I recently sat down with Couri Leuschner, founder and CEO of Botanical Solutions out of Westchester County, New York. His story is different from every other one we’ve featured, and here’s why. Couri isn’t a pest control operator. He’s a board certified master arborist, a credential that only two percent of certified arborists ever earn. He runs a lawn fertilization and plant health care company in one of the wealthiest markets in the country.
And the Pest Control Millionaires playbook still took him from $400K a year as a solo operator to closing in on $1 million this year with two technicians doing the work.
If these strategies work for a tree and lawn guy in New York, they’ll work for your pest control company. Here’s his story.
Before Couri started his own company, he spent eight to ten years working for tree care companies in his region. He started as a technician and worked his way up to sales arborist, the person giving out the estimates. He also managed a smaller landscape company for a while.
The way he puts it: “I was getting paid to learn my mistakes.”
He worked almost every position except owner. So when he finally launched Botanical Solutions in 2021, he skipped the problems that trip up most new owners. He already knew pricing, CRMs, estimates, and how to train new guys. He hit the ground running with premium prices from day one, which gave him the margin to advertise, buy better equipment, and grow.
Why He Started His Own Company
“I was just tired of working for people.”
Couri wanted autonomy, freedom, and control of his own life. But like most owners learn, the freedom doesn’t show up right away.
His first year was actually fun. He ran the business out of his garage with low overhead, worked three weeks, then took a week off. His second year full time is when things got brutal. He was working five to six days a week, missing family events, and barely seeing his wife. He was making good money, but the family life went to the wayside.
Looking back, he says that second year is exactly when he should have made his first hire.
The Facebook Message That Changed His Business
By his third year, it got worse. It was April, peak season, and Couri was grinding through twelve and fourteen hour days.
He had been listening to Jonas Olson’s podcast, and in one episode Jonas said something like, if you’re an owner struggling with stuff, just message me on Facebook.
Couri’s honest reaction: “There’s no way this dude who owns like a ten million dollar company is gonna respond to me.”
He messaged him anyway. Jonas responded. They hopped on a call, Jonas advised him to join Pest Control Millionaires, and Couri joined. He hired someone fast after that and, in his words, got a little bit of his life back. Today he has two technicians working for him.
I love this story because it shows what one message can do. Couri went from drowning in the truck to building a real company, and it started with him deciding a ten million dollar owner might actually answer.
$400K to $700K to $1 Million in Two Years
Here’s the growth timeline.
Couri’s last year completely on his own, the end of 2024, he did $400K. He joined Pest Control Millionaires in 2025, mid-season, with one technician. That year he ended around $700K, and he says Facebook ads with us was the only lever he really pulled. This year he’s closing around $1 million with two guys in the field.
His words on the program: “It was the best investment I ever made with my business.”
He’s not slowing down either. Next year he’s targeting $2.5 to $3 million because the systems are finally in place, the lead funnels, the follow up, all of it. And long term, he believes his single county can support a $20 to $30 million company. He knows because he used to work for companies doing those numbers in the same market.
Now let’s get into the three lead engines driving that growth.
Lead Engine #1: Strategic Partnerships That Actually Pay
Couri has more than 15 strategic partnerships with landscapers, irrigation companies, and tree crews. These partnerships single-handedly grew his business in the early years, and they still bring in his biggest accounts today.
His first partnership was a landscaper he used to work with. They went separate ways, the landscaper did the landscaping, Couri did the lawn fertilization and plant health care, and they referred each other constantly. When you do right by one landscaper, they recommend you to their landscaper buddies. It snowballs.
Here’s how he finds new ones. New York doesn’t allow fertilizing from the end of November through the beginning of March, so Couri is effectively shut down for three months. He uses that downtime to cold call about a thousand landscapers every winter. It’s a pure numbers game. Most won’t pan out. Some call back three weeks later, which tells you everything about how they’ll treat you in season. But every winter he lands three to five good partners who refer work all year.
His pitch is simple. If I’m on your property, the big companies aren’t there taking the pruning and removal work from you. And since I’m on a spray program visiting three to six times a year, I’ll tell the client to call you when I spot something that needs pruning. Effectively, I’m selling for you. Clients also love seeing their vendors work together on group texts. It’s a win for everyone.
And here’s the part most owners skip. Couri pays his partners $200 for every closed lead through a paid partnership platform called Clicky, which sends automatic weekly text reminders to his partners. Most strategic partnerships are vague handshake deals. Couri turned his into a system with real money attached, so his partners have a real reason to keep sending him work.
One more lesson from him on this. Jake Sheldon always says go for the big whales first, and Couri agrees. But don’t ignore the small guys either. His single biggest client came from a landscaper who doesn’t look professional at all, and that guy handed him an eight acre estate.
Lead Engine #2: The 100 Facebook Group Strategy
This one is my favorite, and Couri gives the program credit for it: “This I learned from you guys.”
In Pest Control Millionaires, we teach members to post in local Facebook groups in a friendly way, not the annoying “buy from me” way. Couri took that idea and ran with it using a Gary Vaynerchuk approach, jab jab jab right hook. Give, give, give before you ever ask.
Every week he posts Talking Trees Tuesdays and Turf Tip Thursdays across roughly 100 local Facebook groups. Not three groups. Not five. One hundred. He services an entire county with thirty or forty zip codes, and every town has multiple groups, the moms group, the newswire, the happenings page. He joined all of them.
The content comes straight from his real work. During his monthly property inspections, he takes notes on what he’s actually seeing, dollar spot on lawns, spotted lanternfly, beech leaf disease. He dumps those notes into Claude, asks it what the top three issues are, picks the one people are searching for, has it draft a post, edits it, and posts it everywhere.
The results are wild. He has what he calls an almost cult-like following. One week he forgot to post while on vacation, and people reached out to his personal Facebook asking if he was okay. When someone in those groups asks for an arborist or a lawn guy, locals recommend Couri by name, including people who have never hired him. A competitor even started copying him with Forestry Friday posts, though he couldn’t stay consistent.
Now the numbers. This strategy brought Couri 40 to 50 clients this year. His average client spends about $3,000 with him. That’s six figures in revenue from about an hour a week of posting, at zero cost. As Mat Rogers in our group calls it, he became five mile famous.
If you’re a newer owner with more time than money, this is where to start. Post a bug of the week. Give real education for free. The posts live forever, unlike ads that disappear the second you cut the spend.
Kirk Slack runs a version of this same play in his market, posting into groups that reach 175,000 people.
Lead Engine #3: How He Lands Clients Worth Hundreds of Millions
Couri’s market has extremely wealthy people, folks worth hundreds of millions and even billions. And as he puts it, “Bill Gates ain’t going on Facebook to find his arborist.”
Every one of his biggest accounts came through strategic partnerships. He works closely with the top landscape company in his area, a business doing about $40 million a year. They partner with landscape architects designing five, ten, even thirty million dollar projects, and they bring Couri in to do the aftercare. He worked on one property where the plants alone were worth $5 million, not counting labor. His job is protecting that investment.
The lesson for pest control owners, especially anyone chasing commercial work: the higher the ticket, the more trust is required. Facebook ads and door knocking are low trust. Big clients hire through people they already trust. Build relationships with the businesses those clients already use, be competent, call back right away, and show up fast. That’s how Couri got properties he’s never even seen the owners of. His biggest clients are third and fourth homes, and he’s never met them in person.
The Service That Keeps Premium Clients
Landing premium clients is one thing. Keeping them is another.
Couri does a monthly property inspection on every client’s property, looking at the trees, shrubs, and lawns. Then he writes a short report: everything looks good, or this tree should be pruned, call this guy, or the lawn has disease and we should treat it.
His line on this is one every owner should steal: “We’re in the customer service business. I just so happen to do arbor care and lawn care.”
High end clients want proactive, not reactive. When he worked for his competitors, nobody did this. They only called when there was a problem. That one habit, the owner or account manager showing up and reporting in, separates him from everyone in his market.
His master arborist credential helps too. A handful of times a year, ten to twenty, people find him on the ISA website, see he’s one of the rare board certified master arborists, and ask for him personally. When they do, he charges a consultation fee, waived if they sign up. That protects his time from tire kickers.
The Mistake He's Fixing Next Year
Couri was refreshingly honest about what he got wrong this year: speed to lead.
He was using Go High Level to send automatic texts to his Facebook leads, then calling them when he had time. The problem is the stats. If you don’t call a lead within about five minutes, your chance of closing drops off a cliff. Facebook is disruptive marketing, so the interest is right then and there. He services the New York area, where people get Amazon packages in two hours. They expect speed.
So he brought in a call center that calls every lead every day for five days. Next year he’s training a virtual assistant to do it in-house for less money and more control.
For pest control, this matters even more. Someone with ants in their house is in emergency mode. Strike while the skillet’s hot, as Couri says.
Couri's Advice for Pest Control Business Owners
I asked Couri what he’d tell the other owners out there. Here’s what he said.
Don’t be afraid to try new things, and track everything. Know what works, and know when to stop doing what doesn’t. He tried three different mailer companies that never got results, so he cut them.
Hire early and get out of the truck as fast as possible. Not hiring soon enough was his biggest mistake. And here’s the mindset shift: your technician can be better than you. Some of his guys’ lawns look better than his own work. “Hire the minute the numbers tell you to hire.”
What Couri Says About Pest Control Millionaires
I’ll let his words speak for themselves.
“It was the best investment I ever made with my business. They teach you from all aspects of the business, from the marketing, which for me was my weakest point, to delegating and building SOPs. It’s not just marketing. Just to have access to Dan, Jake, and Jonas alone is definitely worth the price of admission, let alone all the other content they give you.”
I’ll add one thing. Couri got these results because of how he showed up. For at least his first six months in the program, he was on every single weekly call. The program is the kind of thing where you get what you put into it, and Couri put in a ton. The results show.
He also made an open offer on the show: if you have questions about joining, message him on Facebook or LinkedIn and he’s happy to help. That’s a member volunteering to be a reference. It doesn’t get more honest than that.
Want to Grow Your Pest Control Company?
If Couri’s story hit home, here are two free ways to start.
First, join our free Facebook group. Search Pest Control Millionaires on Facebook and request to join. There are over 4,000 owners in there sharing what’s working right now.
Second, grab our book Zip Code Kings on Amazon. Jonas, Jake, and I wrote it to be the ultimate guide to pest control marketing, covering everything from branding and traditional marketing to local SEO and Facebook ads.
Couri went from twelve hour days in the truck to a million dollar company with a team, in about two years. Your version of that story starts the same way his did, by deciding to reach out.
