Door-to-Door Salesman Made $700K in One Summer w/ Kyle Nielsen 🎄 EP 101

We're currently the fifth largest residential pest control company in the nation. Wow.
So we're in 80 plus markets nationwide. And we just recently went through a transaction and brought in a private equity partner.
Between our corporate, our sales force, and our day-to-day remote office employees, we're about, I'd say about 5,000. And I see a lot of like 22-year-old, 27-year-old, 24-year-olds.
A lot of them are talking about making like 100K, 200K, 300K, 100K in a summer. Is true we've had multiple reps that have done uh done over a million dollars in new customer revenue in one summer yeah so they yeah i gotta go i'm gonna start working yeah let's go knock some doors ladies and gentlemen welcome to the christmas and hanukkah special edition of the Money Mondays.
Right now, we are inside of an RV motorhome parked, outside of our toy drive, doing 10 cities in 16 days for the world's largest toy drive. You guys can visit largesttoydrive.com, but when this episode comes out, sadly, the toy drives are complete, and all of my flights and all my miles are completed.
But why did I say it's extra special? Because sitting right next to me is literally Buddy the Elf. Yes, some people call him Kyle.
Yes, he built up a huge sales team and a huge company and massive business. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We'll get to that. But first, it's Christmas week.
We got to talk to Buddy the Elf. So what we're going to do here on the money Mondays as you know we cover three core topics how to make money and invest money how to give it away to charity but it's really important for you guys that are listening to keep talking about money with your friends family and followers we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money I think it's ridiculous that we don't talk about it because we go to high school or go to college and we go out there into the world and we don't know about taxes or how to deal with a bank account or balance a budget or like deal with a checkbook what is a checkbook should we take a loan should we get it i don't know should we rent should we lease should we buy we don't know these things because no one's allowed to talk about it well the reason the podcast has been in the top 10 for 95 out of our 101 weeks when you listen to this episode is because of you because you guys are liking commenting subscribing and sharing it's very very important to us so without further ado i'm going to bring it over to kyle known as buddy the elf to give us a quick two minute bio and we'll get straight to the money all right um so yeah my name is kyle nielsen aka buddy aka the nba elf and i um love being an elf no no i uh yeah i dress up like this during the holiday season um quick version of that is that it started at a toy drive almost 12 yeah about 12 13 years ago when did the movie come out um it's 20 20 years old now i think they have their 20th anniversary um i don't, whatever.
But if they get it wrong, in the comments, call me out. But yeah, it's about 20 years old now.
And so about 12 years ago, I threw the elf costume on, wore it to a toy drive sub-percentage for my company. And the next year, my employees were like, are you going to wear it again? What's going on with that? So I rented the costume again, threw it on.
And when we were in the checkout line at Target, one of the Target checkers was like, you were here last year buying toys for all these families. And we talked about how the elf just was so happy.
And so I was like, a whole year later, I was like, this made a difference. And then, so I kind of just started wearing it to the toy drives charity events.
And then I threw it on an NBA arena and it went viral when Rudyy gobert stole my hat put it on donovan mitchell's head after the game instead of pouring water on him and then i was like well let's just keep the ripple effect growing bigger when i'm not elfin around i uh i kill bugs i'm in the pest control industry and i run sales teams for door-to-door pest control and we're the we're currently the fifth largest residential pest control company in the nation wow and we just recently went through a transaction brought in a private equity partner explain what that means yeah so um we see i'm going on my 18th year now in the pest control all the same brand uh so different brands so same ownership group we originally were part of a franchise called moxie. Our ownership group sold that franchise off to Terminex, rolled that money in, started a company called Eco First, sold that off after a few years to Terminex.
Again, they bought our customer base. And then we started a company called Altera.
Altera, again, Terminex came in and not only bought our customer base, but bought the brand. And every single year, I mean, every single three to four year run, we would build it up uh more and more and then back in 2015 we were like we're done kind of selling customers off our let's build the next one to be the brand that we live and love with you know we love love with we live live in love with forever and so that was active in 2015 and we're going on our 10th summer so we're hitting a decade with that brand brand and it'll be active for, you know, for as long as it goes, which has been fun.
And so we built it with the intention of bringing in a private equity partner at some point or having some sort of strategic exit. And after a lot of years and a lot of EBITDA ups and downs and struggles and learning and profitable years and fun, we found a great partner in Citation Capital and they came in and we struck a deal and we're running the next three to five to whatever years it is with them to see what we can do with it.
How many employees are out there in the Aptiv ecosystem? Yeah, about 5,000. 5,000? Yeah, so we're in 80 plus markets nationwide.
And yeah, between our corporate, our sales force and our day-to-day remote office employees, we're about, I'd say about 5,000. So I speak at a lot of solar roofing, pest control, door-to-door industry type events.
And I see a lot of like 22 year old, 27 year old, 24 year olds. A lot of them are talking about making like a hundred K, 200 K, 300 K, a hundred K in a summer.
Is that true? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, for every big success story, there's also the guys that go home with nothing, um, because of, you know, their work or their lack thereof typically. But yeah, I mean, it's very, very possible for, you know, anybody.
I mean, we had, uh, um, a 40, 44, 45 year old guy come out this year as, as a rookie salesman had never knocked doors before, had worked in the pest control industry for quite a few years and then transitioned off into something different and was like, I know pest control, but I also want to try sales that he came out and made, I think 200, like 150, $200,000 in a summer, in a summer. Yeah.
Um, I mean really really to break it down you make commission off of every sale that you make a good rep can be putting on eight to ten new customer accounts a day rookie can be putting on like one to two accounts a day for a rookie to sell two accounts a day they have to talk to about 60 people to talk to about 60 people on the doors you're gonna you're walking door to door to door knocking on doors saying do you need pest control and it's not as simple as that but there's an art to it but they're having to talk they're having to knock about 150 to 200 doors so you know the the the fun thing about or that gets the the thing that makes it so hard is that to get to two people to say yes you you have to be rejected 60 plus times. Wow.
So, most people can't deal with that. They can't bear it.
And I tell people when they're interested in the job and they hear about the success stories and they come in, I say, look, like if this job was easy, everybody would do it. If everybody could do it, it wouldn't pay what it pays.
Right. Of course.
So, like you have to take rejection and you have to get, it has to, you know, it has to be like water off the duck's back. back.
You have to be able to roll off that and get through it. And you knock enough doors, eventually the door's going to open.
Okay. Walk us through it.
Just give us the main idea. When that rookie goes out there for the first time, they're going to go knock on how many doors in one day? Ballpark.
A good rookie that actually really wants to see results, 150 to 200 doors one day in one day that's an eight-hour day uh we start yeah i mean probably closer to 10. so we we every morning we get together for a morning meeting we talk about the sales skills from the day what were the challenges we go through the team's goals we get on the doors by about 10 15 10 30.
we work till about 3 34 o'clock take a quick lunch break bathroom break get out get back on the doors by about 10, 15, 1030. We work till about 3, 34 o'clock, take a quick lunch break, bathroom break, get out, get back on the doors by 430 and work till dark.
So in some markets at 830, some it's 930. We typically don't want people knocking on doors after 10 o'clock at night, obviously.
But yeah, the people that do it really well can schedule other return appointments. So when they catch the husband or wife at home earlier and they come back and talk to my husband they schedule those ones into the dark so that way it gives them a purpose to be there at dark so when they're knocking on doors they're knocking on people's doors that are expecting them to come back by not you know not super late but yeah no they're they're long 10 to 10 plus hour days when you add in the training and the drive time back and forth and then we train at night we train in the mornings like it's a very intense day to go go there and you know but again for a rookie 18 19 20 21 22 year old kid in college to come out and make 20 even 30 grand in a summer that's massive that's life-changing wow okay so they're out there they're knocking doors let's say they made a hundred thousand dollars that summer what do you say to these 24 year olds to not go blow the

hundred thousand dollars before the next summer buy real estate make sure you set up your tax strategy right so you create your your lc get you know don't get don't get paid as a sole proprietor create a structure with that um invest your money and be smart obviously it's you know you can go buy yourself a nice car you can buy yourself you know something to reward yourself the hard work, but don't just blow it. It's tough to not want to burn through it.
And what I see some people do in the industry is that they're not, from a leadership standpoint, they're not educating their sales force on the tax burdens. And kids aren't realizing that taxes aren't coming out of my paychecks.
And then at the end of the year, they... Uncle Sam's like, he's knocking on their door.
Uncle Sam's knocking on their door. And what that sometimes happens, if a company doesn't train and educate the reps properly, then that rep is now left with a pretty big tax burden.
Sure. And their company's not going to throw them a bonus or something.
So what happens is they start shopping themselves around and they look for... Trying to get a signing bonus.
Got a signing bonus from somewhere. But then that rep perpetually ends up just jumping from company to company to company and they never build anything from themselves.
And so we've taken a really smart approach. Like I do a call in my partnership in my region at the company called Wealth Wednesdays.
And we bring people on, talk about crypto, talk about real estate, talk about branding, talk about tax strategy, talk about all those things to these younger kids to give them opportunities to learn how to be smart with what they do. But I mean, I think real estate's an amazing one for them to get into at a young age.
That's super cool. All right.
So they made $100,000, they started investing, and now it's time for year two. How do you keep them motivated during the quiet times? They're not knocking on doors in like December in the snow, right? How do you keep them motivated in between? Yeah.
I mean, luckily we have markets nationwide. Like there's no snow on the ground in Miami.
You know, Phoenix, Arizona, Tucson, Vegas, St. George, a lot of Texas.
So there's a lot of markets where they can go knock doors. They can work 12 months a year around if they want to.
I prefer like the compartmentalization kind of approach. A lot of them are students.
A lot of them are still going to school for something, whether it's doctor, dentist, lawyer, they're like really trying to, you know, build something in the future. But I think that if you, if you think about it, you have your four to five month summer where you go knock doors and then you have, if they've done really well, like say they produced, you know, 125 or $150,000 in new customer revenue.
That's kind of our benchmark at the company for them to come back and be like a manager, leader, recruiter. Then they spend September through January recruiting and building their team, their own team for the next year, where then they can be the leader of that team.
They get an override stack and, you know, bonuses for recruiting and running a good team. so that then they get their own income off their own sales.
Plus they can pull in another $150,000, $200,000 from running a good successful team in their org. So they spend that next chunk of months building that team, recruiting and building.
And then they spend January through April or March training that team and training them and getting them ready. So it's almost like you have, like any high competitive sports team you have, you're in season.
Like there's not a lot of time to make a lot of changes once you're in the NBA season. Like you can maybe make a trade here and there.
The time to rebuild is kind of in the off season. So then you build your team, you train your team, you put your team out there and see if you did right.
You build your team, you train your team, you put your team out there. You build your team, you train your team, you put your team out there.
And so I've preferred like the compartmentalization where it kind of builds it into blocks. And, and once you get to like the management level where you're, you're these 150 plus thousand, you know, in a year, new customer revenue leaders, you're making enough in the off season or in that one summer to kind of live off that money and then and that kind of gets you through and the way that we i mean the way that we pay our kind of our back ends and our bonus structures out is they're kind of getting checks in the off season monthly anyways there's not this big draw to go and do a blitz here be gone for a week come back for two weeks be gone for a, come back for two weeks.
I would much rather they build their salespeople.

Tell us a fun story.

Is there anybody that's gone and done like $500,000 in a summer?

So we've had multiple reps that have done over a million dollars in new customer revenue.

In one summer?

Yeah.

I'm going to start working.

Yeah, let's go knock some doors.

So there's a few that come to mind, but AubertBear, Les Brons, Jake West and Ryan Smith were three of our million dollar guys this year. And the crazy thing on that is on our comp scale is, you know, because the company makes their money year two, year three.
And so we want to bank on the fact that we're putting on good accounts and that they stick and that our service is there where it needs to be and we're there. But Ryan Smith, for example, put on over a million dollars in new customer revenue.
His commission chunk of that for the first year is 80% commission. So he'll probably have 10% to 15% of those customers cancel.
So he's going to make 700, about 700 grand.

In a summer?

In a summer.

How old is Ryan?

Ryan, don't hate me around if I get this wrong.

He's like late 20s, early 30s.

But yeah, no, he's making...

Murphy, give me your camera.

You're going to go work door to door.

Hey, I might actually get Murphy on the doors this summer.

Why not? No, but... I got 700,000 reasons you should try it out yeah no but I mean and that's and it took him honestly it takes those guys I mean oh bear did it in like for four ish months for like four months because he is he's in school and and he's you know in town on or in in the US on a student visa and has to like remember that scene of wolf of wall street where he's like you show me a check for 74 000 i quit my job right now jonah hill calls his boss and quit his job yeah yeah but but i mean it takes i mean for for those guys that's it's it's an unheard of industry but it's it's difficult like the the mental drain that you have out there and like the solitude you feel like it's there's no one out there watching you there's no one out there watching you.
There's no one out there watching the clock. There's no one out there watching the clock.
Did he clock in? Did he clock out? You've got to be David Goggins out there. Yeah.
You really, really do. You really do.
The only person watching you is yourself. Wow.
Did they ever go on pairs? Or that's just for training? Yeah. I think those are the Mormon missionaries.
No. Sorry.
No. Which there is some overlap.
A lot of the LDS Mormon missionaries come out and do really, really good at this job, but because they've knocked doors for free for two years. But no, we typically put them like a car partnership or a car group and they head out and they park the car and they kind of each go their own way.
And then they kind of meet back up and things. But I mean, we've done stuff with our software to be more sophisticated than most of our other competitors.
So we, we have actually like pre-scored and pre-qualified most of the homes across the U S based on a lookalike model, um, based on what customers we've put on that have stuck with us based on which ones we've put on that didn't. And we, we almost recommend areas in certain homes to sell and reps can still sell kind of anything they want, but they, the, the houses have kind of a color coding on them that if you sell this one it'll most likely retain if you sell this one it most likely won't so interesting choose wisely and they do make a higher commission on the ones that that that are the higher likelihood of retention to so I have a story I never talked about before so friend of mine Carrie Levine he started a company called Mo Pro back in the days and he came to me and he's like a brother to me like a close friend he's like I want you to join the board of the company and he's like yeah I just raised like nine million dollars and we've got all these different things going on and all these big brands and he had all these pretty brands and I said no he said what do you mean no I said well you don't you don't sell anything yet he's like no we did this it was like a lot of amazing deals and he got raised like 9 million at the time or so and I said no he's like if you want I'll build you a sales team and if I hit that number then we'll work it out I need to get to 5 million dollars in one year to hit the number so he was already going to give me a piece for free I decided to create myself a job just because it was fun and I love him.
And he had a great concept, which was, we'll go to your restaurant or your nightclub or your salon or your whatever business, clothing store, furniture store, sports card store, whatever. And we'll build you a website, all your social media accounts, and a decked out video of your business for five grand,

but you pay over two years.

It's just 200 bucks a month.

And so it's a two-year contract,

200 bucks a month.

So me and Jessica,

we went and hired 40 reps

and we made them wear nurses' outfits

and doctors' outfits,

nurses for the girls,

doctors for the boys.

And they would just wear like the, what's that thing called?

The stethoscope.

And we did what's called a digital checkup.

And it was easy.

All I did was train them to look at someone's website before you walked into their business

and just find three mistakes.

Oh, the address is wrong.

Oh, the website doesn't do this.

Oh, the phone number is wrong.

Oh, when you click on this button, it doesn't work.

Just find three basic mistakes, which every website had.

Because this was many years ago.

All right.

This is before Wix.com and those type of things.

Squarespace.

And so I built this team of 40.

We started going to conventions and trade shows.

The lawyer convention, the doctor convention, where we knew they had money.

And we just, all these girls and boys were wearing doctors and nurses outfits.

And then people would walk by the booth like, what's going on?

Like, oh, let's give you a digital checkup real quick.

And we would write six figures of show and orders because it's five thousand dollars a pop with no money up front it's 200 bucks yeah so but on the off times on the weekdays i'd make these reps go to like strip malls and just walk into the stores go to a high rise and just walk into locations i'm so glad you said malls at the end of that sorry just just And so, all of a sudden, we go in and get all these different accounts, and they're just racking up. Paid them a good commission, they're making good money, and I blinked my eyes, and we did $5.4 million in sales, which is 1,100 accounts of 5 grand each, like that, in four months.
My friend, Kerry, raises $17 million after that. $70 million more after that.

Bada bing, bada boom. He lives in Hawaii building a bunch of fancy houses

in Hawaii and has a bunch of kids now.

I say that story because

I want to see sales. That's

why I get so excited asking questions about sales.

There's a famous line that

Mark Cuban said, sales

cures all. Yep.

When you bring sales into your business, it makes your staff excited, obviously your investors, business partners, the media, your vendors, your clients, every single person, the press, future potential staff you want to hire, your competitors, everyone has inertia and energy because of the fact you've got more sales. And not enough companies have someone that every single day just picks up the phone or does text message or emails and social media just to get sales just adding a few accounts a day will literally change the core of your business and everyone involved from your household to your office to people that don't know who you are to people talking about you and rumors about you.
All of it's impacted by you creating sales. And I see so many people try to pitch me on deals or pitch me on businesses or pitch me on companies that don't have sales.
And so if you're listening out there, if you have a business or you want to make some extra money, get into the sales space. Because if you don't know what to do, sell someone else's stuff.
Yep. Right? A trusted brand like Aptiv, which has been around for all these years and has done zillions of dollars in sales, sell that.
You want to sell something in the info product space? Sell it for a household name that you trust in, a brand that you like, that you learn from, sell for them. I used to sell Cutco knives.
Yep. Right? I was selling Cutco knives when I was 15 years old.
The best set of knives I own. I still own them.
They're fantastic. Anyways, the point of it is, if you don't know what your next thing is or you need to make extra cash, the sales industry, whether you're going to go door to door for a company like Aptiv, whether you want to sell something for a brand or product or service that you trust, sales cures all.
And you going out there and doing that will literally generate real cash flow. And it'll help you learn.
It'll help you what you want to do next but allow you to bring in cash along the way okay third topic charity why should people in their business or in their household have a charity component to their world i mean i think it's to me it's it's very grounding I didn't come from, from money either. Like I'm one of six kids.
My dad worked as a, owned his own plumbing company. And then, you know, that wasn't working as well as he would have liked it to work.
And so we worked as a, as a, got a job as a foreman and, you know, worked our way up through like a plumbing company and stuff, but being a plumber, making, you know, a six figure income with six kids in California, even back in the nineties, didn't really go, you know, very far and, and things. And so like we, we grew up, um, if I wanted to play baseball, you know, I had to sell chocolates door to door if I wanted to go to scout camp and I had to sell pancake breakfast tickets.
And, you know, and so I didn't really, if I wanted a pair of shoes and a backpack for the next year, that wasn't the hand-me-down ones for my older brothers, I had to go out there and drum up money and, and things. And so for me, I, I think that, that everybody has, uh, whether it was a longer period of time in their lives or, or a smaller period of time in lives, or at least the fear of not having everyone can relate to that.
And, and I think that it's important to give, uh, to uh to give back and and yes donate with your dollars but but more than that like give with your time and your energy and and if you don't have dollars to donate you don't have to donate with your dollars you can give honestly as simple as a smile or a hug or going to a shelter and serving up meals like at charity i i honestly think that charity is as good for for businesses and for the economy as sales is like charity also cures all um if you're in a bad mood or you're you're dealing with your own sorrow and your own grief go serve somewhere go give and like it is so like it's funny like because i throw an elf costume on for i wear this more than I wear my normal clothes from Thanksgiving to Christmas

every single year.

And,

and putting this on,

like,

I can't be like an angry elf.

Like,

you know,

like I put this on and like,

I have to smile.

But what I've realized is that like this really,

this elf thing is really just an outward expression of,

of a feeling that I feel inside that the world needs more love

needs more smiles needs more goodness needs more grace needs more empathy needs more forgiveness like I want people to feel that through me and and yes sometimes that is with dollars sometimes that's with you know a plate of cookies to your neighbor's house sometimes with donating some some old clothes you don't use anymore but the two years too long thing that you do like I think that

that

I mean I honestly

I think that

that to give is to live like if i'm not giving i don't feel alive wow buddy the elf where can people find you across social media yeah so at the great elbow is my kind of my primary one okay wait you gotta explain you got to explain that. What is the great elbow? So yeah, so it's a nickname.
I was told I had an elbow on my face a lot of years ago and I didn't let it really bother me. And then kind of my circle of friends was like, hey, elbow this, elbow that, the elbow that.
And so, yeah, so instead of letting somebody, you know, make fun of my big side profile nose that i eventually grew into now it became the great elbow and back when i started my instagram account it was when it was made for just you know hey my friends and family are going to see my pictures and that was it and then you know fast forward to me getting you know selling sneakers to nba players and like a few shout outs from from some some big influences on my birthdays and stuff that kind of have amassed a little bit of a following. And like, I mean, one of my, one of my buddies on the jazz, like he knows my name's Kyle, but he calls me elbow.
Like, like, so like if I was to change at this point, it's, I don't want to get lost in the, you know, in the ether with that. And so I'm kind of stuck with the great elbow on that one for at least the, the foreseeable future.
Got it. So yeah.
Um, my nose is that, um is that. And I think Mark Berbiglia has like a comedy bit from like back in the early 2000s about a nose on his face and stuff too.
So elbow on his face. But then also the NBA Elf is kind of what I'm leaning into around the charity side.
And I won't just be like I'm active on it during the Christmas months. I'm going to be pumping content into that throughout the rest of the year as well so those are my two and then obviously LinkedIn Twitter all that kind of stuff awesome and they can check you out Utah Jazz or where else so I mean honestly I want to hit up a lot of I mean any sports arena anywhere so if anyone has any type of event or arena based thing or just some sort of charity event that they want an elf to show up to that's awesome I'm happy to be to be here.
While running a big-ass company. Yes.
Okay. As you guys know, The Money Mondays, it's very important for you to have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers.
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I've just been doing this because I really want you guys to have these discussions. And the way you can help us is liking, commenting, subscribing, all those obvious things, sharing the content, having your friends, having your families, having your followers, having your staff, having people in your circle, listen to these episodes and share it with their friends so we can have an open discussion about money because it's truly important to know about it, talk about it since it is part of our daily lives.
I appreciate you, Kyle, known as the Great Elbow, known as Buddy the Elf. Here we go.
Check out us on themoney mondays.com and we'll see you guys next monday