Bill’s Home Service celebrates 60th anniversary

Bill’s Home Service co-owners Bill (left) and Ryan (right), grandsons of founder Bill Bennett, celebrate the 60th anniversary of their family business. PHOTO: BILL’S HOME SERVICE

Green Valley, Ariz.-based Bill’s Home Service is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Going broke as a 33-year-old farmer with a wife and three kids to support at the time, per a news release, Bill Bennett started Bill’s Home Service in 1964 on the foundation of providingvarious home services like landscaping, pool cleaning, pest control, swamp cooler repair, trash service and more.

Today, the company is co-owned by his grandsons, Bill, 43, and Ryan, 38. The family business is now one of the largest providers of pest, weed and termite control in southern Arizona.

Founder Bill’s son, Will, helped with tasks as a child, holding flashlights for his dad, cleaning pools or taking trash to the dump. His college days were spent in Boise, Idaho, where he met his wife, Lorie, and they had three of their four sons. When his father began to contemplate retirement in 1990, Will and his family moved back to southern Arizona to continue the family business.

In the mid-1990s, they began to focus their expertise on pest and termite control services and added home inspection services in 2007. Will’s sons, Jeff, Sam, Ryan and Bill, helped with the business as kids, washing trucks for technicians or stuffing envelopes at the dinner table. As the business grew, so did his kids, moving away to pursue higher education and start careers and families of their own. Jeff and Sam pursued work in engineering and finance. Ryan held positions in the nonprofit fundraising industry, while Bill held management positions for two Fortune 500 companies. In 2013, Ryan and Bill decided to move back to southern Arizona to continue the family business and raise their kids.

For seven years, Bill and Ryan worked from the ground up, familiarizing themselves with different areas of the business as technicians, obtaining the licenses required and gaining more knowledge. In 2020, the brothers officially took over Bill’s Home Service as co-owners with Bill leading the operations and Ryan managing the marketing, IT and administrative activities. They successfully overcame hurdles that many small businesses faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The core of what we do is we take care of people and their homes. That hasn’t changed in 60 years and part of the success of the company is staying true to that. Part of what we’re delivering is peace of mind for people,” said Bill.

Over the years, Bill’s Home Service has accumulated dozens of awards from organizations like the Better Business Bureau and the Green Valley News & Sun for their work. Founder Bill Bennett passed away in 2019, and his family accepted the Green Valley News & Sun AZ19 Most Influential People Legacy Award on behalf him.

“Our grandfather didn’t have any strangers. He only had friends he had yet to meet. He was one of those people that could talk to anyone,” Bill said. “None of us could’ve bootstrapped things the way our grandfather did.”

Today, Bill’s Home Service employs more than 25 team members serving over 8,000 customers every year throughout southern Arizona. They contribute to multiple local community organizations, schools, senior adult programs, and youth athletics including the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, Sahuarita Unified School District, Amphitheater Unified School District, La Posada Community Services, Copper Hills Little League, Tucson Conquistadores, and CDO Little League.

The post Bill’s Home Service celebrates 60th anniversary first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/19/bills-home-service-celebrates-60th-anniversary/
Sacramento CA

Rockwell Labs: EcoVia G

IMAGE: ROCKWELL LABS

EcoVia G granular insecticide is a highly effective, broad-spectrum, botanical insecticide that delivers quick control and residual repellency protection for crawling insects and mosquitoes. Exempt from the U.S. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) 25(b) provision, EcoVia G contains a higher level of botanical active ingredients, over twice the level compared to other 25(b) granules, the company says. This translates into low use rates of just 1 to 2 pounds per 1,000 square feet. It can be used for outdoor perimeter and yard applications, and is ideal for mosquito and tick control when applied to turf, landscape areas with heavier growth, ground cover vegetation and wooded areas. It has no pyrethroid or neonicotinoid use restrictions. EcoVia G is available in a 10-pound resealable bag.

About Rockwell Labs

Founded in 1998 by Pest Management Professional Hall of Famer Dr. Cisse Spragins (Class of 2018), North Kansas City, Mo.-based Rockwell Labs offers products that are conceptualized, developed and formulated in-house. New products undergo extensive testing in-house, in the field and at major universities before they are produced and launched in the professional market. Other products that Rockwell Labs manufactures include, but is not limited to:

• EcoVia MT Mosquito & Tick Control Concentrate
• EcoVia Fly Killer
• Power Foamer
• EcoVia WD Insecticide
• InVade Hot Spot+ Bio Sanitation Aerosol Foam
• InTice 10 Perimeter Bait
• InVict AB Gel Bait
• InTice Gelanimo Ant Bait
• BorActin Insecticide Powder
• InVade Bio Foam
• InVade Power Dose
• Foamer Simpson 5.0
• CimeXa Insecticide Dust
• InVict Gold Cockroach Gel
• InVade Hot Spot
• InVict Blitz Ant Granules

RockwellLabs.com

The post Rockwell Labs: EcoVia G first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/19/rockwell-labs-ecovia-g/
Sacramento CA

Truly Nolen appoints HR director

Jeffrey Bohne

Truly Nolen Pest Control recently appointed Jeffrey Bohne to director of human resources. He will be based at the company’s human resources (HR) headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz.

Bohne has over 30 years of HR experience dating back to the beginning of his career and has worked in industries from construction and banking to snack food manufacturing and consumer products. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human resources from Brigham Young University and holds a masters in human resources and management from the University of Phoenix.

“I am excited about helping our team members grow throughout their careers, being a positive force for good, and giving team members a safe place to go for questions and concerns,” Bohne said in the news release. “My favorite thing about working for Truly Nolen is our great people who I get to work with every day.”

Bohne was appointed following the retirement of vice president of human resources Darlene Cohen, who retired in November 2023 after 43 years with the company. He also replaces Cohen as a member of the company’s executive team.

“We are so grateful to Darlene for the legacy that she left behind, and I believe Jeff’s three decades of HR experience plus his common sense approach to both people and business made him a perfect fit for our team,” said Scarlett Nolen, president of Truly Nolen and PMP online columnist. “Jeff will play a pivotal role in shaping our future HR strategies and initiatives to ensure our team’s continued excellence.”

About Truly Nolen Pest Control

Founded in 1938, Tucson, Ariz.-based Truly Nolen of America is one of the largest family-owned pest control companies in the United States. Truly Nolen has more than 80 branch offices in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The company also has independently owned and operated franchises in an ever-growing number of territories including Kentucky, Georgia, New Jersey, Canada, Puerto Rico and over 60 countries.

The post Truly Nolen appoints HR director first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/18/truly-nolen-appoints-hr-director/
Sacramento CA

Steps to identify stinging pests

Lisa Eppler

Venomous stinging insects such as yellowjackets, paper wasps (Polistinae) and hornets (Vespa spp.) are most active from August until October, when their nests reach peak size. Follow these steps to identify risk factors and minimize the chances of encountering stinging pests:

• Inspect the property and eradicate any existing hives and nests.
• Look for abandoned animal burrows and tree hollows where stinging insect nests could hide.
• Seal entry points into the structure (attics, crawlspaces, under decks, etc.).
• Inspect trash can storage and point out any unsealed containers to your customers.
• Eliminate standing water around the structure, including in bird baths, gutters, etc., which also can help reduce mosquito populations.
• Place stinging insect traps around outdoor dining areas.
• Recommend that customers avoid wearing sweet fragrances, dark and floral clothing, open-toe shoes and loose-fitting garments.

An integrated pest management (IPM) strategy can help you minimize the risk of stings for your customers. In the meantime, “bee” aware and “bee” safe.

The post Steps to identify stinging pests first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/18/steps-to-identify-stinging-pests/
Sacramento CA

Pest Patrol owner is raring to grow

Gabe Seymour

I’ve been hustling my entire life. I understood at a very early age that if I wanted something, I had to work and make money to get it.

When I was 10, I collected aluminum cans and beer bottles from bar dumpsters and turned them in for recycling money. When I was 12, I had five yards that I mowed and landscaped every weekend. At 14, I split wood and did yard work after school for several widows near my home. When I was 16, I got a job cutting grass on a tractor for the Nebraska highway department. Senior year of high school, I worked in a butcher’s shop after football and track practice. When I was a freshman in college, I ran the nursery at a Pentecostal church in Salina, Kan. — I will never look at a tambourine the same way again — and I babysat for many church families during the week. My last three years of school at Elmhurst University, I worked for a local newspaper as a sports reporter; I ran routes for my dad at Mid Central Pest Control; and I worked evenings and weekends at River Forest Country Club.

While my friends were watching TV or playing games on their Atari, I would be hunting frogs in a bog near my home and selling them to a local bar for fried frog legs. I wrote term papers for classmates for $2 per page. I would sort freshly picked, freezing-cold potatoes on a conveyor belt until my hands bled.

One of the most gruesome jobs I had was at a grain silo. A local rancher would lift off the tarp and my buddies and I would catch and kill rats.

The point is, if there was money to be made, it was a given that Pete Schopen was lurking somewhere nearby.

Meet another multi-tasker

Gabe Seymour, 30, is very much the same type of guy. The owner of Pest Patrol in Portland, Ore., has a very hard time just sitting around. At 16, he got a job at a retail store, but he also started teaching music on the side. At 17, he learned mole trapping with Chris Taylor. Seymour would marry Taylor’s daughter Kelly three years later; they now have five children.

At 19, Seymour started his own mole trapping company, Mole Trappers PDX (named after the famed Portland Airport) and started advertising on Craigslist. At the same time, he became a bookkeeper at his father-in-law’s six stores in the Oil Can Henry’s franchise. He was soon promoted to general manager. Oil Can Henry’s became Valvoline Instant Oil Change stores in 2015.

As with many other Americans, though, COVID-19 caused Seymour to change course. Taylor decided to sell his six locations due to the uncertainty of the pandemic. That, unfortunately, left Seymour without a job. So, on Aug. 8, 2020, with no pest control experience, the young entrepreneur watched some videos by The Pest Posse, got licensed, and started providing rodent trapping and ant treatments.

Finding his calling

With his success in the oil-change industry, it was surprising that Seymour chose pest control. But he has two great reasons. “There is tremendous opportunity in pest control,” he explains, “and the barrier was lower to get into pest control.” Had he continued in his previous business, there would have been a lot of start-up costs involving find the right property, marketing, hiring, etc. By contrast, he was able to start Pest Patrol with a used pickup truck and some basic materials and equipment.

Seymour considers his late mother, Erin, a role model. He notes she taught him and his three siblings to be compassionate in all things. “She was a positive emotional influence on me,” he adds. “In pest control, there is tremendous potential to really help clients and make a difference.”

Path to success

His company has grown quickly in the Portland market. In 2021, Pest Patrol finished at $220,000 and Seymour hired his first technician. In 2022, revenue jumped up to $330,000 and Seymour hired a second route technician. Same story in 2023: Revenue up another $100,000 and he hired a third team member. Our goal for 2024 is to see him hit $525,000 in revenue by improving the company’s rodent pricing, working on upselling, and getting standard operating procedures in place for all services.

Naturally, growing a successful pest control company isn’t enough for Seymour. In May 2023, he joined Andy Sanefski of Perimetek Pest Management and started the very popular “Coast-2-Coast Pest Talk” podcasts, available on Spotify. Seymour has become something of a social influencer, too, posting on LinkedIn more often than Gordon Ramsey creates new TV shows.

Next up? Baby No. 6 is due later this year. I told you, this guy doesn’t believe in sitting around!

---

S.W.O.T. Analysis: Pest Patrol

STRENGTHS

• Creativity
• Good communication
• High customer satisfaction
• Thorough services
• Friendly team

WEAKNESSES

• Lack of organization
• Bookkeeping
• Lack of key performance indicators (KPIs)
• No central office

OPPORTUNITIES

• Upselling high-ticket items
• Customer exclusion work
• Rodent station installs
• Price increase/change
• Local property managers

THREATS

• Oregon’s (very liberal) Paid Medical Leave Act
• Lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs)
• Aging vehicles
• New state and federal laws/regulations

The post Pest Patrol owner is raring to grow first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/17/pest-patrol-owner-is-raring-to-grow/
Sacramento CA

The blessings of being in pest control

Branch Manager Steven Aguilar receives kudos from WesLaco Chamber of Commerce CEO Barbara Jean Garza during last summer’s ribbon-cutting event for ABC’s Rio Grande Valley office. PHOTO: WESLASCO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

I have written many articles about how lucky I feel we all are to have landed in the pest control industry. When most people outside our industry think of pest control, they think of killing bugs and crawling under houses and all the reasons they have for never even considering joining our industry.

I also have written before about how people change their minds and develop a new appreciation for what we do when they get to know us better and learn about the magic of our repetitive business model.

This time, though, I’d like to focus on another aspect of our industry that I find really cool: the actual work and the daily aspects of dealing with our customers. Getting a new customer is great! They add to our services lists and our bottom lines, and help us grow our businesses and feed our families.

Another great aspect of gaining new customers is the opportunity to get to know them on a deeper level. Spending time with customers, talking to them, getting to know them and their families, their spouses and their children. Getting to visit them over and over again. Connecting with them on a deeper level — in their homes — is not something many other industries get to experience.

We look at our list of service stops for the day, and we see more than just “stops.” We see customers, acquaintances and friends. We see pets and children. We see people we get to care for and get to know better.

A two-way street

In addition, your customers also want to know you better. They are interested in your life, your family, where you come from and so on. At first, they want to know these things because they just want to learn a little bit about who they have let into their house or on their property. Over time, though, they want to honestly get to know you as a person, a parent, an employee, or a coach. Doctors get to know their patients like this, but most people do not really look forward to doctor visits. They do, however, look forward to your visit.

Dennis Jenkins

I realize that times have changed, and that the popularity of exterior-only services have impacted this, but when we do get this to this level, your customers become more than just a “stop” — they become a relationship.

COVID-19 had a negative impact on this, as we all learned that an exterior service can be pretty darn good at taking care of most pest invasions. I would challenge us all to take stock of that, though, and get back to building relationships instead of just running stops. Remember the days when we used to get face-to-face with customers and realize that those interactions are what keeps customers.

Strengthen your relationships

What we do is incredibly important. We protect people’s health, property and food. But it is who we are and the relationships we have that make us so very special. It makes our customers love dealing with us and look forward to seeing us.

As long as we are willing to give of our time and ourselves, our customers will look forward to sharing their lives with us. It’s the very best part of being in our industry.

The post The blessings of being in pest control first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/17/the-blessings-of-being-in-pest-control/
Sacramento CA

Pest control firms open across the country

The pest control industry has seen a flurry of growth and expansion in recent months, including the following.

Meridian, Idaho-based Vertex Pest Control opened its newest office in Eagle, Idaho, continuing its mission to provide pest control services to the Treasure Valley area of southwestern Idaho and beyond.

Many of the company’s pest control technicians are either former military personnel or actively serving in the military. The new Eagle office will serve as a hub for Vertex Pest Control’s operations in the region, providing convenient access to its comprehensive range of pest control services.
Check out more pest control companies that have recently expanded:

• Maryland Mosquito is a mosquito management company that recently opened in Baltimore, Md., by entrepreneur Steven Garey.
• Adam Benetti, an entrepreneur, partnered with industry veteran Bruce Cook to launch Waves Pest Control. Waves Pest Control is now open for business in Charlotte and Sarasota County communities in Southwest Florida.
• Fort Myers, Fla.-based All U Need Pest Control opened a new office in Melbourne, Fla., on April 8 to serve the city and the surrounding communities.
• Houston, Texas-based Termite Watkins Services “took control” of Coastal Fumigators and End O Pest. The two companies offered termite, fumigation, and pest control services in the Greater Houston area.
• Virginia Green, based in Richmond, Va., continues its expansion in the Charlottesville-Harrisonburg, Va., market by acquiring Home Pride Lawn Care.
• Nashville, Tenn.-based All Things Exterminators hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony last year to celebrate the opening of its new location in Gallatin, Tenn.
• NaturePest expanded into Parkland, Fla. The company is a Homestead, Fla.-based provider of holistic pest control solutions, serving residential and commercial customers across Florida.

The post Pest control firms open across the country first appeared on Pest Management Professional.

from Pest Management Professional https://www.mypmp.net/2024/04/16/pest-control-firms-open-across-the-country/
Sacramento CA