How David Royce Built a $500M Pest Control Empire From Door-to-Door Sales

23:44So why don't you walk the audience through some of the hardest parts of building this company, you know, personally and professionally. Yeah. So about a year ago, I sold my business and exited. It had been about 20 years. And I built four different of the fastest growing pest control companies in the nation during that time. This last one, I have an NDA, so I can't say how much it sold for, but we're doing about$500 million. That's public. And the average pest control company sells between one and three times revenues. usually the larger you are, the higher a multiple you get. So it was a big company.

24:19We're in 34 states, in 5 ,000 cities. Third largest residential pest control company in North America. The audience is like Googling this stuff right now. We started out with just one location. And what happened was my boss told me, by the way, I'm selling my business and I'm getting out. And I'm selling it for 10 million bucks. And I was like, wait a second. Okay. So I was here for three of the four years that you did this. You, you know, you're only doing a million and a half. We took it up to about 9 million. Now you're going to sell it for 10. That's, that's actually good money. You know, if I was to use, utilize kind of that same model and I don't like pest control, then maybe I'll just go back to MBA school.

25:02Cause that was my original plan. So he was the one who originally encouraged me. And I had a, there was a bunch of advantages. I had a finance degree, which most people don't have, and pest control. Most pest controllers are mom and pops. It's just like a one-man show. They probably worked for a big company, broke off, and started their own thing. And they're very focused in the business as opposed to on the business. And so for me, I was excited about building something, becoming an entrepreneur and scaling. So the first company I started, it was very similar to, it was kind of like me working in a lab and trying things out.

25:34I'd knocked on 60 ,000 homes over four years. And I picked up a lot of information, you know, in terms of what customers were looking for, you know, the residential side. Uh, you know, we love working with people who had families and had pets. That was really our niche. And I never, I never wanted to go knock a door again. I never wanted to go service a home myself. I wanted to study and implement, you know, test different things out, different ideas to see what would work, uh, and how we could improve the business and how we could scale. As far as a struggle, the first year I almost bankrupt the business.

26:08So, you know, you think you know a lot, you just, you got your college degree or whatever. And we grew too fast. Oh, wow. So I actually convinced my old boss to invest in me, said, look, I don't want to do anything. I'll be, you know, I'll be a silent partner, but I'll invest into you. I'll match what you are putting in. And then that gave me the ability to grow even faster. And so I thought we might put on maybe four or 5 ,000 accounts. The first year we put on almost 7 ,500 and the problem was cashflow. So when you're paying out the sales reps, their commissions, although you pay it out over time, you're still paying out, you know, the money before all the revenue comes in because you're thinking, well, these customers might stay on for five years.

26:49I can pay out X amount, but you know, if you're going to pay them out within three and a half, and even if you pay out some bonuses, like six months out or whatever, you just don't have enough money if you go too big. And so I actually had to convince them. They all had great summers. Like we were, I mean, the entire country was hearing about what we were doing in Corona, California. We first started out. That's wild. And so, yeah, I just went to them and I said, look, like we did way better than I thought we would. Are you okay if I pay you in two months from now? I'll pay you 10 % interest or whatever, but we need to get through this.

27:22And I'd worked in the trenches with them training the guys and they were like, yeah, of course. They're all They're all coming back the next year. They had a great experience. So I learned from that. I said, okay, let's not go quite as big. Let's do about the same amount the second year and make sure our cash is good. And then I'll have a better idea of how the cash flow is working and go from there. Someone once told me that revenue is vanity, profits are sanity, but cash flow is reality. So I learned that lesson very young. It's so funny. You made me think of something to you, Dave. is so I have another business, right?

27:59I have a partner and we have a payroll company. And I, and, and admittedly, I don't go hard on that payroll company. You know, I, I kind of get things here and there. Right. But when we were building it, that's the first thing that I saw and was like, okay, we'll get these sales reps. And then I said, hold on, hold on. Cause my partner was like, yeah, we need to do that. Sure. And he's like, you come up with a comp plan. I go, I can't. He goes, you know, this stuff. I'm like, oh no, I've got the comp plan already in my mind. I go, but if I execute this comp plan in two, and we have two sales reps at this early juncture and they get 10 grand in revenue each.

28:39Right. We're cooked. I go, cause we're doing, we're bootstrapping this thing. Right. Right. I'm like, and he goes, well, how do the, the companies like paychecks and ADP do? I go, do you want to see the reserve accounts? Like they have a ton of money. So they pay net 30 on all of their, all of their sales. But like, I think that's a, that's an interesting point because you're the only other person I've spoken to that had that issue immediately. Like, Oh, this is a problem. And a lot of people right now are thinking, well, I'll just build it so quick and then I'll pay people, right. Some commissions that you guys got to be careful, you know, because you may not have the cash flow to pay those individuals.

29:21And that would be a very bad thing. Yeah. And as a business owner, like you get paid last. Yeah. Right. All this, you also have to think about yourself, which, you know, I couldn't do at the time and I'm paying everybody else out. But even then, you know, if you have a great business model that can grow too quickly, you can actually grow yourself out of business real quick. That's wild, man. Yeah. We're on the right track here. You know, we've been slowly building this, the business side of it, right? It was just a good show before. We were doing great numbers. I'm like, this is just a hobby. We better fix this, man.

29:52Better fix it. But you never want to grow too quickly. You want to make sure you have everything in place. And, you know, I think the growing, the scaling quickly is just the sexy thing people talk about on social media. You know what I mean? That's what gets clicks, right? Yeah. Yeah. Damn clicks, man. Everybody's an overnight success. Everybody. It only took me 10 years to get here, right? Exactly. It's just crazy. So talk about some personal struggles. Cause you talked about the professional struggle. Was there anything in your personal life that that kind of needed attention because you were spending so much time doing this over here?

30:23You know, so I was very, very fortunate and this is something I'd actually recommend to everybody, not necessarily how I did it, but you have to decide like the thing you're giving up is your time. Right. Like, and I loved working 16 hour days. Um, I, I was crazy. I got married in college. I married my college sweetheart. That's awesome. And, uh, she wanted to be an attorney. And so the reason why it worked out so well was because she was working 78 hour weeks, you know, in law school. And then she got this insane job doing securities fraud litigation, working 78, 80 hour weeks. And so we both had like our dreams and we were both set on like, let's both help each other go achieve our dreams.

31:03And then, you know, on Saturday nights, we'll get together, we'll go to a great restaurant and enjoy ourselves. And then we'll spend the day with each other Sundays. You guys are still married? We are. Yeah. 25 years later. Shoot. Well, I mean, you know, when you see your wife really 10 times a month, you know, I mean, that, that I'm teasing. That's awesome, man. That's good. Cause you both were in your grind. You both understood you're on a journey. Yeah. And absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absolutely. Absolutely. Saturday night date nights, man. That's great. Right. But yeah, that's, that's the key.

31:33It's making sure you have somebody that's on board with that because if she hadn't been, it just, it wouldn't have worked. It probably, you know, we probably ended up divorced because we wouldn't have both said, yes, we're on the same page in terms of what we want. And we did that for about 10 and a half years. Wow. I mean, just, I mean, that point though, Dave is, is super interesting because you look at what could have been like, what actually is and what could have been or what might not have happened being on the same page as your partner is so important because i know a lot of dudes and a lot of women out there that are married to individuals that'd be like when are you coming home yeah like you're still working like you are you going to come home now like imagine that heaviness when you're out there knocking knocking door to door right right um of course my wife asked me hey you what's your eta yeah and it's like that you have kids.

32:25And it's like, Hey, I need some help at home. So my schedule over time, once we did start our family, if that question became more common, more frequent, it's like, Hey, like I realized I need to be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool, man. It's a really cool story because, and I can just get a vibe for your energy. And I can just imagine you would bring the same energy to the, what you did out there in the field and then training your sales reps and then training the people within your companies to build this massive success. It's interesting to me because a lot of people are sitting there listening right now, like pest control.

33:04Right. Like pest control. Yeah. Not the sexiest. No. Right? One of the least. But dang, that's really cool, man. So there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this last year. It was called The Stealthy Wealthy. And there's a professor out of Princeton that has labeled us the stealthy wealthy. So the top 0.1 % of income earners, not the one, just the 1%, the top 0.1%, people who make$2.3 million or more per year, 43 % of all businesses are these guys. Wow. And so most people write like, it doesn't get a lot of clicks. You know, it's not good clickbait. But almost half of the business out there are these kind of boring blue collar jobs that a lot of people don't think about or that just don't get the hype.

33:52And many of them are really great business margins because other people don't want to do them. And so it's a really fascinating thing to think, maybe I should be, instead of just thinking about maybe AI, where it's insanely competitive, or a lot of people say, I want to be passionate about what I do. I'm going to go look into Hollywood, or I want to be a music artist or whatever else. everybody's running into those industries because they think it'd be fun. But what about the smart way looking at other industries where you don't have people maybe that even have, you typically have a college education or an MBA or just the drive to get out there and bust their ass and scale something with more of a white collar approach.

34:32Lots and lots of opportunity. So I like that, right? Because you're talking about a blue collar business with a white collar approach. Right. And, and so I know there's somebody listening right now that's going, wait a second, that clicks, like all this checks out to me. I need to not be worried about running to where everybody else is running to. I can run to an area that wants me, that is needed. Right. What would you tell those for, how, how would you instruct those people to start? Because there might be a man or woman right now and be like, Hey, it's time for me to make a move in my life.

35:05Where do I start? Yeah. So today's such an amazing time, right? So when I went to college, you went there because in theory they had the knowledge, right? Like you could take a business program and, you know, go through a business program and graduate knowing business. You know, the internet was, it shows how old I am, but it's just getting started up and you can - Well, I think we're the same age. Yeah. How old are you? So I'm 48. Yeah, I'm 47. So we had the AO all the dial up. Yeah. So you get it. I get it. It's, I mean, there were no podcasts to go listen to. Like, oh, I remember when Harvard and Stanford first started putting their lessons online back in like maybe the late 2000s.

35:44And I'm like, oh, this is so awesome. I can learn more. And now like guys, like you, like you have incredible podcasts. There's so much knowledge to learn out there. It's almost like I go to college other than like, you're just putting your butt in a seat and you're forced to sit there and learn. But for those who are self-starters and self-motivated, why wouldn't you just go online and learn and listen to podcasts and continually you can be growing and learning? So today you can go and chat GPT and just ask it. What are the top 10 blue collar businesses out there with the highest margins? And it'll tell you everything you want to know.

36:20That's wild, man. So it's easy to like pick, figure it out. Whereas before it's like you had to know somebody that was doing it or they understood business. Maybe go to like a private equity guy or something and try to ask them like, Hey, how do you, what, what's a good business to get into? I don't know. So totally different world. It's never been easier in my opinion, to figure out how to start a business and to start it with less people than before. Right. Cause there's so many ways to be more productive through software and AI. It's, you know, you made a good point. Like in this era that we live right now, there's all of these, there's all of these entrepreneurs putting free information out there on how they built their business.

36:54It's funny. I don't know if you know, but you know who Andy Frisella is? So he owns First Form. It's a number one online supplement company in America. And he's viral. He's had a very good podcast called the MF CEO Project. And yes, MF, yes, because he is the MF and CEO, he said. but he and von kohler went through the whole journey of building first form and how he did it like sleeping on a mattress painting lines in a parking lot he was such a great storyteller right such a fantastic storyteller of the struggle like him and his buddy that owned the first supplement superstore they took turns sleeping on the mattress because they weren't going to sleep there together you know they're like we're not doing that but but like he went through everything he told all and that was my that's still my favorite podcast to date like they they just they sunsetted it and he started another one but they're bringing that one back they're now recording to bring that back again yeah and the thing that i loved about it is exactly kind of what you're doing and you're giving people this information of how you built this like literally here's, here's what I did.

38:09And I tell people this all the time because I learned from Andy, you want to know how to build a show? Here it is. You're not going to go do it. Yeah. I know you're not going to go do it because it is intensive. Right. But for those that are, I'm here for it. Right. But I really loved listening. And that's what inspired me to start this. Right. And it was, you know, right around COVID, but not everybody and their brother had a podcast just yet. I got in right before. Now everyone's got one. But the point is, to what you were saying, I took time and I listened to a podcast. And it helped me sort my mind.

38:49It helped me sort my feelings. And I didn't know what I wanted to do at that point. But the moment I went deeper on myself, all those answers came to me. And then I applied those principles and we're doing pretty damn good, but the amount of information out there for people, like you should, you can't be stuck. You can't be stuck. ChatGPT can write your workout program for you. It can write your nutrition. You can tell you your macros, everything. Cause it's all based on SEO, right? Like this is all information. So what other tips would you give someone right now that, that is, that has just started their business in a high, in a high margin area, but they, but they're, but they're kind of, kind of tightening up a little bit and in, in, you know, they need some help.

39:35What would you say? Yeah. So one, just basically you said, you know, it goes, it reminds me of that point. Knowledge is power. And they say that, and I'm always like, it's potential power. Yeah. Because if you don't have the inertia, the energy and the drive to go put it into action, it means nothing. Yeah. Right. It's like, and that's why like this super skill set today. It's not the knowledge. It's almost like, yeah, you just got to know where to get the knowledge. I think it's applied knowledge, man. Yeah, it is like applied knowledge. It's, it's the difference in my mind is, is that drive that you have, you know, that ambition, it's the ability to become obsessed about something and just keep noodling on it and thinking about it and tweaking, you know, and working at making it better and better.

40:17So as far as like, if for other entrepreneurs who are maybe out there, maybe you have like a single location or you've got a little bit of traction, like how do you improve it? The biggest gap I see is how to scale. So that first company, I realized I didn't have enough money. I was going bankrupt on the first one. And so after four years, I sold it. I have an NDA on that one too, but Forbes said I sold it for 13 million. And now I didn't just have$600 ,000. Now I had millions of dollars to be able to invest and expand. And so then we expanded. The first company, it was figuring out how to scale or was figuring out the model in order to be able to scale.

40:57And so a lot of people ask me, well, how do you know if you have a scalable business? And I'm like, take a 30 day vacation. And if you come back and your business is still there, you're ready. You're ready. Right. And so scaling, I know it doesn't sound sexy, but it's getting, it's creating, you know, training manuals. Right. And it's training job descriptions and getting all that secret sauce. It's creating that recipe for the secret sauce so that you can scale what made you great at that single location. And the problem is it's not the big things that hold us back. It's the small things. It's entrepreneurs.

41:34A lot of people, they want to work in the business as opposed to on the business. This is one that's really good, right? because explain that to the audience, because I know a lot of individuals that struggle with this and sometimes I get really caught up in this one too. So this is a real thing. Yeah. So the problem is, is it's, it's, it's a function of time. So I divide my time into A's, B's and C's. A is something that's really important, but not urgent. A B is something that's somewhat important, somewhat urgent. And then C it's urgent, but it's not important. So a C might be paying bills.

42:15It's urgent. You got to pay your bills, but it's not that important for you to do it. You can hire somebody else to do it, or obviously just set up on autopay. Yeah. Right. And then maybe a B might be hiring people. You know, it's critical. You got to hire the right people, but can you train somebody else to do that for you so that they're hiring? You create standards, you create what your values are. You know, here's the job description in terms of what they need to have, but also help them analyze the body language and how they communicate. So you can really get great people, but you can train somebody else to do that.

42:46You don't have to do that. And then you have your A's like strategy, right? Or coming up with a new product or service line, you know, figuring out how to make your business more efficient, you know, more productive, more profitable. Those are the most important things. And so as an entrepreneur, you should focus only on your A's, like get your C's and your B's dialed in where you hire people to do those things for you, but maximize your time. Ask yourself the question, what is the best use of my time right now? That's the question I always ask myself. I love that. Thank you for sharing that because we recently, you know, I stopped worrying about my B's and C's and I'm only worried about the A's.

43:27And it's the first time I've ever heard it, you know, explained like that. But my wife and I and my partners were sitting down. I'm like, this is everything that I'm doing every single day. And I can't because the actual conversations are in a struggle and I cannot grow this company. I cannot grow the show. I'm worried about B and C. So I need, we got to put some guardrails in. We got to figure out who's covering what, but the responsibilities, right? And then we need to hire maybe one or two people so they can go take care of this. We hired one. We hired my buddy, Dan. That was my boss at Paychex, trying to be one of my best friends ever.

44:05He has like a brother to me. Yeah. And now he's transitioned out of corporate and I hired him. Perfect. First official hire. Great hire. It's pretty cool. Yeah. You know, what's funny too, is we feel productive when we're doing B's and C's, but it's, it's a, it's the wrong feeling. Um, you still feel productive when you're doing things and you feel like this animal productivity. It's just that you're not focused on the right things. And what happens is you become like this glorified manager. You can hire a manager to do all those things. And there's nothing wrong with that position, but you just have to decide if I really want to scale, what does that need to look like?

44:39And so for my second company, that's what the focus was. I took my four most loyal managers and we went into four different states and I said, okay, the next step, I want to see if we can actually scale, you know, this recipe that we created, scaled that one, uh, in over another few years and then sold that business too. Why needed more money to grow faster. And I, because I was in a blue collar industry, I wanted to take that white collar approach. I finally, now I had tens of millions of dollars to be able to invest in the company. And so I started thinking, okay, what can I do? Because I'm not learning a lot from pest control at that point anymore.

45:17So I started looking at Silicon Valley because the tech company started like 2000, everything was in the pot. Like people weren't as excited to go into tech anymore. And that's why I was looking at best at banking. But then towards 2010, like things were starting to pick up again. And so I started looking at Silicon Valley going, what can we do? And so I went toward like Google, you know, uh, you know, went to meta, uh, the Nike headquarters, uh, Zappos. And I started studying all these different headquarters and amenities and things they were doing. Right. Cause to attract the very best talent tech, like had to get software developers in there.

45:54And so they had these really amazing facilities, you know? And so I just said, all right, I'm going to start doing that. I don't care what every other pest control company is doing. We're going to put in an NCAA basketball court, at our headquarters. That's cool, man. Like we're going to have, you know, a movie room and a ping pong, foosball, you know, pool tables, a golf simulator. And we're going to make our headquarters look really cool. Cause I, my, the issue we were having is I'm like, look, we're going to grow into thousands of cities. I need to get the talent here and a differentiating factor.

46:25Cause nobody else is doing it. I can make our headquarters look really sexy. We can have really cool company retreats. Like we started going initially to Hawaii and we're to Caribbean. Then we started doing like Egypt and Africa, Australia, all this really cool stuff. You had a lot of college kids. Yeah. And so they were super excited to see the world. And, you know, these trips were legendary. We'd like skydive out of planes, you know, swim with sharks. You were skydiving? Oh yeah. Yeah. Like just to, if you signed up with us to come back the next summer to sell, you had to skydive, we all were going skydiving together.

46:55Oh my God. So my tourney, like granted, I didn't have an house attorney at the time. But, you know, later they're like, you might want to rethink this one in case something happens. You can't throw them in a cage with sharks, dude. You know, you just can't do it. It was always part of our thing, but it's really a question of like, how do you, how do you differentiate and make it interesting? Then we got into software and like, like when we recently sold the company, we had 60 different software developers at our company. And so we started thinking more tech and how to make the business more, how to make the sales productivity go up, how to make it more profitable, all those sorts of things.

47:31So we just kept thinking of different ways to differentiate the business as, and as far as scaling goes, you know, we really nailed it on the second company. It's like, okay, we've got a model, let's keep growing. Let's create core values, you know, so that we, we can stay the same. It gets harder and harder, right? As you grow a business, it gets bigger. You're, it used to be what would Dave do? But then it's like, what should the company do, you know, as a whole? And so by creating core values and picking out key managers for each location, that's how you replicate yourself. It's really smart.

48:02What's the biggest lesson that you learned in growing all those companies? I'm sure there's a thousand lessons. Yeah. There's thousands. I think

48:14as we got bigger and bigger, it's really critical that you're hiring the right people. Like everything comes down to hiring. If you want to be able to continue to build it, you can't build it on a sanity foundation. And so the core values and the people, you know, the metrics are kind of easy to figure out. Yeah. I'd probably say the number one thing is never stop growing. Don't just build a bigger business, but build a better one. Yeah. That should be the focus. If you decide that you're big enough, you know, or that you, you've always done something a certain way, or that you're good enough because you're just the biggest in the industry, that's when things start to go downhill.

48:55I always say there's like a startup, a scale-up and a screw-up. You know, a startup, you're just getting going. The scale-ups when you're starting to scale across the country, you really get bigger. But the screw-ups, you know, you've seen it in almost every company that gets really big. They start to rest on their laurels. And if you lose that entrepreneurial edge, it's really hard. If you stop in business, it's not like you're just stopping. you're actually going backwards because all the other competitors are moving forward. They're moving at light speed because they're still hungry. It's really interesting because that right there is something that I refuse to fall into.

49:31And so as you grow and you know, that's like when you were doing really, really well, that people will come up to you that know you for that, man, I'm really proud of you, man. You must be really proud. Like, you know, is it enough yet? And you're like, I'm just getting started. Like, this is, this is nothing yet. And so when people come to me and say, wow, like you've grown, you'll go, look at this, what you're doing. This is incredible. Sitting down with people like Jay Leno. I'm like, okay, like what? You're not happy. I'm like, no, I'm happy, but this ain't it. I'm nothing. And like, I think that's a healthy mindset.

50:05You know, I just, I think there's a lot of people out there that say, no, you should always think very highly of yourself. I do want to put in the work. Like I get very proud of myself, but I also don't sit idle. So someone comes up to me, he's like, man, you're number, number two on Apple or number two trending on Spotify. Yeah. Okay. Like that today. Yeah. Cool. But like, my point is this to me, I still see the dude that was recording in the car. Right. And I think every entrepreneur needs to never let go of that beginning entrepreneur in them. Like that is the most powerful place you can be is still seeing yourself as the dude or the gal recording in an SUV.

50:50Cause it's the only quiet spot you can find. Let everybody else sing your praises. But me, like I'm just that dude. Yeah. Never forget where you came from. Right. It's like pride cometh before the fall, you know, and it's, I was always worried that if I didn't stay humble and just keep working and grinding and trying to figure it out, like I really believe only the paranoid survive. You have to have that mentality in order to, if you're number two now, a year or two from now, you still want to be in that spot or number one. Yeah. You can't rest on your laurels. It's like this, it's so hard to explain because sometimes my wife, she'll be like, I don't understand why you're so paranoid about this.

51:31You're good. You don't stop working. You keep going like that. You don't have to worry. You don't have, you don't have to worry about you. Right. Like, well, I know, but like, what if, like, so I got to be ready for these what ifs and I have to foresee things that may or may not come. And I think that is also like being really locked in and having intuition about what you're doing. And, and you can only be that way if you're truly obsessed with it because then you connect with it. Well, that's a great point. Obsession. Like people often ask, what is the one skill you have to have as an entrepreneur or the most important skill.

52:02And I always say it's obsession. You have to like be able to dig in and just, no matter what happens, if it's, if it's just passion, passion comes and goes, you know, it's like the first part in a relationship, you know, it's exciting and the chemicals are flowing and you want to be around each other all the time. And after a couple of years, you know, scientists say that that wears off and then you're with each other. You're like, all right, this is it. This is the deal. We got to figure out how to work together. And if we want to, you know, have a family and you know build something then that's that's about commitment and sticking to it and being obsessed about the relationship working on it continually that word you know assuming it's good enough and just kind of letting it go to the wayside obsession is a funny word people love to bag on obsession you're obsessed you're upset negative connotation everywhere i know what that word it's like is it meant to be negative every high achiever i've ever spoke to they they'll that's exactly what they say.

52:58They're like, I'm just obsessed. Yeah. I'm obsessed about the process, what that looks like, how to get better. Um, I was, I went on a spring break with, uh, one of our family friends. Um, his name's Ryan, but his stage name is cascade. He's like a famous DJ. I know who he is. 10 millions of dollars or whatever. He's just named dropped cascade. I went on vacation with cascade person on this beach in Fiji. I'm like, so how did you get to where you are today? Like what, you know, what was it really? Like what, what's the secret sauce to what you do. Cause I actually don't listen to like a lot of DJs.

53:29Like I like music, but it's not something I'm super into. My wife does, but. And he's like, you know, I just, I stuck with it. He's like, there are so many other DJs out there that were better than me, but it's a hard life, you know, getting into it and just going. And he's like, I just never gave up. He's like, and you know, 20 years later, here I am. Yeah. He's a man, dude. He's big. That's a, that's a, he's a big DJ. That's the point though. people always go, and I mentioned this on the, on another show this week, it was, people always say, well, be careful because only 1 % of people are successful at this.

54:06It's like, but why is that? Is it because it's impossible? No, it's because 99 % of the other people just quit. Yeah. They just stopped. They just stopped going for it. Like you, you have to be able to stick with something. You have to be able to be like, all right, I'm in this. Like, can I do this every day? If I would never make a dime, would I like having conversations on in front of a camera on a microphone hell yeah why not I get to learn about somebody right to learn your whole most of your journey right now you can't fit it all into an hour but like I get to learn about you and I'm obsessed with this process of getting to sit down with people hearing their stories and seeing how we're similar right like that that's a main passion but never giving up is super important like people people quit man like I What's that book?

54:52Three feet from gold. Have you ever heard about that one? I don't know if I have. So I've read a lot of network marketing companies use that reference this book, right? Because they want you to keep prospecting and sliding into DMS and getting people to watch your video. But essentially this one guy stopped digging. They were trying to find the gold, stopped digging. Somebody else came in, dug three feet, gold. Right. Like literally is it, you don't know, you better exhaust every option. You know, if you're going to quit on something, you have to know, you have to be okay. If somebody else hits it, I can have no reaction.

55:28Right. Because I'm just done. But dude, his advice, it's so funny because like I laugh and I get speechless because somebody's so big as Cascade. What's your secret to your success? Just kept going. Yeah. And I feel, I feel, I like that too. It's just like, I just kept sticking with it. There was, I had a college professor and I said, you know, what, where you're talking about, like, how do people create lots and lots of wealth? And he said, you know, over my lifetime, what I've seen, I've studied, you know, thousands of businesses, they, you have an entrepreneur, he just sticks or he or she sticks with it, like long-term.

56:11And they'll go all the way in their 60s, 70s, 80s grinding. Yeah. And they'll build billions of dollars of wealth. And it's like, oh yeah. Well, yeah, if they'd quit after 10, 20 years, you know, then they may have had hundreds of millions or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I always, you always, you always get the question, right? Like, I don't know. It's funny to me because people always push back on this part and I don't understand it. Like, I just don't understand. And they're like, no, give me the real, you're saying stick with it. Give me the real story. Like, what did you do? I'm like, this is it.

56:56Why does there have to be a drawn out answer? It's like, this is the most simple direct approach. Don't stop. Yeah. And every waking minute I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Like I'm totally focused on it and maybe it depends on your life. Right. Like I think of the same, like I think of the word workaholic, you know, it's like, it's this negative thing that every manager loves a workaholic or every entrepreneur is a workaholic, you know, but it's, it's times and seasons in your life when you can dedicate it, it becomes negative when it's distracting, it's pulling you maybe away from your family. It's like you need to have certain priorities or whatever, and you have to learn how to scale back to a degree.

57:35That's definitely not helpful when you're taking your time so much time away from your children and they don't know you, you're not there to parent. I think that needs to be reworked, Right. But you can still be obsessed and still be a mom or a dad and be an amazing present parent. Yeah. And still be a workaholic. Right. You know, because from the guardrails of eight to three, I'm locked in. Yeah. But, you know, when I go home from three to about seven or eight or 830, it's them. Yeah. And when you start out, you're young and like, you don't know crap. Yeah. And like your advantage is working crazy hours because you got to accumulate all that knowledge.

58:13And then 10 years down the road, now you, you're, you're a lot smarter and you have more experience and you can lean on your experience while you start to step back as you start to build, you know, have a family and you need to spend more time outside of the office. It's like, well, I got the experience to run circles around these younger ones, but the ones who are, you know, working crazy hours and gaining that knowledge, like they're going to, you know, they're going to be your boss someday. Absolutely, man. Or go be an entrepreneur or something else. Well, listen, man, I know. Oh, shoot, man.

58:43You got to get going to the airport soon, buddy. But before we end the show, I want to ask you the one specific question. The word determination to me is super important. And for me, what it means is doing what you said you were going to do, no matter how you feel emotionally at that time. I don't believe determination is this gritty, sexy thing that everybody thinks it is. It's just showing up. If you can't put your shoes on, just put one of them on. That is determination. And your determination is going to look different every single day. What is your true definition of determination? I tend to think as I've gotten older, I started to analyze myself a lot more.

59:21Asking questions like, why did I do what I did? And when you start to go back, you know, most therapists will say, we'll go back and look at your childhood. That'll probably give you the majority of the answers for what you're looking for. and I had this theory that every entrepreneur has a chip on their shoulder about something. I found that most high achievers, they didn't come from easy circumstances. There was something that was hard and then it later drove them. And for me, it was actually, my parents almost lost their home when I was a kid. And my mom kind of slipped and told me about it when my dad was gone five days a week traveling.

1:00:04It scared me to death. And I never talked about it with them, but I realized at a young age I needed to have financial control. And so I got a job when I was 14 at a pizza parlor at 15, working at McDonald's, then working at a bunch of construction jobs, all that kind of thing, just, you know, trying to, you know, have extra money to support myself. I think you have to decide what is that one thing that drives you. And for a long time, I didn't quite realize it was that, but as I got older, I started to look back and for a long time, I was just having fun working my ass off, you know, just thinking, oh, this is what successful people do.

1:00:42But I realized like many of my other friends, like that wasn't as important to them, you know, and I had to figure out like, what is it that's driving me? And do I really need to be running as hard maybe, you know, as I was. And so when, you know, after 20 years, when I finally decided to sell, I really felt like I'd learned everything I was going to learn from that industry. And I was starting to get bored. I was already getting bored when I became chairman and founder of my last company. And I just said, you know what, I think there's other things I can learn, other industries I can go explore.

1:01:14There's new things for me to go seek out, but know what it, If you actually can know what it is that drives you and know you're good with that, you can really lean on that chip. Somebody else told me that chips put chips in people's pockets. They do, man. I mean, I've got a, I got a creator size chip on my shoulder, man. I mean, it's just the way it is. I know how to, I know how to work through it better now because before it was more of a, I was so, a lot of trauma, you know, just basically what it was is if you don't make it as a baseball player, what are you going to be? You don't have any other skills.

1:01:49Sure. So now it's like, hold my beer, watch this. Right. Like you can't make money on your voice. Watch me. Right. And there's nothing better. It's like gasoline on a fire. When somebody else tells me you can't do this, you can't do that. It's too hard. It's impossible. Only the 1 % of 1 % can pull that off. Okay. Watch me. Watch, grab your popcorn, dude. Cause you're going to, you're going to be watching for a very long time. And for me, it's always that. It is, if I'm ever slighted in such a way, if someone says something to me in a certain way and minimizes what we've built, I will never forget that.

1:02:32I will never forget that. And I will work endlessly to make you see me wherever you go. like literally every time you open up your phone i'm gonna be there my face i'll never say anything to those people but exactly i'm gonna win so much that it that it makes you think like damn i was wrong yeah you just put your head down i just put my head down and let your work speak for itself yeah it's it's funny wait i remember real quick and i know you had something to say but um we were We were at an annual meeting when we were with Paychex. My wife was in the Miami office. I was in the Fort Myers office.

1:03:12We're both sales reps. That's how we met. And we had a new one come in, a new sales rep come in. We're good friends to this day. We don't see each other talk much, but when we do, it's like, what's up, man? I was standing there with my wife. We weren't married yet. And he comes up and he introduces himself to me. He's like, nice to meet you. he's like i'm going to beat your ass this year and and i just looked at him i'm like okay that's all i said and my wife goes you have no idea what you just did you just put jet you just put jet fuel in an engine he's going to bury you i just like i operate like that i don't know why um but I've learned to deal with it in a healthier manner now because before it would, it would tear me apart.

1:04:03Like I would be quiet on the outside, but on the inside, I was so angry and just felt like just disrespected. And I just had to just pound my chest and win. Now I just do it silently. You know, if you, if you want to supercharge your business, you know, have a villain, you know, find a competitor that you want to compete against that has maybe said, you know, talk crap about your company or, you know, doesn't, you know, hurt you in some way, it'll drive you like crazy to build the business. We've run the fastest in those times over my, over my career. I got some villains, got some villains, man.

1:04:41But the one other thing I'd say is in terms of like trauma, I really think that's the secret is looking at as a gift because the big question in my mind is what I have done, what I did without it. and so for how long do you look at that and go yeah i can't believe that happened oh it's so tough i really didn't like that point in my life but made me who i am in that and i'm grateful for that right absolutely so i'll just i'll just sit there in that energy man well dude it's just so nice to talk to you man of course yeah i want to have to you want to go out to la i'll have to hit you up dude we'll have to get some dinner or something be uh great to connect with you again but thank you so much for coming on the show telling your story and give them some real value you to the audience.

1:05:24So we've got a lot of people that want to either start things or do have their own businesses that are just kind of looking to, or another, another perspective of how to build something. So I think they learned that from you today. Yeah, I've got mine. I'm excited to help others get theirs. Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, guys, share this episode with someone, you know, love and trust, go check Dave Royce out on Instagram, go just Google search his name and watch all the interviews he's been on. So you can hear more of a story because every host that talks to Dave has a different approach. And something may have been said on another show that you don't want to miss that just wasn't necessarily said here.

1:06:02But again, go check out everything he's done. And thank you guys for watching and listening. Until next time, stay determined.