087:Pest Control Then vs Now: Hugh Radford on Bait Stations & Rodenticide Stewardship

0:00 Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 87. We've got a new background again, which I think it's okay. We've got some new sponsors, just want to mention them. Just thanks to Powered Now, who has been sponsoring since May. It's a job management software company. Helps with your jobs, pest control jobs, scheduling appointments, etc. there's a link in the description if you want to check it out and we also have Dan Traynor CFO and author of Pest Control by Numbers turning busy pest control firms into profitable ones and basically your help supports and funds the show buying this new mic the website and all sorts to improve the show pay for this stream yard software and many other things so thanks for the support this week we have on Hugh from Guardian Pest Control who wears many hats like me he runs Guardian Pest Control he's on the board of the MPTA he's the vice of the MPTA he's got an awesome podcast called Beauties and Beasties is there anything else you do hi Sean how you doing right are you yeah it's quite odd being on this side of the the screen um a new experience yeah it does yeah it's cool but yeah it's a bit strange but yeah glad to be here so now i've technically had all three of you on i've had sean on alex came on as himself it was about weightlifting and fitness sean came on saved me one week because the guests dropped out and we had a chat about all sorts uh so i've had all three of you on now so we've done the full circle which is good so for anyone

1:48 that doesn't know who you are um do you want to tell them who you are and what you do and then we can go through history after we can well hopefully i won't bore anybody to death and they just think oh not him again um so i'm q radford i run a small pest control company in somerset uh we've been going for as a small company for 28 years i'm also the vice chairman of the mbda along with jasmine who's the chairperson and sean's on the board as well and various other people and i help to run the uk pest controllers facebook page and the asian hornet uh page as well that's on facebook uh as admin um and i think black book do you do the black book too oh yeah yeah black book yeah uk pest controllers black book so yeah um and that's about it i run i write a few articles now and again for uh today's technician the mpta magazine so you can follow my uh from the library off if you'd like to if you want to um if you feel inclined so yeah that's about it really i think nice so um how do you how do you start off in pest control many moons ago i imagine it was again i don't want to bore people with the details too much but because they may have heard them before um as a young chap i was uh worked in a local factory and it was going to be shut down

3:29 and i needed a job and i needed a job and there was a jobs fair there and i saw a job working for rent to kill and i thought give that a go um and that was back in 1987 seven um and i started uh went to the interview uh just luckily the interviewer good old jack who's dead now i'm afraid um he uh had been to the factory that i was working at as a as a as a supervisor for rent a kill actually um so i could relay information about that site to him and talked like we knew things and uh an hour hour probably about an hour after the interview i got a phone call and said yeah would you like to come and work for us and as i was being made redundant from the factory i said yeah sure so i was made redundant on friday and started with rent to kill on the monday nice that's good that is so he picked me up in his I think it was an Astra estate back then.

4:45 Okay. And took me up to Bristol from where we are and gave me all my gear, gave me my van. It was just on the changeover. I think it was from the marinas to the Vauxhall Astra vans. And I got a Vauxhall Astra van, thankfully. Okay. And so started the training program for Rent-A-Bit. Which I always hear on all, you know, various podcasts, your podcast, American podcast. They always say the Rent to Kill training is the best. They all say it. It's one thing that keeps coming up. It was. I can't comment on now, but yeah, back then it was.

5:26 As long as you had the right trainer, because what happened was you would get a new trainer each week. and you meet them um in the morning and you go out with them every day for a week and that would take six weeks you go out six weeks you have your training book um with the different subjects in it and then every friday you would go up to the office to see your supervisor and he would give you a quiz if you messed up you'd be put back a week if you were okay you carry on to the next week so a lot of it did a lot of it did depend on the trainer um some took it a lot more seriously than others um but yeah and then after six weeks you took your final exam and if you if you got it if you passed you got your job and if you didn't pass you'd have to start again okay so did they actually do was there an RSPH level to awarding best management back then or equivalent?

6:29 No, it was the BPCA diploma part one and part two, but we didn't have to do that. Internal rent-to-kill training was enough.

6:41 So you would do that and then off you'd jolly well go. So I imagine it was very different to back then. you didn't have a mobile phone did you no so you were given uh time in the morning to phone the office and the time in the afternoon where you would phone the office and you have a bag of 10 peas and you go and find you go and find a phone box because obviously everybody knew where the phone boxes were back then yeah um you go and find a phone box and you'd phone in in the morning and you'd say hi it's you anything for me today and they would relay any complaint calls on or any job calls on and you take your notes in in the telephone box and you'd sort it yourself so you you never you never really spoke to anybody um other than your service controller who was called michelle i think at the time um okay that's that's the only person you'd speak to you you didn't have any real backup you just have to work it out for yourself and it was like literally like running your own business you'd be given a box of cards yeah okay little like postcards and we took us customers on um names and addresses and off you go so imagine did you ever have to use the map to find where you were going always there's no such thing as sat nav so you had an a to z and an os map um they were fine os maps were quite quite

8:21 quite good um okay not so much fun when you get stuck in somewhere like bath or bristol or um a city with your a to z in one hand trying to drive along and looking at your a to z that wasn't much fun um especially when you would be dumped in a place that you didn't know to help out obviously okay by the time a year had gone by you'd know your patch inside out oh yeah you would and we used to call it working the zone so every every customer would have a zone number on their card and you would work your zone from one to 250 and start again was that in the days where i'm not i don't know friends who do it now but were that in the days where say you had a high street and you'd literally get all get the entire high street going shop to shop to shop to shop i don't know if that's a thing now but i heard they didn't use them yeah i mean i did uh back in back in the day as they say i you know it's nothing to do i did 32 visits in a day you just start at one end of the high street and you just walk down you park up and off you go you know i suppose though and it sounds a lot but if it's next door i think literally next door i imagine just monitoring blocks you've jumped in job to job no that would they weren't a thing then then no no they weren't

9:48 okay no we had cardboard boxes some empty cardboard boxes there or was it you put bait in them i suppose right then yeah yeah every every box had bait in there was no such thing as non-toxic monitoring there was no such thing as outside bait stations yeah there were no boxes outside no the only thing that you ever got given now and again were were drain pipe tubes okay yeah so i suppose like yeah very different so you just literally you baited everything everything yeah and they just refilled it if anything anything happened yeah you had to learn the knack how to make a cardboard box because it wasn't as easy as it seemed oh it's not as little flat pat ones you get now because we have some of them the car oh no they're easy no they're easier actually the the original rent to kill bromar box was a lot harder to make there was a definite nap to make in it oh some people would sit at home in the evening and make them and then just put a dob of bromard in um stack them up in a cardboard box and take them with them to save time wow fair play to them yeah so and off you go and then after a year you would then get sent to fell court which was a beautiful old building or no yell you lodge that's right you lodge

11:10 which is a beautiful old building up in i want to say surrey um near fell court and you would have a residential um no it's about six months after six months that's right okay um you'd be sent there for a whole week and you'd stay there and then you go back through all your training again okay because obviously after you after you've done six months um more of the training made sense to you okay it does it does training's good but you need to pull it into practice don't you yeah and then you go down to the two fell court itself to the r&d uh research and development uh part and you go in and see the black rats and the brown rats in the outside pens and the mice and go through the labs and everything um oh it sounds good that sounds really good fantastic It was a fantastic place, you know, a proper training centre.

12:10 You were allowed a couple of drinks a night on the house, as it were. They'd feed you. It was really, you know, it was really nice. You really felt like you were part of something. That's good, guys. Until they trashed it. Oh, all right. They trashed that part of the training. Oh, well, that's good. Not good. I mean, that training sounded really good because. it was and then after the sorry when you say black rats i've never seen them i've only ever seen the mickey mouse look like mickey mouse oh um and then after a year what you would do is you have the opportunity to take your advanced technicians exam which is a little bit like a cross between level two and certified advanced technician okay um and then you could take that and then if you got it you got it um if you didn't it didn't really matter you didn't have to take it okay did they pay you any more if you got it um no you so after a while you got um they introduced a bonus scheme um a credit scheme so you would get i mean back then you'd get i think it was a pound 50 to wash your van each week on saturdays you were definitely doing that weren't you yeah yeah and you got three pound to wash your overalls and then they bought they brought in a credit scheme where you would get so much per month extra if you did so many hours proofing and then if you did field biologist visits or technical visits as it was called then you got so much per month extra if you kept that credit up there was proofing field biologists sort of technical trainings what's the other ones we used to get proofing credit training if you train so many people a

14:13 year you'd be allowed 10 pound extra a month and i think there's another one i can't remember i got it here somewhere today you got 10 pound a month back then was not 10 pound a month it would probably be what is that what in today's money like 50 quid 100 quid i don't know don't know it might not have even been 10 pound but i can't remember it's something anyway so yeah and then i trundled along uh working for rent to kill quite happily and unfortunately or fortunately whatever way technician sorry did you always stay a technician or did you get any higher um after about seven seven years I think it was somebody said to me oh there's a job going down in Plymouth as a supervisor you ought to do that and I thought should I really okay yeah who wants to you know make life difficult but I thought and everybody my supervisor or my manager was like no you really ought to go for that that'd be good yeah yeah yeah that'd be good that would anyway i went i went for it and i got it so then i was um it all sounds a bit like i'm blowing my own trumpet but i'm not um i was the supervisor for devon and the channel irons nice no was there a lot of work there it wasn't nice then no no no no no um so myself and the other supervisor didn't get on okay that's great um

15:54 that was not great not great uh my manager went slightly cuckoo and did a runner had a bit of a breakdown so then he left left the branch in my hands for a while which I was only a supervisor I wasn't a branch manager and okay it all went to it all went a bit odd pear-shaped for a while there so but it was a lot of experience oh yeah you learn on the job yeah yeah so we um yeah we we had Jersey Jersey strange places okay never been yeah no strange strange people strange places well you don't like moving up the country anyway do you from where you bar you know not now anyway bristol and sort of anywhere past devon that's it down down down towards you know cornwall no anyway um so yeah but it was it was an experience i mean we went i went out to the island of brecu which is just off of alderney and sark it was owned by two eccentric billionaires called the barclay brothers um and they were building a gothic castle on the island um and it had a rabbit problem and uh we weren't uh we were employed to decimate the rabbit problem and it was very secretive place we weren't allowed to refer to it on the telephone it had to be called project 51 so when when they phoned up they'd be like this is uh steve smith from project 51 here oh yeah okay so one one week we got flown out to um

17:43 guernsey and up in the hotel and we caught the we were there one night and then we went down to st petersport which is the dock yeah we had a large box of phosphine gas and a couple of air rifles and nobody was supposed to know who we were as a bit clandestine okay everybody's like oh you're the guys who rank here aren't you like no what makes you say that except we've got a great way for two rifles on it and a box that says phosphine on it do not drop in water you know poisonous gas so we loaded it on this little boat that came in called the braku chief yeah and we you know don't drop this in the water handing it over the side of the dock you know wow don't drop it so and then the brekkie chief took us over to the island and uh we got off and it was like james bond there were all these um nissan huts where all the builders were and they stayed in the nissan huts and they were building the castle and there was a helicopter pad and uh we we were put up we were given a the little pass all pass all area access um um we'd uh and then they'd give you little tokens so you could have a beer on them two beer tokens a day okay and uh we yeah so we stayed there for a week um trying to shoot rabbits and didn't shoot one oh okay didn't shoot one hardly gassed anything

19:22 it was a complete waste of time but hey, whatever So where were the rabbits? They weren't hanging off the cliff were they? Yeah There's no way you were getting to them No, they were so the island's really bleak and it's got quite stiff steep sides and they just didn't hear anybody coming they just run over the edge of the cliff I thought that was interesting from from your not your point of view from the uh didn't matter to us does it did it so yeah exactly and then uh yeah we had all did did all sorts of things strange things that we did uh cockroaches on the um on a uh us auxiliary ship um cape diamond went out and spray treated this big ship for cockroaches not a single cockroach there they just wanted a clearance certificate so all we ended up doing was sitting with the with the guys and drinking iced tea and and they gave us little camouflage you know uss cape diamond yeah yeah it was yeah and then all sorts of strange things we did some i i don't want to keep repeating stories people have already heard so i see some of my listeners may not have heard yours on you you don't know do you you know we did some fur beetle on a saber-toothed tiger yeah and a museum yeah that was good fumigated uh uh one of um it was a piano i want to say it was beethoven's piano but i don't think it was okay um but stuff like that because we did methyl bromide fumigation back then um so you talking real fumigation because nowadays a lot of the old boys they they use the term fumigation but they don

21:19 mean fumigation i mean i stuck a one shot in the loft a lot of them say it it's not yeah yeah so we did phosphine fumigation and methyl bromide fumigation yeah you'd empty phosphine tablets into a egg carton yeah like an egg carton soak the egg carton in water empty the tablets on it push it in underneath and the water would react with the phosphine tablets and then give off phosphine gas sheet it over and chain it okay so yeah a bit different back then yeah i imagine so ppe you wore ppe did you or no not for phosphine for metabromide but not for phosphine is that the one what's the one where they say that you don't wear it where people used to die but you couldn't wear a mask because if you smell almonds you're supposed to run or something almonds is almonds is sodium cyanide that was so that's that's that's that's cym that's cymag um which you would use for rabbits and rats apparently i heard was nest too i heard oh yeah you can use it for wasp nest simag yeah very very lots of farmers stops the heart doesn't it uh no uh no no it sucks the oxygen out of the air oh right well yeah yeah yeah well without being uh not quite the right thing to talk about but uh to gersh who make uh who made uh simag and phosphine um yeah was a german company yeah and you can guess

23:00 what they make can't you no well they made cyanide for during the second world war for the oh right okay the concentration camps oh no okay yeah let's skip over that so yeah that's a bit of knowledge for you yeah uh but yeah so you would have uh sodium cyanide but that's not really a fumigant uh well is it not really um no it's not because it's a powder not a gas um metabromide and phosphine okay so when did you end up leaving rendakill or was there any more roles you went to or um no no no that was it and then uh one day i bent over the barbecue and uh stood up my prolapse two of the discs right at the base of my spine oh and uh i didn't walk again for a year so i didn't stand up again for a very long time uh rentakill in their wisdom um they kept me on full pay for a year um to be fair not for a big company that's nice thing yeah yeah yeah uh there was a guy called mike salter back then that sort of i don't want to say so just looked after me um and when he moved to australia new zealand australia rent to kill australia and uh there was a big shake-up then and there was lots of supervisors made redundant and people changed around obviously they looked at this guy that was off sick for a year and said right

24:43 like off you go and they may be done well they didn't make me redundant they sacked me okay can you imagine sacking someone in this day and age for that no a chance but that's what they did and um then uh i had spine surgery and it and it worked and i got to walking again and uh i sort of thought oh what am i gonna do i haven't really done anything else i thought well you know let's start doing pest control for myself so you set up guardian then was it called guardian from day one yeah so what made you want to call it guardian no idea oh okay just sounded cool what would you like well i just i mean a year spent on your back lying around thinking of things um yeah it was like you've got lots of time to think haven't you yeah um and i just thought it gave the right you know protection you know guardian you know just gave the right image i just thought it get at the time it just gave the right image um yeah it just gave the right image really um you know the protecting your business looking after you protecting public health and i can remember because i knew i was coming on so i can remember the first because back then we had yellow pages didn't we that was only yeah that was the only

26:18 form of advertising really. Yellow Pages and the Thompson local as it were. And that was our first ever that was our first ever advert in Yellow Pages. And that MPTA member? See there? Yeah. And that advert was £500.

26:45 Is that good? Is that good? In them times? that was a lot of money it was a lot of money yeah when you're starting off 500 quid was a lot of money did you get all the work out of it or do you know did we yeah all of our work out of it well there you go then you know it was but back then and then we went up in adverts to this one nice I looked at that that was good that does that's about two grand's worth two grand's worth okay but again the pages was getting more popular and then uh price went on size and whether you were black and white or whether it was clear or whether you had color or anything but then i realized because it had the rsph logo on it that you can't actually do that um you can't actually we can now because we are actual members of the rsph but you can't just say um i've passed an rsph exam so i can use the logo now you're right there because i've never called people out on it but i've been on certain people's sites and a lot of people sticking on there just because they've got a qualification and that's where we had our new site mate i made sure it wasn't on there i just mentioned i have an rsph level two awarded yeah you can't remember you shouldn't really use the logo unless you're a member but you can't be

28:08 To be fair, you've got to be fair. Me and you get criticised more. So if we do something, it's pointed out. Oh, you're on the board of MBTA. You should know better. And then we ended up with that advert eventually. Oh, nice. And that's about £3,500. But each year we did it. Yeah. It would probably just about get covered by the yellow pages, by wasp nests. Oh, good. Good. but you would but you wouldn't make any money on it but what you would but what you would get is for all the wasp nests that you did you got repeat business exactly you get repeat they remember you they do that one cancelled out the other you didn't make any money on it and you probably didn't make it you know but it would fall on it would go forward so that's and then we grew from there really and then so it's just yourself to start with when did you take on another technician when when when was that point because you always say that's the biggest and scariest leap to hire another person didn't happen by um didn't happen like that well no no i imagine didn't happen like that at all uh unfortunately after about five years maybe yeah maybe i had another accident i had another accident and hurt myself okay and uh i couldn't walk okay and uh so my son ryan was at university okay and i said to ryan look son uh could you would you come home yeah go out and do the work for us um and keep it running until i get better and uh he was like yep i'll do that um but he couldn't drive okay um so he came back my old man who was 70 then pulled on his gloves we paid extra for the insurance and so then each day ryan would go out i think he was 18 then

30:24 okay um he'd go out do the work and my dad would be driving them around and off off they went and they just kept it going and then ryan passed his driving test and then dad was demoted and off he went okay well uh it's a different way of it happening though it's nice that your son might to come on board and help you and obviously he stayed there ever since yes i i wouldn't say he wanted to he wanted to okay i wouldn't say he wanted to the fact was that if he didn't we would have lost the business and we couldn't have supported him okay at university so it was really a bit like oh shit what do i do um and then i had to learn to walk again and it took me a year i was walking walking 30 seconds then a minute and then a minute and a half then two minutes and then two and i built it up because because i'm i obviously can't experience the same thing as you because i broke my knee twice i have learned to walk twice but i don't imagine it was on the same level with you no no but people don't realize what it's yeah i was in a wheel i went around the shop once you know my missus wheel chaired me up to the shop and people treat you differently and i said hello to this guy and he didn't say that's right i says i'm not disabled you know i've just broken my knee

31:48 I can't get oh sorry I said you shouldn't ignore people because they're in a bloody wheelchair he started apologising I said I've just brushed my knee I said you were ignoring me oh I'm so sorry but I imagine that happens to a lot of people yeah yeah yeah I think it probably does you become invisible yeah as well you don't have the same yeah confidence so yeah so I yeah I got to walking again and said to Ryan what would you like to do and I can start you know doing a bit again and we were just like well let's get another van and let's see how it goes so that's what we did and it just went from there really.

32:34 So at that point when you made that conversation was Ryan helping you with the business pushing forward like giving you ideas and or you're both bouncing off each other we're just both of us bickering oh i wouldn't say we have some right arguments over stupid things yeah i wouldn't say bouncing off i would say more like punching off or you know verbally punching off uh it's never come to blows yet but yeah so yeah we just kept we just carried on going and uh it just i won't say it snowballed because we're not that big but it just carried on going and then we always found you know then we took on um now what do we do oh yeah um we were going to advertise for somebody and somebody that we knew was sold their business and said i want to work part-time okay that'd be great and he said i'll tell you what i'll i'll subcontract for you i'm like okay okay that's that's brilliant that's brilliant right um so that's what he did for a while good old uh tim um tim slater he and he came with us and he'd go off and do stuff and uh then he decided that you know he probably wanted to retire um okay so we needed to take somebody on and then we took the first uh we took uh matt on a guy called matt did you know this guy or did he apply for the proper process did you have loads

34:05 a people interview or was it uh no uh matt was matt used to work for tim okay so he used to work for another company and uh we sort of half knew him and he was looking for a job and uh yeah we just took him on nice and then i can't remember the scenario then then we then neil came on board uh wonderful wonderful neil neil bond um i hear a lot about him what's his name on what's his name on youtube ratty boots that name always gets mentioned on on the beauty yeah so we call neil the bloodhound okay um because if it's there he'll find it for sure okay um so he's our certified field biologist and he he goes out and does that and other stuff as well.

35:00 And then Ross came on board. Again, he just lives two streets away, and he came on. He's done really well. And then Steve came on board. So, yeah. How many do you have, then? How many people? so there's me ryan ross steve and neil but neil's a subcontractor neil works for himself and does other stuff as well so yeah five five of us he said you're not big but i think you are you fair you know uh it just depends what you think you know uh i don't really do anything anymore i'm afraid as far as actually go out because i've got another health problem um so i just end up doing all the paperwork really well someone's got to do it and i imagine you still work on the business like oh yeah you know you know with 10 tenders don't you you started doing that yeah well ryan does that ryan does that side of it he's um so he does he's a lot more office space now the the amount of um paperwork over the years has become absolutely phenomenal um if you think of something like uh brc the closest thing that we had years ago was probably srs which was the special reporting service okay and all you ever had really you never had a plan you didn't have a plan at the stations you just had a checklist okay and you might get one or two field biologist visits a year and that was it really but it seems ever consistent for people to make rules and regulations up to justify their job and make it more and more and more and more and more

37:04 and more difficult i can imagine that when they ask for extra paperwork you're like you shouldn't be asking for that it's not on the spec you're like not on the spec we've got us we have yeah we have i mean we've got a situation now where because we do a lot of schools um every single school wants a separate letter safeguarding letter sent through now we've got a generic one that we send through with all our enhanced dbs checks and everything on on there but a lot of schools are like no it's got to be on our paperwork it's like okay i do one school currently and they've not asked me for that at all you wait you wait when you've got 50 of the fuckers so i've only got one so yeah okay you know it's it's just like well look we've got a generic form it's got everything that you need on it um wider just transfer the information over so but like i say the the paperwork's got snowballed so yeah there's plenty of time for us to fill with just filling out forms well yeah because basically sometimes there's more i'm not saying every visit but some visits are literally there's more paperwork than you were actually looking at having to look about i would imagine i haven't done brc you helped me with one but i didn't

38:21 i didn't get it i didn't remember when you gave me a bit of advice but uh maybe one day but it does seem like it's paperwork heavy it does it is for sure it is so them kind of sites when you went for brc was that ryan door knocking or were they people that rang up and said we've got a brc site or did they just fall into your lap then once i wouldn't say for not fell into our lap but they yeah they just phone we don't do any selling at all oh fair okay well that's good it's what you want that is that's just luck not yeah businesses you know any business is probably 70 effort and 30 luck other people will you know say that might be different but it's just keeping going and hoping that that luck will keep it kick in suddenly yeah because i imagine once you get into the brc and you do a good job i imagine i'm not saying it does but reputation might spread no um a little bit a little bit not not like wildfire i mean we're not in you're not you're not on you're not on socials though are you really you're not on your company's not really on there really don't really don't really get a lot of um don't really get a lot of traction with that can't stand facebook people phoning up they're always they're always a pain in the ass uh facebook work they always want

39:55 cheap you know it's not can't be doing with it oh that's fair we get quite quite a bit of work off off it but uh i don't pay for adverts they're just people that ring me but yeah i mean i know yes i know there are a lot of people that do get a lot of facebook work but we don't seem to it's not you've got you've got to know how to handle them as well because you get stupid comments as well i know how to handle them i don't yeah yeah i was a killed on a kindness policy yeah yeah so yeah no um i suppose reputation yeah reputation does come into it you get one qa that may move from one site to another site that's what i mean about just keeping going okay um you'll see you know even with letting agents you'll see one manager's estate manager move to another estate and then they take you with them um yeah and then they move to another one and you keep that one and then you move it so it's it is a matter of just keeping going keeping rolling on yeah no it's a good point it is it's um it yeah that what you're basically saying is there's plenty of work to do and there's plenty of paperwork in the office to be getting on with there's tons there's tons and if you let that go if you forget to invoice people or you haven't got that time a customer that's not

41:12 invoiced is not a customer exactly we did that recently um they paid the bill straight away it was all i've done it it was i've got one now that i forgot to invoice for a year

41:27 just yeah just dropped off you got just dropped off uh dropped off the spreadsheets and off it's gone so yeah but the one i'm talking about we were still servicing oh no yeah yeah you know we've been yeah yeah oh yeah no we've been going for a year and haven't invoiced them so yeah it happens hopefully not soon so because we're implementing things there's stuff in softwares that you can do that sends a reminder like in terms of yeah we do yeah yeah but you've got to put it in in the first place haven't you well you have yeah you have to do that so yeah we use free we use free agent so it sets up the reoccurring invoices and sends it and then sends a reminder every 10 days but if you forget to put it on there in the first place then it's not going to reach your mind no it's not is it it's not but now with AI and particularly Astra we be able to try one it good Astra isn it It much better I noticed that This here this overlay was made by Astra, and oddly, when you put that real images in, for some reason, the power of now on the one on the right, Periscope CFO, it didn't change them.

42:43 I'm like, what? It actually took the face value, did it? Because normally they recreate them, don't they? but it didn't recreate them. I thought, is that part of Astra? Sometimes it does, sometimes it don't. But it seems much better, Astra does, than it used to be. But going back to Ryan, what you've got to remember, when Ryan started, we didn't have crew and we didn't have CPD. So he was able to go out and do that work. Yeah. Whereas now, you'd have to do your safe use. um yeah although i do know that there are some companies that just send people out anyway um i hate it too i hate it too so things were quite different they were they were so i'm a baby in the industry i'm you know six years in that's it yeah not very long at all yeah i'm not saying um you know it's a bad thing but um things were very different we didn't seem to kill shit that we didn't seem to kill copious amounts of things unnecessarily though um but it was all with the invention of i think really with the invention of the the perimeter bait box that's when it all really kicked off because like i said if you remember we didn't have any outside bait box base you didn't have outside base so you wouldn't routinely bait around the outside of places that was just not something that happened that was really a a sales technique you know the first line of defense against rodent intrusion see what's it um the ring of steel yeah did they call them bread bins or something I'm sure I heard you someone say on what he used to call the bread the bread bin came in a bit later so the first ones were the plastic green for rent to kill with a plastic green perimeter bait stations so you could then sell

44:44 you know you could sell this first line defense against robert the ring of steel and basically the more boxes that you could sell somebody yeah um the more money that was there because not only did you get the sale of the boxes you've got the sale of the main maintenance of those boxes exactly um so that was just seen i mean for want of a you know rent to kill and the other big companies are a big machine and they are there to make money so they will sell as many bake stations as possible i mean i it's nothing to have seen them five foot apart so you know you can imagine you've got you've got a big site you've got bake boxes every five feet stuffed full of diphenicum um it's it's probably going to create whereas before you would look you would look around the site and you'd know if something was going on you wouldn't need those bait boxes there you you would know um and i think we lost that way a little bit because we don't as a company now we don't routinely put in perimeter bait stations which is not something we do well when you have say you have a commercial client you don't put perimeter bait stations that no not not even with monitor no why would you put a monitor in i don't know would you would you walk around the outside

46:08 of your building and chuck a dog biscuit down every 10 foot i suppose you're right yeah okay that's interesting that is what you say that is we've we've never we don't use external monitors at all oh okay um like i say you will you know all you are doing is drawing rodents into the building for the monitor bot it's a food source after all yeah now you say you're right because if you're going to sit there they're going to eat it you get but you you go back they're they're then in close to the building in a in a hidden location yeah so where's where's the next move oh let's just slip into the slip into the different it's actually a very good point there no i never thought of it from like that you know when you go back it's going to be eaten by slugs or slimed and you're not going to tell whether there's a rat there or no and even if there has been a rat there five weeks ago what are you going to do oh we'll we'll we'll change it what your your field skills are so bad that you need a block to tell you that there's a rat on the site yeah it's nice you know and then you put you know then you put we would put the boxes down for the limited amount of time and take them away it's a good point because a lot of buildings will

47:30 have rodents passing by anyway yeah or we put empty boxes down but we don't use monitor blocks at all outside too expensive isn't it well it's that money it's just not something that we do it's just not something i believe in like i say you wouldn't chuck a digested biscuit down on the floor every 10 foot so why would you put a monitor block in there change my thinking you have on that that seems right that does yeah so yeah i've never well i suppose ryan's the same though i suppose ryan's never had national any working for any of the firms is he like i've only ever worked for open pest control i've never had no experience apart from doing training talking to other people of how other people do things you see yeah no it is it does yeah it does open your eyes up when you but then that's the whole thing about these podcasts and um cpd and meetings you get you know you do get to know other bits of information you know if you bury your head in the sand and you don't keep up with things um and and again just because i've done something a long time doesn't mean to say i know everything absolutely not um you know people will change my mind all the time and i'm like oh yeah why did we do it like that uh yeah maybe you shouldn't maybe you shouldn't but

48:53 on the same hand you look at it and go don't be such a pussy you know you can do that um So it's a bit of both, isn't it? But you've got to be open-minded. And just because you've done something one way, I mean, we used to use asbestos all the time. Well, that didn't work out well, did it? No, no. So you've got to keep up with it and look at every technique you can. I do think the industry as a whole seems to be more open-minded than they used to. When I first started in the company, I used to go to on-the-road days, and a lot of the let's say the old boys whenever somebody would talk about something new they'd be very cocky about it i don't need to know this but nowadays it seems to be that they're open-minded and they listen they don't just start shouting out crap i think a lot more people have um the way that society is going as well i think that a lot more people have realized that we've got to make ourselves look a lot more professional you know because generally speaking most people are professional but we also need to give that image to the to the to joe public specifically with um the anti-brigade coming on now you know not necessarily the sabs but if you just follow a few of the pages where people are saying oh dear little rats just leave them alone they're not hurting you we have to count we have to counteract that in in a in a very robust way and say yeah we are the guardians of public health and we are professionals uh professional guardians of public health and get rid of there's nothing wrong with the rat catcher image but we have to dispel it it's more like i think obviously we call pest control but when you frame it more we are public

50:42 health, I think people get it more. Yeah. Because it is. Because if you tell them what the disease is that they can carry, suddenly, it's like with some people, you think, do we need a stupid disease like the Black Death to come back to get the message home? Then there's one, some of them. But you might find out that some of them ones that love the earth and that, the minute they get a rat issue and they'll laugh, they'll ring you, but they won't tell no one. No, no. Not in my house. Long night in my house, it's fine.

51:12 but you know we do it is an ever-growing you know in paris and places like that that they've been you know they've actually had discussions on whether just to leave them alone um in new in new york now they're talking about banning second generation anticoagulants um so and that's that's that's come to the fore i think it's been i think it's been um uh dispelled now but because of it is a dangerous one because although calico syphilis good what if dogs and that get to the bait and everyone says and second gen but second gen at least you've got an antidote if you have yeah well you get you know and again you get to the situation like they had in california where they banned because of the mountain lion they got poison but they banned escars but then they brought in something called bromethylene um and bromethylene is a nerve agent and it'll it'll it'll kill you on you know it'll kill a dog no problem whatsoever roll them over straight away well you go i mean they all have to risk just to point out people every bait's got all trap has got a point i'm just pointing out if you were to remove escars completely there'll be a i think there'd be a massive problem in the uk definitely yeah without a doubt you know but but again there's a lot of

52:34 people um and without sounding preachy um there's a lot of people out there that forgot that we nearly lost all escars we've already been down that road we had a vote in um we had to lobby our local uh euro mp because they were going to ban it when we were in the european union and we came very very close to losing it and that's why crew was formulated in the first place yeah the issue is people don't see it that way they don't see it no a lot of people think of crew as being this over-governing body that's the the the seat of all evil and you know how dare they tell us what to do well if they didn't actually tell us what to do and if we didn't hadn't voluntarily um decided that this is the route that we would go down we wouldn't have any rodenticides whatsoever that's what so that's what i mean whether it whether you you can have your beliefs that they they are quite powerful and they're this overriding body that's telling the industry what to do now for whatever reason um yes they are telling the industry what to do yeah but but it is believe it or not it is the medicine that is the good for us yeah now again it's all a lot of people talk about um banning rodenticides to the public

54:06 but a lot of people also didn't don't realize that when the mpta previously asked um for proof of this and to help back it back it up we didn't get any didn't get any so the hse automatically just turned around and said well this is not a problem if you can't prove it there isn't a problem okay because i know the big push at the time was to have every or all baits sold in sealed bait stations which is fine you know that's you know that's not such a bad idea um because of abuse but when the hse turned around and said you show us the uh the proof actual proof not not a facebook post actual photograph customer day what happened then it was like oh i can't say that well if you can't say that they're not going to take us seriously and i think it was and it was scott johnson i think previously that said well she's dead now but you won't get rodenton size band unless you kill the Queen's Corgi with them.

55:12 That's a little bit different now because it's the King's Corgi, but you're not going to get them banned. It's just not going to happen. It's no part of it that HSE said people can't afford pest control, need a cheap way of doing it as well. We all know that they make far more money out of the domestic market than they do out of us. I'm fairly sure of that. And the other thing that you've got to realise is that, most with like most politicians things what you want and what what the government want or what somebody else wants neither's going to get either you're going to have to meet in the middle um so you people think of crew as being four or five blokes sat in a in a room but when you look there's a lot of members of crew it's probably 30 different people or not people but organizations you know you've got farmers gamekeepers um and the lobbying body from the farmers is much bigger it's huge we're tiny yeah so they're gonna keep they're gonna keep their redenticide for themselves they're gonna because that's the way it works people get the wrong perspective of of crew and how it works it's like i see a post one day um i've may have been a post i made on pest perspectives about the industry and stuff.

56:32 Somebody put, yeah, people put crew on their pest control website and then buy two pallets of bait. That's the cheapest way to buy it. But if you do it how you're meant to do it, there's nothing wrong with using bait. There's no reason crews stay to keep bait. Another thing is, oh, it's a profit-making scheme. All the crew courses are free of charge. They are. um obviously if you're not a member of a trade body you can do it i think kill germ still does it free on their website they do yeah and things like it's free of charge mainly you know okay it's not a profit matter it's not a money-making thing but the suppliers also want to ensure that we can continue to buy bait so they can make money so there's money involved oh yeah but but that's that's business but it's not purely as a month the training is not a money-making machine you know how can how can it be you've got say you're a member of rich pest register you've got 35 quid that's it that's it that's it every other bit of training that you can get or need is free it is and you you people are saying you can't afford 35 quid a year no exactly it's not that much i mean i'm sure i'm sure um i'm sure mooney's sitting there with his lamborghini for everyone but again you know i hear i hear the argument that you can't balance the two out because people then turn around and say oh yeah but it's the training look at the hours and hours that we we that we we would need to train and then on this in the same breath they then turn around and say but we want amateur use banned ah so ah right okay but you want it banned but you

58:31 won't keep up with your training if you go down the route of licensing you're going to be spending a week a year in a classroom in places like germany and other places like that you have to do a compulsory weeks learning in the classroom so don't say that's uh 20 cpd points which is 20 hours worth of learning learning so it's too much and then turn around on the same and say you know i gotta admit when it first came in i sort of thought oh christ nobody's gonna i don't need to know this shit why do i need to know this i've done it oh you've made it easier now there ain't they like yeah so self registers made it easier and opening it up more yeah definitely you know like literally i said to somebody is you don't want all you can do is read your magazines you can do the podcast and literally do your crew points you don't have to go if you don't want to go anywhere you can just do that oh okay i says well if you listen to a podcast a week or whatever or in the van and put down what you learn you're done yeah you don't have to go anywhere but as as it's better to go in person that things are bent you learn more yeah you definitely do in person i think yeah yeah yeah because everybody learns in different ways as well some people like to

59:51 watch a video some people like to listen to a lecture some people like to read it and there's all those different ways that you can you can um you can learn so yeah definitely it is because i ain't you know when it comes to learning i'm not the brightest at all i struggled at school but when it comes to pest control i did all right i yeah i've done it twice i did this by say say few of them aside and the insect version basic ones and a few years later i did the rsph i passed the rodents i failed the other two then came back and passed them passed both of them i did so and i wasn't far off it cockroaches caught me out because where i live approaches don't happen very often done two jobs in my whole six years so far so again yeah i mean we didn't the the when i first started again it was just after crown immunity was lifted okay so you um all be all government buildings prisons um hospitals had complete complete immunity from uh prosecution for public health problems oh sorry that's what you mean you explained it there i get it so they could have a yeah major infestation nothing could be and they did and they did um and luckily luckily for me uh i we we we did quite a few hospitals around here so i learned quite a lot about

1:01:21 cockroaches back then you know much more now then than now because we get very few now but back then you know you'd be there you'd go out at night um you do night inspections in the hospitals and you know go in the kitchen and it was the old yeah and and you i said the story on our podcast the other day i looked we were in and there's an old victorian hospital that was in taunton and uh you could one night i saw this cockroach feeding off of this guy's dead skin on his big tongue yeah so and and it was you know that that it was different it was mainstream roaches but that's where you learn isn't it you know it is because i actually believe what not if i get a roach job i enjoy doing it oh yeah it's because i've never i don't do it often you see yeah there's a roach there's a roach i thought we sorted it like we've got a new contract but that's how we that's how we got it they had a roasting roach infestation and a rat infestation we got a contract out of it but i do enjoy doing stuff I don't do often.

1:02:34 I love, I don't get much bed bug work, but I've been getting more recently and I've been loving the chin chicks. Yeah. Or used to, um, have you ever seen a carpy duster? No. It's like a set of bellows. It's like a set of bellows with a reservoir on it. So what you do is doing a backpack. No, no, no. It's like a set of bellows that you set like, like you start a fire with. it's got a reservoir on it what you used to do is tip your insecticidal dust into it okay um something like for nitrothione um and then what you would do is you'd stand at the end of the tunnel where the roaches were or the ducting and you pump it away and you'd see the big bellows of insecticidal dust going all the way down through the through the uh through the ducting and cover the whole duct up with organophosphate dust oh okay so yeah it was it but you always had to be careful that you knew where it was um where it was going because you know there have been occasions where somebody been pumping it into a hole and that it's been flying out the other side into the canteen or something yeah and then people and people recently been moaning about a bit of chin chicks yeah yeah yeah yeah i was anti i just want to start with i was anti chin chicks i know you were time i know you said francisco was great with me and i'm now an advocate of it i like that stuff yeah but he says to me that's what happens francisco says sean he says it happens as a negative when he says they hear other people doing all right out of it and they change their mind and this as well that's the only thing we if we get a bed book job now i mean don't get me wrong we haven't done big bed book jobs like your

1:04:29 firm have we just get bedrooms you know here and there but yeah it is good but i'll say anything we do now is we offer steaming and chin chicks or whatever they want basically but again without listening to things like this uh your podcast or any of the podcasts yeah um you don't learn about these things you wouldn't even know no you know you can imagine just not ever i mean i've never seen a chin checks advert in any of the pest magazines or anything you would never you would never get them at any on-road days because all i've heard i'm not saying which companies but all i've heard is companies slagging chin chicks off recently i imagine that because chin chicks is doing very well and the same pest controllers are no longer buying the same insecticides they bought off the firms eating into their profits and that's why they're now moaning about it i would say it must be difficult for for the for the reps as such because you know with redenticide usage going down i hope well it should be yeah you know that's going down and now maybe i don't say diatomaceous earth or whatever if that starts going down as well because there's chin checks available then it's like oh shit i've got to make my money up somehow yeah i know i totally get it

1:05:51 I do. I'll be honest, the most popular podcasts of the year are mine so far. I've all been bed book, chin chicks, steaming related, and heat treatment related. The most, you know, the bigger numbers they have. It seems to be the year of the bed books on both our podcasts. I think yours have done very well too. They have the year of the bed book. The year of the bed book. That's what I reckon it is. More than wasps. But not in my area. I've definitely done more Wasnest than bedbugs. I can assure you.

1:06:25 I don't get many bedbug jobs. I don't. Right. No, we get a few. You do. You do some big jobs, but I would like them if they were to come to me, but they haven't currently. But you never know, do you? You never know. No. No. But should we talk about MPTA? Yeah, whatever you want, mate. Yeah. So there we are. So I will click onto my other screen. So I can't see you. Where were we? Pest Tech. Where did I put it? So apparently, is it right, Hugh, someone was saying that Pest Tech 2026 is now sold out.

1:07:08 Is that right? Apparently so, yeah. Apparently so, but it's not. We can confirm it's 100% not. Registration is open. It is. And it's also another point. I was chatting to somebody who was a BPCA member that they didn't think they could attend Pest Tech because they're a BPCA member. Just confirm that anyone who wants to come, MPCA member, BPCA member, not a member of anything, just a member of CPD body or someone who wants to join industry. It is free to all and you could just register and come.

1:07:44 So it's open to all. in all honesty sean i even if you haven't registered i think if you rocked up and just wandered in nobody's exact there aren't bouncers on the door that are going to kick you out so obviously you encourage it but yeah they they do have security on the door obviously but um they will let if you tell someone you haven't registered is that sean muller is that you on the you're doing the you're doing the bouncing sean no but didn't you know we do is actually security check any tickets at the door they have yeah yeah i told you it's you you're doing it yeah you are i don't i don't check people's tickets i'm the welcome face this year i am but yeah no there is actually you've got to make sure how many people in the building but yeah if you if you do just rock up you can just i'm pretty sure you can sign up and they'll let you in they will yeah yeah because they have to click you in and out but yeah i will be there there'd be a stand inside the building and it would be me and my wife saying hello.

1:08:47 It will be. Ta-da! Hello! Because we've got the, we've got the three, last year I was giving out the three cards for the coffees, the coffee area, having coffee and us. I was. And that was, that was really popular. People were trying to get more than one card. They were. I was like, no, one each. But I think, I think the coffee's going to be better this year, isn't it? I don't drink coffee, so I wouldn't know. I don't like it. I'm one of their people. I don't really drink tea either. I don't. Oh, no.

1:09:23 So, yeah, it's the 4th of November, everyone, at the Arena MK Milton Keynes from 9 till 4. It's over 80 exhibitors. Look at that. Pest perspective is there as well. It is. The seminar floor. um so what we got here so this workshop let's see if it loads it will load so there's uh the wasp law so a spray spray sprayer servicing by paul frost um there's bed bugs by luke jones i imagine that would be relation to bed bug dogs i would canine detection um and yeah there's there's there's all sorts here there is if you can see it on screen yep they can see it just check in but yeah there's there's all sorts there there's perspectives down there at 3.15 to um 3.45 if you want to come and check it out alex is there talking about insecticide formulations that's it and also it might sound a boring subject but actually insecticidal formulations is quite an important subject.

1:10:38 So, well worth having a listen to that. That would be good.

1:10:42 And then there's pest control in the countryside, the role of gamekeepers in rural pest management. And I think this guy's been on your podcast, John Dickinson from Inverbal. Inverbal, yeah. He owned NBC Environmental. Okay. And then there's Duncan Bosworth from NPTA. talking about pest control and agriculture and there's also a talk about crew. You all love crew. This will be rammed out. Everyone loves to talk about crew by Dr. Matthews and Richard Mosley at 9.15 till 10 o'clock. And there's wildlife management ideas as well by Alan Johnson.

1:11:29 But yeah, there's plenty of talks for people. There is. Covering all sorts. It's all CPD. I believe there's a trail as well. So you can get some CPD. If you go to the Pest Tech stand, the MPTA stand, I think there's a, you complete a trial. Is that right, Hugh? You do certain things to qualify for so much CPD. CPD trail, yeah. There is. What else have we got here? There's going to be a Pest Tech gallery. There is. I don't know if that's got anything yeah Pestec Gallery I think that might that may be part of the trail I don't know that is sponsored by Barentine Environmental it says there so that would be nice to look at I'll have a look at that I will but yeah it's a good it's a good day people you don't have to just and here we go we can talk more knowledge trail so you get one point per seminar so that's 45 minutes a total cap of four um and with a wasp area 30 minutes per talk so that's half a point basically and one point at each stand total cap of four um so basically and general attendance is two but also if you do attend the all the all the all the talks if you are self-registering, you can just self-register stuff as well.

1:13:04 There's no one stopping you. So, as well. But that's what a lot of people do as well. But the Knowledge Trail has the British Pest Register's part of it this year, apparently. So that should be good. That is. So where else is there on this site? Yeah, it says there, British Pest Register and basis prompt. So you can get 10 points in total if you're behind with your CPD. you shouldn't be but there'll be many people that is I think I'm at 76 for this year I am and I haven't even loaded all the ones I could load but yeah that's probably a bit too much it's just bits and bobs I've learnt there's a rage room if you want to let your anger out there's a rage room you can smash things up to your heart's content I think you have to just queue up for this one.

1:13:59 There's no booking of this one. You just stand there and wait. It's all recyclable. Apparently, whatever you smash up gets recycled as well. That does. I can see that being very popular, that one. I can. The Rage Room. And there's In The Mix by Killgerm. You can book for this one. I did it last year. It's quite fun. It's, uh, yeah, there's some available. 11am, 12, one two so it looks like the early ones are already gone it does so yeah you get smashed does it yeah yeah there's quite a lot you could they literally let you put every one in it they do so yeah the wine was quite strong i did last year um they just teach you how to make cocktails basically it's quite fun and then they they light it up so it's got like you know flames and stuff coming out like a cocktail give us a pint of cider what's the matter with it oh no it's but it was very popular last year but the idea that's gold that'll do me they give you after they give you it is a bit of promotion for their if they are doing in the mix next year the event the day event it's a bit of promotion for that as well I think yeah if they're doing it again I imagine they probably will be if they're doing this and yeah, is there an exhibitors list?

1:15:27 Yeah, basically. Most of your main suppliers will be there. They will. Loading, Killgerm, OptiCatch, Baratine, Pelsis. There's loads, there's too many to mention. Literally, if you can see it on screen, it's there. Now, if you want to... You all talk online about not liking crew. They have their own stands, so if you want to go and give your opinion, You can go and tell them. Many of you won't. You'll just moan online. But there is the opportunity to go and have your say if you want to. Because they are there.

1:16:03 But, yeah, there's loads here. But I'm looking forward to it. I'm going down on the Tuesday at 11 or 12 o'clock to help set up. And then it's on to the Pestec in the morning. It is. So I hope to see you all there. if you're there, come and say hello. You won't have a choice if you come through the door first thing. You won't. So, yeah. I hope to see everyone there. So, yeah. That's a bit of promotion there. So, if you're not going and you've thought about going, just register and go. But as Hugh said, you could just turn up and I'm fairly sure they will let you in.

1:16:45 They will. They will let you in. they'll have a quick they'll have a quick register panel because they've also got a printing section too where you can just register and print it and go in they have I won't be standing in the actual main entrance bit I'll actually be in the building this time not like last year because it was like I was giving out the cards and it was like they were walking past you and you're having to shout do you want a free coffee do you want a free hot drink it was quite fun there that's where I met Alex Jones, the nice young lad that works for MPTA.

1:17:20 Alex Jones is a nice lad, he is. He's a nice lad, he is. But yeah, yeah, so, hopefully to see everyone there. That'll be good. That will. Just thought I'd plug it while we're on here. And the podcast, The Beauties and Beasties. You are the main brains behind it, aren't you? because uh sean and sure i wouldn't i wouldn't say the brains it's just don't know well they just turn up a new bucket you do everything can they just turn up yeah yeah but but that's only because i've got the time to do it and they're busy so i i yeah i just arrange it all and get the guests as as you know they're not that easy to guess get and chase down so yeah i just do that and do the graphics and stuff like that.

1:18:13 So just got the time, really. Exactly. It's not as easy as everyone thinks because you got called lazy the other day, didn't you? Yeah, for using AI. Yeah. I use AI, actually, everyone now. My missus does not make them anymore. AI does it now. So call me lazy if you want. I don't care. Everyone else is doing it. They are. Well, they don't. We do it voluntarily. you know we don't get any money we put all the money in ourselves um so to spend also another five hours trying to do an advert when you've got other things on as well certainly um and it's not even that easy with ai you've got to take some um you have get the prompts right and it gets things wrong and it still takes time it's not as easy as everybody thinks to just suddenly go uh you know I'll make me an advert and it comes up with some spurious load of bollocks.

1:19:14 Yeah. See, with mine, obviously, because I now release them, I actually feed AI the transcript as well. So I actually say on some of them, it's like, tell me the best title and it reads the entire transcript. Yeah. Because the website, I've got what I do, I upload it to YouTube unlisted. Yeah. then the transcript comes through early then i feed it a transcript and then sometimes like the title catchy titles get put in the in the thumbnail but it all takes time although yes i will admit this podcast is sponsored i do get money um to help run the show and all the software but um it does but still time isn't it still takes time certainly not going to be you know you're not making money, you're covering costs more.

1:20:08 The website, I think I've upgraded the package. It's like 22 quid a month or more now. It's got a lot more features. It's literally, if you were to type in a podcast I've got, the website now gives people the entire transcript and everything though. So AI should be picking up what Pest Perspective is because it's built that way. But that's through the sponsorship I've got, upgrading stuff. But not every podcast has got a website. There's some big podcasts that don't have a website. You don't have to have one.

1:20:41 I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to this stuff. I like to have it all. But it costs, doesn't it? You don't have to. Yeah, it's all money. It's all money. All money. But yeah, Hugh is right. It's not easy to get some guests and a lot of guests don't want their people to come on. Yeah. Shout out to Rich Falkner. I'd love you on, mate. But as you've told me, it's a no. Yes, I'd love to get him on. He said to me, I'd love to go on both your podcasts. Yeah, there have been quite a few, actually.

1:21:12 Generally speaking, I don't mind people that say no, it's just when you're plain ignored. Well, yeah, because he always says to me, I've tried again, Sean. Oh, no, Richard. No, Richard always say no, and Michael from Bell and various other ones have said no, we can't. But, you know, it's just when you say no. I prefer the honesty. Yeah, just to say no. no no really can't I'm afraid um but it just gets a bit annoying when you're ignored completely but hey hun their loss not mine well yeah obviously since the podcast has grown I do get a lot more interest and I do get people pitched to me and a lot of them I'm I make sure that are genuine first I try to because never get pitched at all don't you I get emails daily no okay I get emails I get, honestly, a lot of them ain't the right fit at all.

1:22:06 Probably mine and Sean's ugly faces and miserable faces looking at them. They think, well, fair enough. I can annoy them. Oh, no idea. But I get pitched. Probably five or six email me a week or more. No. But I've only ever said yes to about two of them. One of them came on the podcast. He was an SEO guy, Gabe Bustos. He was quite good because that's interesting. that is that stuff but i try and get people who help people's businesses or within pest control so it's not just on the ground stuff like your one with lulu the other day was excellent i loved it i thought that was great i did um cool a lot more around the learning aspect of it as well and you know ai and various different women in pest control i thought it was a great podcast it was but yeah so who have you got next week on your podcast I don't know news next week news one next week beauties and beasties message you and he'll get it on the show news next week and then we've got a pest tech special the week after so yeah and then got another raft of guests coming up nice nice i've got a few booked but uh hugh came into the rescue somebody had to pull out and so i was going doing a solo today and he's like no i can come on if you want i went okay let's do it so yes so hopefully people have enjoyed this podcast uh yeah they will you repeating myself i honestly think they will and there might be some listeners that don't haven't heard your podcast hopefully hopefully so otherwise it's just be boring listening the same old stories well i had to have you on at some point i wanted to get you on i don't think it's boring i know you do but i've

1:24:04 not actually although i came on your podcast it wasn't really around me it was around why i put dead animals shouldn't be on social media yeah i remember yeah yeah well so at some point if people want me to be on my own podcast which i think is weird but if you ever want it i'll get someone on to interview me to host it or I could do a solo interview myself through chat GPT but I don't think I want to do that really yeah I have asked chat GPT that and it's like that would be weird now I don't think so but yeah so thanks you for coming on you're welcome you're welcome and I will yeah speak to you soon so alright mate thanks everyone and I'll speak to you okay look after sales next week I'll just end the recording now So thanks, everyone.

1:24:53 Take care, everyone.