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The Money Mondays

Dave Royce on Pest Control, Private Equity, and Purpose

23 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

5.65 - 22.765 Dan Fleyshman

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Our guest has built a humongous company in a very unique category that every one of you has dealt with.

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22.745 - 35.737 Dan Fleyshman

things that happen inside of your household or right outside of your household, you might be thinking, what is he talking about? Is it my alarm system? Is it the pest control situation? Is it my roofing, my garage? What is it? We're going to dive right in.

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36.237 - 52.752 Dan Fleyshman

What I want you guys to keep in mind, these podcasts are under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 36 and 40 minutes for you guys. We're going to dive right in. Dave, give us the quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

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52.732 - 56.82 Dave Royce

Yeah, so I built four pest control companies and a solar energy company.

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56.84 - 57.061 Dan Fleyshman

Four?

57.381 - 75.276 Dave Royce

Yeah, yeah. And part of that strategy was I figured out this thing called an asset deal where I could sell off just the customer base, basically the book of business. I could sell that off, take all that money, and throw it into the next company. And so it was a way to basically get investment and still being able to have all the control and all the equity on my own. Wow.

75.477 - 86.793 Dave Royce

So I did that for about 20 years. Roughly every four years, the first four years, I would sell, get money, rinse and repeat, same thing over and over. And then, yeah, became the third largest residential pest control company.

86.813 - 92.762 Dan Fleyshman

The third largest? Yeah, in the United States. So how did it start? Were you working in the space? How did the first one start?

92.742 - 110.532 Dave Royce

Yeah, so I was a starving college student, working minimum wage, and I had a friend come to me and he says, hey, I made 25 grand last summer selling pest control services door to door. Just knocking on doors. Yeah, and I was like, okay, I don't really even know what that is, but I'm in. Sign me up, yeah. Yeah, so I drove out to Sacramento, California,

Chapter 2: What journey led Dave Royce to build multiple pest control companies?

169.112 - 182.612 Dan Fleyshman

At least. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So we cover these different topics of how to make money, invest money, give it away to charity. On the make money side, you're saying that these 22 year old, 25 year old kids can go make 25 grand, 50 grand plus in one summer.

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182.652 - 185.296 Dave Royce

That's right. We have a few that even make a million dollars a year.

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185.316 - 190.283 Dan Fleyshman

A million dollars in one summer. Yes. Oh my God. Just knocking on doors.

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190.263 - 202.379 Dave Royce

Yeah, they're freaks of nature. But if you have, say, 3,000 salespeople, you start to get these anomalies where some people are just really, really amazing. And almost all the sales managers are at a six-figure income for the summertime.

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202.839 - 210.87 Dave Royce

But there's a few guys where they'll do it for, maybe they'll expand their summer to maybe five or six months, and they'll make a million bucks, and then they'll go

210.85 - 215.739 Dan Fleyshman

Is it summer based because of the weather, or is it because that's the right time to do it?

215.899 - 227.159 Dave Royce

It's kind of the right timing. That's when pest pressure is the maximum, is in the summertime. And because college students are out in the summer, it's just kind of how the industry originally started, or at least this specific marketing technique started.

227.299 - 229.703 Dan Fleyshman

Is anybody going out in December in the rain?

229.683 - 238.588 Dave Royce

There's a few, yeah. But most people, if they do that, they're probably in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona. Where it's not that heavy on the weather side. So it's not quite as intense, right? Wow.

Chapter 3: How can young sales reps earn significant income during summer?

539.545 - 542.65 Dave Royce

But when everybody else is doing it, it's a lot easier to do.

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542.63 - 562.472 Dan Fleyshman

So I have a fun story. There was a tech company called Mopro many years ago. My dear friend, he was like, I want you to come join the advisor board with me on this company. I just raised like $18 million. I said, no. What do you mean no? We're like dear friends. This is like a brother. I was like, no. And he's like, what do you mean no? I'm like, we don't sell anything yet.

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562.812 - 577.631 Dan Fleyshman

You're like an artist that just keeps painting for seven years. You're doing all these different things. You've got all these different divisions. Let me build a sales division. And if I hit a certain number, five million bucks in revenue, then I get double the equity and I'll give the other half the equity to charity.

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577.971 - 578.492 Dave Royce

Nice.

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579.013 - 603.51 Dan Fleyshman

Okay. So me and my girlfriend at the time, we go and hire 40 sales reps. Literally just posting on the Facebook. This is a long time ago. Yeah. Posting on the Facebook. That's right. And hundreds show up, 40 get picked. And we put them in the guys in doctor's outfits and the girls in nurses' outfits. And they're your digital doctor. And I had to invent door to door.

603.75 - 620.369 Dan Fleyshman

Like when I say invent, I didn't invent the industry. I mean, like I didn't know it. I just heard about it for years. And so on weekends I would get them convention booths at like the doctor's convention, the lawyer's convention, the restaurant convention. And we made like digital doctors. You'd walk by, we're like, hey, can you give us two minutes to give you a checkup on your website?

621.25 - 640.162 Dan Fleyshman

It's fair, right? Two minutes. They walk by, they stop in and it's just like a bunch of like 22 year olds to 28 year olds, same concept. And they would just look at the website and I taught them like, Find out if the email address is wrong. Find out if the date is wrong. Find out if the address is wrong. Does the link not work? Is it not connected to their Facebook? Just basic things to find us.

640.623 - 664.849 Dan Fleyshman

If you find two or three problems, they'll pay us. And then on the weekdays, we'd go door to door. And we'd go, but again, I didn't know the industry or what was legal or not. We'd show up to strip malls and just walk into businesses soliciting. We're probably why they created soliciting signs. And so we created... 1,100 accounts at $5,000 each. So I hit my 5.5 million in sales.

664.969 - 687.201 Dan Fleyshman

How long did it take you to do? Four months. Not bad. Jeez. But I had no idea. I had no context of any of this stuff. I just knew people needed websites. Yeah. And we'd walk in and say, for $200 a month, $5,000 over the course of two years, we'll fix your website, we'll make you three videos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like this quick spiel. Nice and easy. And people just got it. And

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