Hiring, Firing, and Culture Over Stars

AI is coming for the lawyers, not the plumbers. Pest control founder David Royce explains how blue-collar margins are quietly crushing white-collar dreams.

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1321

What We Discuss with David Royce:

• The unsexy blue-collar industries everyone overlooks when starting a business have fatter margins and recession-proof durability. AI can write legal briefs and ship code, but it isn't crawling into your attic to evict termites any time soon.
• Skill becomes a ceiling unless you turn it into a system. You don't scale talent — you scale the structure around it, as David did with his RAC (resolve, ace, close) system. Document what works, replicate it, and build something that runs without you.
• If you're a door-to-door salesperson, slammed doors aren't failures — they're field notes. David walked into his sales job with no training, no instincts, and no clue, and walked out as top rookie out of hundreds. The difference wasn't charisma. It was treating every "not interested" as a tiny experiment in what humans actually want.
• Top performers can be a company's biggest liability. The best closer in the room isn't always an asset — especially if they're toxic. David fired one of his top salespeople because the culture damage outweighed the commission. Worse, rookies were already emulating the bad behavior.
• Scaling too fast can kill a thriving business. David nearly bankrupted his company in year one — not from failure, but from success. Adding 7,500 customers instead of 5,000 drained cash faster than revenue could keep up. Growth without financial visibility is just a slow-motion crisis.
• And much more...

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