Justin McCauley

That statement is true in the literal sense — McCauley’s grandfather, William, started his own pest control company, The Bug Man, in 1976 in Little Rock, Ark., and his father, Mike, followed suit, opening his own branch of the company in 1983 (Mike’s branch of The Bug Man was rebranded as McCauley Services in 2010). Today, McCauley Services’ staff includes McCauley’s brother Zac as chief operating officer (the brothers purchased the business from parents Mike and Kay in 2020), wife Jen as director of employee and customer relations, sister-in-law Loren as director of HR and brother-in-law Justin Marlowe as a branch manager.

But to McCauley, the entire industry is like an extended family, one that’s seen him grow from his first PestWorld at age 7 to his recently finished term as 2022-2023 president of the National Pest Management Association (NPMA).

“These association events that everybody goes to, looking forward to seeing them and wanting to spend time with them and learn from them and see how they’re doing, it really feels like a big family reunion to me,” said McCauley.

A Bridge to the Next Generation

McCauley wants the industry to feel like family to everyone else who’s in it, too, especially the new generation that’s starting to take the lead in the association and beyond.

“When I came in, everybody welcomed me with welcoming arms because of my dad,” he said. “A lot of these people that are coming in new, they don’t have that person. So we’ve got to make sure as an association that we’re pulling those people in and making them feel welcome and wanted. We’ve got to make sure everybody has a place where they fit, a seat at the table.”

Bridging the gap between generations and encouraging the younger generation to step up and take on leadership roles is important to McCauley, 41, who set the record as the youngest person to lead NPMA as president last year.

When McCauley first was elected to NPMA’s executive committee in 2017, he said the age gap between him and the rest of the members was apparent. “I’ll never forget, I’m looking up there, and all these guys on the executive committee serving are my dad’s age or older,” he recalled. “You just look around like, man, there’s an age gap. There’s a drop-off. I felt like I could serve and maybe be a bridge to the next generation, because there wasn’t a whole lot (of younger people involved) at the time.”

Bobby Jenkins, owner of ABC Home & Commercial Services, has watched McCauley bridge that gap in various roles at NPMA, from the board of directors to the Leadership Development Group.

“Justin has always been an industry leader when it comes to adopting new technologies and understanding how they can benefit our companies and our customers,” he said.

Deni Naumann, former president of Copesan, who also served alongside McCauley on the NPMA board, described him as a change agent and visionary who sees what the industry needs and brings others along on that vision, too — all with a fantastic sense of humor. “Justin can make you laugh and can laugh at himself,” she said. “When he laughs, he’s all in with it, showing in his eyes and smile. I’m laughing right now thinking about his laugh.”

New initiatives like NPMA’s Executive Leadership Program have helped further McCauley’s goal to bring new leaders into the association, which is all part of his bigger mission to leave NPMA even better than he found it.

“Those are things that are going to make our association and our industry great for years to come,” McCauley said. “That was one of the biggest things I wanted to do as president — make sure that we built upon the foundation that the previous generations had left for us. Dad always taught us, you always leave something better than you found it, and hopefully we’ve left the association better than we found it so when my kids are older, they have an amazing association to run and industry to work in as well.”

Lessons From Dad

Life lessons from Mike have played a large role in shaping McCauley into the business owner and person he is today, he said. Some of McCauley’s first memories are of suiting up in a Bug Man uniform at just 4 years old and going to work with his father.

“He would use us to be an icebreaker to go out and cold call on commercial clients,” he recalled.

Kay was a nurse who worked nights, as did Mike.

“I’d have to go with him and his team and end up sleeping in restaurant booths,” McCauley said. “I’d help him on night jobs, and I’d get up the next morning and go to school.”

McCauley looked up to his father and knew he wanted to follow his footsteps into the pest management industry.

“It’s one of those things that I always wanted to do,” he said.

The work wasn’t always fun, but there were lessons to be found even in the dirty work, like the time Mike had a truckload of topsoil delivered to their home and let it solidify for a few weeks before tasking McCauley, then a young teen, with moving it.

“His plan was to make flowerbeds out of it, but I think he purposely let it get hard and then told me one day that he needed me to move it with a wheelbarrow from where it was to like 10 yards away because it was in his way,” McCauley said. “I wanted to cuss him when I was doing it and hating it, but looking back, what he was teaching me was sometimes you’ve got to do stuff that is hard, that you don’t want to do, and you’ve just got to learn to put your head down, one foot in front of the other, and keep moving until it’s done.”

McCauley sums up that work ethic with one word: grit. “That’s probably the biggest thing he taught us and instilled in us."

“We were taught at a young age to do our best in everything and always give 100 percent, no matter the outcome,” said Zac. “Justin shows this in everything he does, and our team steps up and follows him 100 percent because he leads with heart and integrity.”

McCauley Services operates upon four pillars developed by Mike: to be professional, knowledgeable, trustworthy and caring.

“Our overarching thing is to grow personally, professionally and continually,” McCauley said. “And Dad’s biggest thing was if you’re not growing, you’re dying. No matter where you are in life, you always should be learning. You can always learn something from somebody and push yourself to get better. I’m always looking at how can I get better? What’s my day look like, and how am I going to get better today?”

Mike, who retired from the day-to-day duties of business about 10 years ago, received PCT’s Crown Leadership Award in 2001, when he was 42, just a year older than McCauley is today.

“It’s pretty wild,” McCauley said. “I remember, he was so excited and awestruck by it. To come full circle and me be sitting in that seat is truly an honor. It’s one of those things, you always look up to your dad.”

Out in the Field in Fayetteville

As a teen, McCauley spent summers doing termite work with friends and running a pest control route. He was captain of the Benton High School football team and even received a football scholarship offer from Harvard.

“My ACT score was good enough and I was decent enough at football that I could’ve gone there,” McCauley said. “But one, I always had a dream of playing for the Arkansas Razorbacks, and two, all my friends were going there. I didn’t know anybody up there at Harvard. I’m a country boy from Arkansas. … I wouldn’t say it scared me, but I was like, ‘I’m not doing that.’ So I had an opportunity to go to Harvard and turned it down to walk on at the University of Arkansas and play football. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

McCauley played for the Razorbacks for two years, then got a job at a car dealership near the university.

“All my buddies were working there, and we were working these stupid hours,” he said. “We had to work weekends all the time. I think it was like $8 an hour. I remember calling Dad, and I was like, ‘This is stupid. Can I open a pest control company up here? I’m busting my butt not making any money.’ And he goes, ‘Sure.’”

Mike gave him a truck and some equipment, “and I just ran around beating doors up in the Fayetteville market for about three years, building a pest control route,” McCauley said.

After McCauley graduated with a degree in business administration, Mike told him it was time to come home and learn the administrative side of the family business. The family sold the Fayetteville route to some friends, and McCauley moved back to Benton.

“Dad made sure I’ve done every position the company has,” McCauley said. “I’ve sat in every seat at the company.”

From Bug Man to Businessman

One of McCauley’s proudest career moments is overseeing the name change and separation from his grandfather’s company in 2010, allowing the business to expand into other territories.

“Dad always wanted to be a good bug man, and I always wanted to be a good businessman,” McCauley said. “When we decided to change our name to McCauley Services in 2010 and separate from my grandfather’s company, that was a big risk.”

Witnessing the opportunities the change has created for his employees makes it all worth it, he said. The company grew from covering the southern half of Arkansas in 2010 to operating in six states today.

How did the company achieve such growth in little more than a decade? “It was a lot of driving, late nights,” McCauley said. The most important factor was placing the right people in positions to succeed.

One lesson he and the team learned was that the further away they moved from corporate headquarters, the more company culture dissipated. “And we have a pretty strong culture,” he said. “Figuring out how we’re going to implement that culture in these remote locations, it was a challenge.”

The company tackled this by placing employees who had already experienced the culture at headquarters in roles at the new service areas. Brother-in-law Justin was tasked with getting the Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma branches running.

“We took several guys that had worked with us for 20-plus years and put them with managers in those new areas and taught them, ‘Here’s our values. You’ve got to live these values and then hold your technicians to these values,’” McCauley said.

McCauley Services brings all employees in for training once a quarter to keep those values alive.

“Our big one that we talk about a lot is caring,” McCauley said. “Dad taught Zac and I to always give back into the communities that support you.”

McCauley Services works to be a community steward by supporting organizations like Boys & Girls Clubs of America and donating butterfly kits to local kindergarten classrooms each year so children can learn firsthand about metamorphosis as they watch caterpillars transform. McCauley also sees protecting public health and neighbors’ properties, as well as supporting the company’s 60 employees and their families, as rewarding ways of giving back.

“To be able to continue that and grow that and think about how much more of an opportunity and impact we are going to be able to have in the future is really what keeps us going,” he said.

Family Matters

Working with family is not without its challenges, McCauley said, but they’re united by the common goal of ensuring the company’s growth and success.

“We try to have honest conversations,” he said. “When we’re at work, we’re having work conversations, and when we’re off on personal time, that’s personal time. We do our best to separate it. We just know that everybody’s coming from a stance of they love you, want to make you better and want to make the company better.”

McCauley’s wife, Jen, also grew up in the industry, working in marketing for father Jack Marlowe’s business Eden Advanced Pest Technologies (Marlowe is a class of 2008 Crown Leadership Award winner) before joining the McCauley Services team. The couple met at NPMA Academy, though their fathers were friends before that. “It is great having in-laws that get along,” McCauley said.

He and Jen celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary in September and have two children, daughter Blaik, 10, and son Ryder, 8. Their children are just starting to dip their toes in the family business.

“We’ve got them up here stuffing envelopes, doing things like that,” McCauley said. “And then we’re starting to incorporate Zac’s kids (Micah, 4, and Mox, 1) into it a little bit now.”

“I'm super proud to call Justin my brother,” said Zac. “He sets a great example for not only myself and our team, but his kids and my kids — our future generation.”

When they’re not in the office, the McCauleys can likely be found enjoying the great outdoors. In the wintertime, they head to Montana, where both Mike and Kay and Jen’s parents have properties, for snowboarding, skiing and snowmobiling. In the summer, you’ll find them in the mountains, where they enjoy hiking and paddleboarding, at the lake, wakeboarding and surfing, or out hunting and fishing.

He, Jen and the kids recently brought their camper along at an NPMA executive leadership forum in Jackson Hole and spent the following two-and-a-half weeks camping through Colorado and Utah with their two dogs, Copper and Titus.