About Dean

• Owner of Healthy Homes Pest Control located in North Central Virginia.
• Husband, and father of 5
• Experience in construction industry, IT, programming, data analysis

Big Ideas from This Episode

Customer care is their core value. And they mean it.

• "We know all of our customers."(1:33)
• "Our main value is that we care about people. And we express that care through pest control."(11:33)
• "I've taken calls at two o'clock in the morning." (11:49)
• "We want to meet that need and take care of your problem. (16:50)
• "And that's really what I define as success, when you can touch somebody else's life and it makes them feel better."(33:11)
• "I think we should earn your service every month by being good at what we do, by keeping our word and fulfilling our promises." (39:51)

They know what they don't want to be.

• "There are companies out there and their business practices are, I just don't feel they're very people centered...They hire kids who go out and knock doors and this hard, arm twisting sales process to sign folks up and service is secondary to them." (14:19)
• "We don't do contracts. We sign you up and we provide service for as long as you want us. We don't want you to keep us as your pest control company because we're gonna beat you up if you try to quit. We want you to keep us because we're doing a good job." (38:53)

Customer care drives success.

• "We've had explosive growth this past year in spite of COVID. And I think that's because we provide good service, we try to respond to inquiries almost instantly, during business hours, even even into the evening, we respond promptly when people have an inquiry. Existing customers know they can call us." (14:42)
• "Customer service is really the key, I think, to our success." (14:56)

Finding and managing employees:

• "So what we're looking for are people that share our main core value, which is that concern and that care about people." (22:39)
• "Put the employees first and let them know that you've got their back, that you care about them." (23:04)
• "I think it's important that everybody in the organization is on board with that purpose, they all are rowing in the same direction, and have that same vision." (37:16)
• "You have to build a culture that is in harmony with that vision...Then you have to live it. Your people have to see that you believe what you say." (38:13)

Challenges 

• "Sales early on, when you first get started, there's no recognition out there of who you are, you're kind of starting cold from scratch. And the first few months, picking up new customers went kind of slow and didn't go as fast as we planned. And we were kind of chewing through our savings..." (35:57)

For Entrepreneurs

• "The thing I discovered is that most folks in this business and similar home service businesses just can't figure out the customer service. (16:07)
• "You have to have that passion, that visionary, entrepreneurial spirit, that spark that makes you makes you go. Then you need technical expertise." (47:29)
• "I don't know that every person needs to go to college and get a business degree, but it sure as heck wouldn't hurt you to take an accounting class, yes, or two or three, or a finance class. Those things have been immensely valuable to me. Or a business law class or two." (48:21)
• "You need a good accounting firm, you need a good lawyer, you need to develop a relationship with your banker. Getting access to capital is very difficult for small business, especially a business...where most of your value is in an intangible asset." (49:05)
• "You need to have a plan for how you're going to grow." (52:15)