Joey Mantione on Doubling a $250K Pest Control Company
Table of Contents
- He raised every price and didn’t lose a customer
- Plug the leaky bucket before you buy more leads
- Fix the ad basics before you spend more
- Learning isn’t implementing
- The owner should be the salesperson right now
- Your price only feels high to you
- Grow from the customers you already have
- Monthly subscriptions cancel the most
- Frequently Asked Questions
This one was a new format for the show. Instead of an interview, I audited a member’s company live. Joey Mantione, who a lot of this industry knows as Joey Bugs, owns Pops Pest Control in North Jersey.
Joey came out of landscaping, where he learned a ton from Jonathan Pototschnik’s Lawn Care Millionaire channel. He started tinkering with 25(b) products for ticks, made one Facebook post about tick control, and a bunch of neighbors said yes. He ran tick and mosquito part time from 2023, got his pest license at the start of 2025 and doubled the company to about $250,000 in 2026.
My job on this call was to get him from about $20,000 a month to $50,000 a month within 12 months. Here’s what I found and what I told him to fix, with the numbers, so you can run the same check on your own company.
This episode is part of the PCM Podcast. For more audits like this one, read what I found when I audited five pest control companies.
He raised every price and didn’t lose a customer
In 2025 Joey treated for mosquitoes every two weeks and charged a lot of customers $90 to $100 a visit. “I feel like I was working backwards, charging low and doing more,” he said. For 2026 he went monthly, six applications a season with a $150 minimum, and raised the price on everybody.
The framing made it work. Customers pay about 50% more per visit, but he comes less often, so they pay less overall, and they still get callbacks and priority service before a party. He had 125 customers when he made the change. Nobody pushed back, nobody left, and callbacks went down, which he credits to his product.
The customers paying the least are usually the ones who complain the most. Joey’s market has money. Charge the premium, be the top-tier company in your area and put the extra profit into marketing.
Plug the leaky bucket before you buy more leads
Then, after a fast start, the cancellations hit, one or two customers a day, mostly on mosquito. “It was a leaky bucket,” he said. So he held off on ads and worked on keeping the customers he had. That was the right call. Lifetime value is everything.
He found two reasons. The first was customers still seeing bugs, which Joey reads as expectations he set poorly. “When you’re selling somebody, you’re selling the dream outcome. You’re selling no bugs,” he said. Mosquito control is a reduction service. If we could get rid of every mosquito, there wouldn’t be any left in the world. So walk every new customer through the program and explain how callbacks work. The second reason was price, in the middle of the season. “It’s not that the price is too high, it’s that we’re not providing enough value,” he said.
He announced the change by text at the start of the season with a discount to prepay, and about 30% to 40% paid in full. I love paid-in-full customers. I don’t love a spring letter with a price increase in it, because it gets people thinking about canceling right when they shop around. TruGreen sends its prepay offers at the last service of the year, while customers are still happy. There are pros and cons to both, but when I raise prices, I’d rather the new price just show up on the invoice.
Fix the ad basics before you spend more
Joey ran Meta ads for general pest at about $100 a day for a little over a week and got more than 100 lead forms. About 95% of them spoke Spanish and had no idea what he was talking about. Facebook had offered to run the ad in other languages, and he left Spanish on because his VA speaks it. Turn the others off and run English only.
Then speed. Joey had an automatic text going out the moment a form came in, but he wasn’t tracking how fast anyone called. At Pest Badger, 90% to 95% of Facebook forms come from phones, and people move on within minutes. My goal for my team is to call every lead at least twice in the first five minutes and leave a voicemail, because most people won’t answer a number they don’t know. Joey had started double calling and saw “a very noticeable increase in how many people answer the phone.” Our full routine is in why you’re losing leads in the first 10 minutes. Closing 20% to 30% of Facebook leads is good. We run around 22% to 25% on qualified leads.
For Joey, the best ad dollar is probably Local Services Ads. His leads cost a little over $100, but he only gets one or two a week, and he has about 60 Google reviews. Small local companies near him have about 80. Get to 150 as fast as you can, add good photos to your Google Business Profile every week (we do it every Tuesday) and answer every call, because Google sends fewer leads to companies that don’t. Joey had heard Mat Rogers say the same thing. We hit a 99% answer rate the month before we recorded this.
Learning isn’t implementing
Where does Joey’s time go? His honest answer was four to six hours a day on Claude and YouTube. “I’m addicted to learning,” he said. So am I. But if you don’t implement, there’s no point. He already knows how to get leads and sell.
He told me he needed a VSL, a video sales letter. He’s getting two LSA calls a week, so his company isn’t big enough yet for that to make a difference. “Holy cow. I never thought of it like that,” he said. Most of us do this. We get so busy fixing the company that it never gets the chance to grow.
Here’s what I do. Every new idea goes on a list, and if it’s still there a month later, my team gets it. Every day I pick three tasks by asking what three things I can do tomorrow to move the needle at Pest Badger, and I get them done whether they take 10 seconds or 10 hours.
So we made a deal. Claude gets one hour a day, and the other four to five hours go to networking, meeting people and talking to neighbors and customers. I’m holding him to it until PestWorld, about six weeks after we recorded. One account a day is enough. At $1,000 a day in sales, that’s $45,000 by then.
The owner should be the salesperson right now
Joey’s VA answers the phones, handles customer communication and collects payments. With his higher prices, Joey planned to go out and inspect in person, because he thought he’d close more face to face. For an exclusion, bed bugs or termites, sure. For general pest, sell it over the phone. At Pest Badger our initials are $300 to $400 and we still close over 70%, with some reps over 80%.
So send the sales calls to Joey. If he spent 8 to 10 hours a day on sales alone, riding along with his tech, talking to neighbors and upselling customers, he’d sell $4,000 to $6,000 a day. That’s $20,000 a week at the low end. Joey is already out of the truck most days, so it’s time to start building his second route.
Leads that don’t close get two days of follow-up, then a knock on the door. Think about how many unclosed leads and canceled customers are sitting in your CRM right now. And role play with your office every day. Joey never had. Take the top five or 10 questions that come in and practice them for 20 minutes a day. “It’s so simple, but I don’t do it,” Joey said.
Your price only feels high to you
Joey’s initial is $399, and he admitted he overthinks walking up to someone with a price that feels high to him. “That might just be a limiting belief,” he said. He’d heard of a company near him charging $650 and couldn’t wrap his head around it.
But you can’t sell based on what you make. So many companies charge $400 to $600 for an initial. In North Jersey there are dual-income households pulling in $350,000 to $400,000 a year, and $150 a service means nothing to them. Not letting them know what you offer is doing your family a disservice. And if you don’t have conviction in your own product, there is zero chance you’ll teach anyone else to have more.
Friends and family expecting a hookup didn’t help. I don’t even charge mine. I’d rather do it for free than discount. And do the margin math. At 20%, a $100 service puts $20 in your pocket and a $400 one puts $80 there.
Then deliver the price and stop talking. Joey’s line ended with “How does that sound?” and then came the silence. “It gets so awkward, dude,” he said. After the price, the first person who speaks loses. All the value goes before the price, which Joey already knew from Alex Hormozi. When someone asks how much it costs, get excited, because that’s a buying question. Try “No sweat. It’s just $399. Do you like to use credit or debit?” You’ll be bad at it the first few times. Everyone is.
Grow from the customers you already have
Joey has 225 to 250 customers who don’t all know what else he does. If 10% add a service worth about $800 a year, that’s around 20 customers and $16,000 a year, and you already paid to get every one of them. Email and text the customers on that week’s schedule, then ride along and ask in person. Joey’s idea was to tell mosquito customers whose last service is in September that he’ll give them October and November free if they sign up for general pest.
On every stop, look for the next problem, like mouse droppings, a gap along the foundation or a wasp nest in the eaves. If it’s a service you don’t do yet, like bats for Joey, refer it to someone who does and send work back and forth. Lawn care companies that don’t do pest make great partners, and we team up with them in every new market. I go deeper in my guide to pest control upselling and cross selling.
Then knock the neighbors. Say your tech has 10 stops a day and you knock five doors around each one. That’s 50 doors. Talk to 30 people, close 10% and that’s three deals a day, or $2,400 a day at about $800 a customer. Joey runs 10 to 12 stops a day and had never thought of it. Ask every customer for names, too. Joey already pays $75 per referral through Clicki and gives the new customer $50 off the first service.
Monthly subscriptions cancel the most
At the end Joey asked me something he’d been chewing on. Everybody says monthly subscriptions keep customers longer. He doesn’t believe it, and he changed his whole business because of it. I agree, and not because of a hunch. I heard the data, saw it and checked it against our own. Our subscription customers canceled more.
Alex Hormozi’s team looked at over a billion dollars of revenue. Monthly subscriptions had the highest cancellation rate, around 12.5%. Quarterly billing was around 6%, and prepaid was the lowest at 2%. People have apps now that make canceling easy. When I saw that data at lunch, I called my COO and said we were going back to quarterly billing that day for every new customer.
That’s why I like prepaid so much. The odds a door-to-door rep switches someone who already paid for the year are slim. Just be disciplined, because $15,000 that comes in during the spring can disappear fast. Otherwise I like pay per service with a card on file, charged as soon as the service is done. And if you sell subscriptions, whoever takes your cancellation calls has to be good, because a save might mean taking a bundle from three services down to one.
Now go sell, Joey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Joey Mantione?
Joey Mantione, known in the industry as Joey Bugs, owns Pops Pest Control in North Jersey. He started doing tick and mosquito control part time in 2023, got his pest license at the start of 2025 and doubled the company to about $250,000 in 2026.
Is monthly or quarterly billing better for pest control?
Quarterly billing keeps more customers than monthly subscriptions, and prepaid keeps the most. In data from Alex Hormozi’s team covering over a billion dollars of revenue, monthly subscriptions canceled at around 12.5%, quarterly billing at around 6% and prepaid at 2%. After I saw that, we went back to quarterly billing for every new customer.
How do you give a price on a pest control sales call?
Put all the value before the price, then say the price and stop talking, because after the price the first person who speaks loses. When someone asks how much it costs, that’s a buying question. Try “No sweat. It’s just $399. Do you like to use credit or debit?”
How can a small pest control company grow without more ads?
Start with the customers you already have. If 10% of 225 to 250 customers add a service worth about $800 a year, that’s around $16,000 a year. Then knock five doors around every stop, because 10 stops a day, 30 conversations and a 10% close is three deals a day.
Full transcript
Every word of the episode, from the video captions
It was a leaky bucket and it was not just like oh we lost a couple customers here and there. It was like all at the same time and it was like day after day we were losing one two customers. We're so busy fixing the company that it just never gets to grow organically ever.
We had over 100 Facebook lead forms and [music] 95% of them spoke Spanish and they had no idea what I was talking...
But my job is to get you from 20K 25K to 50K over the next 12 months. All right. So today I get to st down with Joey Mantione. Joey, we got to know each other a little bit more at PestWorld last year, which is pretty cool. You came in just guns blazing. It's really cool. I enjoyed your spirit there. Lots of energy. Brought a lot of energy to the house. You soaked everything up like a sponge. But it's really cool. But for those of you who don't know Joey, Joey Bugs, I think most people in the pest control industry probably do know Joey Bugs, but if they don't, they're going to now. So Joey, welcome to the show. First, what why did you get into pest control?
It's a good question. So take a couple steps back. I was in landscaping when I was younger and I loved being in the home service industry. A mentor of mine. I would call him a mentor as you do, JP Jonathan Pototschnik. He was running that Lawn Care Millionaire YouTube and I learned so much from this dude. It's crazy. Long story short, I learned a ton from him. I loved home services. I get out of landscaping. I sell that business. I get into some other businesses and I always wanted to come back to the home service field. Didn't know what to do. We have a lot of ticks here in North Jersey. So, I started looking up business ideas and I found out that in New Jersey, you don't need a pesticide license to apply 25(b) products. So, I started tinkering with 25(b) products.
I had like a system for how I would do tick control. And then I'm like, you know what? Let me just see if there's a demand for this. So, I made a Facebook post. Bunch of neighbors said like, yeah, let's let's try it. Let's see. It ended up being pretty successful. So, I did it part-time, just ticking mosquito for like two years. And then I met a local guy named Tom. He's in the industry in my area. And he's like, "Joey Bugs, you got to get into pest control." He's like, "This is where it is. This is where it's at." So, I took his advice. I took the test, took the exam. I passed and here I am.
That's awesome. And what year was that? So, I got into I got licensed in pest last year at the beginning of last year. So, last year was my first full-time year in pest control.
2025 was your first year pest control.
And pretty much up until that point, what year did you start doing mosquito? Was that 20 or was that...
23. Yeah.
And you're using all 25(b) products just doing mosquito alone? I don't need to go too much into detail, but how how are the 25(b) products working? How they hold it on for you?
I'm still using them to this day. We only do mosquito control with 25(b) products. So successful.
Gotcha. So I'm assuming you're using like cedar oil, things like that.
Yeah, there there's a small percentage of cedar oil. I will say at PestWorld last year, I met a company Eco Venture and they have a product called ER3. It's a bunch of different essential oils blended up and I have amazing success with that product. If anybody's looking to get into the 25(b) stuff, Eco Venture ER3, highly recommend it. It's unbelievable.
And what is your sequence of services? Is every 3 weeks, every 30 days? What are you doing?
When I was doing it part-time, I started out doing every 21 days because it seemed like that was the industry...
Then I was like, you know what? Let me see if I could do every two weeks and see if people would still pay. And last year I did every two weeks, but I was charging a very low rate. And then I didn't I feel like I was working backwards, charging low and doing more. So going to PestWorld, I learned it's not the way to do it. So I switched to monthly, raised my prices. I got no push back and we have less call backs this year going monthly than we did bi-weekly. And I think that's because of the product really holding up well.
I'll touch on that in a second. So give me what were you charging last year? And it's okay. Like just be open.
Yeah. Yeah. So, a lot of customers were were around $100, if not a little bit less, right? Maybe like between 90 and 100 bucks.
Okay. That's not not terrible. And that was bi-weekly roughly.
Cool. And then what are you charging this year at monthly? That's kind of like our our minimum. And did you raise the prices on all those customers from last year or even be...
Raise prices change the service level and hardly any push back?
No push back. Zero. Not not one. But...
I also I watched a lot of Alex Hormozi. So I changed like the perceived value behind it, right? I said to people like, "Yes, we are we are going to be coming less, but you're going to be paying less overall, right?" Because they're paying 50% more per service, but we're coming less. So either way, they're saving money, right? We frame it as they're saving money and then they're getting extras on top of it, right? They're still getting callbacks if they need it. They're still getting, you know, priority service if they're having a party or whatnot because they're long-standing customers. So, no, I got no push back. Zero. I lost not a single and I think I had 125 customers at the...
Love that.
Just doing some math over here off top of my head. And then so [clears throat] you made that switch and then you go to monthly. You didn't get any push back, raise prices, you're making more profit. You're driving basically less. You're you're making two you're making $50 less, but you're saving a visit. So you're still have a lot of drive time.
Callback's reduced. And now let's talk about that. I at first I was going to say typically when you charge a lesser price, you're going to get a lesser quality of customer and they're just the type. So basically what I'm saying is like the cheaper you sell services, the more people complain. That's just how it works. Always people who complain is who pay the least amount of money. Bend over backwards to the customers and they're still not happy. And if you people pay that'll pay $150, $200 a month for the same service are less likely to complain. But that's not the case here. It's the same customer. So what is the difference? You think is [snorts] it the perceived value? Like hey, like what do you think that is?
Yeah, I think perceived value has something to do with it. But to be honest, I really do think this I give a lot of credit to the product. I mean, it's the same technician doing the applications. It's the same technique we use. The only difference is the product and the frequency. Because it's the same customers at the end of the day, right? I raised the prices on everybody. So I would have thought that too. But now that changed my whole perception on pricing. So I went down a rabbit hole on pricing this year as as well with...
And you know like obviously I fell really close to and so it's just like charging the premium be the top tier company in your area and people are willing to pay. You don't get any push back and you get better customers typically. And so that's what I would recommend for you to do is you're in a really good market, you have, you know, extra income out there. So I would definitely charge a premium for sure. And it's just easier to scale that way. You know what I mean? You have extra profit at the end of the day. You have more money dumping ads, marketing things that you're doing. I'll talk about social stuff here in a little bit. But yeah, I like what you're doing. You said beginning last year, you were roughly about 125k, right?
Going into world. Cool. And then this year you basically doubled that going to 250 in 2026. What's the goal for...
I really want to want to hit between 600 and 700 customers.
600 700 customers. Cool.
Average how many you doing? Like eight applications roughly?
We're doing six and then potential potential upsell to seven and eight if the weather calls for it. Cool.
And with that 600 to 700 customers, do you want that? Is that going to be mainly mosquito or be more pest control? What do you think in there?
Yeah. So, the reason I picked 600 to 700 is because that's two roughly two full-time technicians and most of that should be general pests. That's really my goal.
Gotcha. And so, are you doing bimonthly or quarterly out there?
We're doing quarterly.
Cool. What's your average ticket? Average ticket.
Yeah. What you can price What are you going to price your quarterlys at?
Yeah, we're we're between like $210 and roughly, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I think the minimum is like...
Cool. So it's basically if you get 600 customers at that 225 it's 504,000 roughly on top of what you already have or is that all included? I'm assuming all included. Hey, so you go from 250 to 500ish 550 correct you want to double again?
I like that. What are you going to have to do different from this year to next year to go from 250 to 500? What is Joey What do you think Joey has to do differently? Yeah, I think I have a pretty clear idea. So, this year I focused on the foundation of the business. I did not focus on scaling. Nail it before you scale it is what I'm going for. This year I'm nailing the model. Next year I want to scale. So, my focus is going to be on marketing, advertising, social media, you know, meta ads. Hold up, quick pause. If you're running a pest control company or fertilization we control company, you're not in our Facebook group. You're choosing the harder path. Every operator that's in there is skipping years of mistakes because people are actually sharing what's working right now. So, stop trying to brute force your way through growth alone.
Search Pest Control Millionaires on Facebook or click the link below. And now, let's get back to it. Cool. [snorts] I like that. How much of did you do any meta ads this year?
I did a tiny bit. I did a little bit last year after PestWorld in the winter. I did some for like mice and rats when it was slow. I did a little bit this year for general pest, but my settings were a little off. So, I talked to Jake and he helped me out with some of that. But I noticed that this year we grew pretty fast, but [snorts] then we started losing customers. There there came a point where we started losing customers and it was not just like, oh, we lost a couple customers here and there. It was like all at the same time and it was like day after day we were losing one two customers...
On the mosquito side or the pest control...
On both to be honest. More on the mosquito side because that's where a majority of our of our client base is. But we had a lot of holes in the bucket. It was a leaky bucket. So I didn't feel like now was the time to spend more money on ads when when really what I want to focus on is customer retention. Yeah, Agreed. So, when you were tracking those retention calls, people were cancelling. What was the main reason for them...
LTV is everything.
So there were there were two main reasons and one of them was that they were still seeing bugs. I think that that's not really accurate. I think that what they mean by that is like we set expectations poorly. So,...
Like you're saying that you were gonna get rid of all their mosquitoes that I could have or it's a reduction service. Not Yeah.
Right. And I guess maybe we didn't say it that when we when we signed them up, but when you're selling somebody, you're selling the dream outcome. You're selling no bugs, right? So whether that's mosquitoes or notic and it's just not realistic. So now we have a process around setting expectations.
It's still I mean still in the works.
Yeah. That customer calls in. You walk them through the program exactly what it looks like. You tell them like, "Hey, it's a reduction service. We can't eliminate all bugs. Of course, we can't eliminate all mosquitoes. If we could, there would be no more mosquitoes left in this world." And that's just not right. I'd be a very rich man.
You would be. But that's just not the case. So setting expectations from start to finish like what the expectations are, if they need a call back, explaining the reduction service, I think is smart going forward. That way you're setting the expectations up front and that way they don't have you won't lose as many customers on the back end because they the expectations weren't so high. Right.
Right. [snorts]
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I [snorts] like that, too. And then from there, is there any Okay, you said there was two. So, the first one was maybe setting the expectations wrong. They're never going to see mosquitoes...
The second one was The second one was And I don't I don't look at that.
Go ahead. [clears throat]
That that Yeah. So this year we had cancellations mid year because of price and I look at everything like it's my fault, right? So I look at that and I'm like well...
It's not that the price is too high, it's that we're not providing enough value clearly, right? Because I mean there there's just many arguments to show that that's the case. And now it's like okay, we set expectations properly. That's one thing that we fixed. Now, it's like, how can we increase the value or the perceived value of this service? So, I've been playing with that a lot, right? And there's just so many ways to do it. Like Alex Hormozi, he talks about speed. That's a huge value ad right there. Like, if they have a problem and you're there same day, like that's unbeatable. There's a reason why Amazon is king because next day deliver same day delivery on some things, right? So, it's like how can we incorporate these things like how can we lower the time to the dream outcome?
How can we make it faster? And I know it's not always possible with with pest control because products have to take their time and do the work. But there are ways to frame it better than what we did in the past.
Yeah. And I would just say like going back to setting expectations and then obviously you're a firm believer in your product and so you said at the beginning like no one really canceled because of price but they did just later on the season because they maybe they didn't really realize what the price was going to be until the middle of summer or however they may be. Did you send out a like a letter like a they're going to raise prices or you just put on their...
No. So I sent everybody a text message at the beginning of the season. And I just said, "Hey, look, last year, you know, everybody got this. It was bi-weekly, and this year, you're you're all going to get six applications. It's this much for the season." Then I even put a prepaid discount in there. And I said, "Hey, look, if you prepay, you're you're paying you're already paying less than last year, but if you prepay, you're going to pay much less."
So, we stacked a pretty good amount of...
This doesn't ask you what percentage piff for you. I paid in full, would you say? I would...
This is super like for all the pest control people like this is super common in lawn care mosquito right send a prepaid letter to begin the spring you can add price increases you can add prepayment discounts like paid and full discounts but what percentage did...
Prepaid probably around 30%...
Nice maybe a little bit higher maybe closer to 40 but...
30 40,000 bucks in early spring...
Which I do like and I don't like at the same time I don't like it because, you know, I like it because PIFs are nice, right? What I don't like is like I've raised prices so many times in my career, Joey, that I don't send out a techn invoice like...
Even like no other like for whatever reason, our industry, blue collar industry, they go that way, but no one else in the cross planet does. Like no one does. They just like...
No one not a single person, not your cable bill, no one has cable anymore. So that's probably bad. But like Hulu, whatever, they're not no one's going to tell you that they raise prices. Raise price and you pay for it.
That's the one reason I don't like it because then it gives time people time to find someone else too. So with that being said, the most people are going to look for someone new at the beginning or in the offseason, right? They're not gonna they're not going to look for someone typically during season because they're already locked in. You already have service unless they're super unhappy. Most often though, they're gonna they're going to cancel fall time or springtime,...
And so, one of the reasons that I don't like it gets them thinking about it early and some people want to cancel. The flip side of that would be like, okay, well, True Green sends out like example, True Green sends out all their prepays the last service of the year. So, like you get your last service in September, October, you're going to get your renewal for next year, which is good because if you're still happy, you're going to renew then.
So there there's pros and cons both. I'm not a huge fan of it for those reasons. Especially with the price increase, I'd just pull send and have it go back on their invoice. So that's what I would say there. So one was cancellation was because price. So some people end up canceling because of price. Maybe they weren't happy with service days, which whatever. Right. Right. You're always have you're always going to have some term regardless just...
We're not none of us are perfect,...
So meta ads, let's go back to that because I wrote that down. Mhm.
You said you tried some stuff in the fall last year, winter when it was getting slow. Tried some in the spring. Said targeting is off. Let's talk about that a little bit. [snorts] what were you spending on ads? How many leads came through? And what do you have to do this year to get to from 250 to 500?
Yeah. So this year when I did the ads they it gave me the option at the end when I was like picking the creative to advertise to different languages and I was like hm I don't I don't recall this being here last year. So I looked at it and I'm like all right turn off all these languages that I you know clearly don't don't think there's much of a market for in my area. But I'm like, Spanish? You know, there's a lot of people in North Jersey that speak Spanish. I'm like, you know what? It can't hurt. Let's just so, you might ask, why why did you why did you do that, Joe? I have a VA that speaks Spanish,...
Got it.
So I wasn't relying on myself for that. But, I kept them on...
And I was spending maybe like a hundred bucks a day. And it wasn't it wasn't very long. I maybe a little bit more than a week. And we had over 100 100 leads Facebook lead forms and I'd say 95% of them spoke Spanish and they had no idea what I was talking about when I called or when my admin called they like no we didn't click on anything we have no idea we don't have any bug problems here so I'm like all right let's just let's just hold off on it then at the same time we started getting like some cancellations so I'm like you know what let's just hold off on this and then let's let's deal with the leaky bucket and then come back to this when the time is right.
So next year what I think I have to do is again another hormosy thing is focus on organic content and then use what organic content is successful as an ad and just put a CTA at the end. Like I think that's just the most simple and the most effective way to do it when you don't have unlimited marketing dollars. You know, and then also being in the Pest Control Millionaire course, you know, you guys really hook us up with some cool creative ideas. So, I think I'm going to take some of those, take some of my own organic stuff, and I think we should be off to the races.
It's almost like I paid you to do that, but I didn't. I didn't.
Yeah, he did not. No, he did not tell me. [laughter]
I got to make the plug because you guys are you guys are like fantastic. Like, you help me so much. Why wouldn't I say it? Yeah, that's awesome. Appreciate it. So let's stick on meta ads. Yeah, I don't mind the idea because you already have the creative there. You're already doing it. Obviously, you know, now that you have to turn the Spanish off because you don't speak...
So it's hard to sell Spanish people when you don't speak it. Hard to service them when you don't speak it. Although, it's possible. You have apps these days that I've ran into to people on the doors back in the day like didn't speak English, so I just use Google Translate and translate it. And it does work. It's just not the easiest. So, yeah, just make sure to turn off all the Spanish speaking l or all the languages, only English. And then did you have a follow-up process at the time or were they just coming into Facebook and you were just going in there finding the leads and calling then?
Good question. I did not have a follow-up process set in stone. I just said to my VA, "Call them as many times as it takes and text them and do whatever you have to do to get them to respond. Once they respond, if you find out that there's they're not a lead, don't worry about it. If they show interest, then continue the follow-up process until they buy or tell you to just leave them alone. Probably not the best way to do it, but...
I'll go back just a little bit. Like, so when when they fill out the [snorts]
Right, do you have something that autoresponds or was your VA just going into Facebook and looking?
Good good question, too. So, I have Pest AI and I set up a workflow that they would fill out the lead form. They'd get a text message immediately saying, "Hey, this is Joey Bugs. Just got your your message. We're going to reach out to you within the next couple minutes." Then I would get a text message and an email. My VA would get a text message and an email and then she would follow up. And if she wouldn't follow up, I could see and then I would follow up.
Yeah. So, with Facebook, do you know what your speed to lead, rate was? Like, do you know how fast you were contacting that customer?
I don't know.
Or no, are you tracking that?
I don't know exactly. I'm not tracking it.
Cool. That's something that, you know, when you do turn some Facebook ads on, just make sure like obviously you have a speed lead funnel in there with with past AI and their follow-up autoresponder. And the people that respond, some people like it's Facebook, so some people just don't respond, spend three or four messages and then you just get ghosted. Those are not quality leads in my opinion, but it's people who start...
Making sure that those get contacted ASAP. So, my goal is with my team is to try to sell or try to call every single one of those minimum of twice within the first five minutes.
So, it's speed lead super important because you got to think about it, right? Like they're on their phone, they're scrolling, right? They see an ad, Joey Bugs, and like, "Oh, this is cool. Oh, I need I don't really need pest control. Not really thinking about pest control, but this ad's pretty cool." And they're like, "Oh, wait. I'm going through this." I'm like, "I do have that mosquito problem." Cool. So, I'm going to fill out the form real quick and I don't know if you like I don't want to go in whole random Facebook ads right now, but I don't know how much friction you have in there. You go through, they fill the form, it's autofill. They hit a couple buttons. Next thing you know, they're scrolling through, right? But at that time, we know that they're on their phone.
I mean, I think 90% of or 95% of the people who fill out a Facebook form for us are all on mobile. Maybe it's more than that.
Mobile. Yeah.
And so they're on their phone, you know, they're scrolling. So you have like that short window for jump off their phone to go do the next thing. And maybe they'll be there for five minutes, maybe it's three minutes, but if you're like myself, like I'm just I don't scroll, so I just whatever. Oh, you I'm a bad example again. They're scrolling and they're like, "Oh, they're busy. They got to go run and grab their kids or whatever that may be or go to work or get off of lunch break or whatever that thing may be." So, you all all say like you just have that short window where you have to immediately be calling them. So, if your VA gets that text, make sure that she is immediately calling them in the first five minutes,...
So, if they don't answer the first first phone call, like 90% of people, as probably you and I are both the same way, someone calls me that isn't in my probably not going to answer it,...
Right? Like I'm just screening that call. So then from there, double call, right? So I call back again. Oh, this person's calling me again. Okay, why is this person called me twice back to back? It's a little bit more important than I thought. And that's a proven fact that 70% of the people who get called the second time will answer. So make sure you double down there.
We did implement that and there was definitely a very noticeable increase in how many people answer the phone.
And then just make sure you leave a voicemail. Right.
Right. Make sure you're leaving a voicemail so that they know that, hey, this person called me twice. He left a voicemail and he has auto text going out there. But it's Facebook, right? So, you have to follow up like you said, talking with the VA, like it's relentless. And if you can close anywhere from 20% to 30%. I've seen people like 42% which is crazy. I wish I could. But even we can't get there, but we're like 25% 22% qualified leads, right? So, I'll just say like make sure you're following up religiously with Facebook leads. So yeah from there let's go to more on social but you said you wanted to put more more effort into content which organic content which you have done this year you've done a lot better job.
Obviously I've noticed you know all the people have noticed. My first question though for you is of all the content that you've done,...
How many leads do you think you've got from your organic content?
Less than 10. Well, okay. I did one thing organically that that did get me quite a bit of leads. I ran a giveaway and it was all done...
Cool. Without the giveaway less than less than 10 pro probably even like around five and I probably sold all of them. There were probably people within my circle of influence that didn't know I was doing pest control. They found out and they hired me. But the giveaway did very well organically. So we I think we had 40 something leads from that...
From the giveaway. That's cool. I like...
I was just pulling up your account just your IG. So, I was just going through it, because again, [clears throat] not that you shouldn't do organic content because you need to...
Just seeing what you're posting and stuff like that...
Because you just have to show that your business has a pulse I've had I've had view like I've had videos do tens of millions of views and hardly any people converted,...
And I've right...
Right? So, it's like make sure you're being very diligent on your targeting and just tagging, you know, your specific areas that you're servicing and make sure to check your local friends to share it.
You have some local influencers that'll help you share it, things like that that you can work out an agreement with them. I think it's a good play for you, too, because again, you're you're at 250 going to 500. It's not like you said, you don't have a massive budget to even put into Facebook leads.
So, you're going to do as much organic stuff as possible. Like you said, the free giveaways, maybe work with a few influencers in area, get them to share your content, maybe you run a campaign with them where you're getting giving them 50, 100 bucks or 200 bucks, whatever your CAC is, right? Pay them pay them as a as a person. You in a big area, too.
So, there's probably unlimited potential of people that you can network with. Maybe it's the mom groups or whatever. And I don't know like how much your VA does. We can kind of get that a little bit. But with content like I think again you have to do it. There's people you know that we know they do a really really good job with it and they get a lot of leads through it but they also work with the influencers in the area. It's not just their content that's getting it. So it's the people like it's the mom groups right? It's the people who have influence in the area who have a big following that's local. Those are easy ones that you can you know bounce ideas off of or have them refer you as well and then they can get paid to do it too and just helps your organic search way easier.
And again, you're not you're not throwing a huge budget at them either. You're just paying them for leads that they got or the conversions that they get,...
Like is our goal is to get you from basically 20,000 a month roughly to 50,000 a month.
And so we it's not that hard, right? So that that's our goal with this call. It's like, hey, let's get let's get you from 20K to 50K by next year, right? So that's the goal of this call. Of course, we're recording do the podcastes. What else does your what else does your VA do? I know she takes some calls. What else do you have her doing?
Yeah, she t she takes all the calls coming into the business. She handles all the customer communication. She handles the accounts receivable. And I really want to get her to handle the but it I find that to be a pretty difficult thing to delegate because there's a lot of nuances and it like I don't want to say that like people don't care about their jobs or whatever. Like I know a lot of people do, but nobody's going to care as much as you as the owner, which like I'm trying to still get get over that part of it.
A lot of nuances.
But I think I think I was surprised at how much training something like that would take. I'm like, "Oh, I'll bring a VA on and they'll just handle all that stuff. All this stuff in the office I don't want to do." But yeah, there's a ton of training when it comes to scheduling. Like there's just so many nuances. What looks like I don't know where she lives, but what looks good on a map does not necessarily correlate to looking good on a route,...
It doesn't it doesn't work like that.
Right? Because on a on a route they're a minute like they're a mile apart, but in your area that could be 45 minutes or an hour depending on traffic. Yeah. A lot lots of nuances that you talk to there. But yeah, there's a lot of heavy lifting that goes into that. And so I'm assuming that you're currently still doing the scheduling, yeah. Nice. And then so she's taking just your, you know, your regular calls. Is she doing the sales calls currently?
I'm still doing the scheduling. Yeah.
She was I had her doing that but I changed my process around that completely. So I was selling over the phone. I did raise my prices. I changed my pricing model for quarterly and now everything's going to be for for the near right the near foreseeable future. I'm going to go out and do an inspection because the higher pricing I think that I will increase my close rate if I'm there in person and I could sell them in person. Again, I don't know where the balance is because at some point you can't you can't keep up with that, right? A company your size, I don't think you could send somebody out there...
Like so there's big companies that still do it. I don't think it's...
Necessarily scalable in my opinion. But there's big companies that still do it. So they prove me wrong, but I would rather just sell it over the phone still at a high ticket item, high price.
If there's if it's like it's scenario based, too. Let's just say it's a yeah. Yeah. So, let's just say it's an exclusion of some sort. Like, of course, you're going to go do an inspection. If it's a big job like that, bed bug job, you know, I want to see how bad the bed bugs are. You know, if it's termite, obviously you're going want to do an inspection. But...
It is for sure.
For general pests, I see the I see the value of getting in front of the customer. I really do.
So, if you're selling a onetime thing, maybe it's a Was removal, you get in front of them and you can sell them a reoccurring thing. I get that. But we sell, you know, high ticket items like a high ticket price for an initial and we're still closing over 70% of all reps. Yes. Our reps are training very very well. We have reps that close over 80% and initials are three to 400.
So, it's not that.
Yeah. And it's not we're in middle of, you know, Midwest. So it's not like we don't have the target audience that you have. So I'm saying like if you just transfer those calls to you, those sales calls to you and Joey answer those calls and you sell them on the phone, you easily do it.
You think so?
Because now Joey's time is going to be...
Which I think you should be in the sales role in my opinion. You have your technician now. You go do the del tech work. If you spent eight 10 days, eight 10 hours a day just working on sales loan. Whether you're doing ride alongs with your technician, talking to the neighbors, upselling the current customers, the next thing you're going to sell four to $6,000 a day. And so if you're selling, you know, 4,000 bucks a day at five days a week, that's $20,000 a day or $20,000 a week, yeah. You grow pretty fast that way.
That's 80,000 a month. Yeah. But this is where mo this is where most small companies mess make a big mistake in my opinion is like they have to be the technician which I get it. I was there too, right? But the faster you can get out of the truck, you're you're there like you're at 250, you're there like...
Yeah, you're there. You have to start building your second route.
Yeah, correct. I'm out of the truck most days of the week.
Awesome. I love that. So, what is Joey's time currently? Give me your Give me your dayto day. Yeah. Mo most of my time currently right now dayto day isending.
No, I'm not. It's spending time on...
I spend so much time on Claude trying to...
Trying to learn really. It's just I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. So like the most recent thing I've been...
We're we're in such an information age. This is another huge mistake. We're in the information age where there's so many YouTube videos. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't learn. I'm not saying that you shouldn't because you need to...
No, I trust me. I know what you're saying. You're saying I am like addicted to it, which I am. I'm addicted to...
Not just Joey. I'm addicted to learning, too. But you have to implement. If you don't implement, there's no point in you know, you know how to go sell. You know how to get leads. You know, you can talk to customers. You know, you can talk to the neighbors. You know how to grow this thing. Sitting on cloud won't fix that. Well, what I'm using Claude for now is kind of like I've been changing my model a lot, right? I'm...
Right? No, I agree.
There's only so many models in pest control. Like, come on.
Well, no, there there is. I think so at least, right? You read Alex Hormozi's book Money Models and it just kind of like opens your mind to how many things you can actually do.
Like there are so many close to like I'll go there four times a year. I'll be up there. I'll be up there the 31st and the 1st and I'm back out there on the...
Right. So, you know, right? So there's like so many ways to package it or like to put a bow on it and make it sound like something different. So, I'm just trying to find like where the balance is between price and value. And I don't I always thought I wanted to be the company that's like, oh, we're just going to do volume and just sell as much as we can and grow that way.
There's nothing wrong with that. So, you have Walmart over here, right? Which that's their model. They're going to be the low price for everyone,...
And it does work and you have to decide that from day one. Like is that what I'm going to be? And if that's you're gonna be, you have to do it. It's scalable. It's harder because there's le there's less profit. But I'd rather be the other side. I'd rather have...
Well, that's Yes. That's what I found out this year. Hey, I don't I don't want to be that guy.
I want to be the higher ticket, the more premium. And you think like listening to JP, you know, my whole like young adult life, you think I know that because he preaches that too. You want to be the premium service provider. But I think a lot of things you have to go through yourself and learn. And so it's like, okay, now my pricing was one thing. Now I got to raise my prices. But it's like, how do I just raise my prices like that overnight? And in my head, right, I overthink it and I'm like, I need to add more value. It's like, how do I do that? And it's like, Claude, how do I add more value? And then Claude gives me a list of things. Then I narrow it down. Dude, there's so many rabbit holes you can go down with this.
Okay, so what's more important, Joey? Sitting on cloud or building this thing to 500 this year?
Yeah, building this thing to 500.
Okay, let's I'm not saying you can't be on cloud. Let's just tone it back a little bit. [laughter] So, with Claude, I do love cloud. I can sit on cloud for hours myself, too. You know, it's great. But again, you can nothing wrong with learning. I think you should learn, but at some point if you don't implement this thing's going to stay stagnant. You're going to get stuck at 250. We can't do that either. So, let's make a plan for Joey to get from 250 to 500 right now. Let's get it over with done with.
So, we're going to do social, which I think you should. How many times a week have you like work a lot at cloud? So, how many times you going to post a week on on social? And which socials do you think you'll post on? Instagram and Facebook.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, I do hear some companies posting on TikTok. I don't really see the whole attraction to it. I think it's a younger client base, and I don't know if they're really buyers. Maybe...
They might not be buyers. They might not be buyers yet, but as you age, they're going to age with you. And if they keep consuming your content when they own houses, they'll be buyers then. And so I think that that you have to be on all platforms. You never know which one's gonna convert what. And so you don't want to be watch a lot of Alex. You don't want to be key channel risk. You don't want to have all your nuts and bolts on Facebook or on Instagram or on TikTok. So I think you should you're already doing the content already. Might as well just use the same content for now and just put it across all platforms. You already have the content. Just reuse it, right? On all three. Just be on there and you never know, right? You can in each and Snapchat does too. They all have their own back end, right? You can run ads in all of them. I've actually had a person in the course that does like$100,000 or $150,000 in ad spend and Snapchat works really well for them.
Like interesting, you know, I have Snapchat. I don't use it, but I do have it and I get the ads. I don't click on them, but they're there.
Right. So, how many? So I agree like I think you should just go with IG, Facebook obviously as your core. I think that Joey Bugs is growing a personal brand himself. I could already see it. So, I think creating your own YouTube channel at some point would probably be It's just it's just you're you're already doing the you're already doing the work, right? You're already creating the shorts. You're already doing the content. It's like...
I agree.
What's going to make Joey...
The go-to person for pest control in your area? How are you going to be that five mile famous, right?
Like everyone has to know, everyone has to know who Joey Bugs is. So, if you're just sitting there answering the questions, there was a book a long time ago, not a long time ago, like 2016. It's called they ask you...
Really good book. Basically, like come up with all the questions that customers ask. If you type into YouTube the top like you just type in like pest control, it'll bring up like the top 10 most recent searches or most I'm going most recent but a most asked questions on pest control...
And create videos around those top 10 things like how much does pest control like I have videos on on my YouTube all the same things, right? You put them on your new website. So you dropped a new of course I saw that. I was doing the homework. Yeah. He that looks really good. Of course, I like the colors.
Yeah, you did see that, huh?
Claude. Claude created that.
He just copied me. I'm just kidding.
I like Okay, so we're going to post on all these social platforms. Start maybe maybe dabble into meta ads. I think it's smart. I think for you personally, I think your best dollar spent on is probably gonna be on LSA. You can manage LSA ads yourself pretty easy.
Yeah. So, I do have LSA running. I have the budget set at like$2 million bucks a day, something crazy like that.
Yeah. And the lead [clears throat] cost around here is a little over $100 per lead.
Not bad.
But the I mean, you just can't change the lead flow. So, in the past seven days, usually I think it's around one to two leads per seven days. So, it's hard, you know, it's hard to scale that. Then my next question yeah you can my next question would be how many reviews do you have on that page currently?
You can...
On my GMB or is it like a separate Is I have like 59 or 60.
Just on your GMB. Yeah. And so what would you think say 59 65 star reviews, right?
And if you were to search your area, what does the average company have in your area?
Don't go with the big players like Rentokil, Terminix. Don't go with all those guys. Like local companies like yourself.
Yeah. Maybe maybe like somewhere around 80 to 10 and something. But there there are some companies around here that, you know, have like 10 trucks and they have, you know, a thousand reviews. So...
It's a huge range, but the companies that are smaller, you know, five trucks and less, maybe like 80 reviews, something like that.
Yeah. So we got to try to get to like that 150 reviews as fast as possible. And then I don't know the whole back end of your website yet. I haven't got that far into detail. I don't know where you rank on your pages organically. There's we can go down here, but all those things like posting on your GMB, adding new pictures weekly.
Maybe maybe Yeah. If you if you start adding new pictures every time that you add new pictures, we add new pictures. We try to do it every Tuesday. Every time you add more pictures, every time you get more leads, but don't just don't just post pictures just to post pictures. Like make sure they're good quality content, which you do. You do a good job.
I know that...
Video, short videos. You can put, you know, testimonial pictures on there. You could put, pictures of your team, your technician, your trucks. Yeah, it's simple. Just add a picture a week. It's not hard.
Okay, cool. Maybe something you have your VA do.
But then yeah, just running, you know, and I don't know what services you have on there either. So there's that. Like when it comes to pest control, what services do you offer? I know you said you starting to do rodents, right?
Yeah, we do rodents, we do gen pest, and then mosquito and tech.
And then do you have all that turned on on your LSA account? [snorts] cool. And then far as targeting goes, how far do you travel in that radius that it gives you?
Yeah, I do.
You pick out your area that you want...
Yeah. So, I pick like it has me pick like zip codes.
So, honestly, I pick like most of North Jersey because I did some research like, hey, if I pick a smaller area with that same budget, am I going to am I going to be the like the pick? So, am I going to be like ranked higher in those areas? And it said no, it doesn't really work like that. You can pick as many areas as you want and it's not going to change your rank one way or another. So, I just picked a lot.
Cool. And then when you here's another thing you have to be super mindful of and careful of too Joey is that what if someone comes in...
From LSA or Google let's just say you're not doing Google they come in through LSA and someone doesn't answer that call if your call answer rate falls below a certain threshold I think it's like in 70%ish they'll stop giving you as many...
Yeah I know. I heard Mat Rogers talking about that. I couldn't believe...
Yeah. So, if you're going to run ads, make sure you have someone there that's to answer them. I don't care if it's the VA. I don't care if it's the call center. I don't care if it's AI. I don't care if it's Joey Bugs. Just make sure they get answered. Like, I'm a freak about it. Like, if you want to talk about a freak about answering call rate, I we had a call rate of 99% last month and I was like, we're there. We're not we're not 100%. But it's like sometimes it's just out of hours or whatever, you...
But I just I'm afraid you're crazy about it. You just have to watch it as you scale this thing. It doesn't get any easier than that. So, just start now. I would probably have her, if it was me in your shoes, I'd probably have her start an transferring those sales calls to you taking those calls. You can get a phone.
Go ahead.
You think I should just try to sell everything over the phone?
I mean, if you want to go there in person and you want to do that for the beginning, sure. If you want to go get in front of the person, there's nothing wrong with that,...
Right? Me personally, I'm not going to I'm just gonna sell. I'm just gonna sell over the phone. If there's something that I don't close over the phone, I'll just stop there.
Maybe maybe follow up for the next two days. They don't answer, then go stop at their house,...
Knock on the door, like this is a true remodel, right? Like they have canvasers they call them, right? They have canvasers that come like through not like they're not selling at the door, they're just canvasing, but they have leads that come through the office that they don't get closed and they just give them to their canvasers and the canvasers just go knock on those doors. So, think of how many people have canceled leads that didn't follow up with or that you know didn't close that you have in your CRM currently that you could just go stop by and talk to.
Maybe it's those one-time treatments that you've done. Maybe it's mosquito customers that you can upsell. Have you I haven't even got there yet. I'll write that down.
It's a good point. I actually never thought of that.
Okay. Our goal with this call, yes, we're recording a podcast, but I want Joey to get from 250,000 to 500K without a doubt next year. And Claude, yes, Claude can help you, but action.
We just need action. Like, and I see this all the time. And I'm not I'm not calling you out, Jo. I'm not. I'm just like out.
You call me out.
Keep me accountable.
No, I again I'm just I'm here to help you. Always been here to help you. You know that. So I want to see you win. Whatever I have to do to make it happen, I'll do it. I have to come knock doors with you, I'll come knock doors. So organic content, we're going to put on IG, Facebook, right? What software are you using for your CRM currently?
Field rats. I like that. And is she is your is your VA putting all the information getting all the information from phone numbers, first name, last name, addresses, first thing she does. Cool. And then getting source codes of how the customer heard from she supposed to but doesn't always.
Of course. Yeah. No, I get it.
Totally get it. Like another thing we watch this on a on a nightly basis too. My call center manager goes through all the leads, all the sales that went through and make sure that all sources are filled in. If they're not filled in, they go back to the C, go back to the to the salesperson or C CSR. They'll have to go back and like list them to those calls and then then if they can't find out from the calls, you have to sit there and track which leader came from, it's pain but something that just super important because as you scale bigger, you need to know where your dollars are spent best on marketing. So, if the majority of your ad spend is on, let's just say LSA, but you keep dumping money into Facebook and the return is not there, like you just have to know. Or if like your this one campaign did super well, you just want to know where it came from. Maybe you did do some every door direct mail...
And you have different maybe you have two different offers...
Like put in a scope for each one so you know which offer it came from. Right. Okay. Okay. So, we're going to go with said Facebook, TikTok, IG roughly. I mean, LinkedIn's probably not a bad spot either. A lot of commercial people around there. Not terrible. We do it. I don't love it. It's one of those things I always forget to do, honestly.
So, I'm preaching the choir here.
So how many times you going to post a week? All the research that I do says says to post every day, but it's very difficult to keep up with. I find I don't know. I don't know why.
It is. It is. No, I hear the baby in the background.
Yeah, that's my son. He just woke up. I guess he's crying.
I love it. Love that for you guys.
It's the best. It's the best.
What is the kids?
I already know the answer to this because I live in it every day. What is the hardest part for you with...
The [snorts] hardest part is to give you all the information you need. Yeah, it's it was I think it's I think it's you know I don't know it's hard it's hard like I'm trying to think of the tr the right not the right answer the truth right and it's like what comes to my head is like thinking of ideas on what to post but that's easy you can think of ideas right...
I mean you could go to my page and copy exactly what I've done for the last day...
Yeah right like you won't let you...
And then I think to myself all the editing is pretty time consuming, but I don't know. I think I just like I don't what's that?
So, are you doing all the editing do you do all yourself?
Yeah, do I do all...
What do you edit on?
What is it called? Cap Cut. Yeah, cap. Cool. How long does that video take you roughly yeah. Well, I'll just record and edit. Let's go with edit.
To record?
Less than an hour.
Less than an hour to edit. Maybe like 30 45 minutes...
To edit it. It's that bad. Maybe that's too long. I don't know.
No, I'm just I'm just like I'm doing I do too.
I have like OCD, you know? So, I'm like okay. I'm like I need it to be perfect. I can't let the world see an unperfect.
I agree.
How much would it cost you to have a VA edit that same video?
I have been thinking about that. I don't know. I mean, you can even go on Fiverr, I'm sure, and not have a VA on payroll and just have a Fiverr person do it pretty cheap. I'm sure they charge like 10 bucks, you know.
And with all the AI tools like Opus and stuff, it'll just do it all for you for free. Yeah. You might have a small little tweak at the end. Super easy.
Does it really?
Yeah. So, like Joey's Joey's number one thing right now should be talking to customers, getting in front of people, going to events. Maybe it's doing booths. Maybe it's fairs. Maybe it's talking to the neighbors while your customer while your customers are being serviced. It's like you have to get in front of as many people to show them who Joey Bugs is. Like that's your number one goal is to create as many leads as possible. It's going back to the Alex Hormozi thing because you love Alex so much, right? It's like doing those the same thing a 100 times each day, right? 100 iterations of the same thing every single day. Well, that's $100 an hour, 100 phone calls made. Like, it's so true in your stage. You have to do the simple things...
And just do every single day. And it's a pain in the butt and can get overwhelming, but this is what gets to the next level. If you just keep doing this over and over and over again, you get to a million before you know it,...
Right? I think the hard part for me or the thing that I overthink the most is approaching somebody to sell them or with the intention to sell them and trying to sell them an initial service that's in my mind priced pretty high. That might just be a limiting belief like an initial at 3.99, you know? I mean I don't I don't know.
But again like who told you 3.99? So are you asking like how I came up with that number?
Yeah, I just like where you came with that number from...
Alex Hormozi with his customer finance acquisition, right? So like of course. Yeah. So...
You know the why is it a limiting belief for you?
The amount of c the amount of companies that charge $4 to $600 for an initial is absurd. Like there's so many.
Yeah. I guess I didn't realize that. I heard recently that a company near me charges like 650 for their initial and I couldn't I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I guess because in my stage of life like or where I'm at in business and life like that's a that's a lot of money. Like just being real like that's a lot of money.
But again It's not right. So, you can't you can't with the belief going basically the belief of what your income is currently because you're just starting out. You're young, right?
For the average person maybe it's not.
But there's people especially in North Jersey that have that are making a couple hundred,000 a year, half a million dollars a year, million dollars a year, dual incomes, pulling 350, 400 that have the money. Like the $150 of service means nothing. It's like You're doing a disservice. You're you're doing yourself a disservice by not getting in front of them because you have a great product. You know, you're good at you're good at your job, right? You have a good price. You're doing a disservice by not letting people know what you offer.
You're doing your family a disservice. You're doing your son a disservice because you're looking at this thing as like the sales is like this is how I'm interpreting it. And I can be wrong,...
But it's like I don't want to go sell this thing that I don't believe in. I don't want to go sell this thing because I think it costs too much. I want to I don't want to go sell this thing because I have a limiting belief on my service. That's what I'm hearing. But you can't if you if you're not con if you don't have enough conviction in your own you're there is zero chance you're going to teach anyone else to have more conviction than you do.
So if you don't believe in you don't believe in your pricing,...
No one's going to sell this. Like I said, you're trying to sell the dream, but if you can't if you can't if you're not convicted on your own self, in your own product, in your own business, no one's going to be.
But I feel like you're But I feel that you do have conviction.
You see, I do and I'm a huge believer in what I have to offer, my services. I guess I've heard a few times people close to me, friends and family, that have maybe referred business my way and I give people the price and maybe they expect a hookup or whatever and I give them the price because I don't really believe in discounts. And they, you know, like Joe, what the heck are you doing telling my buddy like 3.99, 400 bucks to take care of his wasp nest? It's like, you know, they put this seed of doubt, I guess, in my head, like if I'm being do your are your family and friends in...
And my dad is. Yeah.
Nice. Does he give everyone discounts?
No, he doesn't give everybody discounts. No. [laughter] I didn't think so. And so, like, yeah, discounts can be good for friends and family, but me personally, I don't even charge my friends and family. I'd rather just not have I just don't like it. I just because I just don't want them to and complain. Like, if they're going to, I just give it to it for free. And if they and complain, at least it's...
And I don't I don't need to make money off my good friends and my and my family either. So, and people might not agree with me. I just rather not just rather go to free.
But then yeah, it's like it seems like all friends and family expect discounts. I totally disagree. Like if it was me, I'd rather pay more for my friends. Think like I want I'm there to support him. That's the way I look at...
Yeah. Because that's logical, but people are so emotional. People are so emotional. It's very hard to build a business around emotional people.
Yeah. He can't build a good business by giving everybody discounts and doing nothing but family and friends at a cheap service. It just it's just it's almost impossible to grow. Let's just say you're at 20% margin for 100 bucks. So every service every service you're making $20 just hypothetical. Right.
So like there's only 20 $20 to Joey's pocket. Like now you're charging 400. Now Joey's getting an additional couple dollars in his own pocket. Right.
Right. So, let's just go with 400 be quick math off the top of my head. Know that's 80 bucks roughly in Joey's pocket by 20%.
No math wiz, but I'm just saying like so all these little things matter, you know, like that $80 can go a lot further in marketing. $80 can go a lot further into Joey's pocket for his family and kids. So,...
Right. But going back to like what you should be doing about knocking neighbor's doors, like it's the belief that you shouldn't knock on your neighbor's door. You shouldn't let them know, hey, I'm just like it's not a hard sale either. You don't have to. You're thinking of this like again, this is how I'm taking it. Like you're thinking of like a sales like sleazy car salesman, but like It's not even that. I think...
I'm Joey Bugs. I'm taking care of Susie Smith right next door. I'm already here. She like the neighbor probably know who Susie Smith is already like hey I'm already next door would you like you see what I'm doing cool if not that's cool like no big deal at least you're get in front of at least you're talking to another person and the more people you talk to the better chances better odds that you're going to sell somewhere...
The first maybe it's the first time or two times or 10 times you do it like oh I can do this...
Right no you're you're 100% right I do see why I have to do that I think the hard part for me is like when it when it comes time to give the price, I'm not very good at at delivering that, right? So, what do you mean?
Tell me more.
Like, somebody says, "All right, everything sounds great. How much does it cost?" Like, cool. It just be 3.99 today, and that comes with a 90-day warranty, and then if you decide you want to do this regularly, the next services will be at a lower at a lower rate. How does that sound? And then like...
After the after the price, the first person who speaks loses, say the price and shut up.
Right? I have seen some of those videos. It gets so awkward, dude.
It doesn't get awkward, but they just like, okay, maybe at maybe your first few times it gets awkward,...
But the more you practice on the phones, right, the more you talk to people in front of you and you're telling the price, that all that goes away. Pretty soon you'll be like you'll be like you'll be stretching to see how much more you could charge in your area,...
Right? You. But it just takes doing that same thing a h 100 times a day till you feel confident in doing it. But it's just like anything else. The first time you picked up the camera to record a video, were you nervous? How many times did you did you mess up? How many times did you start over?
How many times did I delete the video and redo it? Like 50,...
Right? And Okay. So, how many times do you do that now? Maybe it's a few...
Maybe if that I usually just wing it and just start recording and go for it.
Right. So, it's the same thing with everything else. You're gonna suck at first. And it's okay to suck. I suck, too. I sucked at everything that I've ever started, just like everybody else on this earth. Like, no one just picks up something naturally just extremely awesome at it, the best in the business from day one. It's just not...
You see all the stuff online that these people are super talented, of course, but they've done it hundreds of thousands of times,...
Right? So then just give give the price and just...
Shut up. What are they What are they going to do, Joey?
Tell you no. Oh, okay. Like, no one's ever told you no before.
Yeah. You know, it like Alex Hormozi said in a recent video, I don't know why I always bring this guy up, but...
He's great. You got you got to watch less videos, [laughter]
Dude. I'm like a freaking encyclopedia over here. So he says like you should not be you should not be proving the value after the price. All the value should come before the price. So when the price come this is the same thing just don't don't talk.
I just like could that be sales psychology. The first person who stock loses what are they going to say yes no or they're going to ask you a question about something that you do or like are you have to ask you a buying question like oh how much does it cost? That alone right there is a buying question that they're interested. Little light bulb in your head just be like, "Oh, wait. What? You want to know the price?" Cool. Like, I can't wait to give you the...
That should be an exciting moment because that's a buying question for...
Anything about the service related, how many times do you come out? Like, how often do you bill? Like, what's the cost? Like, what's your technician's name? All those are buying questions,...
So, that their light bulb should go off in your head like, "Oh man, this person's actually interested. I can sell this person." You're you're you're 80% of the way there. Now all you got to do is close yeah, the price is just $3.99.
I just repetition. Or you Oh, yeah. The price is $3.99. Or Yeah. No, no, no sweat. It's just $3.99. Do you like to use credit or debit?
Oh, I like that.
It's super easy.
Good. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. I'm already over it. You've already convinced me.
But you'll say that now until you go knock your vers, okay, I'm going to walk away. But it's okay. Just stay in the pocket. Okay. Yeah,...
Don't be afraid. You'll just get better. But I promise you, if you do these little things every single day is how you're going to grow this thing. And like I said, that'll translate to everything else that you do in life. Whether you go do events, networking, being eye, or anything like this that you get in front of people, get in front of leads on the phone, the more confident that you'll be as a person in selling your services. And that's how you grow this thing. That way, when you need to hire a salesperson, you can train that next salesperson. So when you're up to that 750,000, like now Joey can't be the salesperson Let's replace Joey as a salesperson. But you'll have so many services sold at this point. So much revenue sold at this point that you easily just be able to teach this person. Cool. Come right along with me for the next 20 30 days. See everything that I do all day long.
And if you just did that 8 to 10 hours a day, you'd be amazed at how fast you get to 500k,...
Right? And then like the season seasonality of it shouldn't really change things, right? Just keep going and just like right now.
The coldest door that I ever knocked was negative 22 degrees or 22 or 28 and sold the account on to a doctor on a culde-sac that had rodent problems. The first year we ever knocked Joy, there was like I'm not joking, we had 20 feet of snow on the ground.
That's crazy. Okay. It's all just limiting beliefs then.
Yes. Like people still have...
I mean you see it in the office like in the winter people still have...
Whether it's maybe not so much bats in the winter but like bats in the fall time wildlife in the fall time in the winter it's like rodent or ants of all things you know it's the people just have issues all fleas ticks maybe not ticks but fleas is another one the dogs...
Bed bugs another one like there's so many leads available like you have a limiting believe of how much work is out...
Oh That's Yeah, you're 100% right. You definitely nailed that one. I do.
There's like Let's go back to it. Like you said that you spend $100 a day for like a week and you got like a hundred or couple hundred leads.
That just goes to show, So that just shows like how much work is actually out there. People have issues. You just got to go find it. And you would be shocked at how many people that you just go stop by their house like, "Oh my gosh, my husband and I were just talking about this last night. We woke up this morning, we had ants in our yesterday, we woke up, we had ants in our in our kitchen. You'd be shocked at how many people you ran into every single day. If you knock enough doors, talk to enough neighbors. Let's just say your let's just say your your technician had 10 stops a day for easy math. And all you had to do is talk to five people, call five rounds or nine rounds, call five rounds. Now, all you had to do is cloely talk to five people per stop. You're talking to 50 people, knocking 50 doors. Maybe you talk to 30 people. And if you close 10%, you're still closing three deals a day. You're that's 8008 $2,400 a week a day that you're closing deals on,...
Your average is like 800 you said roughly $800,000.
Yeah, it's...
You can, right? So, yeah. 840.
At three people, that's $2,400 a day.
Yeah. So I should Yeah, then I mean we do we do about 10 to 12 stops a day. So I could totally I just never thought of that.
So I'm gonna go back to the same question. What is Joey's time every single day? I know you have a technician. I know he's out in the field doing tech work...
Most of the days. Most of the days. Right. And so you're scheduling which doesn't take too many time to schedule 10 saps a day. So, you have a VA that answers the CSR calls, right?
Yeah, I have been struggling with that, too. That has been the biggest struggle for the past like couple months is like getting her to a point of like self-reliance. And again, I bring everything back to myself. I just don't think I've trained her well enough.
You probably didn't, but that's okay.
Yeah. So, I'm just trying to figure out that like I just feel like the more I train her, the more I just like...
How many calls have you taken that you had her listen to?
Only a hand. I mean, she can listen to all of them because they're all recorded, right? So, any any call I take, I just don't know if she's actively going in there listening in our training. Sorry about the background.
No, don't be sorry. I love it. I have three daughters myself. They're probably outside the door.
Okay, great.
They're probably swearing at this. I'm just kidding.
In the in our training, like I did a whole training module. I maybe had like three phone calls in there in the in the actual training. So, is she going out on her own and listening? I don't...
How often are you role playing with her?
How often do you think you should role play with her?
Probably every day. I mean, that's...
Probably every day. You're probably right. We role play with our CSRs and we role play with our salespeople every single day.
Every day.
So again, it doesn't have to be two hours long. It could be 20 minutes a...
Just jump a call. Let's role play. Maybe it's a billing issue this day. Maybe it's a customer issue this day. Like maybe it's technician. Whatever the thing may be, just role play on that. You like there's so much that just comes up through the day. Like so much stuff happens to us that you can't even that you couldn't even explain on a podcast the crazy stuff that happens to...
Right. And so like it's just training her on all those things that just happen. But let's just take the top five or 10 questions that come into the office every single day or every single week. Let's just role play those. Not hard. That take you 20 minutes a day. Maybe 30.
That's Yeah. It's so simple, but I don't do it. Yeah. And then so outside of your let's just go with that. I'll give you a half hour for scheduling because it's only 10 routes or 10 stops. What else is Joey doing?
So I do I guess you would say yeah, some days I do stops.
I know some days I know some days you're doing stops, right? Part of the problem is like I mean I don't I don't know if it's part of the problem. I live pretty far away from my service area. So I have to drive from where I live 45 minutes to the garage, pick up the product, the truck, whatever, and then go out. The service area is like 45 minutes from there. So it's like an hour and a half just to get out there. So not a huge...
Not a huge deal. I don't mind the driving. I mean, it's like three hours a...
That's the time right there that you can listen to Alex. I'll give you that.
I do. Trust me. And I and I do.
So that's about three hours a day alone round trip. So, you know, a couple days a week are spent like going doing stops here and there. I do most of the reser and...
Because why send a technician back there? You could just go do it, right? I get that.
Yeah. I mean, I do see that there's an argument against it. Like people say...
Because if you do it and it just trains him that you're going to go do it so he doesn't have to go do his stuff.
I'm assuming that you pay hourly, right?
I do. Yeah. Yeah,...
There's [snorts] a there's the other side of this why I like pay for performance. If they have to go back to that job and we're not going to do this on this call, let's maybe we could talk about this in pass world.
But if they have to go back to that stop and they're not technically get they're getting paid because they're paying in they're not getting their commission in that job. So there's...
Right, but they're not getting their their P4P so there there's pros and cons to hourly and P4P like some people say P4P they rush but if they have like pink slips we call them they go back there and they have to go back to their house and...
It just reduces their commission check at the end of the at the end of the month at the end of the week I should say and they don't want that either. So there there's pros and cons to both. I would never pay anyone hourly anymore but that's a different different conversation. So you're doing some reser not a big deal. What else out of that? So right now like how many hours total?
I spend a lot of hours learning and give me give me a number like four to six hours a day for sure like on Claude or watching YouTube or like thinking like oh I have to change this. Oh I didn't think about that. Like then I'm learning about Alex's sales processes and...
I mean like...
I think I think...
I need a VSL. I need a VSL, Jonas. I don't have a...
Needs. I didn't see it on your website yet, but that would be coming through from a Google lead or Facebook blah blah. We're not going to go down that rabbit hole. You're going to need a You're going to need a VSL for every single demographic that you service to and for every issue that they're having. Let's just not get there yet. Maybe in the offseason when it's slower and winter and you're not as busy, then we can record some VSLs.
You don't think that sub stuff is worth touching during the season? No, not right now. Because you talking to customers every single day. It's not like you're going to ramp up your ad budget to a million dollars tomorrow.
I don't think you have you're just not you don't have a big enough company for it to make a difference.
Like you're getting two LSA calls a...
Oh my gosh, dude. I Wow. That was You don't have a big enough company where it even makes a difference. Holy cow. I never thought I never thought of it like that. Why am I changing all this stuff if Yeah. I guess in my head I'm like...
This is what most entrepreneurs like you and I do. Like we're so busy fixing the company that it just never gets to grow organically ever through constantly...
It I think a lot of it is because you hear people saying like oh don't work in your business work on your business and it's like well I'm doing what a business owner is supposed to do. I'm learning and changing the vision and...
You should you should be you should always be thinking about vision. You should always be thinking about changes you can make. Like I used to be the same way, right? This is a skill that I had to learn. I write down a list of things that I want implemented in the company, but I've gotten really good at like, okay, I'm gonna write these really, really cool ideas down. And then at the end of the week, I look back at like, oh, I don't really like that idea. Check it out. Check it out. But if a month goes by, it's still on there. I'll hand it to my team. At that point, my team knows that I've went through my checklist at least a month that now to me it's important. Then they'll ask me now like, "Hey, Jonas, is this like a next quarter thing, like a next week thing, a next month thing, or next year thing?" I'll be like, "Oh, this is probably like a next year thing. Let's just get it on our list of things that we'll work on in the future."
But again, going back to what I said, like so many business owners because we're added right? We just are.
We're constantly have new ideas. That's just what we that's how we operate.
You have to get ultra focused.
Yeah. I had to learn the skills myself,...
Right. So from going from what company you know there've been so many iterations of my companies but well I'll just make it easy and say from company one to company two I got ultra focused got ultra focused on the business and got extremely focused on my tasks. So I what I do is I give myself three tasks that I need to get done every single day. No matter what I have to get those done I don't care if they take me 10 seconds or 10 hours I'm getting them done and nothing else is going to stop...
How do you choose those tasks? How do you choose like what is that important?
I ask myself the one question. What's one what are the three things that I can do tomorrow that that'll move the needle with Pest Badger? And for me it might be a content that day. And so I have a whole content schedule that I follow now that I'm filming. This one is a special edition for Joey because I might want to make it work for you. But I usually record on Tuesdays or Thursdays, right? Days are set. I'm usually in the studio on Thursdays and on Tuesdays I'm out recording content. Usually two days a week. So that's what I do. I ask myself those three questions. Like for you right now, it's just staying focused on like you have to talk to as many people as you possibly can every single day. You have to get everyone to know who Joey Bugs is in your area. Got it.
You got to become that five mile famous.
Like everyone in your service area should know who Joey Bugs is. And I don't care if it's you talking to every single person in the area. I don't care if it's you creating content around that. Like you have to make sure that they know who you are.
Got it.
So CRM, I know that you're using using FieldRoutes, which is great.
Do you do any upsells currently to your current customers? Do you do any referral campaigns with your current...
I have Clicki. We pay $75 per referral and then we give the referee 50 bucks off their first service. And the other thing you ask things you should do that. Yeah, upsells like so you have your Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. So I do stuff like that myself. Do I do a lot of it? No. I don't know why. I think that's where I feel more of like...
So you have like what do you say 250 customers right now? Roughly 200 250.
Yep. About 225 to 250.
Cool. Let's just say we can get 10% of them, which is let's yeah 10% of them, that are on to the next thing. Maybe it's Rodent.
Maybe even five, but five to 10% of them so you can get roughly 25 customers tomorrow. Maybe not tomorrow, but over the next week with an upsell campaign, whether it's email, text message, maybe it's you pick up the phone and calling them. Hey, this is Joey Joey Bugs calling you. Like, I just want to check in with your service. How's it been going? Oh, great. We love you. Blah blah blah blah. Cool. We offer this next thing like you've been such a great customer I want to give you this price you know what I mean now you get into the ro program where now you have work all year round not just your mosquito season right because like that's what you're focused on now it's like hey I want to get more reoccurring revenue for...
You already have the 250 300 customers that are there...
That maybe they don't even know you even offer mosquito or offer pest control right maybe they don't even know that you offer rodent services Right.
How do you get in front of them?
Right. But you said like you'd rather you'd rather sell to them in person. Cool. Well, now you're you're there, you're on their property, you're going to talk to them before you do the service anyway. So, when you talk to them, do the service, come back to them. Like, cool. Did I, you know, did do a good job? Blah blah blah. Go through all those questions at the end. And they're awesome. The one thing that I did notice, Mr. Customer is that I was walking around the property and I saw mouse droppings on the outside of your house or I seen a gap along your foundation where I could see mice getting in and out blah blah blah right...
Or maybe it's oh wasps mess up in the eaves that you can take care of...
Like all those things that you have to be aware of when you're on their property that you upsell them in the next thing...
You know your job well right you could do exclusion you could look for bats you can see signs for bats going in and out there's so many things you do with the current customers that you have that get you from 300,000 or 250,000 to 300 325 with a current customer they already...
Yeah, that's a huge learning curve for me is learning the services. That's what I spend a lot of time on as well. You know, like I just learned how to do roaches. I don't know how to do bats. I do get a lot of customers asking about it, you know, I just don't know how to...
You don't have to do There's nothing wrong with not doing bats right now. Like there's nothing wrong with it. Just all you got to do is...
Call a pest control company in your area or wildlife company that does bats that you don't do. Hey, I have this referral. Cool. Maybe they don't do pest control. Maybe you guys go back and forth. Like maybe there's so many lawn care companies in your area that don't do pest control. Maybe you maybe you work on a referral campaign with them,...
Right? Yeah, we do some of that. That works well.
Yeah, it works really well. We every time we go into a new market, we're partnering with lawn care companies for that reason alone,...
You can partner with multiple lawn care companies, right, that are smaller. Work with all of them.
Absolutely. But there's so many things that you can do that almost cost you zero dollars because right now you have more time than you have money, right?
And so how do we get to the point where you have more money than you have time? That's where we're trying to get you. So right now you have more time instead of using unclauding that you shouldn't do just maybe not as much. Maybe it's an hour a day.
Yeah. That you that you actively try to grow this thing because those four to six hours every single day, you're giving up a lot of revenue...
And there's so many skills that you learn on the doors or so many skills you learn talking to people. Maybe you're going to do an event and the more you learn to sell, like you said, I don't need to repeat myself, but more skills you learn getting rejected on the doors, this is okay. Like people are just going to tell you no and that's okay. No just means next opportunity,...
Right? Yeah. I'm not afraid of the nose. I'm not afraid of knocking. I used to do...
You learn how to sell and then you're going to events and you're selling maybe you're selling 10 $20,000 a week at an and then maybe you do five events a year. It's another $125,000 that you're selling that you're just sitting at events selling 125k for. Like...
There's so many opportunities for you to grow this thing fast.
And my goal is to get you from 20K to 50K in the next year. And if you just follow the things that I'm telling you to do, just those few things with posting content, clover leafing, doing events, talking with with other companies, right? Maybe maybe you run the LSA ads, like I said, because they're just pay per lead with with Facebook, maybe not yet. Maybe it's a next unless you're highly confident that you can follow up process super fast and she's really good. I would say probably just hold off on that. It does help.
But I just think, and again, people be like, "Oh, well, Facebook's just good for getting brand awareness there." I'm sorry. We're a relatively large company. I just don't have dollars to spend at brand awareness. I just don't,...
Like my money has to convert. And if it's not converting, then there's no point in doing that. Well, yeah, but Facebook leads help with everything else. Maybe, but prove it to But now, if you're really good at ads and you can close, you know, 10 to 20%, I'd say go ahead and do it. But my job is to get you from 20K, 25K to 50K over the next 12 months,...
Right? I think a few tweaks database is...
Yeah. I mean, you already have the data that you already have the customers there that don't even know what you do. You send off email text campaign...
Over the next week up or go to their...
You're already doing their mosquito, right? Go to the next service.
Maybe you maybe have a few touches. Maybe it's email first.
Maybe it's a text message second or vice versa or at the same time. And then hey, you're going to be maybe you just do it for that customers that you're going to service that week.
Then when you're out there, your technician's out there servicing the customers that week, you ride along with them. You upsell that current customer into the next thing. It's so easy to sell because they already trust you. They already have your service. Now just right get them to buy the next one. Maybe give them a little bit of a...
Maybe give them a little bit of a break because they're already your customer. Maybe package the deal together since you've done all this packaging, right?
Yeah. I mean, in my head I'm like, all right, well the last service, you're doing all these money models. You should know what Claude tells you to do. Now you all these services together.
What's that?
Yeah. I could I could say like, "Hey, look, the last, you know, mosquito service is in September that you're prepaid for, but look, we'll give you October and November free, you know, if you if you want to sign up for the, you know, general pest, we'll prevent mice and all that other stuff." I could your first quarter is free, right?"
Yeah, you could. You could say, "Hey, your first yeah. And the CAC is super low on that.
Of course, there isn't one really, other than product and your time, you already you've already paid for the customer. You've already paid the CAC on that. Now you're just increasing LTV,...
Right? That's...
Right? That's true.
So you already have, like I said, like 200 250 customers, whatever it is. They get another 10% to give you an extra...
$800 a year. That's roughly 20 customers, right? 16,000 bucks, right? Additional a year. The current customers you already have.
Which is what, just over $1,000, $100 a month roughly. With the current and that's a very small number. Like I think at your size it could probably be more than that...
Especially if you just do the things like you said.
Talk to them.
Ask them all for referrals.
Hey, do you know you know five or seven other people that that could that you could use our service as well. Maybe they give you one or two names. Go. Oh yeah. My sister Sally, she lives right across the road. Whatever whatever that thing may be, right? Just always be talking to people. Like it's so like think about when you were a kid, right?
How did you make friends? You just walked up and introduced yourself.
That's a kids still do to this day.
That's all networking is just go make friends. Networking is just talking to B2B or B2C or your current customers or whatever. Right? That's all it is making friends,...
You're very good at that. You're easy on the eyes. You're you're easy to talk to, like you're cool, like people like your brand. Like this is so easy for you to...
Yeah. I Yeah. I just have to be It seems like I have to be more aggressive in a sense of like just to go get it.
I wish I could tell you the amount of hours that I put in. Like it's hard to even explain. Like people just think like I hear it a lot. Oh, you probably don't work a lot. They have no clue, dude. Like the amount of hours I worked when I first started that I still work now probably hasn't even changed much. I'm pushing 12 to 16 18 hours a day every single day, seven days a week. And yes, I stopped for my kids and events and stuff like that, but oh, I believe it. And I think another thing that people don't see is got to plug in my computer here is like even if we're we're not actively working, we're...
It's I grind hard.
We're still our our brains never stop.
It never stops. Like yeah, you might be like out like doing whatever at a family party, but you're still think, oh my gosh, I have to, you know, call this customer. I have this going on. It doesn't stop. So I can't even imagine what you're dealing with at your size. It's like...
It's just more of the same stuff. It's more of the same boring stuff.
It's not like I'm trying to add anything new. I'm not trying to change anything. Like it's just more of the same boring stuff over and over and over.
Very horosy of you. More better.
So true.
It's true. He says it's just more more.
It is.
Wow. It is. Okay. Got it.
Well, I'm gonna hold you to it. So,...
I appreciate you, dude. We're gonna we're gonna connect again in what, a we're going to be together at PestWorld, right?
What's that? Yeah, a month and a half.
Month and a half. So, I'm going to hold you to it until then.
All right. Deal. Seriously.
Okay. And if you if you pull it off, which I know you can, and you do what you say you're going to do, I'll do some nice for you again. How about that?
All right. How many how many how do we measure it?
There is no measurement. Like maybe it's a maybe it's one account a day.
Something simple. Like I'm not again I'm not asking for the world from you, but just take your take your four hours or six hours of cloud time, turn that into an hour a day. The other four to five hours, go out there, network, meet people, talk to neighbors, talk to your...
I think you could easily sell 30 grand by then.
Thousand bucks a day. If it's a month and a half, it go 45. But I'm saying it's not hard if you just put in the time.
Yep. I'm in. Let's do it. Hey, a quick question for you.
Go ahead. Monthly subscription versus payer service. There's like huge arguments about this, right? Everybody says that monthly subscription you have higher retention. I just don't believe it. I think higher retention is on the per service. What is your opinion? Like I changed my whole business. Because of that.
I will agree with you. And it wasn't my thinking. It was just data at this point. I saw the data. I heard the data first, saw the data, and then verified with my data. And it ultimately the same thing. Our subscriptions had a higher cancellation rate.
I think back in back in the day when, you know, Netflix all came out with the subscriptions, it was super cool. Now they have the apps where people can just go on there and cancel their subscriptions. So, right. I think I think the way people buy has changed. I think they've smartened up.
But there was a there was a there was a data poll by Alex's team that was over a billion dollars worth of revenue. The highest cancellation rate was monthly subscriptions at like 12 and a half like I think it was 12 and a half%. Yeah, 12 and a half or 12.8% something like that. The second was per service quarterly service quarterly billing was like 6% or 6.2 two somewhere right in there six and a half and the lowest was prepay at 2%. So, why going back to the beginning of this conversation, why I like prepaid so much is especially on the doors, right? These these dudes that are knocking doors are very very talented. They are good and they're quick on their feeds. They're smart. They're good at their job. Do they always tell the truth? Maybe not. But they try to make themselves sound really really good and they are. But the odds of them switching somebody over that has already prepaid for the year is pretty similar to them,...
Right? Got it. Okay. There is a reason that I do like prepaid. That's one of the reasons. I would rather take the PIF all day long myself, right? But you have to be very good at managing your...
Because if you have $15,000 in the spring and you use that for the whole like use it all right away, you know, like that can happen. Absolutely.
That's hard. Yeah.
Yeah, it is hard.
That takes a lot of discipline.
It does. So, you got to be smart with money. So, but I do like it. I would I'd rather do that all day long, right? And then chase money around having a big account receivable because it's hard to grow a business account receivable too.
Yeah, I know. I learned that the hard...
So I like pay I like paper service charge when I go there card's on file soon as the service is done lock out charge charge card...
Or prepaid I'm not a huge fan of subscription and you have to be better at saving customers subscription this is my opinion because if say say you have a package deal someone just calls to cancel like your person that's doing cancellations test very good at diagnosing which part they want to cancel hopefully that they're saving saving them on mosquito or hope to saving them on rodent or maybe they're saving them on pest control. Maybe I can't save them on all three, but maybe they take their bundle from three services down to two or down to one. So, in my opinion, the person that's answering the phone for cancellations just has to be better.
Right, right, right, right.
Try to save that account.
Yep. I've been through that. And then the customer's just like, "Oh, well, we have, you know, we're just going to cancel everything."
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, got it.
That's just my opinion. And I saw the data to back it up. So, when I saw the data at lunch, I immediately called my CFO or my COO. I said, "Hey, we're we're going back to we're going back to quarterly billion like today right now."
That wait,...
Do you change everybody moving forward or you change people that already?
No, everyone moving forward. Yeah.
Not all new customers went back.
Okay, that makes sense.
Big change.
Cool, brother. Well, I appreciate you. I can't wait to see you in a month and a...
I appreciate you, dude. Team MGK, right?
Yeah, team MGK. Super excited to have you on the team.
I'm on I'm on the best team.
You are on the best team. I agree. And I know this wasn't the typical podcast, but I wanted to switch it up a little bit. One for Joey. Two, maybe if people like this going forward, I'll do more of them. So, but I was testing it with Joey, but I think overall I think it's beneficial for both of us. You know, obviously I get really good content. You get a lot of valuable information and we can grow your company...
I appreciate you, dude. I'll see you in a month.
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