Healthy Homes Founder Dean Johnson's Encore Career

He ran some spreadsheets, too, and in 2017 determined that pest control was a “pretty viable business.”

Johnson was about to embark on a third major career change — a trek that started in construction project management, evolved to software development, and then shifted to business intelligence and supply chain management for a major aerospace corporation. Then he landed by happenstance in the structural pest control industry because he wasn’t ready to retire.

His old college roommate, nephew and in-laws were in the pest management business. “They had been telling me for some time, ‘You’d love it!’” Johnson said, now wondering why he hadn’t done it sooner.

Recognizing the potential, he earned his license during the tail end of 2017, and a few months later he opened Healthy Homes Pest Control in Palmyra, Va.

Experience in myriad industries informed all kinds of decisions, from the tech platform Healthy Homes uses to customer service and pest inspection protocols. Johnson explained, “After working in construction, I was involved with real estate and some occasional home remodeling on the side, and it’s helpful knowing how to talk to people about how their house is built and where to find potential pest problems.”

Johnson leaned on his pest control mentors heavily at first. “We were learning from scratch, and I’d be on the phone with my friend and nephew every week asking questions,” Johnson said. He also developed valuable industry peer relationships by networking locally, at training events and at the National Pest Management Association’s PestWorld.

A young business when the pandemic hit, lockdown fast-forwarded growth for Healthy Homes Pest Control. “Most of our customers are residential, and with a lot of people working from home, they started noticing the ants and other bugs while sitting at their kitchen tables on a laptop,” Johnson said.

Five years later, a milestone marker for any startup, the business is a family affair. Johnson’s son Alec, is one-third owner, his son-in-law, Nick Howard, works in the business and his wife Carol continues managing the office.

Johnson applies all kinds of lessons learned from previous careers to his pest control pursuit.

PERSONALLY INVESTED IN SERVICE. While working as an on-site project manager for a national homebuilding company, Johnson spent days checking in with contractors, meeting buyers and consulting with customers. “I really enjoyed being out and interacting with people,” he said.

He describes stressful pre-closing home walkthroughs with almost-homeowners breaking down in tears because of a rocky experience. “Seeing what bad customer service could do made a big impact on me,” he said.

He kind of became the cleanup guy.

“When we started the pest control business, we really focused on customer service, and it makes my day when I hear a customer say, ‘You are the first one I called who showed up,’” Johnson said.

A culture of empathetic services defines the way Healthy Homes operates. “We really look at what we do as a service that matters to people, and we recognize that we might see cockroaches and mice every day, but a lot of people never do, and when they find a pest in their kitchen, it’s a traumatic experience,” Johnson said.

At first, he personally serviced every account. Now that he is spending more time in the office, a CRM software platform is in place to mind the details. “Another thing I learned by not doing it right during my working years is, if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers,” he said. “Not that you should ignore the bottom line, but it does take care of itself when your customers are happy.”

SCALING SMART WITH SOFTWARE. Mr. Smith is a woodworking hobbyist, Mrs. Jones has a Pomeranian named Tootsie, there are four kids at the Nelson house and their neighbors, the Suttons, prefer to be home during service visits. These details matter. They form connections between technicians and clients. But as a business grows, mentally filing the “little things” that go a long way in retaining customers isn’t so easy.

That’s what software is for, Johnson said.

When he started the business, he and his wife agreed, no building software platforms. The reasoning: “It would suck up all my time and energy and keep me from doing pest control,” Johnson said.

But after trying several software packages — admittedly, Johnson says he is a “terrible person to sell software to because I pick it to pieces” — he decided to customize a CRM platform, but not start from scratch. For the last two years, he has been molding it to align with the way Healthy Homes Pest Control operates, and the effort has not distracted him from pest control now that the company has expanded.

Ultimately, the software solution is helping deliver the level of customer service that meets Johnson’s high expectations. “We were having trouble with things like follow-up, and with one package, there was no way to auto-drop a follow-up phone call after the service to see how things are going,” he explained.

Courtesy of Dean Johnson

Problem solved. Now, that is automated. The phone system is integrated with the CRM platform, so if a customer calls in, their record pops up on the screen and includes relevant details such as their dog’s name and how many kids they have, or whether they are grandparents. “It helps us establish a connection,” Johnson said. “Software is a tool that helps do the things you would naturally do on your own but on a bigger scale.”

COMMITMENT SANS CONTRACT. Johnson said he takes what might be a contrarian view to one-year contracts for customers.

You’d think a customer commitment would help a business schedule, route, plan in general. And it does. But it could send another message Johnson just doesn’t like. “The only reason you would need to lock in customers is if they are not going to be happy with the service and will eventually quit,” he said.

In his opinion, it’s an off-the-air way of saying, we’re not going to try that hard for you, but you’ll still have to pay us for at least a year.

Johnson learned this lesson in the software business. “At the time, our competitors were requiring one- and three-year contracts, and we didn’t have a contract,” he said. “We told clients, ‘We will keep you as a customer because we will give you great service. And if anyone you do business with wants you to sign a contract, I’d walk away.’”

Clients were kind of surprised with Johnson’s policy. But he draws from his personal experience getting stuck in a contract with a company that delivered poor service. “Every time we have signed a contract, we have been disappointed with the performance,” he said.

WHAT’S NEXT? Most of Healthy Home Pest Control’s business is quarterly service, along with a portfolio of termite clients and mosquito work during the summer. It’s mostly residential, by design — another lesson learned. Johnson dials back to when he sold his software development firm, a decision predicated by the Great Recession. “We were heavily focused on construction customers, and a lot of them went out of business,” he said.

He lost a bundle of his customer base, but not his shirt when he sold.

Diversification of some kind affords sustainability.

Meanwhile, Johnson finds that the pest control industry and newfound family business is delivering a balance in life that allows for flexibility outside corporate walls. The innate entrepreneur has mostly worked for himself. He discovered a passion for the pest control industry and a pace that carves opportunity for the next generation.

Johnson said simply, “I like the freedom to work in a business and take care of people.”

The author is a regular contributor to PCT.