This Wildlife Expert Took the Leap to Running His Own Business
Updated on August 25, 2026 | 3 min. read
FreshBooks’ easy estimates, invoicing, and expenses give Chad Soard more time for personalized customer service.
ℹ️ COMPANY
Trifecta Wildlife Services
💼 INDUSTRY
Wildlife management
📍 LOCATION
Lexington, KY
❌ PROBLEM
A growing team with more complex finances
✅ SOLUTION
FreshBooks' reports, invoicing, payments, and employee logins.
😃 RESULTS
Chad turned his love of wildlife into a business of his own.
Dreams, though, have a way of evolving and diverging. Soon, he saw another path; one with real, tangible results.
“I wanted to parlay a love of wildlife into a business, helping and serving people and just doing something that I love,” he says. But leaving his hard-won career to start his own wildlife services business took bravery—and the support of his family.
“We had two young kids at the time, so when I asked my wife, I thought she’d say, ‘You’re nuts. Keep your stable job,’” he says. “And instead she said, ‘Yeah, you’d be great at that.’”
So, in 2014, he founded Trifecta Wildlife Services with a simple goal: to help people with wildlife problems. Today, Trifecta provides full services to property owners—from removing wildlife to entry prevention, including exclusion work such as attic remediation and restoration.
“We’re always aiming to provide durable, long-term solutions, rather than just come in and remove the animals,” he says. “The tangible nature of being able to see an issue, utilize my wildlife skill set, but then also execute on the craftsmanship of repairing the house to be better than it started so that it doesn't happen again, appealed to me because it’s like, ‘there’s a problem, here’s the solution.’”
A one-stop business solution
While Chad had the specialist knowledge and the support of his family to start a business, his bookkeeping knowledge was at what he describes as a “firm zero.” He also quickly realized that expenses, such as building materials for animal exclusion renovations, would need to be tracked carefully.
“There’s [also] an overhead cost associated with our ability to answer the phone, show up and help,” he says. “We do provide tremendous value, but it’s not inexpensive.”
Enter FreshBooks. “It immediately stood out in terms of its price point, with package levels that just fit perfectly for a young, fresh business owner who didn’t have a lot of financial resources and was just kind of stumbling through things,” says Chad.
It was so simple to get started with FreshBooks.
Immediately, he saw the benefits to his business: Estimating made easy. Clean, professional-looking invoices. Payments with integrated Stripe services, which allowed him to accept credit cards from day one. And an easy-to-understand profit and loss statement that helps Chad stay on top of cash flow fluctuations in a seasonal business.
“The profit and loss for each year is always on my dashboard, so I can see in real-time where we are on any given month. It gives me perspective on what’s changing,” he says.
Growth to support a community
It wasn’t long before demand outstripped Chad’s capacity to continue operating as a one-man shop. Today, five full-time specialists work with Trifecta as W-2 statutory employees, each providing start-to-finish personalized services for clients. Once again, FreshBooks made this transition easy.
“Everyone is fully trained to do everything within FreshBooks, including estimating and invoicing,” says Chad.
Supporting these employees is key to Chad’s business plan. He has no intentions of selling or scaling. He’s happy to continue business as usual—providing it results in work-life balance for himself and his team and continues to serve his community. FreshBooks gives him more time to do this.
“I have a craving for the old way of artisans, where you know the village blacksmith and the baker and you service people well,” he says.
To me, [staying] small is personal. We get to know our clients and get to know our employees.
That doesn’t mean his business is static. Soon, Trifecta will begin offering specialized wildlife products directly to consumers through its website. Rather than setting up a separate e-commerce store, he’ll use his existing Stripe and FreshBooks accounts to manage and reconcile sales directly through his existing website.
“I’ve never identified as an entrepreneur. There’s never been a focus on the financial side of things,” he says. “My only goal was to do something that I love—helping people. My main metric is to bless everybody it touches: our clients, our employees, and their families.”
