What I Wish I Knew Before Opening a Second Pest Control Location

If you’re thinking about opening a second location, I’d probably tell you to wait. A lot of owners expand way too early. They get their first location working, they’re making some money with a couple trucks on the road, and right away they look at the next city. I get it, because I’ve done it. But more locations doesn’t mean you built a bigger or better business.

I’ve been in the service industry for 17 years, and we’ve grown Pest Badger from one location to 20 in nine states. Here’s what I wish I’d known before opening our second one, and what I want in place before we move into another market.

This video is part of PCO Tips. If you’re still getting started, read the top 10 things I wish I knew before starting a pest control company first.

Fill the Market You’re Already In

Don’t move until you need to. Another truck, another office and another dot on the map are exciting. Another 500 customers in the market you already have isn’t, but a new market means another team to hire and manage, another set of customers and more vehicles, inventory, marketing and licensing. There are good reasons to go. You’ve penetrated your market, a great opportunity came up, you have the right person to build it, or your marketing and sales work so well that you know you can build a customer base fast. Otherwise, if I can add a truck where I am and fill it without new overhead, I look hard at that first.

The deeper you get into a market, the bigger you look. People see your trucks, your lawn signs and your techs around town, you stack reviews and referrals, and they recognize your name when they see an ad. Somebody sees a Pest Badger truck at the neighbor’s house, sees our Facebook ad a week later, gets ants two months after that and searches Google, and we show up. That might be the fourth or fifth time they’ve seen us. It’s hard to measure, but that momentum affects what it costs to get a customer, and in a new market you start over, without hundreds of reviews and with higher lead costs for a while. Density helps operations too. Someone close by can cover a callback or an overloaded route, recruiting gets easier, and you build relationships with property managers, realtors and other home service companies.

When I broke down Mason Metzger’s company live, he had 10% to 15% of the homes in his town, and I told him to fill it first. To size up your own market, use the math in how big your pest control company can actually get.

Hire People Who Live There

Once it’s time, staff it differently than I did. It’s tempting to send a tech you already trust, who knows your company and your service program. We’ve done it plenty of times. Then you’re paying for hotels or renting houses, guys are away from their families, and eventually they want to come home. The bigger problem is when a customer needs a callback, an inspection, a wildlife job or a reservice and nobody’s there. If your tech left on Thursday, maybe you can’t get back until Monday or Tuesday, and in the days of Amazon, customers want something within 24 or 48 hours.

So I want technicians who wake up in that community. If someone needs an inspection at 4:00, there’s somebody there, and a local team knows people who know people. I learned this the hard way. Early on I drove two hours every single day, and as the company down there grew, it wasn’t scalable. It was the middle of COVID and hiring was extremely hard, so I brought people down and paid for hotels. That was $80,000 in hotels for the summer. Don’t do what I did.

Your First Location Has to Run Without You

Before I hire anyone in a new market, the original business has to handle my attention moving somewhere else. One location hides a lot. You know your techs and your customers, and when there’s a question, a customer issue, a flat tire or a broken sprayer, you slide in and handle it. You don’t realize how much still depends on you until you can’t be everywhere.

So ask what happens if you’re gone for two weeks, a month, three months and a year. Who’s accountable for the techs, watching the numbers and making sure callbacks get done? Who’s hiring, training, noticing when routes get sloppy, handling inventory and dealing with all the weird stuff that doesn’t fit your perfect process? If it all still comes back to you, fix that first, because now it happens in two places.

And please, please, please protect the business that’s funding the expansion. It’s probably where your best people are, it’s where your customers and reputation are, and it’s probably producing the cash for the next one. It’s easy to move your best tech or your manager, redirect marketing dollars, buy another truck, spend on recruiting ads and pour your own time into the new market. I see it all the time. Don’t create a problem in a good location trying to get a new one off the ground.

Whatever You Budget, Double It

The investment period gets expensive fast. If you’re budgeting $70,000, expect $100,000 to $140,000. Those aren’t exact numbers. The point is to double whatever you budget and have the cash in the bank. You might take a truck from the first location, but you still need a vehicle, equipment, insurance, licensing, payroll, recruiting, marketing and maybe a facility, all while you build a customer base that can take longer than you planned. The first tech might not work out. Leads might cost more because nobody knows you. The first three months might bring fewer customers than you expected.

You want enough cushion that one or two of those don’t force bad decisions. I’d rather wait a few more months, or a year or two, and build the cash than spend a year trying to keep the new market, or the old business, alive. We had enough cash when we opened our second location, but it took a lot more than I thought.

Don’t Rebuild the Whole Company

We control that cost by not rebuilding the entire company in every market. The technicians need to be local, and eventually so does the leadership, a branch manager or a lead technician. You need inventory and everything it takes to service customers. But you probably don’t need an office, and you don’t need phones, billing, inside sales or marketing at every location. We’ve centralized all of that, so the branch spends its time on customers, good routes, developing techs and building the market. One of our branches does $2 million out of a storage unit.

Use what already works, too. If your service program and pricing work and you’re hitting your man-hour rate on every job, start there. Same with how you train techs, handle callbacks, follow up on estimates, ask for reviews and measure performance. That’s why systems matter. Can somebody take the way you do something and get the same results without you standing next to them, every place you go?

Put Someone There Who Owns the Results

Population, income, competition and customer acquisition all matter, but somebody good still has to build the business. Who’s developing the techs, watching the customer experience and doing something when the numbers are off? Who keeps standards from slipping when you’re back at the first location for a week? The more locations we’ve opened, the more the people running them matter. The best branches have the best leaders. I’d rather wait on a market than open one without somebody I believe can own the results. They don’t need to know everything on day one, but they have to take responsibility, solve problems without calling you for every little thing and care about what they’re building.

You also can’t manage by feel anymore. I want live data on customer acquisition cost, new customers, average contract value, churn, production per technician, callbacks, margin, route density, reviews, close rates and man-hour rates. Here’s how we review our numbers branch by branch every week. And I decide what I expect before we open. Where should the branch be after 90 days, six months and a year? When can it support a second, third and fourth tech and a branch manager? When should it cover its own overhead? You don’t want to get a year in and then decide what success was supposed to look like.

Start Licensing Months Before You Open

Licensing and compliance can wreck your whole timeline. Every state is different, and a market an hour or two away might be in another state, with its own licensing requirements, insurance registrations, vehicle requirements and rules on the products you use. We’re in nine states, and some were extremely easy to get into while others were extremely hard. In one market, “we thought we’d be in 30 days and we were about 60 days off.”

If you plan to open a location a year from now, start the licensing now, so you’re not selling accounts you can’t service. Some techs won’t pass the test in a new state right away, so have a good study and onboarding guide for it. Work backward from the day you want to start servicing customers.

What I’d Do Today

If I opened location two again, I’d look harder at the business I already had and what we’d gain by staying a little longer, maybe even an extra year. I’d make sure it could run without me and that we had enough cash. Then, if another market still made sense, I’d hire people who live there, use the systems, pricing and service model we’d already built, put somebody there who owns the results from day one and know what the numbers need to look like before we open the doors.

I’m a believer in expansion. I just think you need a reason beyond another dot on the map. There may be another 500 to 1,000 customers sitting right around the ones you already have, or a market two hours away with a great opportunity. Know which one makes more sense for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should a pest control company open a second location?

Later than most owners think. Fill the market you’re already in first, and open when you have a real reason, like a penetrated market, a great opportunity, the right person to build it or marketing and sales that can build a customer base fast. Your first location also has to run without you.

How much does it cost to open a second pest control location?

More than you think. If you’re budgeting $70,000, expect $100,000 to $140,000, and treat those as rough numbers. Double whatever you budget and keep enough cash in the bank that a slow start doesn’t force bad decisions.

Should you send your own technicians to open a new market?

I wouldn’t. Hire people who live there. Traveling techs mean hotels, time away from their families and nobody nearby when a customer needs a callback or an inspection, and customers want something within 24 or 48 hours.

What does a new pest control branch need locally?

Technicians who live there, eventually local leadership like a branch manager or lead technician, and the inventory to service customers. The office, phones, billing, inside sales and marketing can be centralized.