8 Lessons and Insights From Yardline Pest Control’s First Year

By Eddie Wooten

Nearly every sports league will recognize a rookie of the year, highlighting an outstanding performer in their first season of competition.

FieldRoutes' selection of Iowa's Yardline Pest Control, owned by Sam Rankin, for its Rookie of the Year Award in 2025 seems fitting. After all, Rankin once played junior hockey with some of the nation's best players.

Whether sports or business, rookies learn lessons throughout their first go-round. Here's some of what Rankin, who also owns ETCH Outdoor Living, and Yardline Pest Control have learned—and what has guided them—since making their pest control debut in March.

1. Think big: Start with the end in mind

Rankin is thinking ahead from the outset. He set up Yardline as a separate company from ETCH, complete with its own branding.

"Private equity is huge in the space," he says. "If somebody comes and wants to buy ETCH, I want to have Yardline. Likewise, if somebody tries to acquire Yardline, I want to have ETCH. I don't want to have them so tied together that you can't break them apart in the event of an exit."

While Rankin and Yardline received Rookie of the Year, there's a case to be made that the most important rookie in Ankeny, IA, in 2025 is Ruby Rankin, born in June to Haley and Sam. Ruby has already been a factor in Rankin's strategic thinking for both businesses.

"Someday down the line," he says, "I pray my daughter wants to follow in my footsteps, and I hope there's one of the two businesses I can pass down."

2. Do the right thing

While Yardline is taking its rookie lap, Rankin possesses more than seven years' experience as a business leader with ETCH. That experience has shown him good will follow for those who exhibit integrity. 

"I do think there's some good karma that comes with it. If you do the right thing, if you're a good person for long enough, surely the money will follow. That's the compass we use here."

Above: Sam Rankin, president of Yardline Pest Control in Ankeny, IA.

3. Grow faster with predictable, recurring revenue

A steady cash flow is essential for growing a pest control business, and recurring revenue models establish stability. Subscription-based pest control services help create a more predictable income stream while improving long-term customer retention. 

Even in Yardline’s youth, one-time jobs aren’t prevalent.

"Recurring revenue is first and foremost, right?" Rankin says. "We're a young new business. We're in growth mode. We are trying to get to critical mass very quickly. I don't want to have just one person in the field out spraying, quoting, doing customer service forever. That's not very stable.

And remember, Rankin already has longer-range goals in mind and wants both of his companies to be attractive to a potential buyer or partner. 

"We want to be valued on a multiple of EBITDA, and that multiple is going to be higher on recurring revenue services," he says.

4. Be ‘the dumbest person in the room’—and learn more

Rankin graduated cum laude with a degree in finance from Iowa State University. And he has completed an internship on the strategy team evaluating merger and acquisition opportunities for Berkshire Hathaway, thanks in part to learning from his hockey coach of many years, Greg Abel, who is the successor to Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

Yet Rankin is grounded in knowing there’s plenty still to be learned in this new venture.

"We are only going to get smarter by being the dumbest person in the room,” Rankin says. “I would like to think that we can probably help somebody else along the way, but any opportunity I have to ingest more content and more information, the better."

5. Relationships matter: Network your way to success

While Rankin is in his rookie season of pest control, he’s now a veteran business owner because of his ETCH leadership. And though he wanted to open the pest control company as its own entity, his ETCH customer base does deliver sales opportunities for Yardline.

"Almost half of our clients have come from either referrals from ETCH or from my networking,” Rankin says. "We're really trying to cross-sell those really, really well and make sure clients know that, 'Hey, we own both. It's actually run out of the exact same office.'" he says. "It's the same experience even though it is a separate brand, a separate company you're paying."

6. Data: Your secret weapon for growth

Whether it's tracking key performance indicators or setting goals, pest control companies need data-driven decisions to drive growth. 

Rankin settled on Aspire software, like FieldRoutes a part of ServiceTitan, to run ETCH after a handful of other softwares failed as solutions. Rankin called FieldRoutes "the best route" from the start with Yardline.

"I'm very relentless in making sure our data and our information inside both FieldRoutes and Aspire is accurate because I want to be able to take accurate data to be able to make forecasting decisions," he says.

7. The right questions save time and build trust

Rookie mistakes are part of hockey. And they can be part of pest control company ownership, too.

A homeowner received assistance with a cockroach problem—“Definitely high hundreds. It was not like you saw two,” he says—although Yardline didn’t accurately assess an overwhelming issue and requested another company to solve it.

"We treated the home," he said. "We charged them for the initial visit and told them this should help control them, but we referred them to a local friend of ours who does better on the full-scale jobs. In hindsight, we would've had a better perception and saved the client their time, saved our time to be able to go after better jobs for us, if we just simply asked more detailed questions."

8. Your team is your superpower

Whether it’s been the team aspects of junior hockey or the team aspects of running ETCH, Rankin knows the importance of having the right people in the right positions.

"I am able to do this stuff because we have a team that is so talented,” he says. “It's not because I have it all figured out or anything like that. We've got a team that does this stuff to make me look like I know what I'm doing."

Ready to learn more?

Yardline Pest Control’s first year proves that integrity, strategy, and the right tools can help a rookie make a significant impact. 

FieldRoutes establishes smart, effective processes that fuel growth while providing deep insights that surface gaps and opportunities. You’re just one click away from a free demo to see how FieldRoutes can work for you.