I recently sat down with Nick Russler, founder of Honorable Pest Control out of Michigan, and his story is one of the most wild rides I’ve heard on this show. Nick launched his company just about 10 months ago, started from absolutely nothing in a market where he knew zero people, and has already hit $70,000 in a single month. He’s landing contracts with billion dollar companies, running multiple trucks, and doing it all while learning on the fly. His journey is a crash course in what happens when you just refuse to stop pushing, even when things go sideways.
How It All Came Together
Nick’s path to starting Honorable wasn’t exactly planned. He and his dad own a couple of funeral homes, and Nick was actually trying to get himself out of pest control. He was working for a local company and flying once a month to Tampa to help his dad transition a funeral home there. Then out of nowhere, his boss told him he was going to have another technician run things while Nick moved to Tennessee to start a new company.
So Nick thought, why not just buy the company he was working for? He made an offer, but the owner wanted three million dollars, which Nick said wasn’t even worth a third of that. He then approached the next biggest competitor in his area, and they actually agreed on a price. But when they opened the books, the owner’s wife shut it down because most of their revenue was cash and they couldn’t get what they wanted.
Nick was ready to walk away from pest control entirely. Then it happened. He was out on his route, servicing a guy he’d been spraying for five years, and the customer asked him why he didn’t just start his own company. Nick told him he didn’t have the money. The customer said, “I’ll give you the money to start it up.”
They sat down for a couple months, planned everything out, and Honorable Pest Control opened its doors on November 1st.
Starting from a Clean Slate
Here’s what made it even trickier. Because of a non-compete agreement, Nick couldn’t start his business in the area where he lived. He had to launch an hour away from his home, in a place where he knew absolutely nobody. No relationships, no referrals, no reputation. A completely clean slate.
“I have to create my own business started an hour away from my home where I have no friends, I knew absolutely nobody,” Nick told me. Most people would see that as a dealbreaker. Nick saw it as a challenge.
Ten months later, he’s got two other trucks on the road, a front office, and a sales guy. It’s been a grind, with plenty of 100 hour weeks and all-nighters. But it’s working.
Landing the Big Fish
One of the craziest parts of Nick’s story is how he’s landing commercial contracts that a 10 month old company has no business landing. We’re talking billion dollar property management companies with thousands of units. Nick’s approach was bold and simple.
He’d show up at apartment complexes, find the property manager, and pitch it like this. “Can I have your worst unit? Let me show you what I can do for free. Pick whatever you want. Roaches, bed bugs, fleas, spiders. Even five units if you want. How else are you gonna prove yourself?”
One of those free treatments turned into a $400,000 annual contract with McKinley Properties, a company managing 6,000 units across 20 apartment complexes. Nick did this same free treatment pitch at 30 to 40 other apartment complexes too.
“Everybody knows doing a bed bug treatment costs you 10, 15 bucks. It’s just 10, 15 bucks to get a $300,000 contract. It’s worth it,” he said. And the key to landing that big account? Persistence. It took about five months of rotating through property managers, pitching each one about five times before someone finally gave him a shot. Once one said yes and saw the results, they called all the other properties. “It just went like rapid fire.”
The name alone opens doors now. When Nick tells people in his market that he services McKinley Properties, everyone knows who that is. It’s instant credibility for a company that’s less than a year old.
The $50K Marketing Mistake
Not everything went smoothly though. Right when Nick started the company, he hired a marketing agency at $9,000 a month. They handled social media, Google Ads, LSA, his website, all of it. He spent $50,000 on them before pulling the plug.
The problem? His cost per conversion was $300. That might sound okay for big ticket jobs, but at the time Nick was doing a lot of one-time treatments around $290. He was literally breaking even, and once you factor in the cost of chemicals, gas, and his time, he was losing money on every single lead.
“I’m not a marketing guy,” Nick told me. He’s very upfront about that. So when the agency kept telling him the costs were what they were, he didn’t know enough to push back. Eventually he just had to cut his losses and move on.
How the Program Flipped Everything
Nick joined Pest Control Millionaires in June, and what happened next is exactly why he says the program flipped his business upside down, in a good way.
The first big shift was moving away from one-time treatments and into subscriptions. Nick was heavily focused on one-time treatments at $290 a pop, just trying to generate as much cash as possible. Jonas sat him down and changed the approach completely. He raised Nick’s pricing to $500 for initial treatments, then pushed him hard into subscriptions to lock customers in for a year.
But that wasn’t even the biggest change. Nick was charging way too low on his subscriptions. His bread and butter subscription is now $1,100 a year. He was charging $600. He basically doubled his subscription pricing overnight.
“Our conversion to a subscription went up probably 400% compared to what it was before the program,” Nick told me. Just from fixing the subscription structure and raising his prices on one-time treatments to the point where it didn’t even make sense for customers to do a one-time anymore.
Now his go-to offer is what he calls the Honorable Shield. It’s a full home protection plan with bi-monthly treatments year round, mice included, and a full insurance policy on the house if issues come up in between. And the entry point is only $165 to start instead of $520 for a one-time treatment. It makes the subscription the obvious choice.
LSA is His Secret Weapon
On the marketing side, Nick found his groove with Local Service Ads. He’s spending about $9,000 a month on LSA right now and getting leads at around $55 per conversion. That’s a massive difference from the $300 per conversion he was getting with the agency.
And he wants to spend more. Way more. “If I could spend $100,000, I would. Every week I want to spend $20,000. They just won’t take it,” Nick said. Google caps how much you can actually spend based on demand in your market, so even though he’s willing to pour money in, LSA only takes so much. But at $55 a lead, he’d dump every dollar he could into it if Google would let him.
He’s still figuring out Facebook ads, but his wife handles that side along with all their social media. He’s also got referral sheets that he brings out after every single appointment. One side shows what customers can earn for referring people, all the way up to $10,000 a month if they really go for it. The other side asks for a Google review and lets them tip the technician.
Hiring the Right People
Nick’s hiring story is one that Jonas could relate to, because it’s almost identical to Jonas’s own experience. Nick coached high school wrestling for five years, and one of his former wrestlers, a kid he watched grow up, was one of the hardest workers he’d ever seen. Nick wanted him on the team.
The kid had committed to firefighter school. Nick offered him a shot at Honorable on commission only, 20% on all jobs. The kid did $15,000 worth of work in one week. When he saw his check, he did the math. “So you’re telling me I’m going to go be a firefighter and make 50 grand a year and I’m being paid like three grand this week?” He quit firefighter school and stayed with Honorable.
Nick’s not just offering a paycheck either. He wants his people to have equity in the company someday. “This thing’s going to $100 million, whether you’re in it or not. You can either go fight fires, which is cool, I’m not knocking it, or you can become rich.”
He also brought on an experienced technician with about 25 years in the industry, which has been huge. That guy is teaching Nick things he never knew, like mole treatments, and he’s got his 7B certification with termite, which fills a gap Nick didn’t have before.
Paying Himself Almost Nothing
One thing Nick is very intentional about is not taking money out of the business. He made $70,000 in a single month and paid himself about 2% of that. His wife isn’t thrilled about it, but Nick sees the bigger picture.
“Don’t take your money out before you can really see the light at the end of the tunnel. You need to grow this,” he said. Jonas has said the same thing to people in the program. If you’re pulling out $150,000 a year for yourself when you should be reinvesting, you’re not going to grow. Nick is reinvesting almost everything, and it’s showing in how fast Honorable is scaling.
What's Next
Nick’s not slowing down. He’s planning to phase out of apartment complexes over time and shift more toward residential and commercial accounts without units, like restaurants and office buildings. Apartments have been a huge revenue driver, but the callbacks, the unprepped units, and the property manager headaches aren’t worth it long term.
He’s also gearing up for winter in Michigan, which means pushing mice treatments hard and hammering strategic partnerships. And he’s got a sales guy now to help with all of that.
As for his big picture goal? Nick wants to hit $100 million in revenue. He didn’t have that number in his head until he heard Jonas talk about it. “Now I got to do $100 million in revenue. Now it’s just the race to the top. I got to beat him,” Nick told me, laughing. Whether he beats Jonas or not, the mindset is what matters.
Key Takeaways
Nick’s story is packed with lessons, especially for anyone just starting out. First, don’t be afraid to start where you are. Nick launched in a brand new market where he knew nobody, with a non-compete keeping him out of his home area. He still made it work.
Second, sometimes you have to lose money to learn. That $50K marketing mistake was painful, but it taught Nick exactly what not to do and made him appreciate every dollar he spends now.
Third, subscriptions are everything. Nick was leaving massive money on the table with one-time treatments. Once he fixed his subscription model and raised his pricing, his conversion to subscriptions jumped 400%.
Fourth, prove yourself before you ask for the contract. Nick didn’t call up McKinley Properties and pitch them. He showed up, offered free treatments on their worst units, and let the results do the talking. That free $15 treatment turned into a $400,000 contract.
And finally, reinvest everything early on. Nick is barely paying himself, and that’s exactly why Honorable is growing so fast. The money is going right back into the business, and the results are undeniable.
From a clean slate in a new market to $70,000 months in under a year, Nick’s story is proof that when you outwork everyone around you and refuse to quit, this industry will reward you. He’s just getting started.
Want to connect with Nick? You can find him on Facebook by searching Nick Russler, or you can reach him directly at 517-990-7399. And if you’re looking for the same kind of support that helped Nick cut his cost per lead and completely restructure his pricing, that’s exactly what we’ve built with Pest Control Millionaires.
