Seth Garber: The ones that have the highest gross margin, the ones that have the greatest route density and have the best profitability sell the most simple services, and then they add stuff on.
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Patrick Baldwin: What's up, Seth?
Seth Garber: What's going on. I'm glad to be doing this again.
Patrick Baldwin: Welcome back. Welcome to Texas, kind sir.
Seth Garber: Thanks. I feel like I've been on this journey all over.
Patrick Baldwin: We did a live episode in Fort Worth. Now, we're down in Houston. We just wrapped up NWCOA, the wildlife conference. You had a talk and I pulled you. I know you've already had a long day and I'm keeping you for a little bit longer, Seth.
Seth Garber: This has been a heck of a whirlwind. We've been recording tons of content and all this stuff. I feel obligated considering that Paul's been solo the last couple of weeks.
Patrick Baldwin: It's been busy. Now we've both been traveling. You killed it on Energy. I loved Energy. Everyone there loved it. I don't even know where to start but it was a phenomenal time. Lots of great speakers, the CEO panel, Dave Bradford, Andrew Barrows, and Scarlett Nolen from Truly Nolen, and I had a fantastic time with them. Lo and behold, here comes Aquaman the next day doing a live Boardroom Buzz with a surprise guest, Andrew, from Saela. That was phenomenal. You killed it, and your team, it was awesome.
Seth Garber: We all go to these conferences and they're all super enjoyable and we have a ton of fun but there's something humbling when you have a team that spends a year putting something together and it all comes together. Looking back at these sessions, Paul's session was unbelievable, and everyone's session was unbelievable. The best part about it for me is I did a session and when everyone brings up everyone else's sessions, it makes me feel good. I'm glad it went well. The audience had a great time and learned a ton.
Patrick Baldwin: Your session was awesome, Seth.
Seth Garber: Thanks.
Patrick Baldwin: No detail forgotten. No stone unturned. Your team killed it. I'd highly recommend you all keep an eye out for the next conference whenever the tickets go out. The 2025 conference is going to be called Swag.
Seth Garber: Not Swag but Scales.
Patrick Baldwin: I can't say enough good things about everyone.
Seth Garber: It's awesome.
Patrick Baldwin: Everyone there, there's a common denominator as far as it has its own culture. That room has its own dynamic and everyone in there.
Seth Garber: As a whole, our industry has come together and people have helped each other. Over the years, when we've been building this ecosystem of people that want to accelerate their businesses and focus on growth and put them all in a room together, it's amazing what happens again. It was a hugely humbling experience for me. I can't express how proud I am of all the attendees, the results that they've been getting over the years, our internal team at Pest Daily, all the work they've put in, and how grateful I am for all the speakers that committed their time and resources and effort to make the trip. It was great.
Patrick Baldwin: Here we are in Houston and it was Energy. You're heading out to New Jersey. How many nights have you been in your own bed?
Seth Garber: It's funny, coming into this year, I promised my wife that I would cut back travel. In 2023, we did 38 business trips, 10 vacations, and I spent 4 weekends at my house. A lot of times, I was with my family so it was okay. I've been in my own bed 3 nights over the last 20 days maybe.
Patrick Baldwin: Good times.
Seth Garber: You're the same though, you've been on the road.
Patrick Baldwin: I've been on the road too. Paul is on the road right now with his YPO group. This is awesome. NWCOA, the Mexican showed up like a thief in the night, he came and he was gone soon enough, which is how I like it. A little bit of Mex, not too much, a little Oompa Loompa there. He did a closing dinner with some clients. You all might've hung out for a little bit. Let me pose this question to you he threw at me. As we were getting in the elevator, he goes, “Between pest and wildlife, because they are two different dynamics, and there's a lot of companies that do both, do you see a trend between pest growing at a higher clip or wildlife growing at a higher clip right now?”
Seth Garber: I'm fortunate to have strong clients across the nation who have both. Pest, as a whole, for the top performing companies, is still going to outgrow wildlife into the coming year. That said, the thing that I love about the wildlife industry is that we're able to drive the average contract value to the roof right now. We're getting absolute top dollar, probably double what we were getting over a year and a half ago. We're tying back subscription revenues to all these programs. I like it a lot from a cashless standpoint.
I'm not going to call them out but there's been some large wildlife operators here who are pushing expansion of wildlife. Honestly, they should. You've heard me say this for years, wildlife is an incredibly undervalued asset class that we just need to get focused on. It has crazy value in the world today. I'm assuming I didn't speak to the Mex about it but I'm assuming that's why he's here.
Patrick Baldwin: Maybe. Some additional private equity, In Poland, I've talked about that as far as wildlife goes. You had a conversation with someone that was here at NWCOA and he's also a FRAXN client. The conversation had to do with, “Cash is tight because I'm running 85% wildlife and 15% pest.” What is that like? Your recommendation to him, as far as cashflow goes, “You've got high contract value with wildlife but also building that recurring pest.” You said he needs to get from 15% to 25% or 30% to help his cashflow.
Seth Garber: This is something that lots of companies face if they're in the wildlife sector and they don't have strong recurring revenue. One of the things we face is that wildlife companies, historically, have all kinds of different payment structures. This is why I knew that math off the top of my head. You'll see payment structures where they'll take 25% upfront, 50% upfront, and then they'll get the rest on completion.
The issue we face in wildlife is on-completion is an open-ended item. On-completion for some companies, there's a set time, date, and place up when the job is finished. A lot of times, what you'll see in wildlife is when the jobs get all the way to the end, they'll go back 5, 6, 7, or 8 times to finish this one thing or finish this other thing. Fortunately, I know his business and I know that's the way they operate.
The reason I was able to give that advice and say, “You had accelerated your wildlife business.” I know and I called out the cashflow issue right off the beginning because I knew it. Not even from looking at his data, I just knew from his description. What I also know is that if his recurring revenue on pest was at 15%, I knew that he wasn't able to cover his fixed operational costs of that wildlife company by pest control.
One of the targets that we always look at when we're working with our consulting clients or when we look at the math is we say, “If you're going to go build a wildlife company, what does it take in order to cover all your operational costs from a recurring revenue component?” Whatever that math looks like, I knew his math was off.
Let's say, in his business, he probably needs $400,000 to $500,000 of recurring revenue in order to cover his operational expenses of a business. I’m assuming he's running at a 60% percent gross margin, which is probably where he's at, but his collections are probably off a lot. What I'm saying is that the best wildlife companies, as they're scaling up wildlife, they're building their pest recurring revenue or their subscription wildlife revenue to a size that covers all their operational fixed costs and then they're ready to go up. That's why I knew that math was off.
My recommendation to him was, and frankly I would be more aggressive but I know that when you communicate to people that aren't thinking that way, you have to start something that they can consume. He's at 15% recurring past. I said, “Let's try to get 25% to 30% in the next year.” The reality is he needs to get to 50%, probably a $50 percent split by the end of the year if he wants to accelerate his business. Does that answer your question, Patrick?
Patrick Baldwin: Very thorough, thank you.
Seth Garber: Sorry about that.
Patrick Baldwin: No, don't say sorry.
Seth Garber: It's the first time I've ever done that. That's what happens when I'm exhausted, getting off stage, building five hours of content, and hanging out with you.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm sure hanging out with me is hard, thank you. That was helpful. Pest and Wildlife, a company that's doing both. Fresh off your talk, you said, a client is only someone that has a future invoice schedule with you or else it's just a database, that's how you refer to it. You threw a number up there, 20% to 25% of your existing clients. If I remember right, I could purchase a service from you in the next 18 to 24 months.
Seth Garber: No. The statement that we made is that 20% of the people in your existing database are willing to purchase a service from you within the next 18 to 24 months. It's within your database. What I would say to validate this a little further is that there is going to be a time component to that. This is something we've really been looking at. The time component that we've fell on is that if they've been entered into your database in the last five years, I've pushed for some companies seven years, that's the math. If you have a database of 5,000 people, out of that 5,000 people, if those people were within the next seven years, 1,000 people are willing to purchase a service from you in the next 18 to 24 months.
Patrick Baldwin: That's where a wildlife company could go and market pest control. You mentioned a wildlife subscription.
Seth Garber: We've been deeply looking at modeling and we've been proving this out. I brought this up during my talks, if you went back three years ago to NWCOA, I got on stage and I had a big discussion about building recurring revenue models around wildlife. There were about 150 people in the room. Out of that room, and I remember listening, half that room walked out and was like, “This is bullshit.” I remember listening to it and I was laughing hilariously because we'd already proven it out and some models.
Half the room was like, “That's a good idea.” Everyone has to build their own model around it so now we're way down the road here. We've seen guys that were in that room years ago went and built multimillion dollar recurring revenue programs based on what we said in the wildlife sector. This is one of those things that's highly polarizing. People disagree but some of the models that we're working on now and that we've put out there in the world, we've tested, take an exclusion job, versus doing an annual warranty is we move them directly to a monthly recurring invoice for their warranty. We're proving it out.
Company A goes out, does a $3,000 or $5,000 exclusion job versus paying a 10% or 15% renewal of $700 into the year or $500 into the year. We're moving them to a $50 a month payment immediately. We're positioning it, it's winning, and it's working. Now that we've got the sales methodology around it, we're expanding to other markets. We're doing it in quite a few markets. It's working pretty damn well.
Patrick Baldwin: I love that.
Seth Garber: Honestly, it's brilliant.
Patrick Baldwin: The ability to easily cross sell. They're expecting their credit card is getting hit the first of the month or whatever that is. Right now, you can cross sell on pests or termite like Sentricon or Trelona, some baiting programs, and mosquitoes.
Seth Garber: This all began years ago. What we used to face was that wildlife companies would tend to sell their warranty so they would go out and say, “We'll give you a 3-year or 5-year warranty.” That's what people were always doing. They were trying to one-up their competitor versus thinking about what they're committing to. They're committing to a liability over years, that's what they're committing to if they do that. They can't control everything that happens at these houses. That progressed to annualized annual warranties methodology around higher conversion rates coming into the annual warranty, which then said, “How do we get smarter? How do we get this to a subscription?”
If they had both pest and wildlife, we were building models that said, “If we do exclusion and you buy our pest control service, your wildlife is covered as long as you're paying for your pest control service. We would raise the rates of that service.” Now, we're going all the way and saying, “After we do the exclusion work, we immediately move you to a monthly payment for your warranty.” We're getting that progression and, honestly, it's working and it's working well.
Patrick Baldwin: Are these companies that you're seeing be successful with this? Are they even getting rid of an annual warranty as an option? It's like a subscription warranty or nothing.
Seth Garber: You got to remember the companies that are going to be doing this, the companies that are doing it, these guys are brought into our methodologies. Let's utilize the term bleeding edge. It's probably an extreme term but let's just say bleeding edge for thinkers. These guys are taking the chance. They also follow the sales methodologies that we prescribe, which says, “We don't ask the customer. We don't create options. We tell the customer what the customer is going to buy.”
We’ve built every model. We have all different kinds of sales processes but that's the methodology that we deploy here. The customer buys it during the sales process so they simply tell them, “In the next month, you're going to get a bill for whatever the cost is. What credit card would you like to put this on?” We assumptively sell these things. It's great.
If you took it and you said, “What are all the different segmentations of the sales processes that you run?” We run all of them. We do have option-based programs. We have all these different things we build for companies. This one is the one that I sit there and think about and I love because I know that if we're going to go build the enterprise value of these wildlife companies or these wildlife/pest control companies, this is going to be a key driver.
Patrick Baldwin: Let me ask you, the whole inverse of this whole conversation, taking it way back, we talked about wildlife companies that are getting into pest control. Would you ever tell a pest control company, “You need to get into wildlife services.”
Seth Garber: The answer is yes. That's not a broad stroke. A wildlife operation is much different than a pest operation. The answer is I would if they went in a structured approach and if they were in a market that made logical sense and if the owner was ready. If you go back to Energy, if you thought about what you heard some of these heads of the big companies say, they all said the same thing. They all simply said, “Sell a single service, sell it well, and then add something onto it.” That's what they all said. You're talking about four companies and all four are over $100 million.
Patrick Baldwin: Top 25. $65 million-plus.
Seth Garber: If you think about what the best-of-the-best-of-the-best are saying, everyone's saying the same thing. They're saying that and we've been saying that for years and it's getting the first service and then sell them something else. If you're something else's wildlife, awesome. If you're a wildlife company, then you're something else's pest, awesome. Get to your core business. That was a big deal.
If you looked at that room at the a-ha moment, when you heard, “Sell them pest control first. Don't sell them all this other bullshit. Don't come up with new programs or services and just keep it simple.” The fact is if I look at our clients, our clients that we work with on a regular basis, the ones that have the highest gross margin, the ones that have the greatest drought density and have the best profitability sell the most simple services, and then they add stuff on.
Patrick Baldwin: It's the conversation I've been sitting here and thinking about in the back of my mind. Andrew Richardson is the one that comes to mind. I never thought about this but he talked about layering the service. When he started this bootstrap business, never took on that, he's like, “We layered it. We did it well.” Instead of like, “I've always thought about this amalgamation, a little bit of this, a little bit of this, and put it all together. There's more revenue.”
That's almost like a Mike Rogers methodology, “If I can make a little bit of money here, a little bit of money here, and it's still money on the bottom line.” That's Mike's way. I'm not telling Mike he's wrong and Mike killed it. Someone like Andrew Richardson, it's like, “We got good at pest.” Someone calls him for a wasp job. We're going to sell him a wasp job but they're getting on the plan and then we're also going to sell him the wasp job.
Seth Garber: Those are the playbooks we built. What he's saying was music to my ears because in that room, you have a hundred and some odd heads of companies, maybe more, 150 people in there. I couldn't tell you how many of the people in the room we've had discussions with where they push back on this and I'm going, guys. “This is the way we build these companies.” I'm not saying that I'm right. I'm just saying that this is the way we've been doing this for years now. When you get somebody on stage who validates it who arguably has built a remarkable company, you should have seen the faces of all the people. They were like, “It works.”
Patrick Baldwin: Let's say you have a $5 million business. When it comes to divisions, we just talked about a company in which they're thinking about breaking out pests, termite, wildlife, and so on. What does it look like when you think about divisions of a $5 million company? Let's say you do have these layered services. You've got pests, termite, and wildlife. I even think about the conversation that you and I had over lunch with a client down in Orlando not long ago in which they had four wildlife.
This is not a $5 million business, of course, but they have 4 wildlife technicians and 4 pest control technicians. When it comes to culture, management, division, and specialties, like, “I can be good at wildlife. I can be good at pests. I can be good at termite,” or whatever that is. Do you think about, “You need to break out your service department, at least maybe even sales.” Let's start with service. You need to break your company into different service departments to handle and specialize in those services.
Seth Garber: It's a broad stroke question. I know that sometimes, when they hear us talk, they listen to every word so I want to be a little careful here. If you said, “Seth, build me an efficient company.” The very first thing I think about is my rule of ten as it relates to service operations. My core belief is that a good service manager can operate up to ten technicians or let's say ten crews. In wildlife, sometimes you might have a helper and different things like that.
For me, if you have a solid service manager who's went through the processes, they've learned their job, they know the business, all the things that we talk about, and they weren't just placed in the job, the point when you start to break them apart is when you get close to that ten technicians and then you start to make that decision.
If I'm building a company today and you said how to build it efficiently and it's a pest termite, let's just say, and I need to get to specialization, I’d probably have 5 pest techs and 5 termite techs. I probably split that off and then go build it out. I have a service manager for five or a service manager over two team leaders, whatever it may look like. I get back to that 1 to 10. I like the math versus thinking about it from a product standpoint. The math always says the same thing, 1 to 10 or 1 to 12 before I would ever consider splitting divisions up. It feels sexy to say I've got multiple divisions and we can talk that way but the reality is, from an efficiency standpoint, I wouldn't do it.
Patrick Baldwin: In a similar thought like residential and commercial, breaking out pest technicians between residential and commercials or a certain point in which you would do that.
Seth Garber: That's another good question. Commercial is a very big term. If you're a specialized commercial company where you're dealing in audited facilities and things like that, it comes down to what that specialization is. If you're doing a bunch of shitty restaurants and low-cost stuff, you have residential technicians. In our industry, over the years, if you take general commercial, general commercial is a residential service with more people running around for the most part.
Patrick Baldwin: That makes sense.
Seth Garber: If you're doing industrial warehouses and stuff, this is easy work. The specialized companies, it's a whole different thing. Specialized company, you might have a technician who's on one location for five days. It's some of the stuff that we deal with. If you're a sub $5 million company, I'm probably following the same methodology unless you're a specialized company.
Patrick Baldwin: When we sat down in Orlando with that one company, we have four wildlife technicians and four pest control technicians. It's interesting, pest, termite, residential, and commercial, you think there's some differences there. This is not a knock against one or the other. When it comes to pests and wildlife, these are two different cultures. You're hiring a wildlife guy or girl and they think differently and they act differently than a pest technician.
In that company, in particular, the issue is my wildlife technicians probably even think that they could do what a pest technician does and all their wildlife capabilities. In their case, they promoted a wildlife technician up to a service manager to oversee four technicians and you have four pest technicians over here that don't have a manager. My thought was to promote that person to oversee eight, which I don't know if it's right or wrong, or promote him over four but he still needs to run 60% personal production.
Seth Garber: That's a little bit of a messy situation. It's not a shot at their business. They've created two separate cultures in their company. If you look at it from more of a generic approach, it's a cultural question and the way that the business gets built fixes that. To answer your question as it relates to that situation, because of the model that I like, the 1 to 10 model that you hear me talk about all the time, if you have four technicians, whether they're pest control or wildlife, my question is what does the service manager do the rest of the time?
The math that we've always found out is if you use a 1 to 10 methodology and you have four techs, that leaves you 60% of your week. What the heck are you doing? You might as well tie that to whatever your revenue per route is times it by 0.6 and that service vendor should be producing that type of revenue because I don't know what else they would be doing during the day. They're going to be bored. A good service manager is going to be bored. That's the way I look at it. Does that answer your question?
Patrick Baldwin: It does. I haven't thought about it that way. They can only do so much inventory, ordering, or restock.
Seth Garber: What do you do?
Patrick Baldwin: They've got to go produce. I was just surprised. I thought you were going to say to put them over both and then make sure that will help integrate the cultures but I'm not sure.
Seth Garber: My first comment was why wouldn't you just make it efficient? The pushback was that they don't have the skillset. My next component was, if they don't have the skillset, why are they the service manager? That's that situation. We face that a lot. We even talked about this in Tampa. Too often we're promoting people into jobs in this industry that don't know the job. They've had the title and they have done it at other companies but all we're doing is recycling people without skillsets. As owners, we need to get a hell of a lot better at getting these people developed so they can do the job well versus recycling skillsets.
Patrick Baldwin: In your talk, you talked about getting them to learn the data of the next job. If they're a technician, they need to know what a service manager is measured against. What are the service manager's KPIs in that case? You saw me giggling here because I've never heard this before. You talked about the word did. You said did is a scary word or dangerous word.
Seth Garber: That's interesting you brought that up. One of the things that we always hear and probably the readers have an idea of my personality now, but there's certain things that I hear out there and I start to connect the dots. One of the things that I always hear is when we're going to fill roles for companies, clients, or whatever, it's always like, “Look at the resume. They did the job. Look at the resume. They already did the job. They did the job forever.”
It's a super scary word to me because it doesn't mean they're qualified to do the job, it means that they did or they had a title. Frankly, it's crazy. I went back and I spoke about this at the conference. My first promotion, I got promoted to a title and I didn't know how to do the job. I simply did not know how to do the job. I was running a multimillion-dollar sales operation and I didn't know how to do it. I got promoted because I did the job or I had a title before and that resonated with me. I see it all the time in our industry.
That's why we've been on a passion project related to not just the metrics but then the other stuff that we also discussed related to how to ask the right questions, which blew everyone away when I brought that up. I probably won't share that here on the Buzz but it was a crazy new process we've been building that works incredibly well. We promote these people because they have a title, not because they know how to do the job. It's unbelievable and it's a problem in our industry.
Patrick Baldwin: I hate the word try. That's a word that sticks out. If I say it, it's intentional. It's the great philosopher Yoda, “Do or do not, there's no try.” When you said did, it stopped me in my tracks. I'm walking around the room taking questions and all of a sudden, you're dropping, “Did is a dangerous word.” I'm like, “What?”
Seth Garber: The thing that's crazy about it is I got some pretty funny text messages from people that are in the audience. In the audience, we have a lot of good friends, lots of clients, and we all know a lot of people there. Some of the middle management that had been promoted that were there, I got some messages going, “You might not want to keep bringing this up. My boss is here.”
Patrick Baldwin: It’s like, “What did you just say?”
Seth Garber: My response was, “Your leader is invested in you guys making this trip. That's a big and important investment that says, “We trust you.”
Patrick Baldwin: That was a big investment. I'm thinking about someone that bought five of his team members. By the way, what do you call your employees at Pest Daily?
Seth Garber: Team members.
Patrick Baldwin: That's my thought. I call them employees. What do I call them? Staff? I said something and you corrected me.
Seth Garber: We have a deep culture in our company and probably a lot of it to a fault.
Patrick Baldwin: Pest Daily vibing around family dynamic, aren't you?
Seth Garber: I'm in a place in my company where I get to come up with all kinds of ideas and I'm trying to build this utopian world for my team and we're doing a good job of it. I'm attempting things or trying things that most companies would think are crazy. It honestly gives me the opportunity to test my leadership skills and try to develop new skillsets that I may or may not have. Honestly, they might not even be skillsets that exist out there. I'm challenging myself with crazy ideas related to teams. Some of it's working and some of it creates a lot of headaches for me. I don't talk about the stuff that's headaches. I talk about the cool stuff.
Patrick Baldwin: I want to ask you about the headaches. Have you tested things that you were like, “This doesn't work.”
Seth Garber: There are probably things that we've tested that didn't work but then I have to go back to my core concept or on what I'm trying to accomplish. My core concept that I'm trying to accomplish with my team members, and I keep saying the word try because I am trying hard, is I'm trying to develop a culture where my people love what they do so much, truly love it, that they're willing to go above and beyond when necessary but then they're able to go above and beyond in their life as required by their significant others and families. Honestly, we're nailing it.
I don't think you could go to any one of my staff right now and ask them what they think about the company privately. I don't think any one of them would say that they don't have an awesome life right now. I don't think so, at this point. There are crazy things we do. Our team has unlimited expense accounts. Our team has unlimited time off. Our team has a mandatory three weeks-vacation. Mandatory meaning they have to take the time off. Those things are crazy for companies.
Patrick Baldwin: They can't get fired.
Seth Garber: They can't get fired, which has proven out. We've had the situation where we've had team members come up and say, “I'm not doing my part and I feel like I'm taking advantage of the company,” and leave. I have never let someone go in our company, which we probably won't. One of our core concepts is that you come to work with us and you're with us until you decide to go somewhere else.
Patrick Baldwin: What was the thing you said about their own expense accounts or per diem? Was it $1,000. What was it? It was something that's different. It hit me sideways. You're like, “You have a high trust with your people.”
Seth Garber: Pest Daily is going to get so many resumes coming across after this. This was not something I'd started before. I eliminated the concept of per diems and I eliminated the concept of barriers to spend. I did this a long time ago and I saved a ton of money years ago. My team does not have how much money they're allowed to spend for the day. They don't have budgets related to travel. What I found over the years is that if you remove those barriers, people start to act as they do in their normal life and they don't take advantage. If I said to them, “You have $100 for lunch, dinner, and you can buy a plane ticket up to $500. What does the team do?”
Patrick Baldwin: It's $100 lunch, $100 dinner, and $500 food too.
Seth Garber: It’s not normal for their life. In a normal life, they're not going and buying lunch every day for $100, they grab a bar. Inherently, the result is that they live like a normal person. They live like they would at home. From time to time, as companies, we allow them to splurge and maybe they go out and buy a $500 dinner or $1,000 dinner as a team. The reality is if I look at the math over time, it works in the company's favor and they're not stressed out and they live an awesome life.
Patrick Baldwin: What if someone flies first-class?
Seth Garber: I don't fly first-class.
Patrick Baldwin: What happens if you let them buy? “You can take care of your own travel.” They put themselves up at the W and they've taken first-class to get there.
Seth Garber: It hasn't happened. If someone made that decision, the question would be, “Where did I screw up?” It's not about the money, it's about the concept. I would go, “Wow, I wonder why they made that decision.” Alternatively, I might challenge myself and say, “Awesome, I hope they enjoyed that because that's something they probably didn't get a chance to do before.”
I probably would lean towards that in all honesty at this point. I would lean that way, I bet. I bet if someone went off my team and they bought a first-class ticket and if they did it, they would come back to me and they would say, “I have a $2,000 hour plane ticket.” I probably would take a step back. I would avoid reacting and I would go, “That's awesome. Was it cool?”
Patrick Baldwin: Passive aggressive or is this legit?
Seth Garber: Legitimate. I'd probably be happy for them because my team does well. They do well, they perform incredibly well, and they work hard. I don't know if I would honestly care. Honestly, it would definitely be a pull and tug. That's a hard question.
Patrick Baldwin: I'm bringing you in for the easy question.
Seth Garber: No.
Patrick Baldwin: Phenomenal team. Pest Daily is growing quickly. I don't know where you want people to send resumes.
Seth Garber: I wasn't planning to talk about Pest Daily. I would tell you that we will find you to work for Pest Daily.
Patrick Baldwin: We will find you?
Seth Garber: People come to us when they're ready to make a decision on looking for a career or we'll find the people that are the right fit for our company.
Patrick Baldwin: You sound like a playbook from Liam Neeson for a second, like, “I will find you.”
Seth Garber: We had a lot of hires and it was pretty awesome to have our new VP reach out and say, “I've loved you guys. I've always followed you guys. I'd love to be part of the team.” I loved that. It was one of the greatest phone calls I've ever received. We look at social media, Payton, who's going to kill it, we found her. I know we're a little off track here.
Patrick Baldwin: Anyone that you saw at Energy that inspired you?
Seth Garber: There were a lot of people that inspired me at Energy.
Patrick Baldwin: It's hard to pick one. I'm not trying to exclude everyone else but I'm thinking if there's anyone.
Seth Garber: There were a lot of moments. I'm in the business of building pest control companies, that's what we do. I could go across that entire place and I could probably give you twenty people that their story has greatly inspired me over 2023. My focus is building these growing companies. The results are so remarkable in that audience. There's no complaining in that room. People are playing to win. It doesn't matter if you're a startup or you're a $50 million company, everyone in that room plays to win.
I will tell you that one of the statements that got made to me, I keep thinking about it. Many of the clients on the coaching side, their results are ridiculous. Many of the FRAXN client’s results have been ridiculous. Many of the large companies are also ridiculous in 2023. The one that inspired me from that group was Shane Dietrich. This guy, months ago, shows up, probably shouldn't have bought a ticket to our event, probably has no business being there, and is a franchise startup.
He built a seven-figure business in a year. Think about that. He's been so kind saying, “It's because I follow these programs. I follow this.” Granted, there are lots of 7-figure, 8-figure, or 9-figure companies there. He was so passionate and excited about it. If I start looking at some of these other companies, and I don't want to leave anybody out, there are so many awesome stories in there, that room is full of people who, several years ago, were trying to pay their bills and now they're millionaires. It's crazy. It's super humbling.
Patrick Baldwin: Hats off to you.
Seth Garber: It's them. It's their hard work.
Patrick Baldwin: That's nice. You are super focused. The way that you're wired, you want to see other people succeed. I believe that in your heart. I have not picked up an iota of selfishness. You're humble. As weird as this is, you are very high-drive. That's why it's a hard read for you. I'm shooting you straight here. It's hard to read.
I'm being super candid here. Taking a step back, watching Pest Daily grow, and started up right before The Buzz or right around the same time, and it took 80-something episodes before, “Seth's killing it over there. Let's bring this guy on.” Not knowing this before FRAXN and all that stuff. You have a focused-driven personality. Normally, that type of person is in it for themselves. You don't have that. I don't see that in you.
You have a certain timeline before you want to retire. You know what your goals are. That is all put to the side because whatever's in front of you for the day, that's where you're going to focus on, the people around you, and make sure that they succeed. Hats off to you. I've gotten this nice 6:00 AM wake up call to make sure I'm out of bed and working and doing a great job. That's sarcastic as I say, “Thank you.” To make sure that I succeed with FRAXN and make sure that our clients succeed. Thank you.
Seth Garber: That's super kind of you. Maybe this is some good advice or maybe it isn't but the biggest thing that allows that to happen or that behavior are two things. Number one is the elimination of noise, which is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Candidly, people talk trash about me all the time. I don't even know half of these people. People make up stories or whatever. The reality is I used to get, “Who's that person? Why are they saying this? I've never heard of this person.” I eliminated all that. I got rid of it.
I've never met someone who's talking bad about someone else who's more successful or more driven. There are always problems. We're always jealous or whatever it may be. The first thing that allowed that was the elimination of noise and I've gotten very good at that. Honestly, Paul G gave me a lot of good advice around that. He may not even remember it because he's good at staying laser-focused.
Patrick Baldwin: Can anyone or everyone pull that off?
Seth Garber: Yes. I used to not believe it. If I'm the head of a company right now, it doesn't matter what size. The noise in the world is incredibly loud. The key point to doing it is that you have to remember that anything that happened yesterday is over and you have to move forward. You have to move forward because the reality of whatever happened yesterday is not reality anymore. I've gotten very good at that. You can call me whatever you want, you can talk bad about me, you can talk great about me, or whatever.
All I care about is for the next seventeen years, taking care and building pest control companies and taking care of our people. The second part of this is for people to understand where their company is going and to be able to state it clearly and not chase squirrels or not chase too many ideas and focus on one thing well, for me, that's what it is. It makes it so much easier. I couldn't tell you how many times I get phone calls of, “I've got this idea. What about this? I want to change service protocols. I want to do this.”
The reality is that's the easy stuff to do. It's easy to change directions. It's easy to have new ideas. That's easy. What's hard is to stay focused and grow something. There's a million people in our industry who are online posting all their cool stuff to make them feel good that are growing ship businesses. The guys who are killing it in our industry, the ones that are killing it, are silent if you think about it. There are a lot of people who have killed it in our industry but they were silent for a long time and then they got out there. If you think about it, the killers are silent.
Patrick Baldwin: That's true. I have a couple of people that come to mind.
Seth Garber: It's crazy.
Patrick Baldwin: All of a sudden, you're like, “Who are you? How's your business that big? I never heard of you.” Not to insult.
Seth Garber: We call them ghost companies. I get ghost companies reaching out to us and the conversation always starts the same way, “Seth, we want to work with your company. However, we don't want anyone to know that we work with you.” “Sounds good.” “We need to be sure that you're not going to talk about our company.” “We don't talk about anyone's company.” “Good. We don't even know you work with us.” These companies are the real deal. Some of them were at Energy. If you noticed, they were the ones that were quiet in the corners and they were like, “Who is that guy?” These guys run mega companies and nobody even knows who they are, it's hilarious.
Patrick Baldwin: That's awesome. Eliminating the distractions as far as the noise and all that stuff, I hear that all the time. Cutting out drama, cutting all the noise, and not caring what the naysayers have to say. It doesn't matter. I've seen where it rolls off. I don't know if you even use it to fuel you. The reason I ask can anyone do this is because of my personality. I want to please everyone. That's naturally how I am. I want everyone to be happy, peacemaker, hunky dory, peace signs, and all this stuff, let's group hug it out. Even the negative talk, if there is any, whatever, I care what people think. You're saying, “Forget that.”
Seth Garber: It is so noisy and noise stops successful behavior, it simply stops successful behavior. It's simply the reality. I think about stuff that we're building right now. We think about FRAXN. FRAXN is, by far, the best product in the industry. It's almost indestructible the way that we've put this thing together. it's so good and benefits owners in such a way that there's no way to even shoot holes in it. I think about how to run the best company. People who know how to run great companies run great companies. The reality is you know how to run a great company and I know how to run a great company.
On the FRAXN side, I want people that want to run great companies to be part of FRAXN, that's what I want. Things like CPA functions, that's a skillset and a certification. People who love being CPAs are good at checking the boxes and making things work. When you effectively want to run a successful company, you need people that want to drive home and know how to run a good business. I think about FRAXN and I'm like, “FRAXN is out there doing incredibly well and providing all this value. We don't create any noise around FRAXN. We just go do our jobs. We stay laser-focused and we help companies grow like crazy.” That's what we do, wouldn't you agree?
Patrick Baldwin: Yeah, I love it. I love how it forces our clients to know their numbers. We have two former CPAs as clients, which blows me away and they're like, “I have to know my numbers and perform.”
Seth Garber: Look at all the industry leaders in our industry. Look at Paul. Paul is not here. They run Potomac number one in the industry. You don't see Paul out there making noise and that stuff. He stays laser-focused. He builds his company. Look at the Mex. The Mex doesn't go out there and make noise, he stays laser-focused and builds the business. He talks to people in the way to build the business. You look at our friends in the CRM space. I'm agnostic to CRMs. Look at Chris Moreschi, this guy is laser-focused. I can't even get the guy to leave his house.
Patrick Baldwin: You got him to leave his house.
Seth Garber: I did get him to leave his house. Look at the top marketing agencies, people who are partners of ours, these guys aren’t even on social media. These guys are just building companies. You look at the best of the best in our industry, they're not being noisy. These guys are focused and making things happen and that's what it's all about.
Patrick Baldwin: That's inspiring. It helps remind me to stay focused, forget the naysayers, and keep going. I love it. Maybe that's our value, skillset, or commonality. We're very yin yang, I tell people that because it's like, “We’re different and we're wired.” At the end of the day, I know that we want to help people succeed.
It's funny, you've turned down your client dinners. I know that's hard for you because you’re here revenue-producing hours. You're here at a conference with prospects. You're intentional. You're taking your Pest Daily team to a nice dinner. I know that even making time today because you have been kicking out a lot of content and a lot of videos and did a talk, I know it's been a long week and you're headed out tomorrow. I want to thank you for making time for The Buzz.
Seth Garber: Are you kidding me? I love The Buzz. In all seriousness, Paul has been solo for a while. I don't know how much Paul likes just being solo.
Patrick Baldwin: It’s because he has no one to make fun of. He still does make fun of me in his own special way. I'm not there to giggle about it. Safe travels. Have fun. We'll see you next episode.
Seth Garber: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on.
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Dylan Seals: Thank you so much as always for supporting us at The Boardroom Buzz. We know your time is valuable and the fact that you spend 45 minutes or an hour with us means the world. All the media that we put out from Potomac is meant to honor and celebrate you, the service industry owner. As Paul would say, “Yee who toil in the pest control vineyards.”
As part of giving back, we have this podcast, but more than that, Paul and I have been working our tails off over at POTOMAC TV. We've spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources to build out that platform to bring you market updates, to bring you visual breakdowns of the merger acquisition process, and to tell stories and present information in ways that, frankly, it's not possible for us to do on The Boardroom Buzz.
Adding the visual element takes it to the next level. I want to invite you to go to YouTube and find us, it's POTOMAC TV. Potomac.tv will get you there. Go there and subscribe. Check out some videos and leave some comments. Let us know what you like and let us know what you don't like. Let us know what you want to see more of and we'll see you over there.
