Middleton Lawn & Pest Control CEO applies lessons learned from his old university president - Jerry Falwell.
 By Ernie Neff

Profile: Greg Clendenin

The catcher on Liberty University’s first baseball team, a .250 hitter, wasn’t particularly feared when he had a bat in his hands. No, it was behind the plate that Greg Clendenin earned respect. “I could throw the ball like a rocket,” he reminisces. The strong-armed catcher often threw out base runners trying to steal second or third in the early 1970s.

Clendenin also occasionally played pickup basketball with the university’s founder, Jerry Falwell. Falwell, then in his late 30s, was physically strong and “rough under the boards,” Clendenin says, smiling. The young catcher, who also worked part-time on Falwell’s staff, became well acquainted with the man who later founded the Moral Majority movement.

 “Liberty University and Jerry Falwell were huge influences in my life,” Clendenin says. He recalls Falwell urging students on the Lynchburg, Va., campus to “think big, have a big vision.” Falwell also urged them to “do it right,” emphasizing the need for quality in everything they did. “The quality side was consistent with how my parents raised me,” Clendenin says.

Clendenin, a West Virgnia native who grew up in Melbourne, Fla., worked four years after college as a youth director and teacher in churches and private Christian schools. In 1979, he says, “I changed careers and moved to Orlando.” He responded to a newspaper ad and became an inside pest control technician and salesman in Orlando. “I wanted to be in the service business, helping people with problems.”

Clendenin may have started on the ground floor with Chuck Steinmetz’s four-technician Middleton Pest Control, but he had a Falwell-sized vision. Less than three years after joining Middleton, he assumed day-to-day management of the company, and became a partner, when Steinmetz became the licensee for Sears Authorized Termite and Pest Control.

“YOU’VE GOT TO BUILD PEOPLE”

Because Steinmetz had taken some of Middleton’s best people with him to Sears, Clendenin had a daunting task running the business. “I had to rebuild the company.” He utilized another Falwell teaching: “If you want to build a great organization, you’ve got to build people.”

 “The day I took over, I consciously went about hiring and building people,” he recalls. He taught technicians and sales people, and required them to teach others. “You can’t build a big company unless you teach people to teach others to teach others,” he declares.

The teaching paid off. From 1981 through 1989, Clendenin says, “We built Middleton and grew the company organically (without acquisitions) from half-a-million dollars to probably about $6 million.”

In 1989, Steinmetz made Clendenin chief operations officer at the Middleton and Sears businesses. Steinmetz wanted him “to really establish some discipline” at Sears. Steinmetz also made Clendenin part owner of the Sears operation.

From 1989 to 1996, the Sears business in nine Southeast states grew from $45 million to $100 million. In 1996, Steinmetz and Clendenin sold the business to Sears, Roebuck and Co.

After the Sears sale, Clendenin returned full time to Middleton as CEO and president. In the seven years he had been away, Middleton had increased revenues about 33 percent, to $8 million a year. “One of the first things I did, we really went back to the fundamentals,” Clendenin recalls. Everyone in the field was retrained and equipment was upgraded.  The next year, Middleton invested in advertising.

“He (Clendenin) is a guy who firmly and unequivocally invests in what he believes in,” says John Ludwig, CEO of PUSH, which became Middleton’s advertising-public relations agency in 2000. That includes investments in people, training, equipment and advertising, Ludwig says.

 Ludwig recalls that many other pest control companies cut their advertising following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. “(Clendenin) didn’t cut ... because he knew the campaign was working.” Consequently, Ludwig says, Middleton’s share of the Florida pest control market grew. Ludwig says Middleton probably allocates eight percent of total expenditures to advertising. 

 ONE LEAD PER TRUCK PER DAY

In recent years, the Middleton advertising campaign has used the Middleton mascot, a frog, to capture customers’ attention in radio and TV commercials and print advertising. On commercials, Ludwig says, “The frog figures out different ways to take care of the problem,” whether it’s household pests or lawn weeds. The advertising is different from that of most other pest control companies, and that appealed to Clendenin, Ludwig says. “He doesn’t believe in status quo.”

Clendenin has high expectations for his advertising. The objective, Ludwig says, is “one lead per (Middleton) truck per day.” 

By 2005, Middleton had expanded to most areas of Florida except the Panhandle and South Florida. In the nine years since Clendenin’s full-time return to Middleton, sales had zoomed from $8 million to $35 million. “We had a great plan to build a $100 million company by 2011,” he says.

The company caught the attention of a group of South Florida-based investors operating as Sunair Services Corporation. Clendenin says Sunair, which previously had bought a small electronics firm, likes pest control for a variety of reasons. They like the recurring revenue and good margins in a growing service industry, he explains. A Sunair executive called to see if Middleton could be bought.

Clendenin conferred with partner Steinmetz and told Sunair they’d sell for $50 million “and not a dime less.” Sunair agreed, bought the company and kept Clendenin on as president and CEO.

Since the Sunair purchase, Middleton has accelerated its growth by acquiring other companies in addition to growing organically. Middleton has acquired five other companies since August 2005 and is one of the 20 largest pest control companies in the U.S. Clendenin says it is third or fourth in the country in lawn spraying.

Middleton now has 26 offices in Florida with 520 employees. It plans to cover the whole state by expanding into South Florida and the Panhandle over the next few years. It will then move into the Southeast. Clendenin knows something about pest control in the Southeast from his days with the Sears business. “I know the markets and the opportunities,” he says.  

ON THE LAKE; IN THE ROUGH

Away from the office, Clendenin likes to spend time outdoors, especially bass fishing, and playing golf and tennis. The 53-year-old father of two grown sons and two young sons also enjoys time with his wife and family.

 Ludwig, who runs Middleton’s advertising agency and has become a close Clendenin friend, loves to get the pest control executive on his golf team. “He’s a high handicapper, but he’ll get on a streak and really help your team out,” he explains. Ludwig laughs and adds that Clendenin plays very well from deep rough. “He’s always in trouble, so he has a great recovery game.”

The advertising executive sums Clendenin up well: “He is committed; he is passionate; he is a business-minded man who still has a bit of fun.”