Advice from a high school graduate who makes million: create a sacred rhythm.
Cameron Bawden shares his entrepreneurial journey in the service industry, particularly in pest control. He discusses the importance of company culture, learning from multiple businesses, and overcoming investor challenges. Cameron also emphasizes the value of hiring skilled people and focusing on one's zone of excellence. He concludes with his future goals and advice for budding entrepreneurs.
Timestamps
(00:00) — Podcast Introduction
(00:26) — Introduction to guest, Cameron Bawden
(00:47) — Cameron's business introduction
(01:52) — Blueprint for success
(04:35) — Salary range in the home service industry
(07:50) — Starting and growing a pest control business
(10:48) — Mistakes made in the first few years
(15:22) — First breakthrough in business
(18:07) — Important changes made after growth
(19:23) — Launching and learning from running multiple businesses
(25:18) — Challenges and adjustments in different businesses
(27:52) — Biggest accomplishment
(28:51) — Most difficult period
(30:00) — Importance of hiring skilled people and focusing on one's zone of excellence
(31:33) — Future goals
(32:30) — Advice to younger self
(33:32) — Advice to upcoming entrepreneurs
(35:08) — Outro
Support/Contact Cameron:
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* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-bawden-106976102/
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No Degree EP179 Transcript: From High School Graduate to Multi-Million Home Services Business Owner-Cameron Bawden
[00:00:00]
Cameron: It's not because they're that much smarter than anyone. It's just that they stay consistent with a few themes over time. And that's the power of sacred rhythms I'm talking about.
Jonaed: Welcome to another episode of the No Degree podcast. I want to personally thank you for tuning in and supporting our show. If you haven't yet, hit that follow or subscribe button. I encourage you, don't keep this to yourself. Share these inspiring stories with your friends, invite them to subscribe and connect with us on social media.
So today, I have Cameron as a guest on the No Degree podcast. What do you do?
Cameron: We specialize in home services. Our biggest company is our pest control business in Arizona here. We also do carpet cleaning and windshield replacements.
Jonaed: Wow. Okay, those are three very interesting – different, but I've I feel like some aspects, they are the same. Do you kind of do the pest control and it's like, hey, you need your carpet clean?
Cameron: What we found is that as we provided an amazing customer base that understood who we were as a company, they started asking us, “Hey, do you guys know a good carpet cleaner? Do you guys know a pool guy and alarm guy?” So that one time I had six service companies open all at the same time. I started five within about a 15 to 18 month period. And it was the craziest time of my life. But it all stemmed because people love the service that we're providing initially with their pest control.
Jonaed: So what were the other three that you started?
Cameron: We did pools, we did solar and then we did alarms.
Jonaed: Those are good ones, too. I know people making good money doing that. Okay. So, you've obviously been very successful and successful people have ups and downs. What would you say is a blueprint of success that you would give to someone without a college degree?
Cameron: I've thought a lot about this and what I've really been training my employees on a lot right now is creating a sacred rhythm. What a sacred rhythm is something that is important to you. For example, my sacred rhythm in the morning right now is getting up and starting to exercise right away. And while I'm exercising on – I do stairclimber for 30 minutes every single morning. While I'm doing the stairclimber, I read some type of book to get my brain flowing for the day, and give me something to think about.
Right after that, I jumped into the ice bath, not just for the health benefits, but for the mental battle that it gives me because I want to do something hard right away in the morning. And for me, that's a rhythm. And as I've done it for multiple months now, it's became sacred. So, as you're an entrepreneur, there's a lot of things that you hear about. You're listening to all these motivational people. This guy does this, this guy does that and you're sitting there in a comfortable environment, and you're thinking, I want to do that.
When you go to do it, you might only do it for two weeks, three weeks, and then it becomes hard. And so, you stop doing it. Well, you know that in order for you to be successful, you need to continue to do these themes. When a rhythm becomes sacred, and you always do it no matter what, that's the recipe for success. And so, if I was young, I would – I have a lot of nieces and nephews who are 12 to 15 years old, who are starting to think about business.
I can't not talk to them about sacred rhythms and importance of creating great habits, so that once they start to do these things, they'll have success. You need to stay diligent; you need to make sure that you're being true to yourself and honest. When you make a commitment, you keep it.
Jonaed: Especially now, the sacred rhythms are like, I grabbed my phone, I scroll this, I do that. And it's really easy. It's so important, especially when you're young to develop those good habits. Because when you're young, you can do a lot of things and get away with it. But once you start approaching your late 20s, 30s, 40s, it really starts catching up like how you eat, whether you exercise, whether or not you keep up with people and all that.
Because a lot of things get harder as they get older like maintaining the friendships and all that. So, if you don't build good habits, you end up being 30. You don't have any friends around you or you don't have any friends that you really trust. You don't have good habits, and it's a lot harder to start. So now, what's the salary range for someone that does what you do in these businesses?
Cameron: That's a loaded question because you can decide how much money you want to put back into the business to continue to grow it. I didn't take any money from Green Mango until about year six. But if you work hard in the service industry, there's no reason why you can't make north of a million dollars. But it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice to get up to that point.
[00:05:03]
Jonaed: I've seen service businesses make million. But I've always seen that it's like, year one, you scrape by, you're living off savings; or maybe you might make $1,000 or $2,000 a month that you could put away. But typically you don't have any benefits and you're working all the all the time. You'll find year two, it's like, okay, you built up, made the mistake of saying yes to everybody. You figure out some pricing, you've kind of figured out some processes. Year three is when you're really putting it all together, and you're focused on expanding.
But when you're expanding, you have to be like, all right, you know what, I got to take the salary cut if I want to grow. And then, I find that somewhere around years four to seven, is when you really start being like, All right, now I'm comfortable. And then everybody looks at you like I should start a carpet cleaning business. Okay, good luck in four to six years. Let's take it back. What did you want to be in high school? And how was high school like for you?
Cameron: School didn’t come easy for me because I didn't apply myself. It was boring. I didn't know the right questions to ask. And that's another thing too, there's certain topics and certain things that as a business owner, you need to make sure that you understand accounting being almost number one, how to communicate with people. If you're going to be a business owner, you need to understand how people think, what motivates people and just how to communicate with them.
So, I wish I would have known that history, in my opinion, not something very important. And so, as I'm teaching my son, “Hey, you need to pay attention to history. But when they start talking about math and accounting, and start talking about English, you need to make sure that you're paying attention.” Because those are the things that you're really going to hone in on as an entrepreneur and as a business owner.
Jonaed: It's so true, because you see a lot of people like they don't teach finance in high school. They don't teach this in high school, but I was like, you know how to add, how to subtract, you know, it wasn't exciting for you. I've also seen people who say that I'm like, why don't you go teach a bunch of high school or finance and math and see if they paid – it's like, you have to make it engaging. And you do have to do a little to make sure like do but do the best you can. Now, did you have any jobs in high school?
Cameron: I did not. I played sports. And I was lucky enough where my parents said, “Hey, as long as you're playing sports, you know, you'll have a roof over your head, and we'll pay for your gas.” And so, I played sports the entire time. And then I went and served the church mission in Canada for two years, came home, and I started working.
Jonaed: What sports did you play?
Cameron: I played basketball.
Jonaed: That's awesome. Okay, so now, what was the first job you had?
Cameron: Working for myself. For a short time after my mission, I went and worked for a month for my stepdad. He sold oil. And just immediately I was like, I can't do this. And I started a detailing company, a carwash detailing company, did that for a summer. And then my best friend talked me into starting a pest control business and was just like, hey, there's residual and pest control. And that's the kind of company you want to be into. We’ll be rich. Let's go. At first, I was like, “You're crazy man. Like bugs? I don't want to be a bug man.” He's one of the greatest salesman you'll ever meet. He talked me into it and we just started running. We didn't know how to do anything and we just learned and paid the price, which is fine.
Jonaed: How did he find out about the business?
Cameron: I don't know what it's like where in New York, where you're at. But in Arizona, door to door sales is like a heavily recruited tool for growing companies, especially what with the Mormon community. Kids that like me that come home from their mission they're used to getting rejected on the doors. And so, these companies just want to scoop these guys up like crazy.
So, my business partner was actually recruited and hired or, no, his brother was recruited on an airplane to Utah. And he was like, “Hey, I'm not interested in this. But you know who'd be great is my brother. His brother lined him up. He went and sold during high school, he was making $30,000 to $40,000 every summer as a high school kid, and just love in life. And he sold me on the dream.
Jonaed: It’s interesting. I've had a couple of Mormons and they were your door to door salespeople. So now, you made the connection. All right, how was it that first year or two?
Cameron: At the time? It was brutal man, it was hell. As I look back at it, now is probably some of the most enjoyable times of my life because just like I said, we didn't have a CRM. We didn't have an assistant. We didn't have a bookkeeper. We didn't have an office manager.
[00:10:00]
We were literally running the business out of my bedroom in my mom's house. Half the time, we wouldn't even bill our customers because we were running it on an Excel format. We were just running around; we didn't know anything. It was tough man. Year three, literally would have given the company away if we could, because we're just like, I don't know how people make money at this. It just doesn't make sense.
No one would buy it. And now we're the biggest company in Arizona so it's crazy. Just the pattern – and that's why I talk about consistency. Anyone that's successful, it's not because they're that much smarter than anyone. It's just that they stay consistent with a few things over time. And that's the power of sacred rhythms I'm talking about.
Jonaed: I love that. Now, what were some of the mistakes that you made during that those first few years?
Cameron: There's a lot I look back. For a long time, my partner and I would ride together in the truck and spray houses.
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Cameron: As good and bad, but we stayed on the truck for way too long, we could have leveraged ourselves a lot better. And then if we would have created a better culture from the beginning, I feel like our turnover rate with employees would have been a lot better. We didn't care about culture, we just – hey, you're dead to us if you're lazy. We would just turn through people. When they'd make one mistake, we would just fire them, we wouldn't give them a couple of different chances to grow and learn. We would just fire them immediately. And that was a huge mistake for us. So, those are probably the biggest ones for me.
Jonaed: When did you realize like, hey, we got to change things up. This is what's costing us and it's costing us big and this is what's preventing us from being profitable and growing?
Cameron: I tell this story. I was at a Diamondbacks game one night, and as an owner, you're always thinking about business. You're always thinking about work. And at the time, we were having this staffing issue where we would just be burning through people. So I would constantly be hiring. And I was in this Dutch Brothers line at the ballpark. I noticed one of the girls I was helping serve us, she was just different. You can tell people that have a great personality that are on top of it.
I started to talk to her and I lead with pay, hey, you should come work for us. Because we pay more because it wasn't anything about the culture. Through our conversation, she basically said, “Hey, I'm not interested. I make minimum wage here. But I stay here because of the culture.” And I was just like, “You don't want to make more money. How does this make sense?” She's like, “No, I love where I work.” And so, kind of selfishly, I was like, “Dude, I don't have to pay people the most, I just have to have a great culture, like, how easy is this?”
From that moment, we changed everything, we started to put massage chairs at our office, we started to have soda machines, we put a basketball hoop in our office. We just started doing the little things that made a difference. And to have a great culture, it costs a lot of money. But we spend 80%-90% of our lives at work. People are there and will be loyal to you not because of the pay, but because of how you treat them. That's something that I'm learning more and more even to this day. That was about four years ago, that Dutch Brothers story.
Green Mango has been in business for 14 years now. For almost 10 years, I had that mentality and over the past four years, it's amazing to see our growth as we made that switch. I know that's one of the biggest things that we did. We have people that are here for north of seven, eight years now, and multiple people over four years. And I know it's because of the culture change that we've done.
Jonaed: Wow. So, after you made those shifts, what happened? What were some things that were like, wow, I can't believe this is happening.
Cameron: What I would tell if I know your audience is younger people starting a business. It's not something that you see overnight. It's something that once again, it's a rhythm that you need to create as a business owner to stay consistent on.
[00:15:01]
Because it's not something that is just like, “Oh, we're going to treat people nicely now. They're going to take six months to a year to be like, “Is this guy for real now? Does he really appreciate me? He's saying all these kind words, he's doing all these nice things. But does he mean it?” So, that's what I would say, just be patient, but stay consistent and know it makes a huge difference.
Jonaed: It was ten years in business. You mentioned the first few years are hard, what was the first breakthrough that you're like, “Hey, I'm gonna keep going.” Because as business owners, we always think like I'm thinking about quitting tomorrow, and just whatever, getting a job or just go on a different route. What was that big milestone in the first few years?
Cameron: Like a lot of pest control companies, we started with door to door reps and that's difficult. Every single year, other companies are trying to steal your employees. You're trying to compete with the big dogs that are paying a lot more money than you are for commissions, and a lot better trips. And it's exhausting. That's why in year three, we pretty much wanted to sell because every single year, we have one or two sales rep that come back out of 15 to 20 guys.
Not only were we trying to grow our company, service all of our customers, build and run the office and everything, now we're having to recruit. A huge breakthrough was about year five, when we started to get out of the door to door world for growth and get more into traditional marketing, radio, Google, billboards and stuff like that. And when we did start to put our money, especially into radio, it just took off like crazy. I'll never forget it. We didn't have the money to afford the radio contract. It was $25,000 a month.
But one of the radio DJs here Johnjay and Rich gave us a shout out because we wouldn’t service to his home. And that next day, I think we sold like 10 or 15 accounts, which for us with a team of 15 to 20, if we sold 20 in a night, like we were on cloud nine. The fact that there's one guy over the radio sold like 15, bro, we're going all in, we signed the contract. And that was the most stressful month of my life. Because unless we get this many contracts in this month, I don't know how we're going to pay that bill.
But it's just worked. We've been with them for I think over nine years now. And it was awesome. We were out to lunch just last week to altogether and just talking about the past. And so, I don’t know. Business is crazy. You just got to be open, and always networking, talking to people. And you know, everything happens for a reason. I truly believe that and paths will open up if you're working hard and you're telling people right.
Jonaed: That's very interesting, because that's $25,000 a month. That's pretty much all the cash or like we really need to —
Cameron: We didn’t have any cash. It was like hey, we got to sell whatever. I forget what we're charging for initials at the time. That's crazy, man. It's It was stressful. But it was fun like that. That was our growth.
Jonaed: So, now you started growing. What changes did you make? What did you have to adjust to?
Cameron: A big part of growing pains were when we hired X amount of people like at what point do is their bandwidth full and we need to hire a manager to manage those people. I forget which year it was, but we made the decision. I think it was five or six years ago, as we're really starting to put on all this growth. It was like herding cats. And so I learned from the Navy SEALs that basically how they structure their people that for every seven people that they have, they have a leader over that person.
And so as I've adopted that mentality is that for every seven new employees, we hire a manager to manage those people. It's helped me maintain with my managers, our vision and our goal for the company of how we treat people the knowledge that they have, and how to perform the service correctly.
Jonaed: Now, so how many people are you at now?
Cameron: Across all companies, we have about 250. At Green Mango, there's a little over 160 at Green Mango.
Jonaed: Wow, that’s awesome, man.
Cameron: Yes, that’s crazy.
Jonaed: Now, you had the pest control first. What business did you launch and when did you launch it in terms of your career?
Cameron: Yes, it was year six at Green Mango. It was really weird because like I said, we were so heavily involved in the day-to-day that we were literally every single day working 16 to 18 hour days. And then when we became smart and started to hire other managers, it was almost like we worked ourselves out of a job. So, when you go from working 16 to 18 hour days to a normal eight hour day, you're like what am I doing with all this free time? What's going on? And to be honest, I wasn't making as much money as I wanted to. I had all this energy and now we felt like we were untouchable because we've built this company.
[00:20:02]
It’s like, oh, we can start these other service companies which we've learned a lot from, but we just thought, okay, we have this time, let's start these other companies. And so, we first started with alarms and pools, pretty much launched them at the same time and just slowly trickled in the other companies, solar, carpets, and windshield replacement about a year after that. But each one I went in, and I had a managing partner.
I'd go into the industry and say, “Okay, you've been in pools for five years now. You know the ins and outs of pools. Give them equity in that business so it's their day to day. And then we bring the system, the operations, the finance and the marketing to them, and provide all the tools that we can to help them be successful.” So that way, I'm not having to be like, there's no way I could manage my time and be able to provide a great service if I was having to be boots on the ground in every single company.
Jonaed: What were some of the things you learned, launching all these companies at a short period of time?
Cameron: Just because you're successful in one company doesn't mean you can be successful in another. Every single breed is different. But there's one thing that I think is the most important for people to hear is that in every single company, there will come a time where – it was kind of like our story of 2013 to 2015 but we had to make a switch. In every single company, there's going to be something that you need to figure out. There's going to be that X factor of everyone saying it's not possible, or it's this way, so it doesn't work. And you need to figure out how to get around that, if that makes sense.
Jonaed: What was that point that you had to get around?
Cameron: In which company?
Jonaed: Was there a common one? I guess go through each —
Cameron: I’ll use my windshield company, for example. In windshields, we go through insurance companies, and they squeeze us to death on what we can charge our customers. We can't dictate. In pest control, if I want to charge a customer $150 for a service, no one's telling me I can, I'll charge them that and they like it, they're going to pay it. With an insurance company, they tell me “Hey, you can only charge $500 for a Chevy Silverado windshield,” and the glass is $250, the technicians, this,” and so they tell you how much.
Well, when you're trying to do things differently, it's very difficult for people to tell you what you can and can't charge. And so, it was almost to a point where we needed to shut the company down. I was talking to my partners, I said, “Hey, this is where we're at. I don't think we can make the money that we thought we could make in this company; it's requiring all this time. We need to figure out – this is what I'm talking about, we need to figure out that theme that's going to allow Agave to be successful.”
Shortly after that we found RV windshield replacements. Well, in RVs, they pay cash, they don't go through insurance. We were doing 90% trucks on the road and now we switch that to like 10% or 15% to doing normal vehicles and going all in on RV. So, now we take care of all the Big La Mesas, Camping World, all the big motorhome distributors in Arizona. We actually opened up Florida a few months ago because of demand. And so it's like, it's that switch, the company is literally about to go out of business can't make it, you find that thing. And now it's rolling again and making a ton of cash.
Jonaed: What about the other companies? I remember the pool company, what was the turning point in that?
Cameron: I couldn't figure it out so I had to sell it. But knowing what I do now is I was scared to charge the customers the correct price that it took to run the company. So, I think our average ticket was $90 a month. If I would have lost half my customers that charged $150, that would have made all the difference for the business. But I didn't know that at the time. I just thought if I increase the rates, everyone's going to cancel. And that's just not the truth.
People want to pay for a great service company and they want to make sure that you're providing a great service. So if that cost a little bit extra, then that's okay. I'll tell a quick story because I didn't believe this principle. I mean, we went almost 11 years at Green Mango before we increased our pricing on our customers, because I was so scared of people canceling. Guess what the cancellation rate was when I raised the bill, just 10 bucks a month?
Jonaed: Probably like 0%?
Cameron: Less than 1% of people canceled. It’s insane. You can't believe – you know what I mean? At least for myself, I've just thought oh, you increase it, people will say screw you. You're not worth it. But if you do these things right, if you're providing a great service, and you know you're worth it, then charge what it takes to give great health care to your employees to pay great salaries, to provide a great culture.
[00:25:02]
People like that when a great technician comes to the door, and he's not grumpy and mad, and he's in a nice pressure. He's got a nice clean hat on, and he's happy, what more does the customer want? You know what I mean? People are willing to pay that price.
Jonaed: What were some of the issues that you faced in a pool company?
Cameron: With pools, they're extremely difficult and training the technicians and so growth was not an issue. That's what was so frustrating. We became the second largest pool company in Arizona, within two years. But our issue was that we couldn't train technicians fast enough. There's a lot that goes on science, that goes on with maintaining a pool and servicing. And so, as we were trying to train our technicians, it was very difficult to get them trained up fast enough and handle the growth.
Jonaed: What about carpet cleaning? What are some of the issues you faced over there?
Cameron: It was crazy. When we first started, we took a lot of our employees from our competitors. And the highest job average was $250. If a technician could upsell a customer while they are at the home, $250, he was the best salesman ever. So, when we brought him over, we're like, “Hey, if you get a $300 ticket, we’ll literally pay you – I forget what it was, like 50%.” To us, we'll never hit that. If they do, cool. Well, our guys started hitting that like crazy.
Also, we couldn't afford that much pay because it was a sliding pay scale. And so, we've had to adjust the commissions for the customers. But even as recently, we've implemented our Coconut Club, which is a subscription based carpet cleaning model. And we used to give away our club for free, now we charge our customers $3,000 to join it. And at first I was like, man, what are we doing, but we value the coconut clubs so much that we need to charge our customers in order to be part of it.
They get huge savings 50% off their cleanings, they get an air duct cleaning for free once every two years. And then they get the free spot and spill treatment, which everyone's had a dog or a kid throw up in the middle of the night. They don't want to call the carpet cleaner to come out that has a $200 minimum, we'll come back out for free if you're part of our club. So, people are loving it. And that's been that one other thing that's just been a game changer for us to help with cash flow.
Jonaed: Wow, I love that. It's just interesting because obviously, maybe the profit margins in some aspects may be lower. But the fact is you don't have to get new customers. You have these customers for life. They put an investment. Why would I ever switch? I'm part of the club, I don't have to go call, I don't have this unexpected expense, because from them they have steady cash flows too on their end. So now, looking back on your career, what would you say is your biggest accomplishment?
Cameron: That’s a tough question. I find a lot of great pleasure knowing that I employ so many people, and knowing that I provide an opportunity for them to do whatever they want with their money. Whether that's just buying a new home for the first time, for taking their kids on vacations that they don't have the chance to. But I think that's my greatest accomplishment is building out and providing an opportunity for people provide for their family.
It's been really fulfilling, and seeing people come to work happy as we've made those culture changes. When you walk into my office, you can feel a difference that people want to be there. People are smiling, they're greeting you. And they're having a good time. They're playing games, they're laughing. If you go into nine out of ten companies, it's just not like that.
Jonaed: No, it isn't. So now, looking back, you've obviously been through a lot of tough times. What was the hardest thing you went through?
Cameron: In 2018, we had an investor that was involved in almost all of our companies except for Green Mango. And he pulled out and basically he was like, “Hey, I'm not funding these anymore. And you're responsible, basically moving forward.” And at the time I wasn't making any money from any of the companies. They were all in growth stages. And so it was a pivotal, I thought my life was over to be honest. It was hard, man.
I had to make a lot of changes fast. A lot of difficult conversations that I had with people that's when we shut down, well, not shut down, we sold them all. That's a beautiful thing about service companies is there's always a buyer, and we had to sell a couple of them and really focus in on the ones that we felt like we're winners. And yes, it was it was long, long, hard nights.
Jonaed: I can imagine because it's like you have this trajectory and now all of a sudden, it’s different. Now, have you ever felt insecure about not having a degree?
[00:29:57]
Cameron: No, because the family that I grew up in, but no one in my family had a degree, and they're all very successful people, I think my mentality has been that if I have a platform, and I'm strategic, I can hire people a lot smarter than I am, or that I'll ever be. One of my biggest things when people are starting out that I talk to them about is like, if you have this person that wants $150,000 a year, you don't have to put them on a base salary for $150,000 a year.
You can start them at $50,000 to $75,000 but then have a sliding pay scale for them to where they can make $200 to $250. And just make sure it makes sense for you as a company. But that's how you attract top tier people. That's how I've done it. I have the CFO right now that if I spent my entire life going to school, I'll never be as smart as this guy.
And so that I provide a great opportunity for him, that he can make more money than anywhere else. And he's with me. I could go down the line with all my managers. And so what it's all about is being a good person, treating people, right, and you can find those people that make up for your inefficiencies. Everyone has their zone of excellence, figure out what that is for you, and then hire people around you.
Jonaed: I love that because I've realized even for myself, when I started focusing on my zone of excellence, I just make more progress. I can work longer, I'm less drained, and I'm much more excited. And then I can have other people do other things. Now, let's look forward. What are your future goals?
Cameron: Right now, Green Mango does $24 million a year in revenue. I know that I can get it up to $50 million in the next five years. And then I want to have an exit at Green Mango and I'll probably “retire.” But work on Coconut and Agave as much as probably three to four hours a day. And that's just because I love work. Right now I'm chasing that $50 million in revenue, which is around a $200 billion exit. And I'm confident we can hit that if we keep on our sacred rhythms that we have right now. So, it's exciting.
Jonaed: I think you'll be able to do it, man. You've gone through the hard routes, right? This is year 14, you've gone through the ups and downs, and you've been through different economic cycles and all that and you've adapted and technology. You've changed cultures and all that. And you still have the learning attitude. Now, this is going to be a very interesting question. If you saw the 18-year old version of yourself walking across the street today, in 2023, what would you say to him?
Cameron: I wish I would have learned sooner that principle that everything works out. I had to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars through a business coach to have this principle introduced to me. And then I had to pay a lot of it. I had to go through a lot of lessons by losing that investor to realize he's right. I think I don't know if it was on the show before we were talking but we talked about like we're in the right place.
Like everything happens for a reason. And I've stressed a lot about things that haven't worked out and thought like it was the end of me. And that set me back for sometimes months at a time. And if I could see myself now just like, be patient, enjoy the journey. Everything works out the way it's supposed to. I think that would bring me a lot of peace of mind.
Jonaed: I love that. Now, what would you tell the average high school kid about the future if they're asking for advice, and they want to work in a service based business? What would you tell them to do, what to learn, how to go about it?
Cameron: I think there's value in working for other companies at first. I didn't have that opportunity to see how they run things. I'm a very visual learner. And so I would have really enjoyed to go work for three or four other pest control companies so I had a reference of what they did and didn't do that work. I think there's power in that. And then there's power in surrounding yourself with like-minded people. One of my favorite quotes is show me your friends, and I'll show you your future.
If you're around a bunch of deadbeats, I like to not pursue great things, we'll call it and whatever that looks like for you. You need to reevaluate that and look at where you're going. I've been able to be successful because I've had a lot of great family members, and a lot of great friends that I've looked up to, that were ahead of me in business and motivated me to, hey, don't go out and do that this weekend. Stay and be a great example to your people or continue to work on the business. I think there's a lot of value in who you surround yourself with.
Jonaed: How would people get in contact with you or support you?
Cameron: Probably the best way, I mean, it's Instagram. It's C Bawden B-A-W-D-E-N or I'm on LinkedIn. But I'm always on Instagram so that's probably the best way.
Jonaed: Thank you so much for your time. This was such a great episode. I learned a lot and I know the audience has learned a lot too.
Cameron: Cool, man. I appreciate you.
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