeah so you stayed all the way through the sale in 2015 no let's see I left right before they sold okay yeah I I still remember the date it was November 9th 2015 okay so you left then what so that was the hard part right um I was talking to to my dad about what what's next M you I think everybody that ever starts a company it seems like that I've talked to they worked for a company they felt like there was things that they would like to see different yep and I I saw a lot of those things that I wanted to do differently wanted to have more control over those aspects of the business wanted to be able to offer other services like mosquito and Termite I felt like I was missing out on opportunity while I was on the doors yep and so talking to my dad he was like hey I'll invest he's like you've done really good I'd like to like to invest in it and so that's what what got me to leave and started Pro Force in Raleigh North Carolina in 2015 and where were you living at the time I was living in Utah actually yeah so how did you choose Raleigh Raleigh was partly because Altera had never been there and you know I I respect Dave a lot I didn't want to be a direct competitor to his leaving his company so yeah okay so you locate Raleigh how'd you start this thing so the first thing was I had to start finding sales reps and being that and you were not a recruiter or were you I was yeah okay you were a recruiter the problem was I didn't want to take anybody okay yeah so I I needed to start all over brand new and I had to learn everything about the industry I needed to know how to be the branch manager how to how to wear all the hats in the business so that I could make sure we were doing it the way that it needed to be done did you know how to provide pest control services no okay I did not so you're not a technician you were a sales guy you were doing recruiting y you do three years at Altera you decide okay Raleigh looks like a great place yeah living in Utah MH okay so how how' this how'd this go from there so I I ended up telling my wife hey I want to start a business we're going to sell our cars we're going to sell our all of our hard Furniture we literally just kept our box spring and mattress okay made it as cheap as it could be to move to move to North Carolina I started doing a ton of research just diving in Sleepless Nights tons of them trying to understand okay what are the best products what are the best uh softwares I honestly wish at that time I would have known that something like this pest world existed so I could learn that I didn't even know no clue I was just so your research methods were not that comprehensive I guess they were not no no um I did see that uh it was the thing shortly after but it was a little too late I already passed up that window to go the first year okay so now it was just a ton of research calling all the product manufacturers talking to their sales guys talking to some of their scientists I was like Hey that doesn't make sense tell me this why does this work and did a deep dive real quick so was this in the fall of 2015 when was this when were you doing all this research the research started in August 2015 okay yeah or 2014 sorry August 2014 and that's when I started making the decision to leave start a company so when did Pro Force officially become operative so we sold our first account in May of 2015 okay yeah and how many reps did you have we had seven that first year okay how did you recruit him so my brother was going to school at Utah State University and he had actually worked with me at at Alara before for one summer uh he had just come home from his mission that he served in Brazil and did one summer right after he landed on the plane we literally took a week and then drove down to Austin Texas to go knock doors and he did pretty well so I said hey let's go do this now there is kind of a family Dynamic there I grew up in a divorced family so my brother Sterling was from my mom's side of the family okay and my dad was the investor so so Sterling is your half brother yeah I have I have no full blood I'm the only one okay so you've got your half brother he's younger than you he joins you and then I guess you recruit five other individuals yeah yeah so at that point I said hey all of your roommates in college all of your friends let start talking to them figure it out I didn't have time to do a lot of the recruiting Because I had to learn how to run a p control business i' had never been a business owner my dad was a business owner really successful and so I saw him him doing it but I didn't grow up with him I grew up with my mom and we were dirt poor basically living in you know the the next apartment complex over from uh government assisted housing yeah okay yeah we were eating food that said the Church of Jesus Christ the latterday Saints on the box because couldn't food afford the food sometimes not because it tasted great no no didn't taste that great okay yeah so you kicked this off in 2015 yeah what was it like like to I mean what sort of snafus did you have in that early period of trying to figure out how to be a manager a technician the whole nine yards and actually even before I asked that you're in North Carolina which is a notoriously difficult state to get licensed in I learned that real quick I mean it is actually I I think it may be the most difficult state in the Union so let's talk about that how'd that happen so I get to North Carolina and I started learning really fast in fact before I even opened up it got the first custom customer I already had somebody trying to sue me um that was somebody that I was going to hire to be the be the service manager I needed him to hold the license um I'd made him a or not really an offer I I gave him a letter of intent and he took that as a a contract and he couldn't get his license quick enough because that was my first experience with how difficult North Carolina is it's a really hard process to get your license even though you've been in the industry for a long time like he had yeah and you know your stuff yep so yeah so what happened so he tried to sue didn't work out what was what was the cause of action what was you trying to sue you for he wanted to get two years of uh pay based on what I said his his salary would be okay and it was really his wife that was pushing the lawsuit and then my attorney said hey just because this doesn't say letter of intent at the top of the the page doesn't mean it's a contract if you think it's a contract fine we can go that route um in here it says is that you have to have your license by a certain date you didn't get it so therefore we could sue you and then they dropped it okay yeah so what did you do when you lost a guy do what what did you do when you you lost him as a licens so at that point started calling everybody that had a license on the department of A's list and ran into actually the guy that's my branch manager right now my license holder right now is Charles Major okay um ran into him we went up he lived three hours away from Raleigh at the time uh met him at a McDonald's halfway in between where he was and I was and had a great great little chat he decided to come on board and be the license holder yeah that was easy I can see that so so who was actually servicing the customer while you guys were selling so some of it was me a lot of it was Charles and then we hired two technicians in the beginning mhm quickly learned that wasn't enough needed a third you know the sales guys actually Came Out Swinging we did pretty good you know seven guys we put on over, 1500 accounts that that first Summer and the problem with recruiting out of Utah state was that it's kind of a short summer it's only 3 months so 3 months we put on 1500 accounts and that was that was a big learning curve how do you service all those accounts that quick with a brand new business so 1,500 accounts is roughly 600k in recurring Revenue yeah a little shy of there we we weren't doing the best on contract value Lon I learned that year okay so how did the first year end up how did it close out for you you put on 500 change in in Revenue mhm you were paying your bills no it cost us 300 Grand to do that okay so my dad was the investor he he basically our agreement was somewhat of a a mezanine type loan um I hope I'm saying that right but uh it was the idea was hey you'll have equity and you'll lend lend the business money you'll get your money back once you do you'll have less Equity okay so he gave us 300 Grand that's what it cost us to do that first year the next year we brought out 14 sales guys and we more than doubled the amount of sales that we had the previous year cost us another $300,000 so now we're 600 in the whole the following year did over 4,000 accounts with 21 sales guys and another 300K so we were 900 in the whole after the first 4 years which is when you came into my life and uh I I'm I'm excited that we're chatting today because I was talking about you yesterday when I had a discussion with Andrew baros yeah who now is um president of greenex but uh at the time he was the m&a guy for EPS which ultimately bought Pro Force in Raleigh and I'm trying to remember that business was how many accounts did you have around the time of the sale do you remember it was around 7,000 okay yeah so you had 7,000 accounts we talked about you as an example of a pest control company that's doing door too but was doing it the right way because you had very low attrition rates um obviously by door to-door standards but even low attrition rates by traditional standards you would not have been able to sell that business had you not had the fun you know had the fundamentals been different l oh for sure so I I I remember you doing some unique things I remember you focusing on reviews uh what are some of the things that in your mind distinguish between doing door too right and doing door to door wrong yeah so a lot of door too companies where I feel like it starts going wrong is growing a little too fast which you know some would say maybe I grew too fast but I think you can only grow as fast as you're willing to put in the effort and energy that it takes to to maintain those accounts you know if you're going to spend the money that you spend putting on on an account you just spend a lot of money to keep that account um it's it's more valuable than than the next account you're going to get if you can just keep it so that's where we really put a lot of focus which was new for me because again I I came from sales yeah yeah so what are some of the things that you did to actually focus on account retention yeah so some of the things that we did you know we weren't changing things up on customers you know they got exactly what we sold them I trained my guys extremely well on how sell the accounts make sure that they they weren't misleading customers that's going to cause a lot of attrition and companies that recruit really big teams really fast and don't have a good management structure for those sales guys it's really hard to keep track of what they're saying on the doors yeah and so that's that's one thing I put a lot of my time and energy into I mean I didn't ever go to sleep until midnight um it's it's caused a lot of sleep problems for me later on in life but uh you know I I was talking to the guys trying to figure out what they're doing doing how they're doing it I'd call customers my branch manager was calling customers just doing a lot of uh customer check-ins and we also Incorporated photo documentation into our services so every service that we do our customer gets pictures of every piece of the service that they were told they were going to get when they bought it I see when you talk about what people do and don't say on the doors can you elaborate on that a little bit oh sure yeah what do you mean by that a lot of sales guys feel like they need to go overboard on the cell and promise things that a technician just can't keep up with especially if the company's going to say all right we need to we need this technician to do 20 stops today they don't have time to do 20 stops and sweep all of the eaves up to 30 ft high they don't have time to spray the the foundation as big of a barrier as they need to and then go granulate the yard yep and then talk to the customer have the the face Toof face interaction that they need to have and that's where you really start messing up is when you don't take the time to deliver the service that was promised and if your sales guys are already selling extra things above and beyond that they're saying oh yeah and then we're going to go into the crawl space every time now we we never go into the crawl space you know that's that's not something we're going to push yeah unless a customer has to have it but they don't expect it so you were very I I mean look you you came from one of the fastest growing PESA companies in the country on the sales side how did you learn I would imagine at Altera you obviously understood service CU you were selling it but how did you learn to do those things alter actually did a really good job with their training as well um it I think at least for the people who desired to know what they needed to know and I was one of those guys I was very hungry to understand why things work how they work and even then though I realized that's not deep enough that you know after leaving again when I started my company I learned a lot that I didn't realized I needed to know about a pest control company and my team leader so my first team leader his name was Eric and he had been doing sales for a while sold a lot of accounts but his whole Focus was on how to be motivated how to how to just keep going when you get told no move on to the next door and just keep grinding and it wasn't enough education for me to be able to relay to the customers exactly what to expect u i remember my first sale ever I sold it kind of backwards I did the the initial price at $99 and then the quarterly price at $33 and I called Eric and I was like hey man I got my first account he's like oh what was the contract value I was like well I had to Discount he's like what was the initial price I was like $99 he's like that's not discounted that's full price I like I discounted the quarterly to what and I told him he said we're not even going to do this sir service I went back to the guy as soon as I knocked on the door he opened up and said you fli the prices didn't you so he ended up uh he stuck with us yeah so yeah this was at Pro Force or that was Altera that was my first sell ever so what were some of the biggest I guess learning experiences you had there in that first year setting this up you know I was I don't know what the biggest would be that's that's a really hard thing to say this is much bigger and more important than anything else um it cuz it was such a juggling act for me I definitely didn't do it right you know I I I feel like I did it better than a lot do but part of that was just luck and and just determination and grit going out there not giving up again I was willing to sell everything I had and not pay myself I mean I was living off of nothing I was I was very poor how long did you not pay yourself so I was paying myself commissions only and and the lowest Commissions in the company for the first 2 to 3 years and then after that I started paying myself uh once some siblings started coming into the company and my dad started talking about wanting to give them Equity M at that point that's that's when I was like well if they're going to be answering phones and getting paid more than I could hire somebody else to answer phones for I'm going to start paying myself for yeah for the sales what year did you start Charlotte Charlotte was 2018 actually yeah so the same year we sold the Raleigh location yeah and what made you start in Charlotte I mean you were already grown Raleigh it's a big Market why why do Charlotte s guys were getting tired of being in one spot so we knew just to keep some of our good guys we needed to open up a new market to give them something fresh uh I wanted to continue to densify Raleigh so we actually took our biggest team back to Raleigh that last year in 2018 put a small team in Charlotte and since I was able to stay in Raleigh I lived in Raleigh at that time y it made it made it easier to just have the big team there again is that a recurring problem with door-to-door sales where sales teams get tired of being in the same Market yeah you knock on the same door every year for four years and you just start beginning to expect they're going to say no and that's not good for your mental state so do you feel like in door to door now like some markets are extremely highly saturated with teams yeah Charlotte's extremely saturated uh Nashville a lot of California markets Texas yeah let's talk a little bit about Charlotte so you started in 2018 it's 2023 now what have you seen just in that particular Market on the door to door side over the last 5 years yeah so when I got there we were my sales reps never called me saying that they were knocking with somebody else now we've got I mean solar companies are everywhere you've got I've got Let's see we had AA knocking this year um with a pretty decent sized team we had had aptive knocking there with a really big team and neither of those companies were really doing much in Charlotte the first year again so it's it's drastically changed every day this year my sales guys would call me and say yep ran into another team I've got four companies I don't even know the names of right now because they popped up so quick in in Raleigh like Bal uh or in Charlotte um and some other other companies that I wasn't expecting to have have with us so this was a really tough year for us uh knocking doors so when you say r into another team I mean literally they're in a neighborhood and there's a bunch of other guys they're knocking the door right across the street from you and then they see that you sold that one and then they come over and knock that door and try to take the account right after somebody sold it oh yeah how does that work it doesn't always um if the previous sale was a really sales rep was a really good sales rep and did a good job closing them and selling them on the benefits and your company is different enough in a way where you can provide the benefits that that that person was really looking to looking for and the nice thing is a lot of these companies they hire so many sales guys the typical guy that's knocking right across from you is not always that thousand account rep that can just sell anybody so most of the time it didn't really really matter it was just a morale issue yeah the guys just didn't want to be knocking across from somebody so when you think about like the Charlotte Market in particular you know with the saturation of doorto door folks I mean what is the next few years look like there so we're going to go back to we're going to go back to Raleigh um I I love Raleigh I kind of want to move back honestly but uh yeah it's just a it's a great city to raise kids so um but we'll go back to Raleigh eventually I want to work my way throughout the southeast you I'll take it at take it at the right pace we've actually moved on and started doing other services outside of pest control so we're we're kind of focused on some of those things that have really good cross marketing potential so that's been a big focus of my as well do you think Raleigh will experience the same sort of issues that Charlotte has oh yeah absolutely I'm not at the end of the day you can't be worried about competition you can't be worried about all the issues because if you're willing to to fight you know what I tell my guys all the time I'm like look if you can if you can breathe in that means you're still alive right if you're still alive that means there's fight left in you why not go out there and just keep fighting does that slow down though the ability to to get new customers though yeah yeah saturation definitely hurts it it causes more cancellations as well you know people promising big things and it's hard to convince the customer that some of these things just aren't even possible that the sales rep sold them on and you'll lose the customer you'll get them back once they realized yep that was snake oil I got sold what are you seeing now here in 2023 from a customer demand perspective in the market from a customer what customer demand perspective you know there's a lot of demand um I think that right now one of the struggles that we're seeing is we're trying we're having to help some customers out because I think that a lot of people's wallets are hurting right now you know inflation's really taking a big toll on on on my business we're we're a premium business you know we don't we don't charge 75 80 bucks a quarter we're we're charging $49 a month you know so $150 a quarter got are you noticing more push back on price this year yeah yeah definitely when you break it down into a monthly pricing though I think that pills a little bit easier to swallow for them so we've really like that transition this was the first year we did that so we were able to increase the the average contract value by quite a bit had didn't have to Discount nearly as much it's it's weird how somebody when they hear that's just 49 bucks a month yeah that's way better than it's just 129 a quarter yeah yeah yeah are you doing termite in yeah we're doing doing a lot of termite actually that's something we're pushing heavy I'm actually starting to transition out of Summer cells anybody that wants to come and work with us for a summer we're looking at that more as an internship and then we want to bring them on as year round sales guys so now I'm more so chasing the million dollar a year guy not the12 200 $300,000 a summer guy I know there's a million dollars to Summer guys but I'm chasing those guys too and and they'll knock your round yeah they'll knock you around especially with with us that's one of the changes we made we we started offering other services that are really relevant in the winter months like gutter cleaning pressure washing so I've got the Pro Force Pro wash brand um that does all kinds of house washing services and Christmas lights and some other things and I've got really good business partners that are that are running that arm so that I don't have to get distracted I'm I'm very focused on the pest control side and I just help them with growth so one well sales up sell multiple Services yeah and it's better for them again one of the reasons I had left Altera is I talked to Dave Royce and and asked him hey why why aren we selling mosquito and he said well you know we're we're doing things right we're growing fast we're the fastest growing company in the in the nation and or pest control company in the nation I I don't think we need to change that right now so I'm missing out on opportunity and my sales guys are so that's why I wanted to do that and I've noticed you know this this year's been great my gu sold a lot of pressure washing services um they've sold some uh crawl space encapsulations I now have a home inspection company that's also referring a lot of business over to the pest control company over to pressure washing so it's been great so when a rep makes a sales approach is it just for pest somebody buys it oh we have add-on services or are they walking up saying I can do this I can do that I can do this I can do that how how does that work so here's one of the Beauties to it when you're knock knock on doors and everybody's already knocked their door about solar they've already knocked it about Pest Control not many people are knocking it about pressure washing so a lot of times we're actually starting with you know instead of hey I'm with Pro Force Pest Control you know it's hey I'm with Pro Force we're a home services company we're taking care of a few of your neighbors down the street like Mike and John um so Mike he's actually getting his house washed tomorrow um doing his driveway his house his windows and his roof we're actually cleaning his gutters while we're there um wanted to talk to you about it we're offering a huge discount since the truck's already going to be here and now that's a new pitch that they haven't heard so it opens the door a lot longer and then once you start breaking down the price of that if they do a roof wash a house wash a driveway you're you know $1,500 $2,000 then you say hey who are you using for your bucks and then they say I've got Orin or whoever it might be right uh they say are you married to them not really no okay perfect well if I give you a 20% discount off of that $2,000 service we're looking saving you $400 if I could switch you on the pest control I'll give you a 20% discount over there so now it's an easy sell on the pest control that's not even about Pest Control you don't have to oversell overpromise we just saved them a bunch of money on a $2,000 service that they wanted and I would imagine if they said I'm not interested in pressure washing then you would automatically go to pest yep we'd go to something else would' say yeah actually uh Jim wasn't looking to get his house washed right now either um in fact he was looking for Pest Control he was having some issues with the ants he's seeing a lot of spiders uh there's even been some rat activity in the area um so at that point you're on the best control and and then if they're not interested in that then uh you can talk to them about doing an inspection for them and and checking out their crawl space and move on to something else or if you're not not doing great at transitioning and keeping the dialogue going then now it's on to the next door so I guess this satisfies the age-old issue of why somebody would go from pest to solar cuz it's bigger dollars it is yeah interesting and when did you start to diversify into these other services how long have you been doing this this year so it's been 12 months of doing a lot of other services uh about 18 months actually for the home the home inspection company M but again we're not selling that on the doors though so that that hasn't helped the sells guys at all so you're talking about like typical Home Inspection somebody's going to buy a house they need a home inspector correct yeah is that almost exclusively based on residential real estate transactions or are there other reasons why somebody would get an iner I want more commercial that's that's one thing we're really heavily trying to go after right now and that'll help us get more commercial accounts on the pest control as well so that's a a problem we're trying to solve we see a lot of low hanging fruit in that industry and so that is something we're pushing heavily as commercial I see a lot of Home Inspection businesses getting into Pest Control yeah in fact I had a group come down to Puerto Rico and spend time down there talking to me about Pest Control there was a dozen or so people that came down um cuz you know you do 5,000 inspections a year and you figure 10 15 20% of them have bug issues and they have all sorts of Home issues so you know I've seen literally you know we we did a transaction some years ago called inspect all services yeah they built a $7 million Pest Control business literally from referring inspection clients to a new entity that they created to do pest control and ultimately The Pest Control business is far more valuable than the inspection business um will you then focus on building a standalone inspection business so it's it's Pro Force Home Inspections it's got the same branding just to help with brand identity and recognition um outside of that I've got a business partner that's running that completely I rarely have to touch it except for this morning he he sent me a text that the software company that we're using is making a massive change cuz they got sued by another software company and so there's a fire to put out there this morning but uh other than that we figured out the solution to it in a matter of a couple hours so we're good to go there um but aside from that you I was talking to last night at pest daily um Patrick he his pest control company that he had built was a a lot of it was built off of doing WDS and then selling them other services well my home inspector doing WDS as well and so he gave me some great pointers as well on how to how to cross market after the wvir is done as well as talking to Seth at best daily he gave me some really good pointers because he consults with with some companies that are really big he does a lot of stuff with inspection too yeah yeah so that was a great I appreciate you making the the introductions and that was awesome my pleasure yeah so how many rep you were saying you're you're going to quit doing summer sales yeah you're going to begin to hire I guess a smaller number of reps that will work full-time and they'll be 100% commission and they're going to be able to sell a broad spectrum of services best control and everything else you're doing I mean how many reps would you then hire for Charlotte so I'd like to Charlotte and Raleigh divide it up 10 and 10 that's that's my goal this year and what and can these guys sell things in November in December January people doing pressure washing there in those months necessarily pressure washing but uh gutter cleaning and again Christmas lights uh permanent lighting uh gutter guards so there's a lot of work to be sold in that time as well as a crawl space encapsulation so at that point the idea is to sell what sells well during its time frame like Pest Control during the summer for example mosquito control go back sell them termite in the winter sell them gutter guards and gutter cleaning uh yeah you're not going to be pressure washing during the winter generally right but outside of that there's there's plenty of services that we offer that are able to be sold and then on top of that yeah we're still getting leads and so we'll start pushing those leads over these year round sales guys it's more of a kind of a traditional method of sales is let's give these guys leads have them have their own creative leads as well pay them well for the creative ones that's what we want to do so you'll give them leads calls that come into the company yeah yeah I see anything that needs an inspection especially they're going to get it they'll go out and do it we're we're starting to talk to people who have been in the industry doing year round sales and other pest control companies and trying to onboard them currently and and it's been going really well I would imagine that's probably a better way than having to train a bunch of rookies every summer yeah yeah so we're we're trying to focus on on getting at least three or four experienced bets per five or six non-experienced reps right and so then we're going after a lot of people who were playing baseball or football or basketball and in college and have already graduated so those are the people we're targeting now to recruit that are inexperienced bringing them in having those experienced people train them how to sell the million dollars and accounts that they sold last year yep Y when you look across door to door in the pest control industry you know I've watched commission rates just go up year over year over year yeah you know how much do these reps make nowadays I know you've got awesome reps you've got crummy ones you got the average I mean but what's the the broad spectrum look like out there in the industry I would imagine you pay close attention to that I do I do yeah um I've seen in fact I I talked to somebody just two days ago that told me that they have reps making 140% Commission on the first year and that's a lot it's too much yeah it it it defies economics it does yeah but in terms of dollar amount when you think about you know your summer a summer sales rep I'm not talking about just Pro Force I'm just talking about in general what's the range that these guys are making depends on the company again like you said but a good company that they can work for that's going to train them well give them really good support get the accounts that they self serviced retain those accounts they're making a good six grand six grand a month on average as a first year Revenue okay yeah J for three months they make 18 Grand in the summer then they're off yeah and then what about like real star performers oh a lot more than that I know guys that are making over 100 Grand in a month for 3 months or for 12 months no just short term they're they're really grinding it out and they are getting paid on the high side of things they're the Lost leaders in their companies but yeah there's there's guys that can sell 1,500 plus accounts in 4 months what's a what's a really good sale maybe not best in class but a really good one how many Pest Control sales can a rep make in a day in a day you're so our typical guy our typical first year rep was 2.38 accounts per person per day okay as a first year rep um last time I measured that was back in 2018 actually so that's that's what they were doing back then we've got guys that are doing better than that now um we don't have a big team like we had then in fact you know kind of a lot of that history as to selling the company you know I I had a lot of struggles with that I always told myself that I never wanted to sell the business which you know was a mistake because I I predicated my happiness on certain things instead of just being happy and letting the best thing happen right and the best thing that could have happened at that time was to sell the Raleigh location keep the Charlotte and buy my dad out yeah yeah so let's call it 2 and 1/2 three accounts a day that's what a good first year would do yeah and and what's what's their average day look like in terms of I mean are they out there for 5 hours a day 10 hours a day what does it look like yeah so most companies are doing a training meeting every morning that's generally going to last about an hour and I tend to put mine at 9:00 in the morning so we're out by 10:00 and and they're on the doors depending on the drive time from where we did the the training it could be up to an hour of a drive time so they're either on the doors at 10:15 because it was just right down the road from the training or you know 11 11:15 sometimes and then they're going to spend that time all the way up till about 3:00 on the doors take a lunch get back on the doors as quick as they can cuz they're making commissions yep they want to spend as much time on the doors as possible and then they're going to knock all the way until dark new doors they're going to look at all the call backs after dark anybody yeah anybody that said I'm not the decision maker but my husband might be interested feel free to come back awesome well I've got a pretty busy day it might be after dark is that okay with you yeah it's all right so that's a call back okay yep so they go back the wife came home the husband came home whatever and now they try to close the sale y yep in your experience are call backs easier or more difficult sales it's funny because there's a lot of jokes in the industry of door to door celles you've got the call back guy he's like oh man yeah I haven't made any sales yet but you know I've got these five call backs and I'm I'm pretty sure you know statistically two to three yeah um callbacks are definitely not the easiest and the main reason why is if you don't set it up right you're going to have a a wife pitching this whole thing to the husband and he's already going to have his mind made up he's done yeah yep so I mean how do you set that up the right way I I feel like asking the right questions in the intro of your sales pitch hey are you the you the queen of the castle you the king of the castle things like that trying to figure out are you potentially a decision maker and then continuing to ask questions as you start advancing before you get too deep into what you're going to be doing for them to ask hey are you the one that would typically make the decision on who does your bugs yeah that's that's how you avoid over pitching the wrong person and you're you're saying like if it's pretty clear that that's not the decision maker you kind of shut down the pitch exactly I just say hey um I'd love to talk to your husband since you know you're not the one that makes makes that decision for this service uh when's he going to be back around in your experience I mean when it comes to buying Pest Control service from the home who's the decision maker most of the time it is the the wife okay yeah there's certain cultures that it almost never is but aside from that it's it's mostly the wife and would the wife kick it off to the husband only because in that case he is the decision maker or is the wife trying to say no without saying no that happens a lot too and that's why again even even if you set up a call back perfectly it's still not necessarily a higher closing percentage than the next person you were going to knock and that's why tell the guys don't focus on callbacks until after dark maximize your day stretch it out as much as you can take advantage of that daylight you're going to have I've I've got very few bad reviews for knocking on doors which is what keeps most people out of knocking on doors I talked to test control owners all the time that tell me I don't want to get into it because of all the bad reviews that come from door knocking yeah said well you just got to do it right well it's true you didn't have many bad reviews from doorm knock some companies do some companies it's atrocious how do you how do you how do you do door too and keep from getting all those nasty reviews yeah one you got to you have to make sure your guys are being extremely professional and you have to help them understand the incentive to not getting bad reviews how much harder Paul is it going to be for you to sell the next door neighbor when they look at the reviews and they're bad right yeah you're going to have a tough time so don't generate that bad review for the company I mean how often is it nowadays that you know people have smartphones so how often does somebody's on the door I pick up my phone and I what's the name of your company I type it in and look it up how often does that happen it happens quite a bit it's it's not it's not a majority but when you start having people that have concerns they have objections one of the the frequent objections is okay yeah come back later or call me tomorrow or let me let me talk to you tomorrow I need to do my research and all that ever means is I'm going to look at your reviews yeah yep yep unless they already have a company then they might want to really call them to make sure that they're not doing the things you said you do for them you know you talked earlier about switching over accounts and there's a lot of you know like you said the traditional pest control companies get irate about this because you know we've all heard the stories about reps going on the doors saying hey that company's selling or that company sold or that company GI horrible service or I mean what's what's the right way and the wrong way to switch over an account in your mind you know the I will say the wrong way is talking poorly about the other company for sure you start bashing another company you can switch people over doing that absolutely because let's face it a lot of people do have issues with their pest control company and most of those don't even bring those issues up with their pest control company they just never talk about it yeah there's a there's a lack of communication there they're not reviewing that company poorly so the company doesn't even know that this customer is not completely satisfied and and that's where a lot of traditional and door to door companies are messing up is they don't have that followup and that's one of the things that I have my sales guys do I have them knock on current customers doors yep again we offer other services so there's also some incentive for them to go sell something else to that person but I want them to start that with hey I I really appreciate your business just wanted to come by do a quality control check that's the pitch to a current customer right it's a quality control checkup and it's like okay you sound like you're really happy now I can sell you something else or you're not happy let me make you happy real quick let's fix these issues let's talk to let's talk to Spencer let's talk to the branch manager how can we address this for you we fix it and now you're you're the you're the hero you know um in fact Dave Royce was the one that kind of taught me that a long time ago was I I had a customer that got mad about something that the initial service tech did and I called them I'm like hey man I think I'm going to lose this account account he's like actually you know statistically the best customers aren't the customers who have never had a problem with your company it's the customers who've had a problem and you fixed it the right way yeah and so we've focused on that a lot like I tell everybody in my company my branch manager I kind of take this from Elon Musk that everything that we do in this business is wrong and what that means is I look at everything we're doing today and I say okay that's wrong there's something about it that can be better so tomorrow how do I be better than I was yesterday MH do do you do that at all is that is that something that uh comes up for you you know we we attempt and we're not that great at this but almost using you know Kaizen right that incremental improvement over time um it's the first time I've heard somebody say everything that we do is wrong so I have not looked at it and I'm pondering this as you talk about it so I haven't done that yet I'm going to I'm going to do it I'm going to come back to you on that okay thank you yeah yeah so there's a right way to do this the wrong way is talking trash about the other pest patol company so you know would you then train your people you go to the door somebody says hey I use oron I use Terminex whatever is next question are you happy with their service is that usually where you go with that or no no no that's not that's not where I go with it now because at the end of the day if they are happy with it okay do we have benefits that we can give them that they're not currently getting that's really where we want to get to is how can I benefit you what problem can I solve for you you Paul we we all have problems you I've got tons of problems right and you've solved a lot of problems for me so I'm very appreciative to you for solving those problems for me that's what got me into business with you i' I've referred you other other people because of the problems you were able to solve for me and how you go about that you're an extremely good listener and a big part of cells needs to be listening you have to listen for those problems you've got to be watching seeing their body language did you did you say something that that hit them you know talking about the ants with the neighbors that they were dealing with and they're like oh yeah they might not want to let on to it but their eyes will tell you something about them will tell you that you've been seeing the ants too yeah yeah there it is interesting what would you say from a do you have any anecdotal data on how often accounts get switched over so for us I will say that the majority of the accounts we put on are switchovers really yeah really yeah I'm surprised to hear that although it does make logical sense because somebody that's currently has Pest Control already has demonstrated that they buy pest control services yeah and so uh I'm surprised it's actually an easier sell in my opinion is it yeah and the reason why is because the people especially now budget's a big deal well guess what if you've already got Pest Control it's in the budget it's done it might be a little bit different you might have to adjust your budget a little bit but it's there so you're saying I've got Pest Control you come to my door you're trying to demonstrate the value above and beyond what I'm currently getting and that's a differentiated Services perhaps that's I mean it's like I guess in closing here let I want to kind of rund down an example of this so you come to the door talk to me for a minute I say hey man I've already got Pest Control service you're wasting your time yeah so Paul do you do you have any any problems outside of pest control that I could solve for you again I'm a home services company so it's a little different for me and we've changed that that's that's fixed it a lot that's in increased the amount of switch overs that we've gotten sense because of being able to provide services that these people are looking for and they can do it all under one umbrella they love it so you're saying by the fact that you guys provide these anry Services the actual Pest Control service is now at risk because if you can provide other services they'd be more likely to go with you yeah I learned that honestly I learned that from ABC Pest Control down in Texas you know Bobby Jenkins I had the hardest time when I was knocking doors in Austin switching over ABC customers in fact I had probably 15 20 ABC customers that signed up with Altera that didn't cancel ABC and the reason why is because they didn't want to lose their discounts on all the other services that they were getting from ABC it's all it was and so right now it's if I came to your door and you told me hey I've already got Pest Control get lost awesome well does your Pest Control are they doing just the general pest controller do you have termite service with them mosquitoes you what all do you have with them what are they providing you and then you're going to tell me what you've got and if there's a gap there then I've got an in got it I I'm not getting termite you you might talk to me about Centron or what have you exactly have you ever tried to sell termite as a standalone service on the doors I I we pushed that pretty hard this year actually and I'm interested how did that work it worked pretty good um so Alex one of my sales guys he was the one that did it the best he also had the most experience in door Todo door anyways so the hard part is taking a first year rep and training them all those things so that is a big pain point for us with all the services we offer you can't take a firste guy and say here go sell all of these right now perfect one move on to the next you know and and keep adding in things that you that you've got in Your Arsenal but Alex did a really good job of being able to to break it up and say okay hey look you're happy with your company your cousin does your Pest Control you're not going to leave your cousin right do they have their termite license are they doing your termite for you no actually I don't do my termite he can't do that awesome well look don't leave your cousin let's talk to you about just the just the termite yep and that worked out we got quite a few accounts from that but what about people that don't have Pest Control service now in general would they just do termite on a standalone basis or is that rare so here's the hard thing when it comes to door too anyways is a lot of the door Tod door guys do want to Target brand new neighborhoods because they've got people that just moved in as well so that is the easy side when it comes to non- switch over but as well the people who have signed up with somebody they haven't created a loyalty to them either yeah and so at that point it's a much easier sell but a first year homeowner they've already got termite yeah yeah so that's really tough I see yep interesting well Spencer this a fantastic conversation I think I've gone deeper into the mechanics of door to door with you than I have with any other guests so I appreciate you taking us down that path thanks for doing it yeah abolutely here go you