079:Pest Control CPD: Why It Matters | Elaine Bliss, PestFix

0:00 Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 79 on the 1st of September and not the 1st of August. I thought I had a time machine but clearly not. Thanks to everyone for the continued support on the podcast. It's great to see people letting me know because I've had issues with Basis Prompt recently. I've had a few people tell me that they've actually let Basis Prompt know which podcast to listen to of Pest Perspectives and they've actually granted the points previously i didn't know that because last year they gave us codes for the podcast and i've i emailed them a long list of podcasts expecting codes back but i got radio silence so i don't know what happened there but if you do watch the podcast and all you got to do is send them which podcast it was who was on and what you've learned and i think it's up to six points for basis prompt all the others it's how many you like how many you want really uh but that's what you do with basis prompt now just so you know so let me know if it works label because i i like to know i do but um if you notice the power now logo we are sponsored by powered now they're a job management software um that i use personally as well uh you can do all your pest reports, Rams, etc. So if you want to check it out sometime, after the podcast, there'll be a link in the description.

1:33 And this week, we have, sorry about last week, the guest double booked and he couldn't make it. So he has rebooked Adam Holt. He's been on before. But this week on episode 79, we have Elaine Bliss, technical manager, at Pest Fix and Chef Unicorn and Legend. Chief Unicorn. Chief Unicorn. There we go. Chief Unicorn. See, our reading is terrible. I've got a mess of a coat, you see. I have. I know. I know. Yeah. How are you doing? Yeah, not too bad. Not too bad at all. Busy day, but you know, it's always good if you're busy.

2:17 It means you've got a job tomorrow. Definitely is. Definitely is. Hello, Jackie. Thanks for popping in. Right, so I'll just get the banners up. Right. So for anyone who doesn't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to work into pest control. But you don't have to go through the whole story. That's the next question. Okay. So I got made redundant from a previous job and was just looking for a job, didn't care of what it was and got offered two jobs on the same day one was pest control one was high-end garden furniture and having been made redundant I was like I want something that's that's needed that's that's necessary and whilst that high-end garden furniture was lovely um I thought now I'll go with pest control it seems the steadier option well I think you've made the right decision there really to be honest to me the most definitely it's a service that will always be needed and although we have the advancing AI they're never going to take our actual pest controllers job often unless we get cheap robotics robots I genuinely think in a few years time we'll be doing wasp nests with drones I'm down for it I have heard of people testing it I'm not sure I can't say who but I've heard people testing I've seen videos online I can't remember who it was because let's think that van is your ultimate ppe isn't it just sitting around a screen i i actually do agree with you actually would be it's a great idea but the drone yeah you still got yeah but somebody's still got to aim it but yeah i did watch a video recently i don't remember what

4:02 pest control company it was he wasn't to do the wasp nest he treated the wasp nest and he wanted to get a nice video and the wasp actually attacked the drone they covered it they did yeah they did yeah because they couldn't find anyone else to attack no so they feel threatened they'll go for it yeah exactly they will so you started your career with PestFix in the the admin side what made you move from the office to the more technical side of the industry within the business what was that well it was a very very small company when i joined Pestfix there was five or six of us okay um and so at that point you had to wear all the hats so yes i was in the office i was also the chief tea maker toilet roll buyer um the whole shebang and and when you're doing that i was first response on the phone so if phone rang good morning Pestfix gonna help you um and so sometimes i'd have mrs mcgin saying i've got a wasp nest what do i do other times i don't know managing director of a nationwide company uh asking advice um so you know because as the distributor we're supposed to be the experts so i just kept you know get asked questions go find the answer get off another question go find the answer and then realize

5:19 i've got an awful lot of knowledge building up and then um when the level three award in pest management came out um dan decided that somebody in the company should do that just for the kudos of having it and gave a very pointed look at me so i did that sorry did you do did you already have the level two or did they jump you straight to level three no no no you couldn't do level three without having level two okay it's a prerequisite and okay i did level two i think in i've been about four months when i did that again that's it first time did you pass first time yeah yes i did by the way that's all right not everyone does and if anyone says oh that's a good trainer actually i did all my learning online so i trained myself um but then as the company grew we moved into premises we've got the the classroom so um we started offering training which fell to me we did had some other people doing training initially um and then somebody sort of was brought in to do a bird course and just what they did they said well can you tell me how to i can't remember what the question was and then it was sort of was realizing well actually if the person we're bringing in to do the training is asking me technical questions there's something a bit wrong there so i agree

6:39 with you yes yeah so i started doing the bird training and then basically started doing all the training and from there yeah it just it was the natural progression i really had to step back from anything commercial because i spent so much time in classrooms or um i do a lot of the mpta and bpca on the road regional forums okay those sort of events so if somebody's phoning me for a quote they will they'll get a response because i'll see it at two in the morning or something like that um but i'm not really available to do the same amount of commercial work so yeah i've gone down that technical tunnel but that's where my brain likes to be so yeah well no that's good that is um just a couple people came in i like to shout people out jason thanks for watching over on facebook and uh darren pierce over on linkedin thanks for popping in mate

7:34 so yeah it's um it's been a a bit of a bit of a change for you but it seems like you've made the made the best choice it does yeah yeah you know when you start training people what was it like because obviously you're in a role where okay you were speaking to people commercially on the phone or in if you got did you have a shop at that was it we didn't have a shop at that point no so you were just talking to people on the phone basically yeah then going from doing that to actually having to train people in a room and talk in front of people what was that like daunting terrifying absolutely terrifying um the very first training course i did um there were two guys on the course that were coming down from coming up rather from devon um and i said oh i'll take you out for dinner the night before you know sort of being a little bit schmoozy as it were um and then And then I said to him while we were out that night, I said, look, tomorrow morning or tomorrow, you're going to get all the eye contact.

8:40 I said, because I'm going to be really, really nervous. So you are my friendly faces and I'm delivering the calls to the pair of you because I know you now. I'm fine. And the other people in the room, they were there, obviously. But in my mind, I just kind of blinkered. And that that was OK. And then actually within a couple of hours, I was like, yeah, this is fine. the big nervy one for me was the first time I spoke at um it was a BPCA event um and it was it was in Essex and I'd originally actually said to Terry one of one of our sales guys was supposed to be speaking and I said look this is actually in my hometown um the hotel it's being held in is one I got drunk in when I was 14.

9:22 I'd really like to go just you know just because it is my my hometown um and then the the salesman that was supposed to it went i can't do that event i'm i'm meeting with a customer so terry just said right well in that case you're doing the talk elaine um and one of the other sales guys is going to drive you and i'm not worried about the driving and in the car on the way there frank was uh oh there's probably only going to be about 30 people i said well lauren said there's 105 booked and in the end there were 112 so previously i've done groups of like 10 or 12 and i've sort of gone out on stage for what i've better term in front of a hundred odd faces but again i was really lucky because there were six guys there that had actually been on a training course in my class from the day before so i just focused on them yeah and did it and yeah it went down really really well so from then on i thought i can do anything now so wembley here i come yeah yeah because it's like although i don't i'll tell you something now although i do podcasts and but i've never actually spoke in front of like an audience so at mpta pest tech in november i'm actually hosting a live panel pest perspectives and

10:41 the last slot of the day won't probably be busy but still got to talk in front of people something i've never done you see when i'm when i'm at pestec and things i do say hello but i don't know everyone some people might think that's the thing but you know that's that's the great thing about places like pest tech is everyone's got a badge with their name on um so you know and and i'll be honest so many people sorry for trying to make everyone feel special they'll come and go oh hi elaine how are you and of course they remember me because they did one course last year or two courses last year and i i might talk both of them yeah yeah i i had 500 people coming through the academy last year oh wow that's a big number that is that's i didn't realize that's a big number i think i think yeah not last year actually the year before because i did a lot of really really busy courses yeah yeah um and um yeah when you sort of think oh god i vaguely know him and then you could just very quickly glance down and go oh yeah hi dave how you doing and you know yeah so please make sure if you're coming to me that i can see your badge and then i will make you feel oh so special and oh so remembered but if i can't sorry that's what i just call you that's what i

11:55 call you darling hello darling how are you i think i can't remember what year i see i i can't remember what you know i think i briefly said you said something i recognize you off the internet or something like that or the off the podcast i think so i think it's um you started posting a lot um linkedin on linkedin when you started your whole weight loss thing so i've still got still got a lot more to go but you know yeah i i i need to start my journey

12:29 but there's the gym and it's right next to a cake shop and i just keep going in the cake shop so Oh, well, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, I do a lot of mine for mobility because obviously I've broken my knee twice. So it's a lot to, a lot of it's mobility wise for me. So I do it, but I do like to lose weight, but I love the strength element of it. But no, it's, but yeah, I post on LinkedIn when I can. I used to be a lot more controversial than I used to be. I try not to be as controversial these days.

13:03 I do. Because not everyone likes it when I do that. Yeah, I think if you're going to put something controversial out there, you've absolutely got to back it up. And, I mean, I will put something out, and if it's anything remotely technical, I'm putting that on the internet for the entire world to see. I will double and triple check it, even to the point of, you know, what colour's a wasp? Because I know I know it, but I have that whole, you know, sort of imposter syndrome thing, and I just want everything to be super fact-checked.

13:35 And I'm also, I think somebody once said, never put anything on the internet that you wouldn't want your grandmother to see. So I'm always mindful of any kind of social media post. Is it going to be offences? Is it going to be? That's a good advice. The most controversial one that kind of blew up posts was when I put, what would I put? That was it. And I got invited onto the Beauties and Beasties because of it. I put that in my view, pest control companies, social medias, not pest control us on LinkedIn.

14:10 I put they shouldn't be posting dead animals. And that really stirred the pot up. But what made me laugh was people were telling me that I shouldn't be saying that. And I went and looked at their company LinkedIn profiles and none of them were posting dead animals either. but they were agreeing that you should be able to yeah i i yeah it's not something i would choose to do um simply yeah because i think it could be really really emotive um and yeah i think i never do because it opens i get on my socials i know how to handle people on my oakland pest control but I get started on for mold control and stuff and without the photos so it's not that bad I know I know how the best policy is to be polite and kill them with kindness and thank them yeah I don't know what to do but I'm doing this in a matter of public health this lady could have broke her knee or whatever on the grass yeah things like that so I've learned how to deal with deal with people yeah yeah i think that's a massive massive part of pest control um is not so much managing social media although i hate social media but it's it's a necessary evil um but you know it's it is managing uh people yeah whether it be customer relations public relations um employee relations depending on the size of your company excuse me i don't know why my voice is so short um must have been singing in the car on the way home um but yeah it's um and it's it's one of those things that i i speak to a lot of a lot of pest controllers a lot of people are quite new to

15:59 the industry as well because they're doing their training and um you know sometimes they come in with an attitude and you think i wouldn't want you turning up at my house um and is it that kind of attitude like oh i've been sent here because the boss has made us come that kind of thing or not sometimes yeah some some people come on training courses and they're like oh i already know this i don't know why i'm here let's see if you learn one thing because that's that's my ethos in life you should try and learn one thing every day and you should try have fun while you're doing it those you know if you could if you can do those two things and generally i'll ask someone that's come in with that adjunct.

16:41 Have you learned anything to learn to go? Actually, yes, I have. Brilliant. That's why you got sent here then. Because sometimes you learn something and you actually learned it five years ago, but you've forgotten. Exactly. If you don't use it, you lose it. Absolutely. So with your courses at PestFix, are you quite, do you try and be as practical as you can with teaching people? Are you into that? Yeah. The practical element. Yeah. Most courses are not practical. It's a screen slides and write it down.

17:16 Death by PowerPoint. So that was actually our unique selling point when we first started was hands on. Let's get something hands on every single course. And obviously, I mean, we're in a classroom, so you're limited on what you can do. But I try, I mean, one of my courses, it's, which one is it? active active rodent control um so i've got plastic rats plastic mice fake poo um and it's hidden all around the classroom um and i've left little um ratty footprints in tracking dust and i send them out and they come in one at a time they've got 10 minutes to survey the room and find the rats and mice yeah um and if they find them all it's whoever whoever does it in the quickest time, so I'm timing it all.

18:07 With the bird stuff I got sort of rigs so you can do some netting and some post and wire Shock track I got a little sort of rig set up with that so you can add on sections you know, separate sections in different ways. And that very much was our unique. And then I found more and more people have started doing that as well. Well, I have a gig. They will. It's the way it works. If something's working. Absolutely. I think we'll try that. it's just that's the way it is but i do like the fact that was uh pacifically unique selling project yeah did you come up with this this selling point so no no no it wasn't it wasn't me that that credit goes to anna um animal ins that used to do marketing there yeah um so that was her you know you need to be as hands-on and practical as possible and i was like that's good and I'm like so clumsy and cack-handed and so I'd be sat there like the day we're trying to finesse my technique on you know post and wire so I can do it so it looks so seamless and yet I'm you know I can barely feed myself sometimes I can I can put a net together and it looks really as if I do it all the time well practice makes perfect but yeah absolutely yeah Me with bird work, I don't do it, so I'd be rubbish.

19:28 I don't know anything about bird work. I don't. It's not my area. It's one of those things of, obviously, some people just do birds and some people don't do birds. But what some people start finding, especially when they start hearing about lasers and the numbers involved, and they go, that's a lot of money. It has piqued the interest, that kind of stuff. It has, yeah. um and you know they're not an easy sell and like a big netting system not an easy sell but potentially huge amount of money so i think i think you have to go well actually do i want to do bird work i've got one guy i love him to bits he's a big fella though um and he doesn't like heights so i don't like heights either unless it's a lot yeah i don't like heights he's not even that happy going up in lofts because he's got stuck in lofts a couple of times but you know if you're not if you're not happy with heights then yeah bird work's not necessarily the way forward but actually if you're doing a really big netting job you're a big roof yeah and it's as if you're not you're not but it's only when you get to the edge that it becomes a little bit scary um and then just don't get up and down off the lot of it yeah yeah even now um you know i'm always that that top when you get to the top of the ladder and i'm like it even when i go up in my own loft i go up the left up up the ladder and then i have to kind of put my bum over to the side to get in the loft properly um yeah it's not gainly um that bit's like getting back down on the ladder i said oh i get stuck my bum seems to bend out at the wrong angle but i can't get my leg down

21:08 far enough so yeah i think being short doesn't help wow i'm six foot three so sometimes don't i'm not the smallest person but then sometimes i've got to literally put my legs in different positions to get up yeah further up further up it doesn't help see i'm only five foot two so i'm definitely trying to reach the next rung where is it where is it yeah all the way up where there is. If you see me walking around Pest Tech with my missus, you'll soon see I'm 6'3 and she's probably more your height.

21:43 She helps me with Pest Tech. I help with Pest Tech each year now. And you'll probably see she's more your height. She is. But yeah, no, it's good. Do you know, obviously you do these training days, MPTA, BPCA. I don't know if there's any others other companies do them do they i don't know i don't know i think you know so for example i think kill gem do their oh sorry yes their breakfasts and i think 1env have done a couple of events um but i suppose because we're competition they don't invite me oh okay so obviously this is one was this one's on the cpd you know obviously cpd gets talked about a lot but do you think technicians generally understand the value of the cbd or do some some of them think it's a box sticking exercise because i've noticed how i i think there's a change in the guard because when i first joined the industry in 2020 so i probably went to the first one in i don't know 2021 or something there was very much this hate to say old boys the little boys were there and and they didn't really want to be there.

22:58 And I know this, I know that. Because I remember at one point, there was the girl from Basis that worked there. And they had to save her because the old boys were having a right go at her. You don't check if I've got my CPD, but you soon take my money out of the bank and things like that. But I've noticed it's very much changed now. A lot of people are more open to learning different methods. even a lot of the old boys are as well i don't know what's happened it's the last couple years there's a lot more interactive they take it better i think yeah i think first of all you know we're trying as an industry to address it a whole lot more positively yeah um and and sort of you know actually this is this is good for you it will help you in your career will help you in your job role and it will help you prevent prevent you from breaking the law um it will stop you from dying if you're doing something you know with with health and safety so all good stuff really um i think and it's funny you use the box tick box ticking exercise because you know there are some technicians that are affectionately known as box kickers yes yes if they're a box kicker the chances are they're a box ticker um but if they're genuinely interested in looking at the root cause of a problem then the chances are they're genuinely interested in actually learning because in theory when you're learning this stuff you might actually find a way of making your job easier so i think i think that's that's a benefit and also um the whole realization of if you do not do your cpd every year then after five years of getting your qualification you will

24:42 suddenly go and buy poison they won't let you buy it so here's one for you you probably guessed i'll bring this one up so you probably have a different opinion because you train people what do you think to the people just do the five-year ticket and that they don't ever do cpd it's that being i know crew cru because that came up in a survey i did have you heard it saying crew and i thought i'm one of the biggest offenders oh i call it great yes yes yeah but that's in their survey did you read that have you heard it referred to as crew yes but that yeah yeah yeah so obviously they're the rules but is that because a lot of the a lot of people do say because i made a post about it oh just pay the 200 pounds do the five years don't do any cpd then is that really being professional i don't think so i don't think so um i i would rather everyone um basically came into the industry and came in and did their safety for a dentist side then do an insect course and then a few months later go and do their full rsph level two and then do their cpd every year um unfortunately some people just aren't like that um and it frustrates me and i i see people when i'm doing the training and i know that's exactly

26:09 what they're doing they're coming in they're doing their their safe use um and you know i've heard it referred to as their five-year get out of jail free card um now if there's a there's one exception and that's if someone really is at the end of their career okay and they're sort of do you know what i'm winding down so for example i'll be honest i don't know your age i don't know your dad's age but let's just say your dad says do you know what sean i've had enough um you know me knees hurt me hips hurt whatever i'm gonna gonna take a step back now you're all right dad but just keep yourself qualified just just so that you know we can still call on you when you really are very old indeed then I can kind of see that justification but really no he's in his 60s by the way I'm fair enough I'm 41 but because you're in the trade body MPTA well the membership states you have to do your 20 points with your free absolutely so yeah because because i uh i've told a lot of people that it says if you're not in your trade body there's no get around no yeah yeah if you are in one there's no get around there's yeah yeah bpca mpta you've got to get those 20 points or even cpd body so i said to some some people

27:30 just it's 35 pound you don't have to do on a trade body there you go yeah and and the thing is to be honest you know you can and there's a lot of conversations about the quality of cpd yeah i'm like you know let's let's not make it too difficult let's let's get everyone actually embracing cpd and then start looking at the quality of you know cpd because there's a oh well should you get two points just for being a member of basis and requirement is 20 and straight away they give you two or something like that um they do do that yeah and i think you know but actually if you read a few of the magazines, do a couple of online quizzes, listen to a couple of podcasts, you can get, I'm fairly sure with the MPTA that I heard them say on one of their training days, you can essentially get your entire 20 points, including your three required for crew on their website.

28:25 You can. We've got the, obviously, because I'm on the board of directors for the MPTA. I don't mention it often on the podcast, but they've got a W, a workplace risk management system. So there's 10 points in health and safety, asbestos, et cetera. But we've also got this like rodents in difficult situations, little seminars where you get points. So you can, yeah. I have 62 for the record for this year. Well done, well done. I'm on the British Pest Register though. So the rules are, you can log a lot more on there than you could on a basis, you can.

28:58 And, you know, it's one of those things I always think, do I get the points for a course I've taught? I generally only register points for the ones where if it's a new course I've written, then I send it to basis to say, what's the points for this? And I'll say, well, I've just taught it. So that's mine for the first time. But, you know, I go to and it's funny when Darren said hello earlier from Rattracts. You know, I've heard his talk on rats and drains so many times now, but it's like that is my main source of knowledge for rats and drains.

29:31 um so you know i'm at all those events so i'm always hearing um all the all the content there um and bpca do webinars and and stuff like that and it is very very easy to get this stuff for free and realistically if you look on average it is about an hour a point so it's you know it's 20 hours of your life and if if you're employed well that's probably two two days of a training course plus a couple of magazines um if you're self-employed you know it could be listening to this podcast listening to beauties and beasties while you're driving home as long as you have listened to it you know the kill germs got podcasts as well they have yeah they uh but yeah it's not difficult and this whole that there's a lot of fuss made over it I ain't got time for this.

30:23 It's not difficult. It is not. I think there's a portion of society, and it's the same in every industry, but there's a portion of society that likes to moan. And if they weren't moaning about CPD, they'd be moaning about something else. I know. It's a hard one because we always try and, the industry's always trying to improve. I think it's better. It's not, you know, the way it is. obviously the way you said that people should come into the industry is exactly what i did i started on kill jones basic principles in rodent control and insect control yeah i did do it during covert so it was completely online but i don't know and a few years later i did the rsph level two awarding pest management you have to define that a lot of gas because when you say it they all go well are are you talking about the one day course are you talking about yeah yeah that's what I always get the award is yes when people say oh I'm level two trained I'm like are you level two safe use in redenticide exactly or are you level two RSPH level two award or even level two certificate because that's um the award plus a practical element as well so all three of those are level two but they're like safe use level two award level two certificate so a lot of people say yeah level two i don't say what it may rsph level two i'm qualified and they're actually just got a day course yeah yeah yeah but it's not a lot you could do about it the cr are you have made it that way so that's the way it is yeah yeah it is it then i i would like in a dream world and i'll probably get there'll be some pest controllers that love this attitude and some absolutely hate it

32:02 i would like all pest controllers anyone that calls themselves that to be registered a member of one of the professional bodies obligatory and a level of qualification obligatory to call yourself a professional test controller that actually there we go that actually was going to come up that was and i you've beat me to the punch there i was going to ask you what do you think a professional test controller is i can't find my little question to come on the screen it's there somewhere but no you took the words out of my mouth you did um because there we go there we go um i've had people come into my course doing that one day safe use of redenticide god only knows how many people i did i talked that to last year literally i would the sales team go elaine is there any space on that course no it's full hang on i'll do another one the next day okay and i go ladies and gents um i've just opened availability on this course um please go forth and fill it and literally within two hours i had a whole course sell out of that okay i'll do another one so how many can you fit in your room for for that course um for that particular course i will do 10 because i have to make sure i can do spacing for the exam

33:17 because the exam is a is an actual piece of paper um and so i have to make sure there's no you know peering over oh yeah okay um the most i can fit in um if it was really no interaction no moving around i think i can get 15 in there but it's it's snug um somewhere between 8 and 12 is my sort of happy number um but yeah i've had people come in um doing their safe use and initially they've they've done it because they live on a small holding or they've got an allotment or something like that okay so you're doing it for personal use really okay fine and then it's like so i could now do this for my from the other people on the allotments or i can do this on my neighbors and i always say well technically if you're doing that if you're charging for that that's kind of setting yourself up as a professional in which case you are going to need professional liability insurance you're going to need um public indemnity insurance and i'll just start making up insurances as well to try and scare them out of it because you will get someone you know it's a little knowledge is a dangerous thing um and you know as i say they've done a one-day course on redenticide the next thing you know they're buying a bucket of olfair you know i don't know what what

34:32 what hey um because they've now set themselves up with this control company you think but that's all you've got is a one-day course on on redenticide so yeah now i i would like to see a minimum minimum qualification level of at least what is currently the rsph level two award um membership of a professional body and um yeah that sort of is it a protected title status there are certain jobs where um you you have to have a particular level of qualification in order to call yourself it and i think um i think it's like if you're a nutritionist anyone can call themselves a nutritionist but you have to have a specific qualification to be a dietitian so i'd like it to be that sort of i think it's called a protective profession um okay and yeah i i would i would love to see that because i think um whilst i know a lot of very good very capable very professional pest controllers and there's some cowboys as well and they're lovely people yeah but they're not very good So Darren also has piped in.

35:40 CPD, continuous, there is nothing continuous, about a five-year reset. Our industry is changing at a rapid rate and I find so much value in these talks, forums and training. Everyone is a new find. It's true, Darren. It really is. Yeah, it's a different insight. There's something that can just trigger in your brain and i like that i've learned something because i do say the same as you if you learn one thing out the podcast it done its job yes and it funny with with darren because um we we talked before and in fact we did a um a panel at pest x um about spaying and darren is all about he got the meta glasses he got the ai he he's oh he you know he's just i swear he plugs himself in with the usb port every morning and upload updates itself um and i'm very much well i've got my tape measure and i've got my pen and i've got my spare pen and i've got my notebook i'm a little bit more old-fashioned and we've got in some ways some very different points of view but actually on things like professionalism and training and yeah as it says cpd it's continuous um there's a there's a huge overlap in in our beliefs and he's someone i respect a great deal and i love his ethos of i do rats and drains and if somebody asks him anyone else it's not a rat not in a drain not my area of expertise and I love that but if you've got a rat in a drain yeah I'm phoning Darren.

37:16 He's also been on the podcast and that was a very popular that was yeah it's uh he said he said the same thing yeah I'm not the network of people I do the rats and the drains and that's my service yeah I'm not there to take your customer off because obviously sometimes you'll get someone who does drains but also is press control or some not all firms do but some firms could probably try nick the work off you oh d train so i can do that i'm not into that i'm not yeah yeah now i think um i i sort of see that a lot with um obviously being in the the m d part of the industry yeah um i'm very much do you know what there is enough work in the industry for all of us now i'm not saying that there's no competition obviously there is i'm not gonna go oh yeah just just go and see Killjump, whatever.

38:07 But I'm certainly not going to get into the habit of slagging them off and that sort of thing because it's just, it's not worth it. There's enough for everyone. We can all get along and rub along nicely. And actually, when you look at most of our competitors in the M&E community, we're all each other's customers and suppliers as well. Every one of our competitors supplies us and buys from us. so you know it's silly getting all um you know aggressive or territorial trying to um say trying to poach business and um yeah you you've got to have some healthy boundaries yeah definitely i mean i be honest in my area i mean i've had one of my technical technically competitors on um nathan from pest force and i've had him on the podcast for chat generally i get on with i know most of them apart from one I get on all right we say hello and all that kind of business we do I think what's nice when it's smaller pest controllers and I see this quite a lot whereby you might have two or three of you that are very close and in theory you're all competitors but actually you can work together I went and did a honeybee removal with one of my customers because my route into the industry i don't have a huge amount of practical experience um i will try and get out in the field wherever i can and when i go out with a pest controller i am there to um observe and assist i will advise if requested but i'm like no this is your job i'm here to you know carry the stuff and shove me down a hole if it needs doing and climb up the scaffold i'm going i i want to i want to do i don't just want to stand and watch um and i will

39:57 help where i can but if and if you know i'm not going to say you're doing that wrong in front of your customer or anything like that but um so i've got this particular customer in oxford and he does honeybee removals and he got one down and said you know be a really great experience for you brilliant um so his his team is him uh his partner and a technician and he's also got um a sole trader that lives a couple of miles away um and the the sole trader was was working with us that day so he'd got and it was just this this great sort of little um community effort if you like really so it was a friend of me that put the scaffolding up the day before um i went up with our marketing lady tash so we went up the night before we went out for dinner we went to check the scaffolding yeah it's there excellent yep we'll go up that and then a friend that was a builder came and took the wall down then myself and shane removed um and guy removed the the bees and the comb and scrubbed it all down and then when it was all gone the builder built the wall back because yeah none of us have got you know brick laying as part of our skill set and it was just nice because it's like well technically shane and guy competition but

41:13 actually you know this is a job that requires multiple hands so let's all muck in and you know share the love exactly like like jackie says here i agree with working together with upper pest control so she won't mind me saying and jason wasn't who i mentioned earlier jason got believe it or not they live local and jackie got to know jason through this podcast and now and he has a drain camera and on a few jobs he's been to help to have a look at the drains for her yeah yeah so they've worked together and they you know it's good and they're kind of kind of local they are yeah yeah and i've seen it a couple of times where i've done courses and there's um a couple of people there that are actually fairly local um and it's like oh i don't know how to do that well i do and you know the exchange numbers at the end of it and the next thing i know i'm at pest tech at the end of the year and the two of them have come together because they're oh well here we go we have we have a coffee once a month uh we share work and yeah we thought we'd come up in one van so you know it's really nice to see um see people getting on i've i've never really understood um industries where you get really vicious want of a better term to your

42:26 competitors well it can be it can be you're right though obviously there's one area i wanted to touch sean yeah did you experience being a woman in pest control i hate to say it but what's your overall view because obviously we need more women in pest control yeah what's your view the industry is getting good it's it's getting better there's still a there's still a long way to go i think so there's there's a couple things first of all when you look at the chemicals there's a lot of reprotoxins so the younger women it could be a barrier to you know coming into the industry um if they're at an age where they're hoping to have a family start a family and all that because you know it can damage unborn child um that kind of thing when i joined the industry that ship had sailed so that that wasn't an issue but i i think um the other thing i mean i i had um one of my very early courses i literally had someone call me a slip of a girl and you're like actually I was 50 that was bloody lovely to be called a slip of a gun but um I think the um the old guard of um dare I say slightly sexist men are slowly leaving um so they are used to women actually being in the industry knowing what they're doing

43:52 knowing what they're talking about um but the other thing of course is if you are going on two sides if you're mostly doing commercial work generally you know you're going into a shop or factory whatever that's i'm going to say quite a safe environment you go there's machines there's all that i think as a woman the the big issue is if you're going and doing pest control in somebody's home because i've had more than one woman where they've um in my academy where they've said about situations where they've gone into a property to do a job and they don't feel safe um and one have one woman actually had been locked in the flat oh no i didn't know that happened in this country yeah i don't i hear about stories in america but i didn't know that's um and fortunately i mean basically they they were adamant she was like there's no pests here i can't spray and she's like you're not leaving until we spray now if it's a bloke your size um and you went no i ain't doing it right um you know good luck but you know she's five two and you know seven and a and I'll start soaking wet.

44:57 So fortunately, she played a blinder and said, okay, well, I'll spray, but you can't be in the room when I mix the chemicals because they're really, really dangerous. And she just filled her sprayer with water and sprayed water and then got the hell out of there. So I think there's always this, you know, when you're looking at loan working and going into houses of complete strangers, and especially when you're looking at the bigger companies, they're doing pest control for a lot of the housing associations and stuff like that now in order to get a house on housing association you generally have to have not been dealt the dealt the best hand in life so you've got a lot of people that you know they might have mental health issues they might be i don't know struggling in some way shape or form um so going into that kind of premise as a woman unaccompanied um i think you know there's there's an element of vulnerability that isn't there if you're a six foot two bloke um but on the other hand sometimes being a big bloke can actually be antagonistic so you know somebody might see you and want to square up for a fight and they might see me and look and think i'm their mum um never had that by the way and all the time never had any trouble no I'm rural you see I don't do a lot of cities you see little old Rutland I live in that's the thing you know when you start looking at some of the go to South London and some of the areas around there you know it can be quite rough and quite

46:38 intimidating I've got family that live in Surrey but sometimes you know we'll go into London or Croydon going all the way into London is fine Croydon, I don't want to be wandering around there on my own. Sorry. Sorry, anyone in Croydon, if I've offended you. But it's not a nice place to be after dark on your own. No, I couldn't agree with you. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of people in my role that are female. If you look at, you know, the things like the MPTA, BTTA things, you'll see a lot of the stands there are manned by women.

47:18 and then not just there as eye candy um there's um i remember once we had we were quite committed we've got two exhibitions that dan and matt were attending this round really early on in the in uh in my job and i'd gone to pest x with dan sorry with matt and dan was doing a facility show or something in birmingham and he did hire like a a pr girl it's not the right time i'm going to call her a fluff girl i know what that means and it's not it's not that but you know and um and then the next thing we're doing we were doing a facility show in scotland and dan said oh yeah you're coming on that with me elaine i said oh are you not taking someone from that agency you know just they don't know what they're talking about yeah they look pretty and that's that's great if you're i don't know selling a energy drink or a i don't know a piece of pipe but if if somebody wants to talk to you about a laser or a bird control system you've got to know what you're talking about so yeah there's a lot of the girls sorry women um i just lie about my age i think i'm still 38 um and um you know there's a lot of us ladies that are in these roles and we we do know what we're talking about and it's it's slowly seeping through the industry um but yeah it's it's not the easiest

48:38 but it's getting it's getting better every day good to hear have you know because obviously you see more than i do at the on the on the mptas on the road and the bpcas that their training days and road shows uh whatever you call them all the you know on the road basically you know different events all over the country do you see more women at these shows than you used to there's a few there's a few there's normally a couple in the audience yeah but let's say you've got 30 people if you've got more than five or six women sitting down watching you've done really well it is predominantly i saw a picture once of um i think it was laurence barnard had put up at one of these events he was like me on stage blah blah blah and the picture was taken from the back of the room and somebody just commented do all your attendees go to the same barber because there was just six world of graying balding heads um it's one of the reasons i do this because any event you can see me straight away there's a great photograph from the pest awards a few years ago and it is just a room of navy blue suits and and gray and bald heads and then there's just this bright pink dot in the corner there she is the world's worst game of where's wally um exactly but but the person's

50:05 wrong all the photos look the same usually absolutely like is that is that the one at essex is it the one in cardiff it's it's really difficult to tell so yeah there are more women coming in um but not enough not enough do you think there's any way to improve that or just phrasing standards or could I all have to be out like pest controllers like there is different roles they can do um there is um I think most people that have gone in and do my kind of role have spent some time out in the field yeah um and as I say even though I've come in through a sort side door if you like i try and step back and get that field experience um i i think it is simply raising professionalism within the industry or the the image of professionalism we know there's professionalism there but we need for people to see the image at the industry as professional because all the time that it's assumed oops i've got funny ears headphones to fall out um all the time it's assumed that um you're going to be living in your van with five dead rats and a dead fox in a bucket in the back um driving around from site to site killing things then i don't think that's attractive to women no it's not but if you look at it more on the

51:35 solving a problem and even as i say the the side of pest control that so many people don't realize is the customer service side to get repeat business. To get repeat business, it's not a case of you want to, oh, well, I'll just put down poison and I'll be back again in three months because we'll have the same problem again. Actually solving the problem, managing the customer's expectations. And I think women are definitely better at communication with their customers. And I think even the less academic ones, I see when I look at exam papers or mock papers rather when they're done I'll get a guy and a girl and they're both I'm not academic I didn't do very well at school but I can see that she's put a lot more effort into it than than he has and so that's going to follow through on report writing and problem solving um so yeah I I think if we can somehow um I did see I've seen a couple like promotional videos and stuff like that and i know there's the whole mpta syngenta 525 um but it's i don't know where those things are being promoted i know it's um you know if for argument's sake you wanted your son to go and and join the industry yeah brilliant you'd get straight in on the syngenta 525 he'd have to reply but he's he's he's 11 so yeah i've got a little well get him you know crew code of best practice it's fabulous bedtime reading um but you know are we going to the schools are we going to the careers fairs are we all right that's the issue i don't know that i've been told i don't know for a fact but i've been told that it is easy to get a talk at a primary school versus a secondary school and then the problem is you've got to hold that them kids from primary school they still want to

53:29 be when they get when they go on uh i mean i did get we were busy though i did actually have a secondary school around here ring up and ask yeah if i could go and speak at careers day now i would have done it if it weren't rammed out of work they couldn't give us a day's notice i thought sorry i can't i can't do it yeah give us more notice next year yeah i'll have to prepare it daunting but i would do it i would yeah yeah because that's if you're talking to him at primary school um oh god what did i want to be in primary school there was a time i wanted to be a garden gnome i liked fishing um like a fun thing to be so you know yeah there's a lot changes since then um but at no point actually when i was at senior school did i want to be a pest controller but i didn't know i didn't know it was a job no i didn't no no and jackie's saying here uh 19 years ago i it was rare to find a woman in this job and in those days i was treated maybe of not being man enough for the job Now people especially the elderly are more than happy to see a female Oh, completely.

54:40 If, you know, on the same way as a woman, you have an element of risk when you go into somebody's home unaccompanied. As a female that lives on her own, you know, every time I get a plumber and electrician, you know, washing machine repairman, I'm like, who is this bloke? because I've just found him on, you know, Checker Trading Trust Park, wherever I've found him. And I'm sort of like, I've had a plumber here before and I'm like, I don't like this man being in my house, you know. Can you hurry up and off?

55:10 Because I'm not comfortable. So, yeah, if there's a woman in my house coming to fit my bathroom, I'd be much happier.

55:17 And, yeah, so I think that definitely goes in our favour. I know when I was a teenager, I lived in Dagenham, it's very rough and there was a cab company set up and it was called um lady penelope's and it only had women drivers and it only took women and children because it recognized there was a need every time you get in a minicab as a woman you're vulnerable um every time you have a trace person coming to your house you're vulnerable um and i know you know some people go yeah well i can kick us i i did kickboxing for three or four years and you know part of me goes yeah i could do that if i tried to kick you i'd fall over and break a hip um and and realistically unless again if if those are skills you've got brilliant um and if you practice them because otherwise use it or lose it um but let's not have fake confidence that we could defend ourselves from you know a physical aggressor if if we needed to if we don't actually have those skills so exactly so although i'm a big guy and that and you think i i've in all my whole life 41 years on earth never really had a fight before i haven't got yeah yeah there's there's but when they look at you but i'm not gonna mess with him he's big absolutely and yeah you know some of the um some of the people i know from

56:37 uh my my former kickboxing class and also um some friends i've had you know over many many years and i've got 54 of them um actually it tends to be the smaller ones that are more dangerous um you know the the term gentle giant is is abounded quite a lot when it comes to big fellas um and and also some people just exude a more gentle energy some people you can tell you know there's a there's a a body language as a posture thing and you can tell this person is aggressive and you can you can feel that coming up on it whether it be in a classroom in the supermarket or if they're coming into your house you know or if you're going into their house so it's um reading people is a big skill it is so obviously you mentioned mpta five for 25 the scheme so how that operates is advertised to all you have to be an mpta member company in order to apply for it but it also can be that say you've got a company and you want to take on a young person and if they do the training and get the as long as you guarantee they'll give you a job at the end of it mp that's okay because it's an mpta member company just advertised through that way now yeah it isn't a case of a young person wants to join the industry and can just ring up and join oh no

58:05 no no they've got it it's like a sponsorship really isn't it yeah yeah yeah um but you know we we're doing what we can and obviously you know we we we've got this um training package and you know mpta do that bpca have their onboarding and all that we've got these tremendous training packages there for people that are um coming out of school college wherever um but are they aware that there's an industry here. They know what a plumber does. They know what an electrician does. They know, you know, bricklayer.

58:37 And they kind of choose, I'm going to go into a trade. Dad says, I have a trade and you'll never be out of work. But they don't think of pest control because they're not hearing about it at schools and careers fairs and stuff like that. Oh, my son's school, they all knew about it. He was there with his own pest control pens. Everyone had a pen. With fair blessing. him the other it got me a bit like they had a what's it called um dress up as your hero guy and i tell you what they made me cry dressed up as me in my pest control uniform because he got a kid's version of the jacket i was like damn and i'll tell you what the biggest funniest bit was because when he did it he skived the previous time to go pest tech and the teacher looked at his lanyard it was the pest tech one apprentice and she was laughing oh that's where you were that day

59:42 it was lanyard saying apprentice on it it wasn't that it was the pest tech before that it was but yeah yeah that was a nice thing it was but yeah I think that's that's the thing a lot of younger people that join the industry are joining family industries and that's that's always great unfortunately when I was at that age of leaving school my dad ran a pub and I don't drink and I mean I've worked behind the bar many a times I really don't want to go to that job well I say if you think pest control is hard try working in a pub i bet it is hard i bet it really is it's um i used to drink back in the day yeah i don't drink anymore very rare obviously at pest tech i'll have a few but it's not something i do on a regular basis you know pcn dinner and things like that yeah so um so yeah i i don't drink at all so when you see me at any of those events you think my god she's hammered why is she dancing on the table just living her best life

1:00:49 exactly um so obviously if someone was listening to this podcast now and they wanted to get into the industry or try it how would you what would you tell them to do if there was a way it's it's very difficult because i i could say go to one of the big pest control companies um and we all know the big one that begins with r and they'll give you excellent training and there's some fantastic career paths in that sort of thing um but i think i i got where i am by joining a very very small company and being very very nurtured yeah so i think i'd be more encouraging someone to join a smaller company um the the downside with a smaller company is obviously if you're going from you know two technicians to three you've effectively got to increase your workload by 50 to support this extra person yeah so by taking on a new person that's a big risk to that company so they're they're less keen to do it and also um whilst we're looking at increasing your business by you know 50 actually you're going to be running not at full tilt because you've got to be supporting this this new starter exactly so it's it's a difficult thing to do it's really i guess anywhere find a company where you feel happy with the ethos and if that's um your dad's company or your mate's dad or your dad's mate or

1:02:24 you know someone you feel comfortable with they're brilliant but if you want to go for one of the big companies um go that way um but yeah i i think as i say i'm in a weird way i'm lucky slash unlucky that i've come in the way i have because i don't have that experience but it also means i've not seen and smelt some of the things that you guys have seen although i've you know i've had some experience of bad sights and bad smells so yeah no it's like i haven't got the experience of what other people have i've never worked at a national i only ever started to work in my dad you see and the idea is eventually i i take the firm over and it goes multi-generational it's the kind of the idea it is and i i think you know the other thing is when you're looking at like broadness of experience um if you're working in if you live and work in a city center then you're going to be dealing with very different pests to if you're out in rutland i i did um a safe use of redenticide course last year and i had one of those old schools and I've got a slide up and it comes up a picture of a house mouse and this guy I kid you not said to me I don't know why you bother teaching those I haven't seen one of those

1:03:43 in nine years because where he lives is so remote it's all field mice that's fine mate but literally sat next to him with a guy that lives and works in Streatham have you ever seen a field mouse Streatham Streatham oh sorry we've got a Streatham in Rutland as well it's one along from brixton i think um but you know it's like um and have you ever seen a field mouse you went nope i said have you ever seen a house mouse he said i dealt with nine house mouse jobs yesterday so you know geographically and it that gets really difficult um because again if you're in central london um birmingham uh portsmouth that kind of thing cockroaches yeah bed bugs yeah but you might be out somewhere in the deepest darkest sticks and you've never seen a cockroach ah here's one for you the reason i failed my my level two award first time around was cockroaches because i was soaking it in in the lessons i obviously didn't soak it in enough then it rolled around i retook it guess what was it in the exam cockroaches cockroaches but i have done two jobs so far in our area but it ain't i think it's let's just say my guess is they moved from a city they had cockroaches in their food boxes we eliminated the issue potentially yeah

1:05:10 but we don't generally have them in rutland cockroaches that's where i thought it came from yeah i had one lady um and she'd had um a kitchen imported italian marble slabs and we've got brown banded cockroaches and that's and the area she was in I'm like you don't normally get in there and I was like what's what's going on here and the pest controller that bought these in he said well she's just had a new kitchen fitted um and the marbles come from Italy I was like yep they've hitched a ride um so yeah it does happen they'll hitch a ride if you're moving um but yeah predominantly if you're in a you know a rural area you're not going to come across them To be honest, yeah, for me, it's field mice and all-way rats, mainly.

1:05:58 Yeah, yeah. It is. And, you know, I mean, where we are, we're right on the south coast. And, you know, we're, I think, 10 miles from Portsmouth. And even then, there will be pest controllers, and there are black rats at Portsmouth. But there were pest controllers that have been doing it for 20 years that have never seen one. I've never seen the black rat ever. no no it would be cool to see you all i think yeah i've got still going with a taxidermist i'll have a stuffed one soon um but yeah it's it's it's one of those things that it's really difficult to teach um this sort of breadth of knowledge um to everyone because um you know some things you'll have in the north you won't have in the south um if you're a port town you're gonna have different things i i do a lot of bird courses and i mean literally where i am it's goals there are pigeons as well but the predominant pest is goals um and then i've got people from all over the place that go no we don't have seagulls i'm like really it's pigeons here mainly yeah it is and doves for some reason doves love the pigeons is there a reason is there a reason for that the doves that were the pigeons I don't get it.

1:07:13 Well, they're all very closely related. I've seen that. Not everywhere, but in my dad's road, there were some doves for a point. They've gone now, but it's mainly pigeons. And if you think the feral pigeon is sometimes known as the rock dove, so they're all part of the same family. So, yeah, they're going to be hanging around together, speaking the same language, as it were. So yeah, it's difficult when you're trying to teach them because as soon as I think pest birds, I think gulls. Because, you know, they literally live on all the roofs around here except mine.

1:07:53 Maybe you might be thinking, gulls are in seaside towns, yeah? This is when I go on holiday to Skegness. I hear the sound of the gulls and I know I have arrived on holiday. They pass through here once every so often en route. They don't live around here. That's my holiday soundtrack, Goulds. Have a word to the people that live in Milton Keynes because they have a serious gull problem. You're like, they're nowhere near the sea. Yeah, there's a lot of nesting gulls there. Well, they can keep them, they can.

1:08:26 Yeah. But, you know, to me, it was always that soundtrack of holiday. You know, driving to the holiday was always like first person to see the sea, first person to hear a seagull um normally my first achievement was to feel sick in the back of the car um but it is it is the soundtrack to holiday my my sister threw a party for my 50th birthday and she stayed at a hotel on the seafront in worthing and i i went and met her for breakfast and the seagull outside actually four o'clock this morning that started they live in london oh yeah yeah well welcome to the coast definitely but um tell you what it's been a great podcast but i feel i'll have to get you back on at some point because i reckon there's loads more we could talk about i'm sure there is yeah yeah not even mentioned that so do you want to tell people where they can find you as in road shows etc coming up i will be seeing you next tuesday i'm there yes yeah careful how you say that i will be at the mpta on the road our next is it next tuesday it is that's where i'll be yeah that's in peterborough um the week after that i think i'm a bpca event in durham so essentially if there is a bpca or mpta event coming to an area near you i will be there um if it's an mpta event the chances are i will be talking about bird control with my special talk this year are you

1:10:05 or licensed to kill jane bond um um and yeah otherwise you can find me um find pestfix online we're at pestfix.co.uk um and you can call us great thing with our website we put the phone number right there on the top there's none of this press one to lose the will to live press two to disappear down a black hole um so yeah you can always give us a call there and try and find me that way or i'm on elaine at pestfix.co.uk find me that way very nice i'm all over the place you are you are yeah so uh thanks for coming on elaine it's been you're very welcome thank you for having me it has no thank you um i will get the points up tomorrow for british pest register because all i do is i make a little quiz now what i do is rather than ask some of the technical questions i get i scan it through ai the transcript but so people i know people listen i will pick out little questions that you'd have to know to listen to it it catches i think it catches people out it does because some people sometimes guess questions i know sometimes it's sticky ones that they've said that you may not know i i do a technical update for all my team every friday um and i i put a question at the bottom well i used to put the question at the bottom and whoever got it right

1:11:27 and got the answer to me first got a prize yeah um you know we're not talking big prizes we're talking a bar of chocolate um there was one question on bees they got a jar of honey um and people were coming back really really quickly and uh the sales manager went are you reading this because you can't read that fast so now i've started hiding the question in the body of the text so they actually have to read the whole thing to find it and yeah because otherwise as i say if i'm putting something out there i fact check and fact check and factor i put a lot of work in so i want to make sure that you know they are actually learning what i what i send out every week oh that's nice that is but um but so thanks everyone for watching and on spotify and apple podcast press review on on spotify and apple i should have 80 to 90 reviews on each platform but you don't press the button come on that's with you i know you're watching but yeah thanks everyone if you don't want to stay on the line for a minute elaine i'll just end the podcast but uh yep it's a good one today so thanks everyone and I'll see you all next week can't remember I've got I've got someone thank you