From $50K Marketing Mistake to $70K Months: How Nick Russler Built Honorable Pest Control in Under a Year

00:00Dan Leibrandt

There, my name is Dan Leibrandt and welcome back to Pest Control Success Stories, where we interview the people crushing it in our Pest Control Millionaires program. Today, I'm joined by Nick Russler, the founder of Honorable Pest Control out of Michigan. Nick's built his business around doing things the right way, combining integrity, customer service, and environmentally responsible treatments that are safe for families and pets. His company has quickly become known in the Ann Arbor and Lansing areas for its professional approach and strong reputation in the community. In this episode, we'll talk about how Nick got started, when or what it took to build trust in a competitive market and how he's grown Honorable Pest Control with a focus on doing things the right way by both his customers and his team. Now without further ado, Nick, welcome to the show.

00:44Nick Russler

Hey, I appreciate it, brother.

00:45Dan Leibrandt

Of course, man. So I wanna dive a little bit into your journey and background. And we were talking a little bit about this before the show, it seems like you've had like a crazy roller coaster of events of how you eventually started this company and how the company's going. Can you first tell me how you originally got into pest control?

01:04Nick Russler

Yeah, so I, so my dad and I own a couple of funeral homes and I was actually getting myself out of pest control. So it would have been March of 2024. My dad came to me and I want to give this to somebody and it's in Tampa, Florida and I live in Michigan. So I was still working for a pest control company. And so what I was doing is phasing myself out because so I would fly once a month for a week to Florida while they were trying to find another technician. Around June, so about three months of me doing that, the owner of the pest control company I was working for came to me and he's like, you know, I'm going to have one of the other technicians take over the company. Now, I guess not really take over the company, be, you know, run it. Why I moved to Tennessee, I want to start another company. So I'm like, okay, well, why don't you sell it to me? And he came up with an absurd number that it was not even worth a third of that. So once I actually started doing my due diligence of what pest control companies can make, and then he turned me down on my offer. So he wanted like three million. I was willing to pay like a million. I went to the next biggest competitor in here where I lived in Jackson County. And we agreed on a price once we came to open up things open up the books his wife's like no because they're they're like 80 % cash so he couldn't get what he wanted So Essentially was like, okay. Well, I guess I'm not gonna do pest control. So I went out on my route It was either that same week that I got turned down or the next week I've been spraying a guy for you know for five years and he asked me like why don't you create your own?

03:00Nick Russler

I'm like, well, I don't have money to create my own, I like, flipped a lot of houses. I can syndicate deals. I would have just raised the money, you know, for the pest control company, but I didn't, I told him I didn't have, you know, a couple hundred grand to start up my own pest control company. And he was like, well, I'll give you the money to start it up. So we sat down for a couple months, got everything and I started, or we opened up the doors November 1st of the caveat was in my area I had to not compete. So that was actually almost a complete deal breaker. So now I have to create my own business started an hour away from my home where I no friends, I knew absolutely nobody. So it was literally a clean slate. But, you know I'm 10 months in. I have two other trucks on the road, front office, and a sales guy. So, I mean, it works. It's just, business is wonderful. And I say that because it's hard, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of 100 hour weeks, it's a lot of all-nighters, but it's now 11 months in and... You know, it's, I can breathe a little bit. 10 months.

04:32Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, okay. Yeah. No, well, that's good at least because I'm sure those I mean basically the past 10 11 months You've just been straight hustling and also you didn't mention this but so the audience knows You said a month or two ago. You did 70k in a month after starting less than a year ago Which is like that that's a number that most people have been trying to hit for 10 or maybe even 20 years So, I mean you guys have been growing super fast...

05:00Nick Russler

Yeah, so it's a lot with the marketing that's working, but it's a lot of referrals, it's a lot of networking events. It's a conglomerate of stuff. I don't wanna say it's luck, but it's a lot of cold sales, apartment complexes, and getting ginormous contracts of... You know, from companies that are very, very well known that everybody knows on here that, you know, that are, I'm landing billion dollar companies that a 10 month old company should not be landing because we do what we say we're going to do. We're going to show up, you know, on the actual day in the actual timeframe, you know, and take care of their roaches and bed bugs and fleas. You know, it's like, if you could actually just do the, you're going to say. It's crazy what you actually can do in this business.

06:01Dan Leibrandt

Go deeper on that more because I mean, I'm sure, I think you said like $10 million businesses. I mean, how are you approaching those clients and closing them?

06:11Nick Russler

A lot of it is just driving the property manager nuts. It's kind of crazy. So like this specific apartment complex, it's called McKinley Properties. It's 6,000 units between 20 apartment complexes. They're all monsters. They're huge. They're all infested. You know, the biggest company out there. Can't seem to take care of the issue, which is mind-boggling to me, or even show up for weeks on end. And so I come in, like, hey, can I have your worst unit? Let me at show you what I can do for free at each apartment complex. Pick whatever you want. Whether it's roaches, bed bugs, fleas, I don't care, spiders, whatever your worst spider one is. Or even five of them. How else are you gonna prove yourself? You know, then to do stuff for free. And then now, now it's, you know, a four, three, $400,000 contract that, you know, that I do for the year. But it's, I've done it to probably 30, 40 other apartment complexes that are not, you know, not with this one. And I mean, just doing, cause I mean, everybody knows like doing a bed bug treatment, costs you 10, 15 bucks. Like it's just 10, 15 bucks to get a $300,000 contract. Like it's worth it. So it's, but it was hard at first because I had two Google reviews. Nobody knew who I was. You know, I have a market with 50 other pest control companies in it. Like my odds were in my favor to not win. But you can just every day, every day, not necessarily just go to them every day, but grinding till two, three in the morning of creating your best offer. How can I tailor this to fit best for this client or this client or this client? It's a grind, but it works. I mean, I'm proof right now.

08:22Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. I really respect that. And like I said, I think you would hit it regardless, but you've just, the revenue levels that you've hit, you've hit them so fast because you're working so hard. And I think there's something to be said about that compound effect, right? That snowball effect. It seems like you built up a lot of momentum.

08:41Nick Russler

Yep. Well, you know, not everybody wants to be in the apartment game and I don't even want to be in the apartment game, but I have to at this stage in my company. I'm hoping once spring hits, I can start phasing apartment complexes out just to, I want to focus more on just straight residential. And then, you know, like restaurants or, you know, office places, you know, anything without units pretty much.

09:09Dan Leibrandt

So explain why you want to get out of apartments.

09:12Nick Russler

So the amount of callbacks that you get from bad tenants, nobody preps correctly. There's no accountability for the property managers. Like today I didn't go. One of my techs went and did all the note, like we use FieldRoutes. Nobody likes using the portal, which is wonderful, except the property managers. Well, did your tech even go like in the we're used to the other place to flip all the furniture in the bed bug treatment. Like we try to put back stuff so it doesn't look like we were there. You know, because a lot of them are older people. Like they can't flip their stuff back over. But no, it looks too perfect for us to even be in there. Like what do you want me to do?

10:04Dan Leibrandt

That's insane.

10:05Nick Russler

A camera on their chest so they you can see that they here's the footage. You know, because one thing that we're doing too, that a lot of companies don't do is we're trying to change up a lot of chemicals because of a lot of the resistance. And so, you know, we pride ourselves on trying to do the best treatment. But when we go into a lot of these places and we don't know what the other pest control companies treat with, we can't get rid of the issue right away. So then they're like, what is going on? Well, now we're comparing chemicals and well, what do they use here? What do we use? It's just, it's not always fun. You know, when you go...

10:44Dan Leibrandt

Haha...

10:44Nick Russler

Into a just a normal house that's never had any chemicals in it, like, you know, like a residential house, like it's nine times out of 10, it's a one time treatment. And, you know, it's their money they're playing with. It's not the apartment complex. So they actually take you serious. Like another thing too, is they'll give you, they'll give us like 15 units and nobody's prepped and nobody's ready. So now they're wasting the techs. You know, the tech's time of, well, I gotta get out. It's just such a waste of time. Yes, there's a lot of money in it, but I think there's a lot more money in residential, and you can have a tech make more, I think, in residential.

11:26Dan Leibrandt

Okay, cool. Yeah, so you're about 50 % commercial, that's pretty much all apartments, then you're 50 % residential. So what are you looking to do then? You're gonna kind of phase out of those apartment contracts?

11:41Nick Russler

So I don't really, that's another thing that I have actually learned in this group is like these big apartment complexes, I should have done contracts, but not one of them I have an actual contract on.

11:52Dan Leibrandt

Mmm, Dang.

11:57Nick Russler

So it's a living you learn. Mean, 10 months in, I haven't gotten trouble yet from it, but honestly, if they dropped me, I wouldn't even care, but they're not dropping me because I'm actually showing up and. Getting rid of their issues. But I will say bringing on technicians is a whole lot more trouble. Not necessarily trouble, but it's just a lot more phone calls, a lot more, know, is he actually at the job? Is he doing a good job? You know, like for me, like I pride myself, especially like this is how I grew so fast is like, I'm very critical on how I treat like, you know, very good placement, you know. Getting rid of the obviously getting rid of the issue and doing a good job. Like do I even know that they're doing a good job? So it's a little different.

12:49Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. I want to dive a little bit more into starting the company. So you got a $200,000 investment from one of the people you're actually servicing from your previous company that you're working at. What did that 200 K go into? What, did you use?

13:05Nick Russler

So I have, so I didn't pull the 200,000. It's not like he just like dropped it on me. It was I can pull up to that, but like I had to make a full pro forma. Hey, this is what my marketing is going to cost. This is what, you know, truck costs, soft costs, hard costs, you know, insurance, whatever. So I originally went with a marketing company right off the rip that was like 9,000 a month. And they were doing all my social media. They were doing Google Ads, LSA, my website, all that kind of stuff. Didn't work. It didn't work at all. And I'm not a marketing guy. As you can tell, it took us 20 minutes for me to hook my computer up today. I am on tech savvy. Like if I could just do carbon, you know, carbon paper and hand receipts, like I'm okay with that. So I, they didn't work out. I had to fire him after I spent 50 grand on him.

13:56Dan Leibrandt

Haha, yeah.

14:17Nick Russler

Essentially that.

14:17Dan Leibrandt

So the problem was they just weren't generating leads? Or how did it go?

14:20Nick Russler

No, so my cost per lead was like $300 or cost per conversion was $300.

14:24Dan Leibrandt

Cheers.

14:29Nick Russler

Which would be fine if I was doing just termite jobs for $10,000. At the time I was doing a lot of one-time treatments which were $290. So I was literally breaking even. Actually I was losing money because I had to go out there and service it and use chemicals in my car and gas. Other than commercial I'd made no money so once I Because they were always just telling me like hey, did you like on the cost of just exploding? Like You still can't get my leads under your conversions under $300 like unless because I'm okay with spending, 125 150 especially if it's you know, we're talking a thousand dollar contracts, you know for a subscription for residential but then again, at that time, I really didn't know how to really fully work that either. You know, now that, you know, since I'm in this program, it taught me to do this subscription side more than one time treatment. Well, I'm kind of forgetting where I'm going with this, but yeah, I am losing bad. So.

15:38Dan Leibrandt

No, no, you're good, you're good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, let's go deeper on the program. So I believe you joined, what was it? June, I'm pretty sure.

15:48Nick Russler

You want to ask?

15:52Dan Leibrandt

And kind of funny, you said before the call, and I wrote this down, you said that joining the program and listening to the stuff we say flipped your business upside down, but in a good way. What do you mean by that?

16:07Nick Russler

So I was heavy on one time treatments. As in business, 290. I didn't push, like one thing Jonas did for me was take my business to $500 and then push my subscription, you know, so I can lock them in for a year, essentially. I was just essentially just trying to generate as much cash as I could. And then I'm like, In my head, I'm like, well, I'll just figure this out later. Well, it worked, but it didn't work because now I got 500 customers that just was one time and now they won't move to a contract because I missed my window of opportunity. So moving to subscriptions and I was doing my subscriptions completely wrong. So. I was charging way too low on my subscriptions. So right now, like my bread and butter subscriptions, like $1,100 a year. I was charging $600. So I pretty much doubled. And not only that, he had me put in mice into it as well. I was also running subscriptions where I had like mosquitoes built in and these people were paying year round. Well, now I'm seeing that these...

17:13Dan Leibrandt

Wow, you doubled.

17:33Nick Russler

Know, mosquito season is pretty much ending now. All the mosquito subscriptions that are built into the house are like, hey, we don't need mosquitoes, like we don't want it at all now. So now I'm trying to backtrack, trying to get them on a normal subscription with mice, because I sold a lot of those and it's, my churn is massive on that. So now he's having me do bundles for between May and October, know, paying that window. And so once I made that switch and then like I tried to make those customers that were on that subscription, they're like, no, we don't want to pay, you know, $120 per treatment. Now we're only paying 30 bucks. Pretty much every month. Yeah. So it was a hard pill to swallow, but now we're on the right, right path. Yeah. So now we're now we have a bigger subscription that we're selling a lot more of. Now we're not really doing one time. Our conversion from, or yeah, our conversion to a subscription went up probably 400 % compared to what it was before the program. Just from fixing the subscription correctly with Jake and Jonas and then inflating my prices on one time. So it didn't make sense to do a one time anymore for them to come over.

18:59Dan Leibrandt

Interesting, okay. Do you have like a specific offer around that? Have you created, is there like a go-to, you know, $500 and then $100 a month or something? And there's a certain bundle.

19:11Nick Russler

So yes, so it depends on what it is, Carpenter Ants. Like we'll just say Carpenter Ants. My Carpenter Ants are 340 before, now they're 500. No, they're 520. So not only that, like a follow-up treatment is 250. So you're pretty much $750 in. And like I explained, like, hey, you know, with Carpenter Ants. You know, I there's like a 40 % chance that I'm gonna have to come back and do a follow up. And you're already paying $520. Like, if I was you know, would I would do the subscription because now I can spray the exterior of your house, the interior of your house. There's a full insurance policy on the house if you know if you have issues in between. So we treat your house every 60 days year round. So we do six treatments a year which I'm still arguing with Jonas on that but we're moving forward.

20:13Nick Russler

So bi-monthly treatments year round and you get mice included. So you don't have worry about mice. Like it's a full home protection. And you know, if there still is ants after this treatment, you just call me or I can schedule right now, hey, for three weeks out, I'll just come back and at least check. And it's, you know, it's $165 to start instead of $520 to start. And like you're already halfway going to be paying for, you know, you know, of the... Of the Honorable Shield.

20:43Dan Leibrandt

Mm, yeah, yeah, love that. Okay, that makes sense. And I also wanted to ask you about hiring. So I believe you told me you have a few techs now. Is that right or where you at with employees?

20:54Nick Russler

Correct. Yep. So I coached high school wrestling for five years and I had one of the kids graduated this year and I is he's one of the like the hardest working kids I've ever seen. Very, very honest, very smart kid. And I like begged him. And so he only committed to doing just the summer. So he was going to go to firefighting school. And so. I only pay straight commission. Don't pay hourly, nothing. So if you sell a job and you do a crappy job, then you gotta go retreat, like that's on you. So the amount of commission that I'm paying, like, and I checked, we teed this, but like the average technician makes like 48 grand a year. So I pay 20 % commission on all jobs. So. You know, he has a chance to make 120 grand a year as a technician, Honorable. So we did, I don't know, we ended up doing like $15,000 worth of work one week. And he saw, he saw his one week check and he's like, so you're telling me I'm going to go be a firefighter and make 50 grand a year and I'm being paid like three grand this week?

22:20Nick Russler

So he literally quit the day that he had firefighter school. Yeah, so he quit me. I told him like, man, like, you know, like, I honestly truly like love this kid. This kid's awesome. And I've coached him. I've saw him pretty much grow up with all of high school, you know? And I'm like, man, like we can really make this grow. Cause I'm trying to do in time, like I want people to work for equity in my company. Like I want people to take full ownership. And I'm telling them, I'm like, dude, you obviously saw what one we can do for you. And you have the chance to, you know, take ownership in this company. And this thing's going to $100 million, whether you're in it or not. You can either go fight fires, which is cool, I'm not knocking it, or you can become rich. Like what do you want?

23:13Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha.

23:14Nick Russler

So, and like I don't know, just, last second, I threw a couple things at him too. Like, I guess you're not manly enough to do pest control. I ended up getting, he's locked him out. And then I just ended up taking another technician from another company. Got like 25 years experience, which is good, because I'm learning a ton from him myself. And so he's bringing a lot to the table that I needed. And he's bringing like, cause I've never done moles before, he's bringing moles to the table. You know, he has 7B with termite. I have 7B without termite, so now we can do termites. So it's good. He's good dude.

24:04Dan Leibrandt

Awesome. That's, have you heard Jonas's story of him being a wrestling coach and hiring someone?

24:11Nick Russler

No.

24:12Dan Leibrandt

He literally has that like same story. When he was pretty early on, he was a wrestling coach at, I guess his daughter's high school or maybe the high school that he went to. And like you said, there's this guy that was a super hard worker, this guy James. I met him in person just a few weeks ago. Just super hustler, very obsessed, wants to get rich. And Jonas did the same thing for like six to nine months. He was just chasing this kid down. Jonas knew he had potential, even though he's kind of going down the wrong path, was even pitching this kid's parents, eventually brought him on, and now that guy has equity, I think in, I mean, like three to five of Jonas' locations, and he is crushing it. Mean, some of the locations, grow from zero to almost a million a year because this guy is running the show. It's incredible. So it seems like that's kind of the same thing.

25:03Nick Russler

Yeah, Dude, I worked on this kid, even when he was in high school. Dude, we're going to create something together. Because I've had other businesses and failed hard. Used to, I guess a little bit like I worked for Amtrak for 10 years, got out, started flipping houses right before COVID. Once two by fours went from like $1.98 to $15. I had a couple houses going. I pretty much we broke. Didn't go bankrupt, but I was out there. And so that's why I got in. Sorry, I got into pest control. But like I've always had that entrepreneurship. I just didn't have the right guidance of, you know, I always had like, you know, I could work hard, outwork anybody, but just never knew what to do or write, I guess. So...

25:57Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Yeah, well, let's go on that. Like, so how did you learn what was right? And I'm not saying just from the program, but just from anyone maybe. There any other mentors in your life or maybe just even podcasts or books?

26:11Nick Russler

So I do read, I actually just met with a guy, sprayed his house, believe it or not. He owned a garage door company. He owned it for like four years. He ended up buying it, they were doing like 10 or 15 grand a month. He sold it three years later and they were doing 500k a month. But this guy has bought and sold a lot and he's got full training systems and he's just like, dude, like sit down with me. I'm gonna, I'll teach you how to sell. I'm like, okay. So I've sat down from the last couple of weeks. A very no bullshit guy, I will say. Like he's probably one of the most intense guys I've ever sat down with, but knows his stuff very well.

27:01Dan Leibrandt

What has he taught you?

27:03Nick Russler

So you ever heard of, oh man, I'm gonna forget it right now, it's the Sadler Pyramid, it's sales. I don't even have my phone, but it's all about selling. What he did, so he was out of Cincinnati.

27:10Dan Leibrandt

No.

27:21Nick Russler

I'm gonna say the company he owned like one of the Precision companies, Precision franchises. So like a normal garage door company sells garage doors for like 600 bucks, like installed, he sells them for 18 to $3,000 for the same door. And it's all because of the sales training that his technicians went through. So we're trying to figure out how it correlates to pest control, but sales is sales. Mean, it's all emotions. You know, essentially, it's not manipulating, but manipulate people in sales. Yeah.

28:01Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, well maybe manipulate them to do something good, could say, persuade them.

28:05Nick Russler

Yeah, it is a learning how to ask the right questions. That's what it is.

28:13Dan Leibrandt

Explain that.

28:14Nick Russler

Like, a lot of salespeople will just try to convince you of buying their product. Like, we're the best company. We're gonna be here every 13 days, whether you like me or not. I'm gonna be your best friend. I'm the coolest guy you know. Compared to, you know, what is like a good way of doing this? Like, let's just say you have carpenter ants. You know, hey, Mr. Seller, like you have carpenter ants. Like what are you going to do if we don't treat this today? Like, have you, like, how has this affected your life? You know, essentially going down that beaten path of them talking themselves into it, you know, listening to their, you know, listening to what they say and not necessarily rebuttaling, but. You know, having them sell themselves so you're not selling them. Because people don't want to be sold. And I'm still going through it. So, and I'm not very good at it. But I got techs that are good at it.

29:25Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, I was just gonna mention a quote that I really like, which you kind of already said this, but everyone likes to buy, but no one likes to be sold. Like if it's just a sales guy ruthlessly trying to pitch you and, please, please buy my stuff, buy my stuff. No one likes that. I mean, someone does wanna buy a premium pest control product. There's these like upper middle-class families that can't afford it. You know, maybe it's a mom and they wanna keep, she wants to keep her kids safe. I mean, of course she's gonna buy a premium pest control package. Is she gonna let the dog get hurt or the kids get hurt? Maybe there's some kind of disease going on. Like it's literally a safety protocol. It's needed.

30:05Nick Russler

Yeah, for sure. And like, to like piggyback, like I'm not the cheapest pest control company and I don't want to be the cheapest pest control company because I want, I only really want to deal with the top like 30 % of people with, you know, hiring clients. They don't really call back as much. They understand. They don't even, when you tell them the price, they're like, okay. Like they don't even think about it. You know, it's more of just a relationship thing over a money thing. You know, don't have to, well, hey, if you go over there and sell that dog over there, like you can afford me. It's, you know? So I don't know.

30:46Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, it's the same thing with any market, even me with my agency. The cheaper clients, ones that are always looking for a deal and trying to pay the least, they're usually the worst. Yeah, right? So I guess that's across the board. Something else I wanted to cover, which we'll go back to the marketing stuff, is, so you mentioned that you paid an agency a ton of money, didn't even make your money back. You spent 50K, you maybe made like 10 or 20K back. So then...

30:55Nick Russler

Dude, they're always a headache. Always. Always a headache,...

31:14Dan Leibrandt

After that, or maybe even during that period, what has been working for marketing and getting leads?

31:19Nick Russler

So I'm huge on LSA right now, which that was huge with, you know, Jonas and Jake is they only really say to do, you know, Facebook marketing and LSA. So I'm still trying to figure out the Facebook site. I'm running Facebook ads. I'm just not as good as Jake is. So it's gonna be hard to do, which. But that's the, like, I have my wife run it. My wife does my social media. She loves doing it. And I have a 14 year old daughter. She does it as well. So they get to make money. And my wife does the Facebook. But other than that, it's a lot of referrals. Still a lot of, you know, cold sales, banging doors. Where I just hired a... A sales guy and so we're going to really hammer strategic partnerships this winter. Do you know a lot about strategic partnerships?

32:19Dan Leibrandt

A good amount. I've talked to Jake a lot about it.

32:22Nick Russler

So we're in the midst of trying to figure out the commercial side, because we're going to be in dead of winter. Here in Michigan, it's going to get a foot of snow and five degrees. There's not really any bugs. So we're going to be pushing a lot of mice treatments and strategic partnerships. Plus, I'm hoping LSA doesn't close down or shut down or not shut down, but slow down. I'm running probably about 9000 a month in LSA right now. $55 conversion. It's that is if I could if I could 100,000 I would I literally every week. Well, for the amount that I'm trying to spend every week is 20,000. They just won't take it. Wish they would just take it.

32:59Dan Leibrandt

That's not bad. That fit. Wait, wait, fit.

33:12Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's how it goes. I've witnessed this with a lot of clients and people in the program that I've talked to. It seems like Google will specifically, or it'll take a certain percentage of whatever you give the budget. So you should actually at least like double what you wanna give it. Some people I've even seen will set it to like a million dollars a week or whatever. But it will never obviously spend that full amount. It's different than Google ads, right?

33:39Nick Russler

Wait, so it does half of what you want to spend?

33:42Dan Leibrandt

Not exactly, it could be even worse than that. Obviously like that example of a million dollars a week, it would be much less than that because there's only a certain amount of demand in the market. And LSAs are a little bit more selective and stuff. I wanna go a little bit deeper on referrals. How are you getting those?

34:01Nick Russler

So I use, I do the Clicki, do you know Clicki?

34:04Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, yeah, I just interviewed the founder, Kendall Hines.

34:07Nick Russler

No. That works okay. I'm not the best at it. So after every single appointment, I bring out a sheet. And on the sheet has what people can make, you know, hey, one to five referrals, you can make 50 bucks referral, all the way down to if you want to make 10 grand a month. And then on the other side of the sheet, it says, hey, you're going to get a text or an 844 number, it's going to ask for a Google review, because I do the Bravo as well. So you're gonna ask for a Google review, you can tip the technician if you want, and then like hammer the referral side, like, hey, do you know anybody that wants some pest control? So that and just a lot of property managers know a lot of property managers. So, especially since that big account that I landed, that is huge in the market, because I'm most, I do Lansing, but I'm mostly... Mostly Ann Arbor and surrounding. Just saying the name of that company, everybody's like, you do them? So that really helps out as well. I mean, it's a billion dollar company.

35:17Nick Russler

It's massive.

35:19Dan Leibrandt

And how did you land them?

35:21Nick Russler

Cold sales.

35:24Dan Leibrandt

How did you approach them? Was it a cold call or in person?

35:27Nick Russler

No, no, in person. They have, so in that little area they have, it's 6,000 units and 20 apartment complexes. I just kept rotating the property managers until somebody gave me a free, let me do a free treatment. Like come on, like what's it gonna hurt? Like how many using socks? Like I know they suck. Like everybody in this world knows they suck.

35:48Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Dang. Okay. So you were just pitching a free treatment and eventually that worked. How many people did you have to pitch?

35:57Nick Russler

Well, every property manager probably about five times. It took probably five months to get in there. But then once one gave me an opportunity, then they're like, okay, well, at least put you in the system, which that was a whole nother problem. Do you know anything about like vendor cafes or like these third party? Okay.

36:17Dan Leibrandt

No, no, not much.

36:19Nick Russler

Well, for like for them to do like your W9 insurance, like it's all got to go through this third party. Well, that took a while as well. So this one that I was doing that gave me the opportunity was just paying me by credit card every time I would go in there because they wanted me because of the company they're couldn't get rid of their issue. So I was getting rid of their issue before I even was allowed, before anybody else even knew I was there. Essentially they were not allowed to do what they were doing, but it worked. And then once I got in, they pretty much just called all the other ones. And then all their buddies. Yeah, it just, went like rapid fire.

36:57Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Dang. Okay. So you knock one domino and the rest fall. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, cool, man. I think it's been a great show. We'll start to wrap it up here. I've got one more question for you. And that is, what is your message for the other pest control owners out there? What do you wanna tell them? What do you think they need to know?

37:24Nick Russler

I think they need to know that it's going to work, but you're going to have to work it. It is a lot of work. I didn't know how much work this was going to be. Mean, even last week I was pulling, I pulled two all-nighters last week just to get stuff done so the technicians could have their stuff fixed. It's a grind, like it's, but the... And I have no like the ends not in sight for me yet because I essentially just pay myself a very little amount of money like yeah, I made 70k but I paid myself 1 % not 1 % but like 2 % for them. Like, don't take your money out before you know, you can really see the light at the end of the tunnel. Like you need to grow this. I mean, this industry is massive and you can you can win in this. But you really need to, I guess, be smart about it, but just keep pushing.

38:30Dan Leibrandt

Amen, bro. Yeah, that's what Jonas says a lot, especially with people in the program. It's like, he might do some one on one consulting with people. And he's like, well, dude, why are you taking out like 150 grand a year for yourself? Like, obviously, you're not growing because you're not reinvesting. So sounds like you're doing that really.

38:48Nick Russler

Yeah, yeah, I pay myself very little. My wife doesn't like that.

38:51Dan Leibrandt

But eventually because you see the bigger vision you said you're going for like a hundred million dollars...

38:58Nick Russler

Yeah. Well, I didn't know how big I wanted this until Jonas told me he wanted $100 million.

39:04Dan Leibrandt

Ha...

39:05Nick Russler

And then I heard him talk the other day and he's like, well, I want 100 million revenue. I'm like, well, now I got to do 100 million in revenue. So now it's just the race to the top. I got to beat him. And if Clark Pest Control, can he be bought off 500 million? Why can't I or why can't they? It can be done if someone else can do it.

39:27Dan Leibrandt

No, I love that man. Yeah, no, it's, mean, like, what's what's the difference between you and Jonas? He just got to, you just got to work hard, keep going at it. Keep, keep reinvesting, stay obsessed. Love that man. I love that mentality. And I've been witnessing that with a lot of the successful pest control owners, but just successful people that I've been meeting in general. It's like, you just have to be obsessed. You have to want it so bad, man.

39:50Nick Russler

And you're going to miss a lot of your kids stuff to do it. That's like my wife is the most gracious person with me. Like because I'm out most nights from nine, 10 o'clock still, you know, still treating because I'm still in the I still have a truck that I'm treating with. And she's like, well, you know, you have two techs, you can just push them on them or like maybe, I don't know, push out today. I'm like, yeah, but they need treated today. That's why I'm getting the business. How can beat all my competitors is speed. So, but you know there'll be a time where I'll be able to sleep in maybe a little bit.

40:28Dan Leibrandt

Hehehehe...

40:29Nick Russler

I'm not really a sleeping in kind of guy but at least you know at least midday take my wife out to lunch that'd be cool.

40:36Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm, yeah. No, that's what it takes, man. And most people aren't willing to do that. So that's why you've seen so much success so early. So cool, man. I think it's been a great show. Like I said, your story is super interesting and it's incredible how you've grown so fast. Think you're trending to grow to a pretty exponential rate, a pretty exponential level. So it's really cool to see and I'm looking forward to staying in touch with you, seeing your journey. Where can people find you and connect with you on social media and stuff?

41:10Nick Russler

Well, I don't, that's funny. I don't really do social media. My wife, I have it, my wife runs it. I just don't know how to do it. I do Facebook. You can look me up on Facebook. Yeah, I don't know the handle. I don't know, is there a handle on Facebook?

41:25Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, people usually look up your name. So I think you're Nicholas Russler. Okay, cool.

41:29Nick Russler

Yep, yep. Other than that, I don't really know how to like comment back or post.

41:36Dan Leibrandt

No, all good, man. Yeah, just if someone sends a friend request, to friend them back.

41:40Nick Russler

Yeah. I mean, I got my email and my phone number on here.

41:44Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, sure if you want to share it and maybe if other people want to other owners want to text you...

41:49Nick Russler

Yeah, my phone number is [phone number removed]. And then my email is [email address removed].

41:58Dan Leibrandt

Awesome, cool. And anything else you'd like to plug or promote?

42:02Nick Russler

If you guys know anybody that needs Pest Control in Michigan, send them my way.

42:08Dan Leibrandt

Yes, sir, let's go. I appreciate you coming on the show, Nick. Thank you for your time and yeah, this has been fun.

42:14Nick Russler

Cool, I appreciate it Yep, thank you.