I just wrapped up my talk with Jake Claus, and I'm still fired up.
Jake co-founded a pest control company up in the Pacific Northwest, and he's been doing this for about 20 years. He's not new, and he's a heavy hitter. But he's also just a good dude you can kick it with.
We covered a lot, so here are the takeaways that really stuck with me.
People look at Jake today and think he just blew up overnight, but nobody does. Here's how he said it: "I've been doing this for 15 years and maybe the last 5 years you noticed me, but I didn't see the first 12 years where you didn't see me get my face kicked in."
I hear this from new guys all the time. They think they showed up too late, but they didn't. They just see the win and never see the work. Jake said everyone wants the gold medal, but nobody wants to watch the grind that earns it.
Look at his real path. His first summer selling, he put on about 150 accounts, and years later, in 2012, he serviced 500 accounts on his own. That was a big deal back then, before the thousand-door guys. He even walked away from a bad sales company and lost a $35,000 back-end check to do it. None of that looked fast, because it was years of hard, ugly work.
If you're a few years in and feeling tired, that's normal. Keep going.
He started with a truck and his family
When Jake started his own company, he had almost nothing. He moved to the Vancouver and Portland area and knew no one. As he put it, "when we started, it was me, my wife, my three kids, and a truck. That was it. We didn't know a single person."
To get his business license, the state wanted two local references. He only knew his wife's aunt and uncle on the far side of the state, plus one friend from church, and that was the whole list.
He sold his first customer the weekend before he even moved, after meeting them at a family wedding. Then he knocked their whole neighborhood, and by that fall he had about 150 accounts. He earned every single one.
He gives a ton of credit to his wife, Jana, who he calls the secret sauce. They got through the hard years because they both wanted the exact same thing. A scrappy start is fine, but a split vision will sink you.
Your door reps are your brand
Jake grew his company knocking doors for years, and he still believes in it. But he's honest about the risk. "as soon as you put somebody else in your company logo, you put your name right on their t-shirt or their polo, that's you," he told me. "They are you now."
If a rep is rude at someone's door, people don't blame the rep. They blame your company. So Jake trained hard, and not just on sales. He trained on pest control too, because his reps had to know the real work. If a guy lied to make a sale, Jake sent him home.
He told me about another local company that hired an outside crew to knock. Those guys were pushy and burned whole areas, and now that company has lawsuits against it. The owners built the business, and the door crew wrecked the name.
Here's the funny part. Jake's company is now the household name in his area, so when some random rep upsets a person, that person calls Jake's company by mistake. They just assume it must be them. That's annoying, but it's also proof the brand won.
Be great at the product, not just the sale
Jake and his brother-in-law both went and got their ACE certification, which is a high-level pest control credential. They had already collected every state license they could get, so why push for more? Because the sale means nothing if you can't deliver. As Jake said, "you can be really good at sales, but if you suck at pest control, what good does it do?"
He told me that being good at selling but bad at the actual work felt fake to him. You can stack accounts fast, but if your service is bad, you lose them just as fast. Get great at the thing you sell.
Know your role
This was one of my favorite parts, because Jake broke down the three roles in his company. He's the visionary with the big, wild ideas. His wife Jana is the strategist who maps out the steps to get there. His partner Eric is the evaluator who looks back and asks what worked and what didn't.
Jana also kills the bad ideas, and Jake told an old fable to explain it. A bunch of mice wanted to stop a cat, and one smart mouse said, let's put a bell on the cat so we hear it coming. Everyone cheered. Then an older mouse asked one question. Who's going to put the bell on the cat?
Jana is that mouse. A cool idea is not always a good idea, and you need someone who asks the hard question before you waste months.
Goals are kind of useless. Habits are not.
Jake said something that sounds crazy at first. He thinks goals on their own are kind of dumb, because a goal is just a wish unless you build a habit for it.
He told me about his younger brother, who served two tours in Iraq. Over there he just worked, ate, slept, and lifted, and he came back jacked. One day a guy at the pool told the brother he wished he looked like that, and the brother said, "Yeah, man. I used to wish that, too."
That line says it all. The body came from daily habits, not from a wish. So Jake builds habits, not just goals. He lifts four days a week and hits an assault bike for cardio, and he does yoga twice a week to stay loose. He even has a simple test, because he wants to put his socks on standing up until the day he dies. If he still can, his balance and flexibility are good.
He does the same with faith and family. Church on Sunday, and family prayer at night, at set times every week. The goals are big, but the habits are what get him there.
The real goal was time
Jake and Jana set a goal years ago to semi-retire at 45. Not quit, just step back from the daily grind. They did it by building a team they trust. About a year back, they promoted their service manager to GM, and they have a strong office manager too. Now they can look at the business from above instead of running every detail.
Why work so hard for that? His answer hit me. "money doesn't buy happiness, but money buys time and time brings happiness," he said.
That time went to family, and it mattered more than they knew. Jake shared that they lost their 14-year-old son a little over a year ago. In the years before, they were together almost all the time, and he told me that's the one thing he does not regret. They built the business to buy time, and they spent that time on the people who matter most.
If you're grinding right now, ask what you're grinding for. The money is a tool, but the time is the point.
Grow together
One more thing. Jake doesn't act like the work is some big secret. When he started 20 years ago, everyone guarded their playbook and nobody shared. Jake went the other way, because he says the pie keeps growing and there's enough for everyone. He even invites people to come tour his shop.
I love that, because it's why I do this show. We're all in this together, so help people and train your team right. Build habits, not just wishes. And never forget that the grind nobody sees is the part that actually counts.
Thanks for reading. Now go get after it.
