From Shopify Videos to 368 Pest Control Clients in Two Years

I asked Jake to tell me what it was like starting at 19 years old. How did he get his initial start in pest control and digital marketing?

It really started with digital marketing. Tell you the truth, it was from a YouTube video with Shopify. He was always messing around with websites when he was young, just trying to build websites. He built a couple for some local people in his small town, Kearney, Nebraska.

He already had a liking towards making money online, if you will. He really started with building websites, went to Shopify, and then right around 19 is where he took it seriously. He created a marketing agency. That marketing agency started doing Google ads. That was right at the start of Facebook ads too, so crazy numbers back then. If he could go back in time, it'd be a whole lot different. Of course, a lot of people say that. But that was right at the very beginning of Facebook ads.

He was mainly working with home service-based businesses. If we fast forward a few years with doing that, he ended up meeting a pest control owner. This pest control owner wanted him to run his Facebook ads, digital marketing, and then also run a door-to-door team where they actually go out and door knock for pest control.

So he agreed to it. Long story short, it ended up going very, very well. They put on a lot of accounts, actually over 700, to be exact, in one year with $36,000 in ad spend.

Because of that, they became really good friends. He actually offered Jake equity in a new pest control location that he was starting, and that was Pest Works. That's how he got into the pest control industry.

Long story short on how they started Pest Customers Fast, he went to a pest control conference that's pretty popular. It's called Pest World in the industry. You meet a bunch of other owners. He told them about what's going on, and his business partner knew a bunch of other pest control owners as well.

Because of that, they grew their marketing agency really fast. Within about two years of that timeframe, they grew their agency to about 368 clients, all pest control.

They met a lot of amazing guys in the pest control industry. They grew the agency, kept putting on clients but of different niches, and then he ended up exiting this year and now going in a different direction.

Why Exits Are Never Smooth

I asked Jake what that exit was like this year. Was it smooth? I know I've heard a lot of nightmare stories.

"Zero percent zero," Jake said.

He's exited two companies now, and they are never smooth. Never, ever smooth. You think it's going to take way, way less time than it actually is, and it ends up taking like 10 times as long as you think.

If you ever go to exit a company, it's not smooth and it's not easy at all.

Just to be clear, he had over 300 clients and was doing strictly Facebook ads. They did dabble into website building and a little bit of SEO. He'll be honest, their processes weren't as great for that aspect of things at scale to do that. That's where they messed up.

That's why they stuck to Facebook ads. They went into the website building and SEO for maybe about nine months, close to a year, and they just didn't have the processes down to do them at scale.

I told him no, it's brutal. I've been really honing in on my checklist and templates and SOPs. My onboarding process alone, I think is over 200 tasks in a SaaS. It is ridiculous.

Jake said yeah, it is insane. Even when you're white labeling like the Google ads and like part of the website site health stuff, there's still all of these tasks to do. It's a lot, but if you can stand out as an SEO agency that actually does all the things you're supposed to do, then it does work out.

What's great about SEO, and like once you have those processes down, which they wanted to get to but never did, the great thing about SEO is it's very, very good retention.

Facebook ads, if agency owners are watching this, Facebook ads are great. You can put on a lot of clients. For them in the pest control industry, most of their clients would only go about six months because it gets cold in most states and pest control usually dies down in the cold months.

So their agency would do massive numbers in the season, and then they would do quite literally like 10X below in the winter. They took vacations at the same time the pest control guys were.

It was very, very up and down with the pest control industry. But if you know one pest control owner, they typically know a few others. So if you do a good job, they'll love you forever and they'll refer you.

The Facebook Ads Formula: Audience and Offer

I asked Jake what he can tell pest control company owners or marketing agency owners about Facebook ads. With over 300 clients running Facebook ads, I'm sure he's noticed some patterns, kind of almost cracked the code. What is the key to Facebook ads?

Number one is your audience, just targeting the right audience. He teaches a class now about this, and that's one of the main things they cover: know your audience. That goes down to the nitty-gritty even in your area.

For example, if you're going to be targeting ads in Dallas, Texas, you're not going to be targeting kids who are 18 to 25 or even 18 to 30 nowadays. They're just not homeowners.

We're looking for homeowners in a specific age range that are interested in things that would relate to pest control. He'll give an example like home improvement. He would typically target females, females between usually around 44 to 54. That's just an example. It does change, of course, for every area, but that's pretty typical as far as your audience goes.

You want to have those key interests in there as well. Also, if the client has lookalike audiences, so if they have like a custom audience, they have a good list, some are smaller and they can't do a lookalike audience, but lookalike audiences are fantastic for larger areas like a Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, those areas.

Now another thing that they need to have is a fantastic offer. If a company has the best audience, the best sales reps, the best service ever, but their offer is $10 off, it's not going to do anything. You're not going to get anywhere no matter how amazing your company is.

But if a new company comes in and they're like, hey, we'll give you your first treatment 50% off and we'll give you a mosquito control service for free if you sign up for the year, that's going to do so much better than the best company ever. Let's just say it's the best company ever, but they only give a $10 off. Company B is going to do way, way better even if they're brand spanking new, just started their company yesterday. They're going to get way more leads.

Understanding Lifetime Value to Crack the Offer Code

The offer is going to depend on number one, your market, and number two, the lifetime value of the customer.

If you're a guy who only does one-time pest control, like you go out and do a mosquito control job like only once, or you're doing a stinging insect job, or you're doing a cockroach job, and you're only doing it like one time, well, the lifetime value of that customer might only be a few hundred bucks.

But if your offer is $99 for that job, depending on your lifetime value, if that makes sense, you have to know the lifetime value of the customer for the offer. That's what a lot of large companies have figured out. They'll spend a lot of money in order to acquire that customer, and they'll do a fantastic offer to acquire them because they know their long-term lifetime value of that customer.

That's what Jake explained to all his clients because they wanted to charge crazy amounts upfront. He's like, you don't need to do that. They're like, why?

He's like, well, how long's your average customer? And for pest control, it usually was around five to seven years. Like, so you're getting $500, $600, $700 for five to seven years. You're making thousands and thousands of dollars off that one customer.

They're like, yep.

He's like, and you don't want to pay Facebook $100 to get that customer?

And they're like, uh, well, I guess if you put it that way, that makes sense.

So that was a conversation he had daily of people not understanding the lifetime value of the customer. It's all about educating the client. Hey, yes, Facebook ads are going to be a few thousand per month. But let's say they spend $2,000 and they get 20 customers. It's $100 per acquisition. Some people think that's nuts and it's too expensive, but he promises it's not nuts if they just keep them on.

I told Jake I completely agree. I was just watching Alex Hormozi talk about this, the LTV to CAC. Everyone is just thinking about maybe like an upfront one-time buy, but if you can get someone on a subscription basis, like let's say for me, my marketing agency, our base package is $2,500. It's not that this client is worth $2,500. At the end of the year, they're worth $30,000. So it's in my best interest to keep this client. If I keep them for years, that's a six-figure client.

The Only Two Things You Need for a Nine-Figure Company

I asked Jake a general question because he knows a lot about the pest control space at this point. He's been in it for about 10 years and looked at a lot of different companies. On average, when he looks at a pest control company, because he's also stepping in, taking equity, really scaling these companies, when he steps in, what would he say is the number one thing everyone's missing out on? Is there one or two things that pest control owners just aren't doing that's maybe an easy fix or pretty obvious?

"My mentor massive massive uh massively successful guy and he says this all the time and uh it it's stuck with me ever since he's like Jake there's really only two things you need to learn in business to grow a nine figure company I was like okay well what's that he's like you just need leads and delegation," Jake explained.

If you can figure out leads, you'll never have to worry about sales coming through because you'll figure out the sales part. Even if you have crappy salespeople, that's okay because if you have enough leads, it's going to work out.

So he's like, you don't even need good salespeople. You just need leads. All you need is leads and delegation. If you know how to delegate the work, you're not working 16 hours a day. You're not being the bottleneck in the operation.

The first thing Jake does going into a business is he looks at the bottlenecks and he looks at their lead flow. How do I fix those two problems? And how can we delegate anything that can be delegated immediately?

They have a lot of virtual assistants that work for them. There's so many tasks that business owners, not just pest control owners, but that business owners are doing that they should never be doing.

You realize you can pay someone $5 to $6, maybe a little bit more, but usually around $5 an hour? You can pay someone $5 an hour to do that job for you. That owner, let's just say they're making $150K a year. Their hourly is worth way more than $5, and they're still doing that task.

He's like, you're literally nuts for doing this. It's not that they're not intelligent. It's just that you don't know what you don't know.

Those are the two biggest things that he goes into a business that he learned from his mentor that have been quite literally life-changing: leads and delegation.

I told Jake I love that. I've never heard of that, leads and delegation, but it's so simple but it makes complete sense.

What Virtual Assistants Can Actually Do

I wanted to dive into the VA thing. Jake actually runs a virtual assistant hiring agency. I asked him to tell me more about that. When did he start it? How's it going?

He got into it years ago because one of their office staff was quitting and he was freaking out. He was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

Someone mentioned, oh, why don't you just hire a virtual assistant?

He was like, uh, what is that? He didn't even know what it was at the time.

They're like, oh, well, you can find people overseas like Philippines, Pakistan, India, Mexico, Colombia, wherever it may be. You can hire people to do your general tasks for you for a fraction of the cost.

In the agency world, almost everyone knows what a virtual assistant is. But in the regular business world, especially like the home service world, they have no idea that virtual assistants exist and what they can even do.

Long story short, they were using virtual assistants for years and years and years. He kept having clients of Pest Customers Fast ask how they could delegate some of this work or how they were doing all this.

People ask him all the time, like, Jake, how the heck do you do what you do on a daily basis?

He's like, I don't do all that. I don't have enough time in the day, but you can delegate those processes to great virtual assistants. They can do a lot of that for you, just like a large company here in the US delegates work to US employees. It's the same thing. You're just delegating it for a lower cost.

He had clients reach out and they kept asking where he was getting his virtual assistants. So they ended up just buying a virtual staffing company. It was a small virtual staffing company, just because he was referring too many people to them. He's like, oh my gosh, I'm missing out on so much money here.

So they ended up just buying it. Now they staff business owners with virtual assistants. They have all the processes, how they track their progress, what interview questions to ask, what to look for, how to do their payroll, all that good stuff.

For the typical pest control company owner, what are some of those initial tasks that they should be delegating that maybe they don't know about or that they can delegate?

Customer service right away. Get someone on customer service answering the phone for you. That's where he sees even most solo guys. They're out there teching, treating homes, treating commercial properties, whatever they may be doing, and they're also answering their phone. They might have their rig on super loud, and they're sitting there trying to answer their phone.

That's nuts. You're making six figures, and you're still answering your phone. You can hire someone for a thousand to $2,000 a month to do that for you. Why are you doing that?

That's number one: customer service. Number two is of course sales. You can have people actually take the sales calls for you. Next would be like general admin tasks, so like checking their emails, doing their routing. They even have people who do like their finances, their bookkeeping for them, lead management systems like on GoHighLevel, anything you can think of. A virtual assistant can do it.

Number one would definitely be customer service and sales. Those are the two that people should outsource immediately when it comes to, unless it's high-ticket sales. That's a little different.

Why He Switched from Retainers to Equity

Another thing I wanted to ask Jake about was that now he's kind of running a different agency model. I believe he was just running a retainer base with the Facebook ads. Now he's transitioned into more of an equity-based model with his agency. I don't even know if I'd call it an agency, but he's just getting equity in these companies.

I asked him to tell me about why he made that transition into the equity model and tell me just more about it.

The idea was not his. It came from a business partner of his, a good friend. He had equity in a lot of businesses, and Jake was asking him how his model went.

Basically, the model is instead of a retainer model with the agency space, you come with a team. Here's a better explanation:

Say there's a pest control company that needs Facebook ads, needs to delegate, needs SEO, needs Google ads, needs YouTube, needs all these things. But they're really, really, really good at the servicing and really good at hiring technicians. That would be a perfect scenario for him.

Someone who already has that stuff down, they're just like, I just don't know how to grow to the next step. He would pay for the team, pay for the virtual assistants, set up the call center, set up the ads, set up all the lead flow, and delegate the entire office. That would be his portion. They would do all the servicing.

He has his license, but he hates teching. He never wants to do it. He didn't renew it the last time. He never wants to kill another bug again. He just doesn't enjoy it at all. He told Jonas on the last podcast, I'm just not a bug guy. But he enjoys the pest control industry, just not a bug guy.

That would be like a scenario for viewers. If they know something, say their dad owned a roofing company or whatever, and they know roofing, but if they have some other skills, like if they know Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, if they have some of those skills, they can leverage those skills. Instead of charging someone a fee, you ask for equity in their company to do that for them.

Now of course, you can't do that unless you have those skills. But if you do, you don't necessarily have to charge a retainer model.

When he was younger, still young, but when he was younger, he just wanted to make money quick. Agency model is very quick money. You can make a lot of money very fast.

As he approached 30, he was like, oh my gosh, I'll never be able to sell this agency for nine figures. It's just never going to happen. He doesn't know if he'll ever even hit eight figures with this agency. It would have to be such a giant agency to do that to sell it for that.

A lot of these other companies are selling for massive multiples. Like pest control sells for anywhere from a 2X to a 4.5X on revenue. On revenue, by the way.

So he was like, oh my gosh, if I put more of my time and effort into that, it's not as quick as money. It's much, much slower money. However, when you go to sell, you get a massive multiple and a huge payday at the end of the day.

That's where his mind was going. He got the idea from a business partner who's done some crazy exits. He was like, wow, okay, I need to stop focusing on the quick money now because actually in the next five years, he'll make less in the next five years than he made in the last five. However, once he goes to sell, it'll be large, large exits.

So it was just delayed gratification. Agency money's very quick, and you can make a lot of money very, very fast. It's extremely easy to hit $25K, $30K, $40K, $50K. That's not hard. But if you ever want to make eight, nine figures, that's very hard to do in an agency. That's why he transitioned out of it.

The Reality of Getting Equity Deals

I asked Jake what it's like to get equity from a company owner. Do you have to kind of sneak into it, like ease them into it, or are people on board right away?

"No it's extremely difficult I've talked to quite literally thousands and thousands of business owners um I've uh probably pitched it a few hundred times uh to people," Jake said.

Because when you talk to thousands, you kind of know when to pitch it and when not to pitch it. So he's pitched it to a few hundred. Like he said, he only has 13 companies, so his closing ratio is not great.

But you get better over time, obviously. The more you've done and the more you can prove. Because when you're going to get equity in a company, they want you to prove it, that you can help them. So you have to have real results.

If someone's giving you equity in their company that's already making money, it's a big deal. You can't just be, for someone watching the show and they're a brand new agency owner, it's going to be very difficult to do this model if you don't have real-life results.

I asked what percent he's looking for. Is there a range or is there like a set percent?

He's looking for a range. He's actually never got majority equity in a company besides the staffing agency, but everything other than that is all below 50%. So he's looking anywhere from 10% to usually around 45%, anywhere in that range.

It's very, very difficult. You're not going to get 50% or more unless you're going to put some serious money down to purchase the company, but that's a whole other conversation.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Jake is that you only need two things to build a nine-figure company: leads and delegation. His mentor, a massively successful guy, told him this, and it stuck with him ever since. If you can figure out leads, you'll never have to worry about sales coming through because you'll figure out the sales part. Even if you have crappy salespeople, that's okay because if you have enough leads, it's going to work out. And if you know how to delegate the work, you're not working 16 hours a day. You're not being the bottleneck in the operation. That's it. Leads and delegation. Everything else is just noise. Focus on those two things, and you can build something massive.

The second takeaway is that pest control companies sell for 2 to 4.5X revenue, which is why Jake transitioned from agency retainers to equity deals. Agency money is very quick. You can make a lot of money very fast. It's extremely easy to hit $25K, $30K, $40K, $50K per month. That's not hard. But if you ever want to make eight, nine figures, that's very hard to do in an agency. The agency model will never sell for nine figures unless it's a giant agency. But pest control companies? They sell for 2 to 4.5X revenue. That's a massive multiple. So even though he'll make less in the next five years than he made in the last five, when he goes to sell, it'll be large, large exits. That's delayed gratification at its finest.

The third insight is that getting equity deals is extremely difficult, and you need real results to make it happen. Jake's talked to quite literally thousands and thousands of business owners. He's probably pitched it a few hundred times. He only has 13 companies, so his closing ratio is not great. But you get better over time. The more you've done and the more you can prove. When you're going to get equity in a company, they want you to prove it, that you can help them. You have to have real results. If someone's giving you equity in their company that's already making money, it's a big deal. For someone who's a brand new agency owner, it's going to be very difficult to do this model if you don't have real-life results. You're looking anywhere from 10% to 45% equity. You're not going to get 50% or more unless you're putting serious money down.

The fourth thing that struck me is that virtual assistants can do way more than people think, and you're nuts for not using them. Customer service? Hire a VA for $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Sales? Hire a VA. General admin tasks? Checking emails, doing routing, finances, bookkeeping, lead management systems? All of it. Jake sees solo guys out there teching, treating homes, and also answering their phone. That's nuts. You're making six figures, and you're still answering your phone. You can hire someone for a fraction of the cost to do that for you. The key is finding VAs who lived in the US and now live in Mexico so they don't have a foreign accent. Everyone believes they're local to the US because they have a very, very slight Hispanic accent, which is pretty native to the US.

The fifth lesson is about the Facebook ads formula: audience and offer. Number one is your audience. Know your audience down to the nitty-gritty. You're not targeting 18 to 30-year-olds because they're not homeowners. You're targeting females between 44 to 54 interested in home improvement. Lookalike audiences are fantastic for larger areas. But the other thing you need is a fantastic offer. If a company has the best audience, the best sales reps, the best service ever, but their offer is $10 off, it's not going to do anything. But if a new company comes in and they're like, we'll give you your first treatment 50% off and we'll give you a mosquito control service for free if you sign up for the year, that's going to do way, way better. The offer depends on your market and the lifetime value of the customer. That's what large companies have figured out. They'll spend a lot of money to acquire that customer with a fantastic offer because they know their long-term lifetime value.

If you want to learn more from Jake, check out NextGenStaffing.com if you need a virtual assistant. You can find him on Facebook as Jake Sheldon. If you're a pest control owner, he also hosts weekly group coaching calls with Jonas Olson (and now me) at PestControlMillionaires.com. Jake's journey from watching Shopify videos at 19 to having equity in 13 companies at 30 and planning for a nine-figure exit is proof that if you focus on leads and delegation, leverage relationships, and think long-term instead of chasing quick agency money, you can build something truly extraordinary.