Video featuring Rebecca Fife, beekeeper and urban wildlife manager at Landmark Pest Management, describing the company’s science-based, green pest control approach, staff development focus, community philanthropic efforts, and use of SBA 7(a) loan to expand into a 10,000 sq ft facility. The piece highlights the company’s growth, training activities (including rabies prevention for first responders), and nomination for National Small Business Person of the Year.
Chapters
I'm Rebecca Fife. I'm a beekeeper and urban wildlife manager with Landmark Pest Management. Landmark provides innovative science based pest control to help people live and work in greener, safer buildings. We like to make ourselves obsolete. If a client calls us more than once in wildlife control, that means that we didn't do a good job. So we use a research based approach to control insects where less pesticides are used and the insects are better controlled.
I think that many times people don't necessarily think about the science behind pest control. Rebecca has put together a team of experts. I think that really sets her apart because she's willing to invest in them in order to help her company grow. Landmark has been on this incredible growth curve over the last few years and the focus that we have on providing green service and reducing the reliance on pesticides, making sure that pesticide builds is a thing of the past.
The spirit of Landmark Pest Management is really in its people. We really view staff development as our core scope. Rebecca is able to identify talent in people that they didn't necessarily even know that they had.
And I am one of those people. And she taught me wonderful management skills.
That I am now able to pass.
Along to other people.
They can be empowered in their lives and have a professional skill set that they really wouldn't have had otherwise. As Landmark grew, our office became much too small for us. We were operating out of a facility which didn't have a warehouse, so we weren't able to buy products in the volumes that we needed to to price our work competitively. Thanks to the SBA and a 7A loan, we were able to move in to this 10,000 square foot facility and customize it for our needs. The SBA has been one of the most important tools in my toolbox. As an entrepreneur, I've turned to the SBA for training, for lending, for helping me. Prepar capability statements. There hasn't been a time when they didn't have the resource I was looking for.
Landmark Pest Management is such a great business success story that has really made a difference in the lives of both their customers, their employees.
Being nominated for National Small Business Person of the Year is an incredible honor and if we were to win, it would be so meaningful to me. Especially because it's not just pertaining to our business growth. It looks at our philanthropic contributions in the community to help people live in greener, safer buildings, to train first responders and help them educate the public about rabies prevention. It was proof positive that one can do well and do good.
What Landmark's growth really teaches other businesses is that you don't have to do it alone. There's a lot of tools and resources out there, whether it be your lender, the sba, small business counselors. They can help you get to that next level and make a difference in the lives of others.
I really don't think that I could have done it without the sba. Every new venture and new success I've undertaken, they've been absolutely instrumental to that step.
