Pest Control Pro - Steve Jackson

On episode seven of Arthropodcast, I talk about age limitations, urban coyotes, and what smokers and bumblebees have in common.

If you have any question, comments, or suggestions leave a voice message on ArthropodAlley.com

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to your pest info on the go, Arthropodcast Episode 7.  I’m your sun-battered and rather lethargic host Steve Jackson.  It’s been busy week.  It’s the tail end of swarm season, it’s getting hotter, so the Bedbugs calls are increasing, and of course the end of the month is quickly approaching, so I’m trying to finish up a route.  I’m a single operator, so the beginning of the month was very termite focused, but as long as the weather cooperates, I should be able to service my remaining customers with no problem.

It was a pretty heavy swarm season, so I got a lot of exercise.  Almost 4 years ago, I turned 40 and just about every time i do a termite job and have to start trenching a house, I say to myself “man, I’m getting too old for this”.

But I really don’t have that excuse anymore.  Last week, I heard about this amazing feat that happened about a year and a half ago. We had the very first person in recorded history swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys without a shark cage.  It took them 53 hours. So for 53 hours, this person was getting baked by the sun, getting stung by jellyfish, tongue swollen to the point, this person couldn’t even talk.  You really need to Google the story just to see how bloated and sunburned and blistered this person was when they finally came out of the water.

The person that achieved this incredible feat? 64 year old woman named Diana Nyad.

I complain about 20 minutes of trenching while this lady is out setting endurance records at the age of 64.

Along the same theme of old news I’m just hearing about – Chicago has an estimated 2000 coyotes living in the downtown area. they’re not aggressive towards humans, in fact, they’re nocturnal.  Most of the public doesn’t even see them. They haven’t been hunting dogs or cats, so for the most part, the general public doesn’t view them as a nuisance.  If anything, it appears as if the coyotes are reducing the city’s rat population.

The back story to his is that there’s been a steady growth in the Coyote population around the outlying Chicago suburbs, the younger ones were forced into the downtown area as a means of survival. and since rats and garbage are plentiful, well, they have all the food they need.

Interestingly enough, as of the day this recording, New York police chased a Coyote through traffic and sidewalks for two hours.  So it will be interesting to see how things are going to unfold in the next few years with these urban coyotes.

Let’s move on to an actual NEW study.

The results of an experiment performed by Newcastle University were released last week.  They wanted to know if bees could taste and therefore avoid neonicotinoid pesticides. Now, if you’re not aware, neonicotinoids are structured very similar to nicotine.  Nicotine is a natural plant toxin, that can be used as a pesticide.

Here’s Geraldine Wright:

So when asked why bees might prefer pesticide laced nectar, the assumption is that since neonicotinoids are structured similar to nicotine, when the bees are exposed to it, they most likely get a nicotine buzz similar to what smokers experience.

So maybe we’re a step closer in solving the Colony Collapse Disorder dilemma, but it’s my understanding that this experiment was performed with bumblebees and a few other solitary bees.  They could not replicate the findings with honeybees.

But let me know what you think.  If you have any question, comments, or would like to be featured on the Arthropodcast, message me on Twitter @Stevejacksonus, or send me a voice message on ArthropodAlley.com that’s ArthropodAlley.com.  Take care y’all.

Transcript:

Welcome to the latest edition of Arthropodcast!

You’ll probably notice, I’ve stepped up the post frequency as of late.  I’m going to crank these things out on a weekly basis now.  The reason for the change is just practice.  Podcasting requires a few skill sets most of us aren’t born with, so the only way to get good at this kind of this thing is through repetition.  With a monthly podcast, I don’t think I’ve been doing this stuff frequently enough to grow my skill set.

So we’re moving to a weekly schedule and you’ll probably notice a standard format begin to develop here in the near future.  Maybe like a weekly tip, an interview, a Q&A session. We’re going to do some experimentation, to come up with some type of standard format on the podcast.

So today, Let’s talk about 3 free things that have made me a better PCO. Obviously, this list is not all inclusive, there are plenty of other things that have helped me along the way.  These are just 3 random things that have helped me become a better pest professional, and I didn’t spend a dime on any of them.

1. Jelly packets.  A lot of people already know where I’m going with this. You’ll find these things at the condiments section – sometimes behind the counter at McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, Burger King… pretty much any fast food restaurant that serves breakfast.  I keep a small supply of jelly packets with me when I’m running my route.  They’re really good to help attract ants if I need to locate a colony.  I’ll just put some jelly down, give a little bit of time for an ant trail to form, then follow the trail back to the colony.

2. Phonetic Alphabet.  As a single operator, I spend a lot of hours on the phone and during much of that time I’m dealing with background noise.  Dogs barking, gas rigs running, regular road noise.  So at some point in my career, I realized I needed a good system to take down information accurately, and make sure names are spelled correctly.  Before I knew this alphabet, I didn’t have standard example words I’d use when repeating back info to the person on the other side of the phone. and because of that, I’d put myself on the spot and sometimes I’d use really strange example words or ones that rhymed with other words.  One time I actually used “P” as in pig.  So number one, that’s a rather weird word to use, but number two, It rhymes with other words, so I created greater confusion. “P”, “B” and “D” those letters rhyme as do Pig, Big and Dig.  But If I had known the phonetic alphabet, I’d know P,B, and D as Papa, Bravo, and Delta.  I’d save time and confusion. But here’s the real kicker, it’s hard to imagine how many hours I wasted going to the wrong address and correcting paperwork because of misspelled names, but when I decided to sit down and learn the phonetic alphabet, I probably learned it really well in about a weekend. If you don’t know it, learn it, you’ll be happy you did.

3. Genuine care. Phone calls are pretty much free these days so there’s no excuse for not checking up on a new start or an extra service I performed a few days ago.  I find it really important to show my customers I really care about the service I provide.  Sometimes the feedback I receive makes me better at my craft.  Going even further than that, I like to show them I care on a personal level.  Maybe one of my customers had surgery, a new job interview, maybe one of the kids had a piano recital or something.  Showing care helps my retention and referrals.  One of my customers has a son that coaches strength and conditioning for the Ohio State Buckeyes football team.  After the National championship, I just sent him a text saying “hey, just wanted to congratulate you and your son on the big win.”  After all the kaos died down, the next day, I heard back from him. And just little more than a week later, he referred me to another customer.  I’d been servicing him for about a year and a half, and received no referrals.  A week after my congratulations text, he sends another customer my way.

So the way I see it, if you keep your customers in mind, they’ll keep you in mind.  With that being said, keep this episode in mind.  Do you have any free tools or skill sets that would benefit other PCOs?  Drop me a message on Arthropod Alley.com or shoot me a tweet on Twitter @stevejacksonus that’s @stevejacksonus.  Take care y’all.

So I was checking out PCT’s article on the 2014 pest control market report. Specialty Products Consultants has compiled the research for about 15 years now, and it’s always interesting to see the changes from year to year. What we found this year was that the industry grew to nearly $7.5 billion dollars which was an increase of about 3.5 percent over the 2013 numbers.

About 8.75 million households were serviced by licensed pest control companies, and that’s about 7.1% of the total US households. We have about 123 million households, 8.75 million of which had pest control services performed.
If you consider another 3.75 million customers that purchased post construction termite control, you come up with about 12.5 million households that were serviced in 2014. That’s slightly over 10%
7.1% for pest control, another 3% for termite.

Now when you look at our target market, which are families that earn over $75,000 annually, we have about 36.3% of the households in that demographic. That’s actually a pretty good number, it’s over a third. Obviously, we can do much better. There’s about another 64% still out there, but overall, that’s a good percentage.

Other notable findings, the average post construction termite job increased by $25, it’s now at $861 on a national average. In 2013 that number was $836.

Something that wasn’t highlighted in the article, but something we should pay very close attention to was that bedbugs were only up 5.6% in revenue growth. Which is still an increase, it helped the industry as a whole, but it wasn’t the driving force behind the industry growth. If you do the math, bed bug revenue growth only equated to about $25-30 million. The total industry grew by $250 million. So bed bugs helped the industry grow, but that wasn’t anywhere near the primary reason we saw such healthy increases.

Now, If you dig further you’ll find that bed bug growth has slowed down for the last few years 2012 (+28.2%), 2013 (+11%), 2014 (5.6%).

There was a total of 725,000 treatments performed in 2014, which accounted for $470 million in revenue for bed bug control.

So what’s going on? Are the treatment prices going down? Are we becoming more efficient in our treatment methods, and passing that savings on to the customer? Essentially doing more treatments, but for less money per job?

That doesn’t seem to be the case.  In 2012, the average price of a bed bug treatment was $600, in 2014 the average price was $630.
So it’s actually increased $30 in two years.

Anyway, fascinating research if you really dig into the numbers and compare it to the same study from the last few years.

But now I want to hear from you. What’s your take on this? Why are the bed bug numbers shrinking? Are things slowing down in your area?
Let me know, hit me up on Twitter @stevejacksonus that’s @stevejacksonus. Take care Y’all.

Source: http://www.pctonline.com/SPC-2014-pest-control-market-report.aspx

0505Vacuuming is a great cleanout method; but is there a better, less-expensive way?  We’ll take a look at an interesting alternative and discuss the pros and cons that come along with this different method.

Back in January of 2014, there was a bed bug study conducted by the University of Kentucky.

They took 10 strains of bed bugs from across the nation and exposed them to dry residues of Temprid SC and Transport GHP.

The first time I read the article, I thought the study was a product face-off, a which one is better type article.  But after reading the study several times, I’ve realized the researchers had something else in mind.

The wanted to achieve an 80% mortality rate. They wanted some bed bugs to survive. To ensure this would happen, they had to limit the time the bed bugs were exposed to the products.  The real goal was to monitor the mortality rate of each strain’s offspring.

So they did the study and Temprid didn’t do so well.  After a full day of exposure, Temprid had 2 strains with high mortality, 2 with intermediate, 2 with less than 5% mortality, and 4 strains with 0% mortality.  There was even one strain with no mortality after 14 days of exposure.

On the flip side, Transport GHP had 3 strains with high mortality, 5 with intermediate, and 2 with no mortality what so ever.  So Transport controlled 8 strains fairly well opposed to 4 strains for Temprid.

At the time, I was using Temprid- with good results mind you.  But when I read that article, I said to myself, “Forget it, I’m switching to Transport”.   I did switch, and I have to say, I’ve been happy with the results.  And as an added bonus, it’s less expensive than Temprid.

But what I didn’t know until I recently asked a Bayer representative about the research, was that the study was supposedly re-done using a higher AI% for Temprid (the original percentage they used was 0.075% a.i.). When they increased the percentage, the results proved to be much better. That makes perfect sense, because several PCOs that do a lot of bed bug work swear by Temprid.

Here’s the Alarming Part:

Remember when I said they wanted to monitor the mortality rate of each strain’s offspring?

When they exposed those next generations to the dry residuals of the products, the mortality rates went way down.  What’s more troubling, is that the research showed indications of cross resistance. You take a strain of bed bugs that showed resistance to Temprid, expose it to Transport and that strain will show resistance to Transport as well.

I’ve done bed bug control for a while, and I consider myself well skilled in the process. Through my years of experience, I’ve been able to reduce treatment times and product costs significantly. Instead of vacuuming, I often use tape or a lint roller. I rarely use IGRs. I get great results, even while skipping some of the traditional steps.

Because I’ve been able to reduce treatment times and product costs, bed bugs have become my company’s second most lucrative pest (behind only termites).

What this study tells me is that maybe the good times are coming to an end. There may soon come a day when I might need to go back to the vacuuming, the steam and the growth regulators. I guess time will tell.

Hopefully, in the near future, we can get Dr. Potter or one of the other researchers on the podcast and perhaps they can chime in on this and give us a little more insight on the article.

Thanks for listening.  If you have questions, comments, suggestions, give me a tweet on Twitter @stevejacksonus that’s @stevejacksonus. Take care y’all.

Mickey Ferrell is the kind of guy you want to have lunch with.  He’s constantly coming up with good ideas for marketing and operations.

I recently spent some time learning about him and his company, HomePro Pest.  The thing that really stuck with me was one of the methods his company uses to keep the attention of their “One-Time” customers – a newsletter.

Check out his interview and learn:

• How he comes up with content ideas for the newsletter.
• His top three social media tips for new/single operator pest control companies.
• His favorite sales and marketing books.

Recorded just hours before the College Football Championship, Mickey also shares his game prediction.  For the record, we were both wrong.

Bed Bug Guru James Molluso of the Brooklyn-based pest control company – Northeastern Exterminating – takes time out of his busy schedule to talk with Arthropodcast about:

• Working with his father.
• How and why Northeastern Exterminating began.
• His upcoming wedding.
• The logistical challenges pest control companies encounter while servicing customers in the “Big Apple”.
• The correlation between the use of IGRs and higher call back percentages.
• His opinion on steaming, vacuuming, and the use of encasements.
• Why some analysts may believe the rat population in NYC is decreasing.

Thanks for the interview James!  You’re clearly a natural.