David built four of the fastest growing companies in his industry. His recent venture, Aptive, grew to $500m in just eight years into the third largest residential competitor in America.

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Guest Resources

David Royce LinkedIn – Reach out to David on LinkedIn.

Aptive Environmental Expert Pest Control – Award-winning pest control. Pest expertise with neighbourly care.

3 Value Bombs

1. A company’s secret sauce is really the recipe of best practices, key metrics and its people.

2. A great brand is a story that never stops unfolding. Entrepreneurs should continually innovate in order to survive.

3. Innovation just makes work fun. Humans are always happiest when we’re striving after our true potential.

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.

Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: How to Build Wealth and Exit the Rat Race

[1:36] – David shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

A lot of people say that some are successful in business because they got in the industry early on but he disagree with this idea and believes that there is a lot of knowledge you can gain by learning from the mistakes of the early pioneers and capitalizing on their business model once it is already developed. It’s the pioneers that take a lot of errors.

[2:49] – David shares his origin story of how he got started in this Entrepreneurial world.

It was not something he wanted to get into. He originally tried to find a way to pay himself through college and had a friend who recommended to him to sell pest control services door to door during his summer break because his friend earned $25k in 3 months and so he tried it. He was horrible at first and was not able to sell in anything in his first week. He bought sales books and worked really hard at it. By the end of that summer he was the top sales worker in that company.
The next summer, he worked in a start up pest control company as a sales manager and his sales team sold about twice as much per representative as the rest of the company. The owner was so impressed that he put him in charge of the entire sales progam and was willing to give him a commission om every sales person in the organization if he personally trains them. He created a sales training manual and training videos to do well in the program. They basically grew that company for about $1.5m to $10m in just 3 summer breaks.
When he was about to graduate college he was planning to apply investments banks in New York wanting to use his sales skills and leadership experience to do mergers and acquisitions. He went to his boss and ask for a really good recommendation to wow the bankers and he asked him a question ‘why would he go to work for $800 a week for someone else when he can start his own pest control company?”. At that time, it wasn’t even in his radar and it felt less sophisticated for someone who is graduating from college. However, he was making $225k a summer which is about half a million dollars in today’s money and save $300k to do an MBA school someday and he realized that he can actually use that savings as start up capital instead. So he go for it and started his first start up company in California.

[5:27] – David tells why he started 4 different companies in the same industry.

His first company was like working in a lab distributing what worked and what didn’t. It was great in operating a business in a small scale and get his head around the financials. They did so well during the first year that he almost bankrupt the company because of paying his sales people their commissions in advance when the revenues are coming in. It was a really good problem to have but he had an inkling that he might need a better capitalization to grow that fast.
After 4 years, he sold that business and started his second company Eco First. The influx of capital not only provided him to grow faster but allowed him to avoid giving up equity investors and ensure that he maintain control of the business. He took his 4 most loyal leaders and opened up new locations in 4 different states where he learned to run a regional company and the importance of great leaderships in each locations. He learned to choose diligent leaders who would religiously follow the company’s best practices and make them even better.
After another 2 years, he decided to sell again to acquire a more growth capital and again carved his leadership team and sales force out of the deal and took them with him. With the additional capital, he really wanted to reinvest with his team and build a fun company culture. He started to study the big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple who were recruiting the top talents of the country with all their amazing employee first. He wanted to take a white collar approach to his blue collar industry. He bought a new model headquarters with an NCAA basketball court, a break room which is full of amenities, golf simulator, a movie room, ping pong table and doing annual trips with their top 10% performers in places like Hawaii and Caribbean.
They focused also in creating and emphasizing their core values to attract the right people and create a culture that felt more like a family.
Another 4 years went by and they expanded to a couple of thousand cities and he felt like he is not learning anything new and just replicating the same business model across the country. He realized after 12 years of being a CEO, it is time for him to replace himself and has been training for 10 years his Protégé to replace him as CEO. When he sold Alterra it allowed him to get out of the day to day and focused more on big picture items such as strategy and hiring key executives.
Over the next 8 years, the most important thing he learned was how to hire and worked with seasoned executives who have already worked with building companies. It was a hell of ride that made them the third residential pest control service in North America.

[9:55] – A timeout to thank our sponsors!

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[12:54] – David shares how he stand out into a hundred-year-old industry with over 20,000 competitors and what were his competitive advantage.

First, their sales program was highly unique. Most people think that door to door sales was antiquated but they are only a handful of companies that are experimenting on this marketing today. They develop their sales program into a sales force of more than 3000 people with one of the most elite training programs in the country and as a result, they can grow their business 7 to 10x faster than their competition.
The second thing they did to stand out was add additional service features that their competitors are not willing to do in order to both help their sales and increase their customer retention. Their service tooks half as long as their other competitors but they are thorough and their customers loves it. Having knocked in over 60,000 home owners doors, he heard a lot of feedback of what customer are looking for all though out the years and implemented a lot of those ideas in their service. Quality never goes out of style.
Third thing they did was they started investing in software development early on to improve their efficiency and gamify their business. It was revolutionary in their low tech blue collar industry and helped them jumped ahead of the competition in terms of sales productivity, operational efficiencies and profitability. They become the front runner in their industry.

[14:53] – David shares his #1 piece of advice for an Entrepreneur who is looking to both find and succeed in a new industry.

His advice to wannabe entrepreneurs is to learn to identify a great business opportunity and then get an experience in that industry so they can be prepared to start something on their own.
Its always best to learn in an industry on someone else’s dying whenever possible. 80% of new businesses fail in 5 years. However, in franchise models, they shift , only about 10-20% of businesses fail because they have a working business model in place.
Cancel against things like just following your passion. You have to be passionate but only following your passion could also be dangerous. He doesn’t have passion in pest control but he really worked hard to get in the top 1%. Ideally you need to first discover your strengths and develop them so you can leverage them into a competitive advantage so you can be the best in what you do.

[16:54] – David talks about the one thing that holds entrepreneurs back from becoming a larger business.

A company’s secret sauce is really the recipe of best practices, key metrics and its people. To scale from a single location to a national company, one has to take the time to put all their best practices into a manuals and training programs to ensure the same principles that made the first location successful can also be perpetuated across all traditional locations. Basically, you’ve got to nail it before you scale it.
He learned this value of having best business practices back when he worked at McDonald’s at 15 years old. They had a rule in everything and it operated like a well oiled machine.
Most small business owners get caught up in the day to day business operations that they don’t have the time or the money to develop this tools to scale properly.
You’ve got to create engaging employee training programs that are far more indepth than entertaining. Over the years he continually to develop their sales training manuals with photos, examples and training videos to help their people to maximize their potentials.

[19:14] – David gives his biggest takeaway.

The no.1 thing is to look for ways to improve incrementally. There are 2 types of innovation, Disruptive Innovation and Incremental Innovation. Most people think of entrepreneurs with an entirely different idea disrupting something like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, however the reality is most innovations are incremental meaning it is based on just small improvements of an already existing practice in the industry.
A great brand is a story that never stops unfolding. One of his favorite books is “If you are not growing, you are dying” because it emphasizes that need for entrepreneurs to continually innovate in order to survive.
Try daily to have a goal to improve your business by just 1% because ultimately that coud lead to a 365% increase over the course of a single year.
Innovation just makes work fun. Humans are always happiest when we’re striving after our true potential.

[21:35] – Call to action.

David Royce LinkedIn – Reach out to David on LinkedIn.
Aptive Environmental Expert Pest Control – Award-winning pest control. Pest expertise with neighborly care.

[22:31] – Thank you to our Sponsors!

ThriveTime Show: Attend the world’s highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring Football Star, Tim Tebow, and President Trump’s son, Eric Trump, at ThrivetimeShow.com/eofire!
HighLevel: The ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies! Learn more at HighLevelFire.com!

Killer Resources!

1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!

2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!

3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!