This year I’ve had the chance to travel the country and check out different pest control operations. I get to meet the owners, the teams, and see how they run things firsthand. On this trip, I headed out to Phoenix, Arizona to spend some time with John Anderson, the owner of Greenhome Pest Control.
John gave us a full tour of his office, we rode along with a couple of his technicians in 117-degree Arizona heat, and we even went scorpion hunting with a black light at 10 PM. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get into it.
John’s office used to be a Terminex location, which actually worked out in his favor. They had a chemical storage cage already built out with proper ventilation, so that was a nice bonus when he moved in.
The layout is pretty simple. The front of the office has cubicles, but most of the staff works out of the back. John’s got two office staff plus Angela, his main office manager, and they like being close together so they can hear each other and communicate easily. He mentioned that, size-wise, they don’t really need all the front space, and he’s thinking about renting it out for a year or two.
Out back is the warehouse. It’s bigger than their last place, which was important because they needed room to pull a truck in for maintenance. All of John’s technicians take their trucks home at night. In a market as spread out as Phoenix, that just makes sense. He’s got a guy out in Surprise who would have almost an hour commute without traffic. You don’t want someone driving that far just to pick up their vehicle every morning. Plus, the techs love it. It’s a selling point, and it saves them gas money.
One thing I noticed during the tour was a bunch of backpacks sitting around the warehouse. John said he got to the point where he was asking his guys, “Why do we have nine backpacks sitting back there? What’s going on?” They went through them, kept two or three good ones, and tossed the rest. The spare parts, though, like lids, strainers, and batteries, those are nice to have on hand.
John’s team uses Flow Zone sprayers, and he told me something I didn’t actually know. The one-gallon models have interchangeable tanks. So if you’re running two or three different products, you just swap out the plastic container. You could have ten different tanks if you wanted. I need to look into that. That’s actually kind of cool.
The Greenhome Story
John’s been in the industry for a long time. He started out knocking doors, did a mission for his church, then came back and knocked for pest control, then switched to home security for about five years.
I asked him what was harder, knocking for religion or pest control. He said probably pest control, because you really have to believe in what you’re selling. And that’s actually why he came back to pest control. With home security, you sell an account and it goes straight to ADT or Monetronics. There’s no real ownership. But with pest control, you’re holding your accounts and building recurring revenue.
He also just believed in the product more. The way he put it: he wasn’t sure he’d actually use a home security system himself, but he would absolutely use pest control. So there was more conviction behind the sale. And he felt like pest control was easier to recruit for, too. Home security is a tougher sale, and not everyone makes it through a summer. With pest control, you’d have to be pretty rough at sales to not sell a summer.
So John partnered up with a buddy and they started Homegard Pest Control out in San Diego around 2010. They ran that for a couple years, but San Diego didn’t feel like home. John’s wife was from Arizona, so they decided to sell. Last minute, his partner bought him out. That guy is still out there today, still killing it.
John started Greenhome in Phoenix in 2012 and built it from there. Those first couple years in San Diego had been 100% door-to-door. But when he got to Arizona, he was getting burnt out on recruiting and knocking doors himself. He had a kid, wanted more balance, and decided to go heavy on online marketing and SEO. He knew he probably wouldn’t grow as fast that way, but he’d already seen the attrition on the door-to-door side and wanted to try something different. His first summer in Arizona, he had a small sales team, and then that was it. He pulled the plug on door-to-door with no real plan, just figuring he’d figure it out. And then he went all in on the website and SEO.
Competition in Phoenix
Phoenix is one of the most competitive pest control markets in the country. John said he used to worry about competition a lot, but he doesn’t stress about it as much anymore. There’s plenty to go around. It’s a huge, growing market with heavy bug pressure.
He made a good observation about how the industry has changed. It used to be just a guy in his truck, or maybe some bigger regional players. Now there are a lot of savvy operators who know how to grow a business and see the value and lifestyle the industry can offer. Competition has gotten tighter over the years. But as long as you stay with the core things that make you who you are and stand out, you can do well in any market.
John was also honest about something a lot of owners don’t talk about. He’s got five kids, and he’s not willing to sacrifice being there for them just to double the size of his business. His company could probably be twice as big, but he’d miss his kids growing up. That’s a trade-off he’s made intentionally.
Dealing with the Arizona Heat
I had to ask how he handles the heat with his technicians, because we were out there for one house visit and we were dying. His guys are in that heat all day, wearing long sleeves and long pants because of the products they use.
John said he addresses it early and often in the interview process. He tells candidates straight up, “You’re going to be hitting 14 homes in 110-degree weather. Are you okay with that?” It’s not for everyone. But a lot of the guys from Arizona just shrug it off. It’s a dry heat. They deal with it.
Since Greenhome is about 95% residential, the technicians aren’t outside for long stretches. Quick stops, then back in the truck with the AC rolling. John also runs some good incentives in the summer. Takes the team to baseball games, picks up their lunch on the company card, and throws some fun stuff their way to break up the grind of a long summer.
Seasonal Rhythm in Arizona
I was curious about how the seasons play out in a market that doesn’t really get winter. John said they do slow down, just not like we do up north. They don’t get snow, but pest pressure drops off a bit, and they’re not putting up July numbers in January. It’s more of a time to sharpen systems and get ready for the next summer push.
What’s interesting is the way their busy seasons layer on top of each other. Summer is the big general pest season. Then in September through November, termite season kicks in because of the monsoon rains. All that moisture loosens up the ground and the subterranean termites come up to the homes. Then as it cools down heading into winter, the roof rats start looking for a warm place to live, so rodent work picks up. It’s actually a smart natural cycle. One revenue stream feeds into the next.
On the Job with Ty
We rode along with Ty, one of John’s technicians, who’s been in pest control for five years and with Greenhome for three. He walked us through a typical residential service.
First up, ants. Ty showed us how ants love to work through pavers and build nests around sprinkler heads, so granular bait is the go-to for that. He also pops open irrigation boxes to check for crickets, cockroaches, and scorpions. The way he described it, crickets and roaches live in those boxes, and then the scorpions show up because it’s like steak dinner to them.
For the perimeter treatment, Ty power sprays the foundation, the garage, and the block walls. In really bad scorpion cases, they’ll dust inside the block walls by injecting through the cracks. The columns on a house act like little apartment buildings for pests, especially scorpions, so Ty sprays at least three feet up and to the sides. When scorpions come crawling through those gaps, they hit the product.
Most customers want the interior of their garage done every visit because that’s where scorpions tend to show up. But for the rest of the house, it’s usually every other service or not at all. Some customers are particular about chemicals because of kids, so Ty focuses his application on corners and entry points rather than blanketing everything.
Scorpion Hunting at Night
One of the highlights of the trip was going scorpion hunting with a black light at 10 PM. It was still 118 degrees. I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous. Scorpions glow under UV light, and they just stand right out. We found our first one almost immediately. That bright glow against the dark ground is wild. The smaller ones are actually the ones that sting the worst.
John told me they used to offer black light inspections and treatments as a service. For homes with really bad infestations, like people who’ve moved in and seen six scorpions in the first week, they’d go out at night, douse the place, and then use the black light to physically find and remove scorpions as they came crawling out.
The thing about scorpions is they can be tough to kill unless you hit them directly and stay consistent. They’re good at hiding and avoiding product. Some homeowners don’t want to wait six months for the problem to go away slowly. So that heavy knockdown treatment at night was a way to deliver faster results for the people who really needed it.
If you get a vacant home with a good-sized backyard, John said, you can find 30 or 40 scorpions in a single yard. That’s just the reality of pest control in Arizona.
What's Next for Greenhome
John said he’s reinvigorated heading into the next five years. He was honest about the fact that the last couple of years have been a bit slower. Between personal stuff, five kids, and taking his foot off the gas a little, growth stalled. The COVID years were actually great for business, but things leveled off after that.
He also acknowledged that what worked five years ago in marketing doesn’t always work today. You have to keep reinventing yourself. And that’s actually what excites him. He didn’t get into pest control because he has some deep love for bugs. It’s the marketing, the sales, and the finance side that fires him up. He goes to work every day happy because of that.
On the personal side, he’s a big believer in balance. Five kids, all active in sports. His oldest is 16, his youngest is turning eight. They spend weekends at the lake, go skiing in the winter, ride dirt bikes. He’s soaking it all up while they’re young.
It was cool to see a guy who’s built a strong company in one of the toughest markets in the country, but who’s also clear-eyed about what matters to him outside of work. John’s a good dude, and the people who own pest control companies in Phoenix look up to him for a reason. If you enjoyed this, keep the conversation going in the comments. We’ll see you in the next one.
