How to Grow a Pest Control Business: Scaling, Marketing & Entrepreneurship | Allan Draper - Pest Perspectives

Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 40. This week we have Alan Draper from the Book Books podcast. I can't believe I've got the main man, the big boys and the pest control industry on. How you doing? Hey, great, Sean. Thanks for having me. No, thanks for agreeing to come on because you, you are a busy man. I've got, I've got a new title you got, you got books, you got proof of pest control. You've got lizards, you've got Rana, you've got a law company. Yeah, you're a you're a busy man.

And yeah, you are. Yeah, I, I, I stay pretty busy, I think, just just like a lot of us. But I've got some really good help, so I definitely don't do it alone. I I I couldn't. That's that's fair. Like this. So what's what's the origin story? What made you want to get into pest control businesses as such? Well, I mean, I since the time I was a little kid, I was an entrepreneur and I wanted to build a business. I just didn't know it. And I was always, you know, knocking doors and raking leaves and shovelling snow.

And I had a paper route. And so I was always hustling. And I ended up going to law school and I practise law for a few years afterward. And I was, the idea was that I was going to start a law firm, but I had a brother that was selling pest control door to door and having some success with that. And so I went out one summer and I was a technician for another company and, and we were like, hey, let's start a, let's start a company. You do the sales, I'll be the technician and do the operations. And we tried, that was 2007.

We tried, but we couldn't get along. We didn't have enough capital. We just couldn't get it off the ground. And so I ended up going to law school. So I actually went to law school after we tried the first time practise. Law for. A few years and then there was another opportunity with that same brother.

Once I was practising for a few years and so I said, hey, let's give it another shot, let's make it, let's make it work this time. Yeah, No. Sounds sounds good. It does. It's a very different world. America. Door knocking is not a thing we do in England. You go up and down streets, you'll probably get slapped. People think you're dirty. It's a different. It's a different. It's different way over here. It is, Yeah. And I mean it here, it's, it's not always welcome, right? You're, you have people that really, really don't like it.

They I've seen videos of door to door sales reps getting guns pulled on them, getting the cops called, being arrested. But. That's it doesn't happen a lot but it but it does happen. So maybe it would happen more over there, I don't know. Well, yeah, but mine is the guns part. We think we're not allowed to have them unless you've got a lot, unless you've got a licence, but it's obviously you've got the bug Bucks platform you have. So I have a lot of pest controllers and basically the whole pest control industry.

Listen a lot of them. This is this podcast and quite often we have the idea is education. So I thought Someone Like You, it might be good to get some knowledge off you because you know what it's like to start a company to to like take your first technician on when the right move is. Have you got any advice that you could you could give to people when starting a pest control? I know it's a different country, but it's the same principle. I'd I'd imagine, because it's quite scary thing to go it alone.

It is. Yeah, absolutely. If I mean, if you have 10 hours, I can give you my startup advice or or more. But you know, for me, I think it was all about what my perspective was and what I wanted to do with the company because I didn't grow up in pest control like some people do, not all of us, but there's some people that they got a technician job early on and they work for a pest control company for a while, or maybe they did cells or office work. I didn't really have that. I, I did have a short summer where I work for a pest control company.

And so because of my perspective, I, I didn't have this attachment to the technical work of pest control like a lot of people have. So it was always, when I started it, it was always, hey, how are we going to grow it? And so from day one, I was trying to replace myself where, you know, within the first week that our doors were open, we had hired A technician and we didn't really have the revenue to support that technician, but we did it because of the perspective and what our goals were with the company.

So the first thing I would say is identify what you're trying to do with the company and what your purposes are. There's some people, you know, they're one man shows or one person shows. They do everything in the company and they wouldn't have it any other way. And they're it's not right or wrong for them that they're happy with that. They don't have the stress of employees. They don't, you know, they grow by word of mouth. They keep things small and stress free. That's just not what we were wanting to do.

So when you're starting get identify a few things what you know, what are the things that you want to do long term in your company? I always say when you start a business, there's three stages. Stage 1 is as as the founder owner of the business. Stage 1 is you do what you have to do to keep the lights on. You do what you have to do. Stage 2 is you do what you're good at. And so a lot of us bring sales experience or technical experience. So that's stage 2. And stage 3 is you do what you want to do.

For some people that never changes. They just, they, they want to do it all on their own and they do. And then they're doing what they're good at and that's what they want to do. For me, it was never like that. It was always, how do I replace myself and scale this company? Because I want to be involved in in the large picture, talking about the big picture goals of the company and not driving around from stop to stop. OK. Because obviously if you you've got goals like that, you can't be in the van, you can't be in the van, can you, because you've got to drive that, push the company forward.

You have exactly that was the main, that was the main goal. So obviously with that, what was it? I mean, what did it feel like to take on a technician for the first time? I hear that's one of the most daunting tasks, taking one on. Or didn't it bother you? Was it like the stress of having having to pay someone else you probably couldn't afford to pay? It, I mean, it was definitely scary. We had hired door to door sales team and so we already had some people that were working for the company and and so that helped because that was before we even started, before we had our licence that that helped us kind of get over that initial, you know, Hey, there's, there's people that rely on me for a paycheck.

Like I remember when we signed our first door to door sales Rep and I had this feeling I was like, OK, I get, I guess we're doing this because I, you know, I couldn't, I couldn't back out. There were people relying on me and but yeah, there's definitely that pressure. We, we hired that first technician. It was, hey, I, I have to, I have to step up and like, no matter what happens, I have to make payroll. And in my company, we, we have two immovable objectives. And that is #1 the safety of our people and #2 making sure that they get paid on time every single time.

Everything else we do in our company is secondary. And so when you hire that first technician, you have those two pressures. Hey, I have to make sure that technician has what he needs, the vehicle is safe, we're doing training and all these things to make sure he or she doesn't get hurt. And then #2 we got how to make sure regardless, even if I don't get paid as the owner, that the the technician and all of the employees get paid on time. Because I suppose that's quite important, because without them and you're not paying them, they'll just leave and you've got nothing.

That's what happened. You know, there's a lot of mistakes I've made over the years and there's a lot of things that I've done wrong and I've screwed up some partnerships and I've messed up marketing and I've lost customers and done all sorts of stuff. I think we all do to some extent. But I have never not paid people on time and that's. Good. Because you can't really come back from that. You really can't you, especially with that person, there will always be a question of, you know, hey, is, you know, am, am I working for free?

You know, am I actually going to get paid? And you don't want them focused on that. You want them just getting, you know, into what they're doing and taking ownership of it. So of all the mistakes I've made, I I've been able to avoid that one for the most part and and it's been a blessing. That's that's that's good to hear that is with with regards to like when you first started the the second time how apart from door to door. I'm just trying to bring some UK suspected perspectives here. What would you outside of that?

What were you doing to try and get work in the door? Apart from the door to door salesman with Google reviews big few next door. Would you use apps like that? I was I don't think next door was around. Was it actually they thinking of it? Yeah, I don't think Next door was, but we had Angie's List. I don't know. List. And, and back in those days, so this was about 11 years ago. OK. Yeah. So. Angie's List was really producing for us. We we use Thumbtack a little bit in those days. OK. But you know, lead generation sites.

But in those early days, even from the beginning, we started building Google campaigns, paper click, Adword campaigns, and we were very, very deliberate about our online presence and our reviews. We, you know, we're in this interesting business where people don't really come into our office. So, so our storefront is a couple of things. One, it's our trucks and our technicians. How do they appear? How do they show up at people's houses? And two, what is our online presence, especially with regard to reviews?

So we, we set the foundation for the, you know, the, the rest of the company back, you know, 10-11 years ago by making sure we were getting a lot of really good reviews and that we were properly addressing the negative ones and reviews. And now with SEO and digital marketing, those things are so important to pay per click. And what's happening with AI and with Gemini, with Google and search results and ChatGPT, they used to kind of be segmented where it where it was. We have, you know, paper click.

And then you can do SEO for building the brand or pushing your, your page up to the top and things like that. But now they're so interconnected that it doesn't make a lot of sense to do a lot of heavy paper click Google advertising without doing SEO and making sure you have your highly rated and all those things. Oh no, yeah, I totally get it. Because I can guarantee the vast majority of people watching this podcast, I'm talking to you UK pest controllers. I don't think a lot of them are are investing or looking into how AI work because because I, I've got all the apps and I try and find out where my company is and it has been coming up, you know, in the local area because people don't realise it's coming.

Google's great. Google is great. There's going to be a time and people are already doing it when they talk to their phone. What's the best pest control company in the area? And you want your company to come up? You do. You got to look into ways of how to do it. It's not as easy as you think, but you can do it. You can. Yeah, exactly. And, and Even so, so Google has Gemini, which is their version AI, right? And I don't know how prevalent it is in the UK, but here it's starting to produce search results.

So it's, it's already happening. And it's, it's this combination of your, your entire online presence. Yeah, no, I've been playing with it and I think Gemini is here. I, I don't know stats on what people are using, but I would, I would say people are obviously don't know the figures, but I'd say people are starting to and people you've got, if you're watching, it's in the UK anyway, you've got to start looking into where your company is on AI. You have trying to get it listed the best you can you and, and working it out because obviously you've, you know your stuff.

You've got lizard marketing as well. You, you're quite the marketing man, you are. Yeah. So again with, you know I mentioned earlier that I don't do it alone. I I'm a lawyer turned bug guy. That's what I consider myself. And so I do own lizard marketing and we focus almost exclusively 90 plus percent of our business is in the pest control space. But I have people that know way more than I do about marketing. And so any questions that I have goes directly to them. And it's one of those things that when you're building a pest control company in those early days, especially if you have a kind of a shoestring budget, smaller budget, you may not have the luxury to hire another company.

But as soon as you do, I recommend that you hire somebody because it changes so fast. The other day I asked my lizard partner. We were at Pest World last week. Oh, yeah, that, that looks amazing. That does. We've got nothing like it. Not not the amount of days you've got. We haven't. Yeah, it's almost an entire week. And I, you know, across the aisle I said, hey, Matt, you know, is, is digital marketing the same today as it was in January, you know, of this year, just 10 months ago, 10-11 months.

And he starts laughing because he, yeah, I've heard him say several times that it's changing so fast. And it makes it really tough for a pest controller to stay on top of their business, on top of their customers, on top of their cells, their financials, their employees, their insurance, all these things, and still compete in a digital marketplace. But again, I remember our early days, we didn't have this huge budget and so we would try to do what we could. But the, the key is as soon as you have enough to kind of splurge on a digital marketing agency, you should absolutely find a good one, whether it's lizard or not, find a good one and use them because it's, it's so highly specialised.

It's tough for us to, you know, for the layperson, myself included, to kind of keep up with everything. Yeah, it's, it is. It is obviously. I, I, well, I don't know if you heard of him. I watch a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk stuff. Do you have you heard of him? And he is always talking about what's coming around the corner. You've got to, I don't know. You don't take everything word for word, but you've got to try it. But he's a lot of time. I think he says you need to try it yourself as well as in before so you can see what you market.

The company's trying to do is sometimes some people can actually do it better than their marketing companies. Not all. Not about Lizard, but you said sometimes you could probably do a better job, but you got to give it a go. So I'm always trying to to do it. I am. Yeah. And I, I really like the idea of you have to know enough, yeah. So that you can manage somebody to do it. I'm, you know, if you put me out in the field, I'm going to be probably the worst technician that proof my pest control company has.

That being said, I know enough to where I can tell if they're doing a good job. And it's the same with digital marketing. You have to know enough to be able to manage them to be looking at data. It's like, hey, is my phone ringing? Am I paying these guys for nothing? And then, you know, your second point about you being possibly being better is absolutely true. You know, if and there's I think the big thing that plays into it is no one's going to care as much as you do, right? It's it's your company.

It's like your kids like. I. Love. I love kids, but I don't love anyone's kids as much as I love my own, right? And I think that's the way things should be. So if you know, and that kind of goes back to what I was saying, when first you do what you have to do, then you do what you're good at, then you do what you want to do. Yeah. And so if digital marketing, if you've got yourself into a position where you're like, hey, I have some time. Absolutely. There's information everywhere. It it's a highly specialised field.

Oh, it is. If you put the time and attention into it, it's it's definitely possible. Yeah. Because what I was saying that is because although you've got, you've got to understand the analytics and what they're telling you, because I'm not saying, oh, there's some companies I've heard that charge exorbitant amounts of money and the pest control owner doesn't understand that they're not really doing a lot because it's just going, Oh yeah, and they're just paying it. And in the end you find out two years later, oh, it wasn't worth the money.

So you got to not understand your return on investment as well with. It exactly. And another thing is digital marketing is very interesting because the data sometimes it's not reliable and it's a little bit there. I have this saying that it's like the fox guarding the hen house, where it's like the people that are producing the data are the ones that are doing the work. And so to your point, you want to be able to to know it we using your own data Google Analytics. Is a great spot using your phone system and tracking calls and identifying them as customer service or leads or whether they're qualified or not.

You have to have your own data so that when you did your marketing company, you have your weekly meeting with them or whatever the cadence is. You can say, hey, I, you know, here are my call logs. You're saying that I got 100 leads. I got 10 phone calls. Help help me make sense of this. This is a, this is an issue in digital marketing. We pride ourselves at Lizard on being transparent. Because I struggled with this, that's why I started Lizard in the 1st place. I tried everything I did in house.

I tried different agencies. I, you know, try to do it myself. So you're absolutely right that you have to know enough about it to be able to understand the data and I think even more importantly to know whether the data that you're you're looking at is accurate. Yeah, you do. Do you, do you, do you think in pest control that go back to Gabby Vee again? Do you think the personal brand inside and where within pest control like making content around your company? Do you think video content and that kind of Instagram, TikTok, do you think that's important to the to the business or do you think it's not or is it just part of them?

Oh, the mixture. You think I. Think you need some sort of social media presence. You'll have some people that will that want to look you up, that want to see if you have pictures of your truck, especially if you're doing door to door marketing, but other forms of marketing too. They're going to say, hey, you know, it's, it's a form of social proof where it's like, OK, you know, looking at the reviews. That being said, that bar is really low. That's a create a Facebook page, create a Instagram page, post some pictures, post some team pictures, information about the company.

And then there's this big gap between that what you absolutely need and the companies that use it for traction. And I have a friend that they are very good at social media marketing. They work almost exclusively from influencers, social media marketing and referrals, but but that's their main thing. So it is really hard to just dabble in social media. And one of the reasons is pest control is not sexy, man. It's not it's not like people go to their Instagram. They don't want to be looking at bugs, man, that, you know, we do because we're nerds, but they don't they don't want to be looking at stuff.

They want to be looking at Ferraris and you know, dresses or new shoes or the latest sports updates or whatever, maybe politics or whatever. So, so you, the way to do it is you're, it has to be, if you're going to go in, you have to go all in on social media and it has to be part of your persona. And the way to do it is it has to be entertaining. It cannot just be a look at these all these bedbugs all over somebody's bedroom. That's a promise. How many views? Like you get yeah, yeah, and and, and, and that's The thing is that I, I don't know and you probably know more about this than I do, but but for me and my markets, that's not going to lead to a sell.

I think. I think the people in in my markets that that want to see that they're, they're my competitors, right? They think it's cool. And so my buddy owns nice, NICE pest company in Arizona. So for the listener, you can check that out and see what they're doing. They do trendy videos and. I think they want to do the funny videos and they they kind of, I'm sure I've, I've followed their Instagram. I'm sure I do. They've been on the podcast, haven't they? Your podcast? Have they? I'm pretty sure I followed just off that to see what they were doing.

Very interesting stuff. That is to get the to get clients in on it too, don't they as well? Is that right? Yeah, that's exactly right. That's them. So they've but they my pest control company proof our brand is a little more how do I say this? It's it's professional is not the right word because I'm making it sound like they're unprofessional and they're not. But ours is maybe more serious, maybe that's the word. Ours is more more serious. And so that wouldn't really work for us unless we completely pivoted.

But I'm telling you, it works great for those guys. Right, it's good to hear it is it's like I know I'm I'm quite I do social media, but in my local area, you know, like you know, next the next door app. I really works really well for me. I've had customers at the door saying you're that next door celebrity. No, I'm not you put they said you post no end because I don't, I don't just post about pest control. I did a weight loss journey. I've done charity walks, I've done all sorts. So they see the whole thing, not just I kill, I kill things.

So I get people saying I was like I'm no celebrity. Tell me you are No, no. Well, and the so it just gets the word out, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, and and for and, and that works because it's, but that's your brand. Yeah, that's your personal brand. That's not the company brand. So when people they see you and then and it resonates with them and you have instant credibility because they're like, I've seen you before, right? Like I I follow you or whatever. So that that also works. But then it becomes really hard for you to detach from that, which some people don't want to like, like me and me and bug bucks right hand in hand.

So it's like you just weigh the options. But it definitely, it definitely works because it's it's the new age form of credibility. When those people see you and they're like, you're famous and man, those guys, they're going to be customers for life. Well, yeah, it's nice. It's nice to see. It is. It's got a lot of work, so and and reviews on Next Door are not easy to get. I've got 46. You know, I'm the best in the area because no one, no one tries on Next Door to get reviews, you see, but not many pest control companies.

I mean, it's a new a lot of times when you go to training days, if they were to ask the question, who does, who's got a Google My Business page, Not many people put their hands up and but I've got 84 reviews now. The company's been going over 10 years and that's because me, I've only got in since 2020 with my dad. I've been trying to push it upwards. Just built a new website we have or someone's built it for us. We're trying to push the company forward because one day I would love to have employees so you know, going forward, not just be, you know, work by myself and my dad, but trying to learn all this.

I'm not saying I'm going to become a proof. I'm just saying that a little bit bigger one day. Yeah, Hey, you, you, you never know, man. And yeah, you're going about it the right way. Where you're, you're a lot of marketing is testing a lot of it's an experiment. And and the trick is I'm going to hear some ideas and I'm going to try them in in his book Good to Great, which is behind me, that red one right there, Jim Collins, he talks about when the business is making a decision, first they fire, first they fire bullets, then they fire cannonballs.

And what he means by that is they're honing in on their target. And so with marketing, you're trying to see what works for you. We have at proof we have 10 locations and. Ice. Wow. And, and not everything that works at one works at the other. And, and even if it does, it works in a little different way. Our pricing is different or our message is a little bit different. And so it's so when you hear ideas like on this on Sean's podcast and you're, you know, you're getting new ideas, it's not necessarily going to work for you.

But what you do is you test it. Yeah. So you, you, you've tested before you fire those cannonballs, those, you know, those large marketing campaigns, you make sure and you hone in on that target and figure it out. It's true, but you can't a lot of the time. Some people give it a week or two and give up because they're not doing it right. I'd say. I say to people sticking a a nicely made graphic on canvas saying we do this etcetera was not going to get you anywhere. I don't think it's not, but that's what a lot of people do Go.

I didn't work. Got to try a little bit harder you have. Yeah, it's funny because when we start, when we start a business, we get so excited and we think we want the world to stop and we think people are just going to be banging our door down to get to us. And then we realise no one even notices, no one cares. And they don't care in like a mean way. They don't care because they don't like you. They the reason why they don't care is because look at all the attention that is taken from us, from our phones and our families and our jobs and our commutes and our, you know, our social lives, our hobbies, all these things.

We're going a million different directions. So what do we do as pest control companies? What do we have to do? We have to make them care. And it's not their job to care. It's our job to make them care. So when you said, hey, yeah, people try for two weeks and they make something on Canva posted and they don't don't get any likes or follows or leads or anything. Yeah, that sounds exactly right. And the, and the reason why is because you have to do the work and you have to do it over and over and over and, and do it consistently.

And then what's funny is one of the most difficult things about business is people will try for years and right before they turn the corner and they quit. And it's like, it's like you, you put in 90% of the work and you gave up two hours before things were going to turn for you. And it's the same with marketing, where especially with digital marketing, you have to put in that money and you're going to be losing the ROI is going to be really low in the beginning. And you have to just keep at it and have faith that it's going to work.

And it eventually you'll either figure it out or something will click and it changes. So you're, I, I love that you said that, that people try for two weeks and quit. It's like no, with, with marketing and with anything else, you have to keep at it and keep at it. And it's like lopsided because the the effort compared to the results, it's lopsided in the beginning where the efforts up here, the results are down here. And then you get to this turning point, right where it flips and then it switches where your effort can be down here and your results are up here.

Exactly because it's like never get complacent and it's like although with social media, a lot of pest control, the companies in UK and then you are scared to post. You've got to learn how to ploy to somebody because you're going to get a bit of stick now and then. I've had it. I I people don't like me killing Wasps and I always I'm always I'm always polite. I am someone comes on next door every year to make I call Martin and tells and tells me off. Nice start. Go. Thank you, Martin. Thanks for the input and he boosts the post by by him commenting.

He boosts the post, but you need to know how to deal with it. Some comments I just ignore because they're trying to bait you in. They are. You've got you've got to learn, don't you, how to do it because you can go really wrong, can't it? It can wait. Why? Why does he not want you killing Wasps? Oh, they're great for the environment, are. We talking about bees? No, no, no Wasps. I know, I know. I know what you're saying. Yeah. We've got a lot of people who love. Yeah, yeah. Don't kill them. But it says they're next to someone's door.

Their children might be stung in public health. I don't go. I don't go with a backpack through the forest like that. It's a this is it's a job. Someone's dangerous. It's dangerous. So you do it. But yeah, you would think that the conversation was about I don't kill peas. I get someone got a guy recommend and he he just removes them. He just be removal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. So you've never had that? They've been telling you all about Wasps. No, I mean, there, there's definitely people out there that that won't, they won't buy pest control.

They don't want the neighbours doing pest control. But I dude, I don't know if I've ever heard somebody say it about the Wasps. They talk about the bees a lot obviously, but but Wasps I don't know. I can find some of the messages. I'll probably send you them and you'll say, you'll say it gives me a whole, you know, their nature, they are nature's pest controls, they eat flies, etcetera. They are. But yeah, that's got you there, isn't it? I thought you would have heard that because you speak to a lot of people.

You do. Yeah, no, I'm I, when you send me those messages, I'm going to post them in the bug bugs group because I people will have a, they'll have a field day with this. They'll really like that. And I mean, there's, there's a lot of like, that's The thing is there's a lot of natural predators of, of insects and bugs, right? We, I like having bats around bats. Bats are great for mosquito control. And it's like, but then the people don't want the bats. It's like I. Don't know in the UK that's a no no that's a 5 grand a bat.

You get heavily protected. We we us pest controllers cannot touch them. No, no, no, I, no, I No, we we can't either. I was just saying that that bats are good for mosquito control. So because they'll eat mosquitoes. Yeah, no, not killing them. Oh, no. But I didn't know how it worked over there. I didn't. But yeah, no, it's the one thing that we get told if you find bats or bat, get out. You can't go in unless you've got a. You have to get someone else involved. Then it comes very costly. It does.

It does. But yeah. So is there any, is there any mistakes you see people, people doing when they first start, but you see over and over and over. Yeah, I think a couple like low hanging fruit items are #1 they don't keep track of their books and and manage their money properly. I, I don't know why I don't know. It's be, if it's because they're not comfortable with it, it's not really their thing. But you need financial statements so that you know where your money's going. And a lot of people think they can manage their money from a, a bank account, like a checking account, but you can't.

You, you need to see what those different items are going to and, and what your business is costing you. I, another thing I see a lot is people think when they start a business, that money's just going to start flowing in. And so they're frivolous with spending and I'll see somebody overspend on a new website or wrap a, a truck or I heard you say van, so a pest control vehicle and or do a whole branding package. I, I like to, I like bootstrap companies and part of that because that's what I did with proof.

We started with some savings and that was about it. We didn't borrow any money. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with it, it's just not how we did it. But I've just never really been an overspender. And the reason why most businesses fail, at least in the first few years is because they run out of money is because their expenses exceed their cash flow. So I would hit those two things, you know, for somebody starting a business and they're related, right? Make sure you know where your money's going, that you have financial statements set up from the beginning, and then two, that you're not overspending on something that doesn't produce an immediate ROI.

Yeah, no, definitely good advice that that is because a lot of a lot of a lot, I'm not saying all pest control firms do this, but a lot of people get someone to ring around their competitors. I'm just charged less or same as the competitors. But sometimes that can be a loss, a loss leader because you're making, they charge some, some. The rat race to the bottom ends it for some people. And that's not what you want. You've got to make money and that's the idea of it. But there are some charities, There are some charities out there aren't.

There there are and you know, proof has never been a we're going to compete on price. It's good with the lowest, you know, people, although the people that do it, if you're good at it, then I think you can make it work. But you know, if you're wanting to pay your people well and you're wanting to have a nice website and nice uniforms and all these things, it's, it's really tough to do, but being in the middle is a really dangerous spot. I in terms of pricing, I always recommend people are either you're either low or you're high and you wear it right.

That's what you talk about. Like so when people call me and they're, you know, I, I quote them and they say, Hey, that's, that's expensive. And always I love the line. Yeah, if you're looking for something cheap, I'm sorry you, you've called the wrong company. We're a full service, high end pest control company that really just wants to take care of you top to bottom. You call us and we come out the next day, those types of things. So whatever you decide, you, you have to wear it. And it's kind of like your marketing it, it becomes part of your brand.

But pricing and we raise our prices every year a a small percentage and yeah, we've always been in the 80th plus percentile of of our of our markets with price. Well, nice. You should, because unfortunately all the baits, all the chemicals, everything goes up every year and sometimes in recent times, more than once. It shouldn't though, but it does. But you got to, you got to keep raising, as you say, but and then again, a lot of people don't do that. They stay the same, but you can't because you got to work out what your materials are and everything's going up.

You've got to counter it. You have. Yeah. And, and The thing is that so, so there's all these other these external factors that are happening with, you know, in the United States, we've experienced extreme inflation over the last 5-6 years, four or five years, something like that. And so, So what? Something has to give. If you're not raising your prices, but everyone else is raising their prices on you, something has to give. You're either making less money or you're paying your people less money.

And we don't want either of those things to happen because it's not sustainable. No, it's not. No, no, it's not. Are you still good for it's still good for now or do you need to? Do you need to go yet or? No, I still have, you know, I'm still good for another 10-15 minutes. So it's training. Do you believe training, training is a big part of, of running a, running a good pest control company, like keeping your technicians up to date because you, you have licencing over there, don't you? Licencing.

That's not something we have see, we have qualifications and once you've got them, you've, you've got them. We have such but. Yes. So here we have continuing education. Do you guys have that? We do. This podcast is part of it, actually. Oh, believe it. Believe it or not, it's like basically one point for every hour of education learning. Oh my gosh, I'm jealous. That is. That's awesome. No, that wouldn't count. That wouldn't count here. If somebody listened to the Bug Bucks podcast, it should. I'm going to talk to somebody.

All the podcasts, the other podcast you went on, you did go on. Was it you that went on the Beauties and Beasties? Was it you or was it no the the bug box guys were on the Beauties and Beasties in the UK. OK. That must have been my partners. Yeah, it was them. That was because they they went on and they were, they were fascinated by all the differences between the UK and America. They couldn't get over it. I think it's really cool that you guys do the continuing education on this type of stuff. Honestly, this conversation, if I'm a pest control owner is a lot more helpful than some of the continuing education classes that I've been to.

But yeah, that's, that's incredible. We need some reform over here. Our things have changed over the years. They've like there's been new, a new continuous, but we call it continuous professional development. There's a new schemes and I'm on one of the newest schemes, but my points can be used on all of them. But you can literally anything that's learning. You could read the pest control magazine if it took you an hour. There's a point that's cool that you need reforms in America. You need. It needs to happen.

We do because our continuing education just to be honest with you, it's the. Same old time is it? Not in a lot of cases. There's some good stuff, but it's just people what what happens is because it's not, it's, it's, you have to check the box and you have to do it their way. A lot of times they, they tune out. They, you know, it's, this isn't all the cases, right? There's some good stuff out there, but the fact that this counts as continuing education, that's incredible, man. That's like one of the best things I've heard today.

If I wanted to, if I wanted to, I have not listened to your book books podcast. I could actually use one of your podcasts. Say I've learnt this about you, had one recently where you a while ago or weeks, few weeks ago, the one where you got a few bits of sales. What would you do if you were starting now? I could put that in. I could put that in there. Oh my. Gosh, that's I'm going to I'm. Going to do it to show you. That's incredible, man. That's, that's awesome because it, it's so different. It's, it's stuff that like, and, and I think sometimes the best lessons and the things we learned the best from, they're not like they're not courses.

It's just people having a conversation and talking about like, you know, you can't learn to run a business from a book. You can get some ideas and I read a lot, right? But but the way to build a business is to build 1 to just do, just to do it. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. So that's incredible. If you get a continuing professional development, is that what you call it? Continue. Profession. That's it. If you get one of those, man, I'm going to. I want to post that in my group too.

That's incredible. Yeah, I might. I might self register one of them just to show you and it'll be an hour. It'd be a point it will be just under an hour. You can still get away with it. You can but no. So you you think it's important part to keep the technicians trained but is it? Is it a lot of the same you have to do? Is it a lot of the same courses they have to re redo each each time? Is there anything fresh or is it just the same stuff? Yeah, a lot of it is repetitive. It, you know, they're the people that sell the materials and the chemicals.

They'll, they'll do some and I think those are a little more interesting, but the, I think, you know, you asked me if training is important and I think it, I think it really is, but I think it is important not in the continuing, you know, professional development or continuing education, as we call it. I think it's important for the retention because as human beings, we want to feel like we're learning something, that we're getting something out of our jobs. It's not just punch in, punch out that, that we're getting better at something that we're, we're putting ourselves in an uncomfortable situation.

And, and we're, it's uncomfortable because it's new, but we're, we're learning and we're progressing. So I think the training, that ongoing training is really important if you want to retain your people and, and the people make more money and they, they take on more responsibility over time if that's what they want to do. Not everybody wants to do that. Some people are the punch in, punch out. They do a great job. They want to go home to their families. They don't want to worry about anything extra.

But for the people that they're like, Hey, I want to be a service manager. I want to be a branch manager, I want to be a regional manager, I want to be a technical operator. Whatever you, when you provide that training and that feedback, that is a great way to keep them and then you and then you follow it up with allowing them new and different opportunities within your company. That's really good. I'm about to blow your mind. See this book here? There's a book here. He can't. He can't see it. Hang on.

Wait a minute. Blurry. Give me a minute. I'll just settings visual specs off now, can you see it now? Yeah. Right, it's a quiz book. Looks like a crossword puzzle. Yeah, 212 points this is. So that's 12 educational points for doing a fun quiz book.

The £12 this was to buy, but it's worth it. But we only. Need to do 20 hours a year. Is that all we have to do? But I've got 70. I've got 70 correctly. So you have to do 20 a year and that book is 12. So that would get you more than halfway there. You don't have to do that book though, but that's a company that's brought them out and they're planning to bring one out every year that is. So you have to do 20 points. Three of them have got to be crude. They're basically about buying medenticide. So you've got to do that and then you get in, you can buy medenticide as of next year.

But yes, quizzes, the variety is getting really good. You need to start campaigning. Come on. I knew, I know. I. Need to and I have a buddy that owns a company that does the continuing education training and I've always, I'm always talking to him like, hey, we got to mix it up, man. These guys in the UK, they have freaking quiz books. And we're in fact, if I was to go on the book books platform, I could like, oh, I've done this course. I've done that course. I've listened to this but get more. We need to that would be a cool episode where we just talk about, you know, some of the differences and then talk about continuing education or professional development.

And yeah, yeah, that's. Cool. It definitely is. No, Yeah, I think it's been good. I, I want to get you back on in the future because I, I don't think we've scratched the surface here, but I know you're, I know you're a busy man, but yeah, I will, I will input some of the CPD for your podcasts and I will show you. Oh, I love that. Obviously I've got to input it, but I'll blur a bit, few bits out, but I will show you how it's how it is. But it's not like, you know, it's just a certificate, but for next year.

But like, he doesn't say John's done 79 points on the, he doesn't say that, you know, it's just the requirements. But yeah, yeah, no, it's been a a fun time. Alan, thanks for coming on. Would you like to promote anything? Bug bucks or anything? Yeah, just, you know, make sure to check out the Bug Bucks group. We have 5200 pest control owners in the group and we. Have a lot. Awesome, Sean, Awesome. We have a lot of international members. I don't know how many. I, I don't know if there's a way for me to find that out, but so, so check that out, check out the podcast.

You know, for me, I'm just all about helping people grow their pest control companies. So that's why Bug Bucks was built that Sean's doing this, which is incredible for the community and you guys, that's The thing is it here. People are doing this in their spare time just because they want to. They don't even get credits like you guys do, so. It didn't used to be a few years ago. Things have changed, but this, this is kind of a new thing. Within the last couple of years, the beauties and beasties started doing it.

And I found out they got CPD and I was like, I've got so one of them, one of them as part of it, he's got like his real, you know, seriously brainy. And I thought I'll never get CPDI applied for it. And I did. They were like, yeah, yeah. As long as you can say what what someone could learn in each episode, it's fine. That's all. That's all that matters. Even if it's something minute you could, it's still learning. It is that's do you want to mention your bug books, video platform or learning platform?

Someone might be interested in it. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. So Bug Bucks plus we have a membership where you get discounts with a lot of the vendors and chemical companies. But it's a online training, a platform where we release courses each month. And it's just all about helping people solve problems within their pest control companies, whether that's producing better financial statements or closing more leads or how to train their employees or how to find good people, all, all of those things.

Yeah, nice. Thanks. Thanks for coming on. I've I've got one for you. Who would you like to see on this podcast? Have you got anyone in mind? You think it will be good to come on in the future or next year now because I'm already booked up for the rest of the year. You've got anyone you you could think of. You know what, since we were talking about marketing, you should bring my my partner Matt Rogers from Lizard on this. This Wyatt worked for you. Wyatt. Wyatt Chambers. Do you know Wyatt? I don't know, Wyatt.

Have you got Have I got the wrong? Have you got a has lizard? Got a podcast called Swarm Cast? No. No, it's not a wrong company. Sorry, it is. Swarm cat. I've heard of that before though, but I don't know who does it. The one that does it mainly is Wyatt Chambers. I I thought it was lizard, I got it wrong then sorry I did. Oh no, no problem. Wyatt, sorry, what sorry that that company's swarm pest control marketing that is gotcha. Yes, I've. Heard of them? I will try and get him on the podcast though.

You're the what's his name again, Matt? Matt Rogers? Is he on LinkedIn as well? Yes, he is. I will look him up and say he recommended you Matt with one. T. With one T OK, yeah. But yeah, I'll see if I can get him on sometime next year. But yeah, we have to do this again at some point. But thanks for giving up your time. It's fun. And I'll be in touch with the the stuff I said I'll give you. All right. Appreciate that. My pleasure. Thank you, Sean, Have a rest of your good day. Because you're in the daytime still, aren't you?

I am. I have 9:00 at night here now. Yeah, it is. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And you and you. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. My pleasure.

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