He Turned A Summer Job Into A Nine Figure Exit - David Royce
From Escaping the Drift with John Gafford by John Gafford
May 19, 2026 · 53 min · Episode 233
About this episode
David Royce shares his journey from a college summer job to building a nine-figure pest control business and the lessons learned along the way.
On this episode of Escaping the Drift, we sit down with David Royce: founder of Aptiv, EY National Entrepreneur of the Year, and the man who turned a college summer job spraying for bugs into a nine figure exit to private equity. Before selling Aptiv for a number that made hundreds of his employees six and seven figure earners, David was a broke BYU finance student who sold zero pest control contracts in his first five days on the job. He went to a bookstore, bought half a dozen sales classics from Zig Ziglar to Brian Tracy, committed to 90 minutes of reading a day, and finished that summer as the top rookie in the entire company. In this episode, David opens up about the moment his boss casually mentioned selling his pest control business to Terminex for 10 million dollars, the ego he had to swallow to walk away from a Wall Street M&A career, and the white collar approach to a blue collar industry that built one of the fastest growing service companies in America. We dive into why the secret about unsexy industries is they have sexy margins, the Wall Street Journal data showing 43% of the top 0.1% of earners own boring businesses, and why door to door still grows companies…
People in this episode
Host: John Gafford
Guest: David Royce
Topics covered
- entrepreneurship
- business growth
- sales strategies
- pest control industry
- personal development
- exit strategies
Keywords
- entrepreneur
- pest control
- business exit
- sales techniques
- personal growth
- service industry
- financial success
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Aptiv, EY, Terminex, Wall Street Journal
Places: BYU
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