Plan Well, Work Hard, Treat People Right: The Three Rules That Built a 4.9-Star Business
When people ask me the secret to building Pied Piper Pest & Lawn into a 4.9-star company with over 800 reviews, they expect some complicated marketing strategy or a growth hack. The truth is simpler—and harder.
Rule one: Plan well. I spent 30 years in corporate pest control before starting my own company. That wasn’t hesitation—it was preparation. I learned every role in the organization, from service technician to management. By the time I launched Pied Piper in 2010, I had three decades of lessons to apply from day one. Planning isn’t glamorous, but it’s the difference between building on bedrock and building on sand.
Rule two: Work hard. There’s no substitute. I started at 18, got married at 18, and did what I had to do to provide for my family. But hard work doesn’t mean working stupid. I learned early that it’s better to have ten people working eight focused hours than eight people grinding through ten exhausted hours. Smart effort beats sheer volume every time.
Rule three: Treat people right. This is the one most business owners get wrong. They focus on customers and forget about employees, or they focus on employees and forget about the community. A healthy business is an ecosystem—everyone in it matters. We spend practically nothing on marketing because our customers refer us. That referral engine runs on one fuel: doing right by people. Every single time.
These aren’t revolutionary ideas. Benjamin Franklin probably said it better than I can: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” But simple doesn’t mean easy. It takes discipline to plan when everyone else is winging it. It takes grit to work hard when nobody’s watching. And it takes character to treat people right when cutting corners would be faster.
Forty-five years in, I could retire tomorrow. I’m still here because I’m still having fun. And that’s the real measure of whether you built something right.