Recommended reading and culture lessons

David Royce went from a broke college kid in a door-to-door pest control job to building and selling four service businesses for nine-figure exits by applying Silicon Valley systems to an unsexy blue-collar industry. In this interview, he breaks down exactly how he scaled Aptive Environmental to over $500M in revenue, created a training engine that produced top-1% sales performers, and built a culture that became a recruiting magnet in a commodity market. For founders interested in recurring revenue, service businesses, systems, or operational excellence, this episode is a blueprint for building a scalable, sellable company from scratch. What you’ll learn in this interview: • How David turned a “crappy summer job” into four nine-figure exits • The sales framework that took him from total failure to top 1% in one week • Why following your passion is overrated and unsexy industries create the biggest opportunities • The systemised sales engine and training playbook that scaled nationwide • How he built a white-collar culture inside a blue-collar business • Why paranoia is a competitive advantage and how to avoid the “screw-up phase” • How to structure a company for maximum exit value • The strategy behind selling three companies to the same buyer • How software, gamification, and AI supercharged efficiency and sales • What founders must understand about recurring revenue and private-equity rollups By the end of this episode, you’ll understand the exact principles David used to build scalable operations, dominate an overlooked market, and turn recurring revenue into generational wealth — giving you the roadmap to build a company buyers compete for.

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