I just got off the mic with Blake Black. He runs Black Widow Pest Specialists out of Connecticut. We met at a big industry expo in Houston and clicked right away.
Blake went from zero to 1,200 customers in three years, and he did it with no SEO and almost no website. That part is wild to me. Here is what stuck with me after we talked.
Blake learned to sell young. He told me about a discount card program he worked as a kid. The runner-up that year sold about 13 cards. Blake sold around 130.
Pest control was even easier for him to sell because he sees it as something people need. A discount card is not. That shift changed how he pitched.
As Blake put it, "I'm doing them a disservice if I don't give them our service versus the other guy if I let them go with somebody else I'm doing them a disservice by not helping them."
I love that line. He is not pushing people, he really thinks he is helping them.
"Say yes and figure it out on the way"
This is the line that stuck with me most. Blake learned it at 21.
"You jump and you learn how to fly while you're in the air," he told me.
He bought a truck he could not afford, then found a way to make more money to cover it. He says going after things before he was ready is what got him moving.
He warned that this can be a bad idea for some people. But for him it works.
1,200 customers, all from referrals
Here is the part that floored me. Blake has no SEO. He can count his Google customers on two hands over three years.
So how did he grow? He builds deals with other companies. He calls pest guys and offers to take their wildlife work, and he calls wildlife guys and offers to take their pest work. He sets up a simple agreement so nobody feels threatened.
He told me about a friend named Bob Scribner who does the same thing. They send each other work almost daily now. Blake also gets leads from animal control officers and even taxidermists. He says opportunities are everywhere if you go looking.
His social media teaches, it does not sell
Blake spends real time on his posts. One post can take him an hour. But he aims to teach, not to sell. He wants people to look and think, huh, I never knew that.
One of his videos hit 2.2 million views on TikTok. It was a bee nest removal. He says he has no idea why it blew up.
Hire the admin first
Blake made a hiring mistake early. He hired a technician first when he should have hired an admin.
He is great with customers but not with the back-office work. That work took him 80 hours when it should take 40. Now he knows his lane, and he even hired a second admin before he needed one. He does not want to get stuck back in a seat he is bad at.
Fix the foundation before you build
Blake spends his slow season on systems, training material, handbooks, the boring stuff most owners skip.
"A broken foundation if you attempt to build on it will crumble and you will have to rip your building back down," he said.
He says that with the right base you can build as high as you want. With bad systems your business stays bad. That hit home for me.
Set goals that scare you
Last year Blake did not break a million. This year his goal is $2.5 million. That sounds crazy and he knows it, but that is the point.
"If I fail I will still hit a bigger number than I would have if my goal was a million," he told me.
He wants to figure out what a $2.5 million business looks like and build that now. Aim high and miss high.
The mindset under all of it
Blake has been through more than most people twice his age. What stuck with me is how he thinks. He does not play the victim.
His advice was to "find the good in every bad situation" and to ask why it is happening "for you not to you."
And when I asked for his last word for new owners, he did not blink. "Be relentless," he told me, "if you're not you'll get beat by one of us."
That is the kind of fire you cannot fake. I cannot wait to have him back.
