Chase Goodeill is the kind of guest I could talk to for hours. The guy runs Pest Control Consultants out of Illinois. Four branches. Around 25,000 active recurring customers. He did 11 million in revenue last year, and he’s now the largest privately held pest control firm in the state.
What got me is how much our stories line up. We both came up the same way. Sales first. Doors second. No fancy playbook. Here’s what stood out.
Chase grew up around pest control. His dad and grandpa ran a company in the 90s. But the thing that set him apart was not the family name. It was the drive. He wanted to win young, and he never hid it.
“Ambition is priceless,” he told me. “I’m so thankful God gave me ambition.”
I feel the same way. If you’re a pest control owner and you want to build something big, you have to want it. Nobody knocks on your door and hands it to you. Chase said it plain: “If I can do it, anyone can do it.” But you have to go do it.
Sales before scale
This is the line that hit me hardest. Chase keeps telling his partners the same thing.
“You got to sales before scale,” he said. “You’re never going to be able to scale a company if you don’t know how to sell a service.”
He learned this the hard way. His dad moved him from servicing accounts into sales in his mid 20s. Chase asked for a road map. There wasn’t one. His dad just gave him the old Jordan Belfort line. As Chase put it, his dad told him to “pick up the phone and start dialing.” When Chase asked when he should start, his dad said, “There’s no greater time to start than right now.”
So that’s what he did.
His cold call system was dead simple
Chase had no training. So he read books and listened to Grant Cardone all day. Then he got to work.
Every morning he’d grab coffee and walk into every business in his service area. He’d trade his card for their card and find out who the decision maker was. He’d do this for eight hours. By 5 o’clock he had 30 business cards.
The next day he called all 30. He found out who they used, when the contract ended, and where they hurt. Then he pushed them to a yes or a no.
The trick was finding the pain. He noticed school districts had problems with roaches but were still paying the big national companies. So he showed up local and asked for a shot. He started flipping those deals one after another. He even walked the main street in his new town and switched every business off their old vendor in one week.
The one question he uses for every big deal
Chase has done 10 acquisitions since 2019. When he was nervous about going all in on one, some peers in the industry gave him advice he still uses.
They asked him if the deal lined up with his goals. As Chase remembered it: “Does doing this deal get you closer to where you want to be in one year, three years, and five years?” The answer was yes. So they told him to stop worrying and figure out how to finance it.
He’s run his decisions through that filter for seven years now. “If something aligns with your goals, I think you should do it,” he said. “If it doesn’t, run from it.” Simple, but it works.
Buying out his dad changed everything
For years Chase sold accounts for his dad and never took a sales commission. He got a raise once a year and a new truck. His buddies pointed out the obvious. He was building a book of business he’d one day have to buy back.
So in 2021 he did. They got an evaluation, brought in accountants and an attorney, and set up a holding company. The buyout runs as two payments a month for 20 years. Smart part is he gets to deduct those payments as a consulting fee.
I’ll never forget his story about signing the acquisition note before that, though. His dad was the majority owner. They sat with the bank president, and his dad signed, looked over, and basically said he hoped Chase knew what he was doing. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
But here’s the payoff. “Once my dad got out of the way, we doubled every year,” Chase said. He grew 60% last year alone.
Partners with skin in the game
Chase can’t be in four places at once. So he brought on partners to run his branches. His brother-in-law in Iowa. His best friend in Wisconsin. His cousin in Springfield.
Every one of them bought in at a fair price. That’s the key. When people have equity, they treat the branch like it’s theirs. Chase gets to focus on the big picture while they grow their market on the ground.
Door to door is here to stay
A lot of owners hate door to door. Chase doesn’t, and neither do I. He got into it when the national crews started knocking his own neighborhood. He figured if they were going to take his customers, he’d go take some back.
His take on the haters was perfect: “Most of the haters don’t know what they hate it because they’ve never done it.”
He’s right. Yes, there are bad door reps. There are also bad cops, bad nurses, and bad teachers. That doesn’t make the job bad. Chase built whole branches off door to door, then layered in digital to scale them. One year he sold 350 accounts himself while still servicing routes.
Stay focused
This was the full circle moment for me. Chase’s grandpa was a great salesman, but he jumped from business to business every few years. The semi company. The pest company. Always something new. He never let one thing compound.
Chase sees the same itch in himself. He talked about maybe going into other industries someday. But he knows the lesson. As his dad keeps reminding him, he’s got a really good thing going. Don’t lose focus chasing the next shiny thing.
And he reminded me of something easy to forget when you’re grinding for that first win. “Your 12th million’s actually easier than your first million,” he said. The early years are the hard part. You lay the foundation, and then the business pays you for the rest of your life.
That’s the part Chase is most proud of. He built his own economy instead of waiting around for the phone to ring. Hard not to respect that.
