Ivan Mardesich gave me a lot to write down.
Ivan owns Nature’s Balance Pest Control in Orem, Utah. He runs it 50/50 with his partner Spencer. Ivan is the visionary. Spencer is the integrator. They run on EOS, and it shows.
We had never met in person. I just saw what he was building online and reached out. The story he told me was wild. Here are the lessons I keep thinking about.
This conversation is part of the PCM Podcast. If you liked Ivan’s buy-in story, you’ll also want to hear how Tony Carder built a $24M pest control company and then did it again.
Ivan started as a tech for Nature’s Balance. One day he asked a buddy who was joining the fire department what he made. It was about the same as Ivan made spraying bugs. That was the moment. He read Rich Dad Poor Dad and went to the owner. He said he wanted in.
The owner needed someone to open up Utah County. So Ivan bought his own truck, his own gear, and his own products. He ran that market as a contractor. He pulled in about 75 customers from flyers, Facebook, and just calling friends.
Then the owner decided to sell the whole company. Spencer was already being set up to buy it. The owner sat them both down and asked if they wanted to buy it together. Ivan was 25. Spencer was 23. The price was about $1.1 million.
They had no money. So they hunted for a loan. It took eight brokers before one said yes. They went the SBA route and needed about $72,000 down, split 50/50. Spencer pulled a HELOC on his house. Ivan had maybe $15,000 to $20,000. His dad took a HELOC on his own house to cover the rest.
People told Ivan it was too risky. He didn’t buy that. “If you don’t take risks, you’re risking not living life,” he told me. I love that line.
“You got to just be professional when you’re asking for money”
The first summer, they decided to run door to door. The old owner had warned them not to. They did it anyway. They hired a sales team of 25 people. To make that work, they needed six figures in the bank by April 10.
The banks all said no. Banks don’t like pest control, and they really don’t like door to door. So Ivan and Spencer drove around making calls and chasing leads. They found a lender in Idaho. The money hit the account on April 9. One day before the deadline.
“That was the biggest relief I think I’ve ever had in my life,” Ivan said. He had carried months of stress waiting on that wire.
He also learned a lesson asking for money with no paperwork. “You got to just be professional when you’re asking for money,” he said. They got it done. That summer they did about 1,300 sales and doubled the company’s revenue.
Set expectations at the door, or pay for it later
That first summer humbled him too. About a month into sales, their reservice rate took off. It used to sit around 3 to 5 percent. It jumped to 8 or 9. Then it hit 14.
The fix was simple but huge. “The initial tech needs to set expectations at the door,” Ivan said. Once the sales reps started doing that too, the numbers got better fast.
He also let his sales leads pick where the team knocked. He called that a logistical nightmare. Good area management matters more than people think.
Doing it in-house taught him the hard way
This year they tried to run the sales program in-house. The sales lead was one of Ivan’s best friends. But he could not recruit. He saw sales as pushy and didn’t want to put that on his friends. From October to January, he signed up one guy.
So Ivan jumped in. As the owner, he had an easier time. People want to work with the owner. He pulled together 10 to 12 rookies plus one guy with three years at Brooks Pest Control.
Then it fell apart. The experienced guy bailed a week before the May 1 start. Day one, the team got one or two sales. Two weeks in, they had about 15 total. The rookies were burnt out. People started dropping off. Ivan shut the whole thing down.
He told me he stuck to a belief in his friend instead of looking at the logic. The signs were there in the recruiting. He just missed them.
Track everyone, even your managers
After shutting down sales, they had to cut costs. They let go of three office people and two techs. Then their operations manager asked for a raise. They said they could do it in November. He wanted it now, so he quit.
That’s when they found the mess. The ops manager had been working about eight hours a week. Six or seven trucks weren’t ready. Some had no oil changes. Backpacks were broken. They had no scorecard on him, so they never saw it.
“I think the management team can take more advantage of you than anybody else,” Ivan said. His takeaway was clear. You need scorecards for your managers, not just your techs.
If you’re coasting, you’re going downhill
After that rough stretch, Ivan and Spencer took a month off. He says now that was a mistake.
“If you are coasting, the only way you’re coasting is going downhill in my eyes,” he told me. When you stop being productive, you get less productive at everything.
That mindset carried into his health too. He started 75 Hard in mid-August and was on day 23 when we talked. He quit nicotine, and he was a big Zyn guy. He even did about $30,000 in production that month while running routes and working out twice a day. The way he sees it, business comes down to endurance.
My takeaway
Ivan is three years into owning this thing, and he’s already packed in a decade of lessons. He bought a company with borrowed money. He won big, then got humbled, then got back to work. What I like most is that he owns his mistakes out loud. He doesn’t hide from them. That’s rare, and it’s a big reason this guy is going to make it.
