I know we always talk about what to do when launching or considering starting up. Thought it might be useful and
even entertaining to hear what you wouldn't do again if you had a "do over" or "mulligan."

Mine would be buying an arsenal of traps and supplies instead of gearing up as I had the need or incoming work.
I bought to establish and all around ability, but ended up going down certain trails that made much of my purchasing
obsolete and therefore collecting dust in my "warehouse."

Justin

My biggest mistake resulted in me pushing harder. No regrets...

I still make plenty of mistakes, but we learn from it.

Dave,

Good point I should have put in the thread topic that learning as you go is how most get to be the best.
I don't relish making mistakes but I know they benefit me if I indeed learn from them and it makes me
better.

Lately pigeons are teaching me a few lessons that I'm paying close attention to!

It might sound funny but I think my biggest mistake was expanding my territory to quickly. My general area is saturated with companies so I branched out to areas with almost no competition and now I regret that move. Nothing worse than driving hour and a half for a $50 squirrel.

As soon as I find an operator in those areas I trust I am going to load him up with work.

Biggest mistake..... priced per animal like a fur trapper (which I was/still am) instead of a business.

What Ron said. I charged $5 for my first animal (a red squirrel in 1982.) Another mistake early on was trusting people too much. Get a credit card #.

Buying supplies before I understood what I really needed, buy as you develop the need. I also bought cheap traps that I am slowly replacing with quality gear. I now buy Comstock, Advanced and AES as I can. Buying things twice costs way more than getting quality the first time. Lastly, if you don't know how to handle a job, it's ok to pass on it until you are more experienced. Having an upset customer is gut-wrenching enough if you know that your doing things right!

I regret not letting my wife quit her Job as a cna the
First year I started! She now works for herself so I can
Plan big jobs according to her availability! If I would have
Saved up more money before I started this business
Letting her quit would have been possible the first
Year, so what it comes down to it saving money before
I opened shop!

All great responses folks, thanks for sharing, hope to see more, I see many things that I completely agree with.

The one about being willing to pass is something I think folks learn over time. I was just saying this to a colleague
yesterday about some bat work where the house is swiss cheese.

Learning to say no is important in this industry!

Keep it goin!

my biggest mistake was not getting a divorce sooner.. Then she got half...

Justin, you just mentioned our biggest mistake. And it seems to ongoing.

I am wanting to get away from this myself but the backlash from customers is not encouraging. I think what is hurting me is when I tell them $350 for a squirrel and then I try to sell them all the add ons they balk. At least when I had the "set up fee" they had the small up front fee so they felt better about the add ons. Maybe a half up front/half at completion will help with this...just not sure it will work in this area.

2012 was the worst year I ever had with having to chase money and I DO NOT want to go through this again this year.

Paul, I assume you referred to not saying "no."

For me I've had only a couple as I'm only 2 years into it now but they were obvious to me but I was compelled
by the need / desire to make money. I had a set of condos that are badly in need of serious siding, chimney and
other upper level exterior repair/replacement. Most of the issues I resolved even with the shoddy conditions but
a couple are causing me chronic warranty repairs. My only silver lining is that the same folks have other units and
see that I'm reliable and therefore have offered me more work on buildings that are far better structures.

Ironically I say no to lots of other typical nwco trapping requests, but exclusion jobs I have a hard time not wanting
to move on them!

Saying no is always hard and inflating the price to force a no almost always seems to end in a yes.

True Nate!

Too much Advertising... Spent too much on DEX and...

Also Reaching out too far for jobs.

When I started out I did all the advertising I could and spent a LOT of money on it. I never looked at that as a mistake because I learned so much from it.

While radio ads were worthless for ADC and cost a lot of money I am already putting my radio spots together for the store.

Have been thinking about a billboard in the area for the wildlife and pest control and the cost is kinda large but I drive by it every day and think it would look nice with my sign up there.

I would "NOT" reccommend spending a lot of money on advertising outside of website, business cards, or flyers. But would never fault anyone who took a chance on something big. I'm all about go big or go home. lol

We were careful to avoid over-capitalizing; bought a 13-year old truck, used traps (many from the company that fired me!). This allowed us to price our work to make $$ and not to pay off big loans. It also helped to have a sharp accountant for a wife!(Plus, I'm a tightwad German!)
Biggest regret was not getting serious about net advertising. That's 75% of our new business now.

One of mine would be that I waited too long to hire technicians to help expand the company and spread out the work load.

Dave, how come we brag about the fact that we're German tightwads but hate it when we get one as a customer. ( On the other hand, I don't recall any German tightwads that we had to turn over for collection either )