This one was different. Travis Bottoms from Nice Pest Control co-hosted with me, calling in from his Tesla, and together we sat down with Gustavo Hernandez. Gustavo runs 1-800-Raccoons out of Queens, New York. He has been in the PCM program for a while and he says he watches every episode of this show.
He also had no idea why we asked him on, and we made him wait an hour to find out. Here is what stuck with me.
This episode is part of the PCM Podcast. For more from my co-host, read how Travis Bottoms got 500 pest control accounts in five months.
Gustavo started working in his dad’s pest control company when he was eight. When he was 16, his dad went blind from diabetes, and Gustavo had a choice. Hang out like most kids, or work every day so the family kept the house, the cars, and the food on the table. He worked.
People tell him he was privileged because his father left him a business. He doesn’t see it that way. “He didn’t leave me a business. He went blind and I had to take it over,” he said. His dad gave him the passion and the technical knowledge, but he never showed him how to run the business. Killing bugs and growing a company are two different jobs, and Gustavo only got taught one of them.
His dad passed away at 62. Gustavo said they were best friends, and that his dad was the one voice that could tell him “you got this” and make the fear go away. That matters later in this story.
The wake-up call
For years Gustavo had one or two techs, paid the mortgage, and never thought about scaling. Two years ago his wife asked him a hard question. You know everything you need to know, so why aren’t you growing the way you want to? His honest answer was that nobody ever taught him how.
Around the same time his health forced the issue. At his heaviest he was 420 pounds, with the same diabetes that took his father’s sight, and the doctors told him plainly that he was going to die. He had gastric bypass surgery. “A lot of people say I cheated. I say I cheated death,” he said. I loved that line. It is the same thing I tell people about anything that gives you a jump start. Momentum is momentum, and once you have it, it is hard to stop.
His goal now is simple. Don’t die at 60, build something he can eventually sell, and be around for the grandkids.
From a possum in a milk crate to 1-800-Raccoons
Termites are Gustavo’s first love, but the wildlife side started by accident about 15 years ago. A big management company called about a giant rat. It was a possum. He caught it with a milk crate, drove it away, and decided there had to be a better way. So he learned wildlife and fell in love with it.
Three years ago he got the chance to buy 1-800-Raccoons, the name, the phone number, and the website, and he folded everything into it. Today the business is about half pest and half wildlife, and he does a lot of sub work for other companies that don’t do termites or wildlife. He has built a reputation in New York that he will never touch another company’s clients, and that gets him a lot of work.
And yes, New York has wildlife. Coyotes, foxes, and a skunk right down the block from the Javits Center that sprayed a whole construction site. His theory is that other trappers release them in the city. Every kind of revenue, I guess.
Pest control in New York is a different sport
I asked how anyone gets around with that traffic, and the answer surprised me. His techs take the train. They park a truck somewhere and ride the subway with their tools all day. Gustavo said if you see a guy walking around Manhattan with a Milwaukee tool bag, there is a 90% chance he is an exterminator. Some guys run their whole city route on a folding e-bike with a backpack sprayer.
Parking is $7 an hour, there are tolls everywhere, and you get a ticket for something on every block, so he stopped pushing for work in the city. He services the clients he already has there and focuses everywhere else. His territory runs from the Hamptons to Westchester, about 60 miles, which is 90 minutes without traffic and six hours with it. So he routes each tech from where they live and keeps them on their side of the map.
The economics are different too. The cheapest house in his market is around $450,000, most of his customers are in the $600,000 to $900,000 range, and a brownstone in Brooklyn goes for $2 to $4 million.
Wildlife starts you at zero every year
Gustavo is at about a million in revenue, and he was clear that he doesn’t want to build a monster. He wants to never worry about a bill again and still get to do the work, because he loves it. Thousands of roaches, a live raccoon in a tight space, he lives for that adrenaline. Travis and I told him there is nothing wrong with a lifestyle business doing $1.8 million and putting $400,000 or $500,000 in his pocket. He is not far from that already.
The problem with wildlife is that every January you start over at zero. There is no recurring base pushing you forward. So Gustavo is converting as many wildlife customers as he can to quarterly service. If they sign up during a trapping job, the initial is free. Once the exclusion warranty ends, he moves it to a monthly charge instead of a one-time fee, because the one-time fee is a fight and $20 a month is not.
He did the same thing with termites. Instead of a big annual renewal, it is $35 a month. The money hits on the first of the month and the customer barely notices it. That is a smart move for anyone who struggles to collect renewals.
The biggest bottleneck is the voice in your head
When I asked about his biggest bottleneck, Gustavo didn’t say marketing or hiring. He said himself. “I’ve always been told that I wasn’t smart, and I’ve always been told that I would be a failure, so I second, third, fourth guess everything I do,” he said.
So I asked him whether he second guesses himself on a raccoon job. He doesn’t. Because he has years of reps doing that. The doubt only shows up when something is new, and that is true for me, for Travis, for everyone. The biggest players in this industry failed over and over on the way up. When I hear that little voice, I lean into it, because it means I am doing something new. I would rather ask for help and look stupid than sit in the same spot for five years.
Travis said the thing I was thinking. Gustavo kept saying he just wants to be okay. “You need to allow yourself to want more than just okay, because you’re capable of more than okay,” Travis told him. Only about 10% of companies in the country ever pass a million dollars. Gustavo is already there. Why not the top 5%? Why not him?
Don't drown in SOPs
His second bottleneck was SOPs, and I gave him the advice I give everyone at his size. Don’t spend months on them, because they will change completely by the time you hit $5 million. Document how you do the actual services, run it through ChatGPT or Claude, make a quick video, and move on. For the office, hit record on a screen share and let the next CSR watch it.
And don’t get caught up thinking your company is the only messy one. I have consulted for a $50 million company and every one of them is messy. Travis put it well. With growth comes mess. The big companies got two or three things really right and the rest was a shotgun blast. Find your niche, stick to it, and double down.
Carrying his father's legacy
Here is why we had him on. The house is a group of 26 operators we bring together for a few days every year, and this year people submitted videos to earn a spot. We watched all of them. Gustavo’s made me tear up, and it made some of the board change their vote. So on the podcast, we told him he was in.
He was speechless for a while, and then he explained something that hit me hard. Since his dad passed, he has been missing the one person who would look him in the eye and say you got this and mean it. His wife tells him she is proud, but as he put it, she has to be.
I know that feeling. The day of my dad’s funeral I wrote down my goals, and 90% of what I am building is so people remember my last name. You can carry a loss like that as a crutch or as fuel. Gustavo has already lost the weight, read every day, and brute-forced his way to a million. The technician mindset is the last thing to shed, and a few tweaks from here will make this business take off like a rocket.
His dad used to say that a day you don’t learn one thing is a day wasted. Book the flight to Dallas, bring a notebook, and ask every question. Nobody in that house is going to think one of them is dumb. You got this, Gustavo.
