“God Set the Stage” | Byron & Jennifer Gifford’s POTOMAC Experience

So I’ve got four kids then my wife Jennifer.

What is it you hope that they learn from you? What is your legacy to them?

Hmm.

My name is Byron Gifford, I’m one of the owners of Evergreen Pest Solutions.

How would you describe Byron?

Intense, passionate, focused. He knows what he wants.

I had roommates there that had done pest control. I went to the meeting and immediately I’m like, I will kill this. I’m passionate about working hard and that’s why when I came across pest control I’m like, this sounds awesome.

It was his very first time ever selling and he was top sales rep. He was killing it, every goal they put out there — Byron crushed it.

After my first summer I’m like, well shoot, I mean this is kind of cool. I mean I didn’t really understand that selling 400 — how amazing that was — I mean from the standpoint of look at the revenue you just bring from thin air almost from scratch.

The light bulb really went off. It was like, I don’t need to rely on others to determine my future and my income. I can — I can do this my own and I will. I’ll make this happen.

It was an interesting time where I was having to really go out and knock and earn an income, and then for one week and then the next week I’m flying home, we’re doing recruiting meetings. And I remember just praying heavily — for some direction, some help. And of course I lined up with really sharp people who complemented where I’m weak, and where we’ve been strong, and so we’ve been able to unite together really well, run a very profitable business, but God set the stage — there’s no question about it in my mind — for something very positive.

One of our guys, Zach Mehmed, he’s listening to a podcast from somebody in the industry that brought up Potomac and how they’re able to broker deals and get much better rates than what we had seen in the past. The stars aligned because we were looking for an exit of two locations to really move our reps into the other ones.

That was a great experience. They’ve been phenomenal to work with. I mean they understood what it took to get the valuation we needed, what the numbers needed to look like, everything that we needed to do from beginning to end. They were very involved and I’m confident we got a better offer as a result of working through Potomac than anything we could have done on our own.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I would say — I don’t really have passions in life, but that’s a passion.

I was out in Danbury, Connecticut. I’m not familiar with how bad ticks are in Danbury, Connecticut. Come to find out it’s ground zero for Lyme disease and ticks. And I happened to walk into a yard that I got an impression not to walk into — higher power, whatever — and I ended up getting a tick and found it about a week later and it caused all its damage as far as causing Lyme disease.

It’s been his personal health — like he really, it’s been painful. For a very long time. I was bouncing around doctors and everything else, and just really struggling with a lot of pain, a lot of inflammation, not being able to do what I normally would want to do.

I’ve watched him have to dig inside of himself because I think you finally figure out like — you’re not invincible.

Once we figured out Lyme — well, we can’t really fix it. Well, yeah, we can’t. There are resources and I was guided to a particular institution that’s taken care of it. I’m almost pretty much healed from this thing. But if I’d allowed my mind to just go down that rabbit hole it wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t — I’d be in a totally different situation right now.

I’ve got four kids then my wife Jennifer. What is your legacy today?

I would say to just overcome. You need trials. You got to go through that because then God makes you what you really are supposed to be.

Nothing is going to keep him down. All of his skills of intensity, determination, focus came into play. And I’m like, I’ve made you this way. And he’s crawled out and I think he’s going to help a lot of people because he can do it. He knows how to pull himself up and keep fighting. And to me that is just so admirable.

I just believe you overcome whatever challenges come your way. Some people succumb to it and there’s a downward spiral that occurs. Some just kind of endure it. And some overcome.

I 100% know why I was supposed to marry him and we’re a great team and I would not want to do this with anybody else. He’s amazing.

After about four years of going through that — even once I found out I had Lyme, but it took a while to find out — I just came to a realization: I’m not buying into this. I’m not gonna let it get me down. And it’s amazing what your mind will do when you finally decide to do that.