Day in the Life of a Pest Control Franchise Partner - The Local Guys - Pest Control

Hi, my name's Sean. I am a franchise partner for the local guys pest control. The mornings for me now are so much better. I've got that flexibility in the morning now. I get to take the boys to school. I don't take any jobs until after I've taken them to school. I get to spend that time with them. I get to share the load with the wife. She does have all the responsibility taking them anymore. Yesterday I got to go to my son's presentation at high school. He had a presentation at 1 o'. Clock. So I didn't take any work at 1 o'. Clock. Got to block out two hours of the day, go see him. He loved it. I loved it. It was great. So in the morning I'm checking my schedule, my CRM. Get the CRM up. It's got my list of jobs for the day. Today we've only got the one site, but it's a big site, tells me what type of job I've got today. So I got commercial treatment. So I know that I'm going to need rotor baits, spider sprays, termite inspection equipment. So I know that I can set up the car for the day, make sure I have all the equipment. It's got the maps here. I can click on the map, brings it up, plug this into the car and then away we are for the day. Make sure that I've got all the equipment that I need. Of course I need my esky with my drinks and lunch for the day. Have you done any cooking yet? No, I'm in the garden rooting the harvester. Oh yeah. So far I've rooted. I'm in the carrot section and the potato section. Ah, so you got. You're planting carrots or you're digging them up? I'm digging them up. Okay. Harvesting them, are you?

So while Sean was there, previous employee, the kids were finding it. He wasn't able to go to sports days, which really upset them. Book week, things like that. He wasn't able to take them to their trainings. He couldn't take them to the park. They were constantly asking, why can't dad be there? I felt terrible having to constantly say, sorry, but dad's at work. He couldn't really afford to take days off. It was too hard to manage. Basically trying to get a day off just to take them to school or to be at sports day. So now with him being his own boss, there's a lot more free time he is able to attend sports days. He can actually book that into his calendar. That's his time to do as he feels with the kids. Gives me a bit more free time to help out, you know, with going to sports days with him. He's able to enjoy it a little bit more at nighttime. He can take them to training. He can spend all night there. He doesn't have to think about rushing off or, you know, getting there late and missing out and only being there for about 10 minutes. He can be there for the whole time.

Hug. Can I have a kiss? Love you, dad. Have a good day. I'll see you after school. Yeah. Bye. Bye boys. That's, that's what I love about my mornings now is those little things that you don't get when you work for an employer. Got to be there when they say you've got to be there. Now I've got that flexibility. It's the little things that make life more enjoyable. It's what I love about it is that work life balance. I'm all about work life balance. And it's the little things like that that the kids love, the little things like that that I love. It's definitely a bonus. Having three is definitely not cheap. But I'm still able to earn a good wage, a good living and work less hours than I normally would for an employer. Yeah, it's the money I'm getting for the work I'm doing is so much better.

Now that Sean's his own boss. We don't have that stress on the back of our minds of, you know, losing hours. Where's the work coming from? We've noticed there's a lot more, there's a happiness there.

So the client that we have today is a winery in the Barossa Valley. They're a family based winery. They own a few different labels. I've been dealing with them for the last two and a half years, I think. So it's a really good site. As in they have at least I'd say seven different sites for me around the Barossa. So I get a bit of traveling, a bit of view along the way, a few different sites to take care of. It's a very profitable job for myself. As in it's a commercial site. That's an ongoing thing. It takes me a day. So it's one day of the month that I have guaranteed work. I don't have to worry about bringing in work that works guaranteed for me. So we're on our way to pick up my brother. He's in training at the moment. He's about to come on board and work for me. So we're going to go to a site that he will be taking over eventually when he comes on board. So it's a good one for him to get some training on and have a good overview of the whole process and get his head wrapped around it. Eventually he can take on a business himself and be his own boss, get out of the employee side of things and come on as a business owner himself and then hopefully grow that into something. The main reason he wants to do it is to grow something for his children to be able to take on themselves one day. He wants to set them up, I suppose, as opposed to if you work for somebody else, you can't really do that unless you're just saving a lot of money. When you have a business, at least there's something there that you can actually hand over to them. In the end, he's just looking for that change. He was stuck in the rut, as a lot of employees are, that is stuck in the 9 to 5 doing the same thing over and over again. It's just a routine. Whereas my job, there's so much more flexibility. The range of jobs are so far and few between that. Not every day is the same. So that's a good thing. There's a lot of problem solving. You gotta be thinking and then what's the number one rule of the country? Leave it how you found it. You gotta leave it how you found it. So my background was basically almost out of high school. I was into manufacturing. So I worked at Holden and Elizabeth on the production line making cars. I was there for 14 and a half years. I think I didn't mind working there. It was pretty good, like good money, but it was a bit mundane. It's the same job day in, day out. So it was almost a blessing in disguise. We got a payout, a package and I decided that I was going to actually do something with this money.

You know, he was just in a mundane job. It was just, it wasn't going anywhere. Whereas now I can honestly say that we are. We've gone so much further than what I actually thought we ever could. And it just feels like it's just going to get better and better.

The top three things that interest me about pest control at the start was I wanted to get into a service based industry because I knew that the repeat work and the high profit margins are really good in the service based industry. And then I looked at pest control specifically because the variety of jobs really appealed to me. There's so many different pests out there that we deal With, So each and every day is different. So I have a variety of jobs, which keeps the mind fresh, I suppose. And then the pest control industry itself is an industry that will always be around. There will always be pests. People always have problems with pests, so it's something that's going to be around forever. I pretty much went straight to the pest control. I knew a couple of pest controls already, so that sort of guided me in that direction. I knew a little bit about the industry, so that made my decision a little bit easier. Talking to them, learning about the industry, their day to day life and what it means for them. The main things that I was looking for was that variety in the day, the day to day stuff, because being in a manufacturing plant, it's literally the same thing over and over again, 300 times a day. So I was really looking to get my mind out there, working again. And it's definitely what I was looking for. If you're business to business, you're just dealing with maybe the receptionist, that's it. Whereas I'm dealing with different people, real people, every day. You're building that relationship. We sit down, we have coffees together, we chat about the football, the kids, a lot of things. I actually have clients that will be my clients for life. And we have chats like we're really good friends. When you're working for a company, sometimes they only let one or two people have certain times off. And, you know, in the real world, things happen and more than one person can require time off. I've seen people not get the time off around having children. The good thing about working for yourself is if I need time off, even if something come up unexpectedly, I can call a client, reschedule. So there is that flexibility, but you don't have as an employee, and I.

Think that's the best thing. We feel like we've just got so much more freedom. It's a little bit daunting starting something afresh, but we knew that working together, that we could achieve anything. Myself, coming on board with Shaun has been a great thing for me to do. I'm able to help, you know, book jobs for him, take phone calls, I've realised that. But it's got a lot of potential in this kind of work. And I'm finding it's, you know, paying off a lot more than my current job that I have at the moment. It's flexible. I'm able to work around, you know, home life, I'm able to work around my current work situation. I had a lady send Me a picture of her backyard. Just in general, she was just enjoying having a chat to me for a little while. So just things like that, it really shows it's a great industry to get into.

As long as you're wearing the correct PPE and taking the right precautions that there really isn't any issues with chemicals. As long as you're doing the right thing, you won't have any concerns. So this is just a bent breakfast that I look after for the winery that I deal with. So we're just doing rodent stations around the outside of the house and then we have a few on the inside to check over as well. Obviously not every piece of equipment is required on every piece of job. So I go through my schedule, see what equipment's required for the day, load up the car, so that way I have everything that I need for the day. I've got a couple of sites, big commercial sites where you can spend a whole day at, but typically you do residential, where you're just going from house to house and do different jobs. That way, residential is helping people that have a specific problem there and then, whereas commercial is. It can be a requirement in the standards for them to have pest control done. So commercial is more preventative than actual dealing with specific problems in the. Now, as you can see, these are all empty, so there's a fair bit of activity at the moment. Commercial would probably be easier. It's just the mouth about setting up the correct plan at the start and then it's just maintaining that system. So a lot of rodent stations, just checking them over, making sure that they're not having any issues. If we can prevent them from having issues in the first place, that's what they're looking for. The rates would depend on, obviously the size of the site. Like today is a really big site, so obviously the cost is a lot more. But then it also depends on what services that they're looking for. A lot of commercial sites just want rodents. Some would like rodents and cockroaches, fly control, depending if it's a small restaurant, something like that. So it really depends on each and every site. Shoes off. Always shoes off when you're inside. So the process of each job would be, I guess, well, first you're checking the CRM for the customer. Name, number, contact details, site address, going to the site, introducing yourself to the client, working out what treatment is going to be performed for the day, explaining that process to the client. Then you're doing the treatment. After the treatment, you're explaining to the client. What you've done, what they can expect to see from the treatment, billing the client, whether that via invoice or eftpos, going back to the car, writing out the report, adding that to the CRM, emailing it to the client, then they've got a copy of what's been done, a receipt of the work performed, checking the CRM onto the next job. So the reporting for a commercial site, if it's a rodent report, we're reporting the activity on each and every station. The client needs to know what activity is happening in each station so that they can get some information fed back to them about the reporting and what areas need to be addressed. Opposed to a residential reporting, you're just reporting what treatment was done for the day. So you can do that at the end of the job, write out what you've performed so that they have a copy of what was performed. Okay, all done at this site. We'll move on to the next. So this next job we're going to is another site of the winery. It's a nice big old of the century place. We're doing a lot of rodent control, also checking some termite stations and even performing a visual termite inspection on the property as well. Since I got here in Australia, everything is so frightening. There's a lot of animals that will kill you. What's the situation on the drop bear? They drop bear. Well, you've got to really have your wits about you when you're in drop drop bear country. They attack with without warning, most vicious animal in the world. So as long as you're keeping your wits about you, just looking up every now and then, you'll be fine. Do you have special traps for that? No, it's a shotgun. That's the only thing that'll save you from a drop there. Okay, so we're about to perform a termite inspection. I've got my torch and a picker to dig at any termite activity and also my phone for a camera for all the reporting. So we're going to start on the outside of the building. We're going to pick a point that we're going to start out, work our way around, check for termite activity and then before heading on inside the building and going from there, Number one thing that we want to do on a termite inspection is check all the trees on the property. That's where a lot of termite activities start, nest and things. So we're looking for termite activity on trees. So that's little things, especially some Sawn off areas of branches. You're looking for any dirt or mud buildup around the cuts. That's a sure indication of termite activity. Is previous termite activity. The way that it's all eaten away indicates that it had some termite activity there once upon a time. High power torch is your best friend. And these two type of jobs makes your life so much easier. Being able to see things that you wouldn't normally be able to see without a torch. So this was actually serviced by another pest control company and the winery. Sought myself out to come and quote on the job job to provide them with hopefully a better service than they were previously getting. And I was able to do that. So we've got a termite system around this building that we just need to check every three months. So we're just looking for any signs of activity. So this is a bait rod. This is made by Centricon. So this is an all in one attractant and bait that stays in the station all year round. So those rods actually last for five years, unless they're eaten. Obviously we replace them, but they'll last for five years. So we'll just go around and check all these, look for any termite activity. So when I say this is a bait all in one, that means that the termites eat the bait rod, they take the bait back to the colony and it wipes out the whole colony. So there are a few different systems on the market. This one being a bait and attractant all in one is a little bit dearer than others. It really depends on what way the client wants to go. Some clients like the idea of, of having bait in the system all year round. Where other stations are a little bit cheaper, but they have timbers and a tract in the station. But bait isn't added until we have termite activity in the station. So there's just a few different options. The next job we have is a residential client. So they gave me a call during the week to tell me that they're hearing some noises in the roof. So there's some scratching at night time. So sounds like it may be a rodent issue. So we're going to go there, investigate, get up in the roof void, have a look around, see if we can find any evidence and then implement a treatment from there. So a residential property would have most of its activity when it comes to rodents coming from the roof void. So they typically sleep up there during the daytime, stay nice and warm and then they'll venture down during the nighttime. So that's when they Come out into the kitchen looking for food scraps, that type of thing during the night. But the roof void is where you're going to find 90% of your activity. So that's where we want to investigate and target. So in the roof void, we're looking for any signs of rodent activity. So a lot of droppings, evidence of them burrowing through the insulation. Okay, so we've just completed the inspection of the the roof void. We found evidence of rodent activity in the roof void. We found some droppings and they've chewed up a little bit of the insulation. We didn't find any actual rodents. You very rarely find rodents in a roof void during an inspection. They're more scared of us than we are of them. So you very rarely see them in the roof void itself. Just evidence. So we found that evidence. We've implemented a treatment plan. We've got bait boxes up in the roof void that we've got with some attracted bait for the rodents there. They're gonna eat that during the week. We're gonna come back next week, check it all over, offer the customer a warranty too. And then we've also done an inspection around the outside. So we've pointed out a few areas that we think that they may be getting in. Some weep holes and some gaps around the service pipes. So they could be getting into the wall cavities, into the wall cavities, up to the roof. And that's how they're causing havoc for the customer at nighttime. They also asked for an outside general pest treatment. So this is a perimeter spray that we apply to the outside of the building that will help take care of spiders, cockroaches, millipedes, that type of thing, your general press, general crawling insects to help give the house a little bit of protection and reduce the numbers that they see inside. Okay, so we've got the chemical all mixed up. So the process of the. We're going to go around the perimeter of the building. We're now a meter up the wall, a meter out from the wall, around all the windows, all the doors, underneath, any eaves, entertaining areas. Create that barrier to prevent general pests getting inside. Spiders, cockroaches, that type thing of thing. We've sold a two time rodent treatment. So that's where we treat one day, return in a week's time to retreat, offer a warranty. That's taken us around half an hour, 45 minutes. Then we've also completed an outside general pest treatment that's going to take us about another half hour.

During the time Sean was an employee, I did notice he was very stressed, whereas now he a lot happier. He can manage his work life balance to suit him and us. With the kids, he is able to give more time to them and myself. We can actually sit down at family dinners and talk about the day. He doesn't feel like he has to rush off, you know, to get to bed early or he's actually able to enjoy the conversations that we all have.

So I've just got home from picking up the boys from the school. Now I've just got to get on the CRM and do a little bit of admin work for the services for today. So we've got some rodent reporting that we've got to download to the CRM, add to the client portal so that they have access to all their reporting and I'll send that along with their invoice for today so that I get paid for today's work. It's pretty simple stuff, tops. Per night I might be working for half an hour on the computer, but that'll be it. So the admin side of the day can be a little bit daunting for some people, especially in the early stages of running a business. But with the admin girls in the office walked me through the CRM, walked me through Xero and tax requirements and now it's all pretty much a breeze. In the early stages, whenever I had an issue, I gave them a call and they just walked me through it. It's been really good. So the systems that we have in place and that the girls have shown me through the steps, a lot of the stuff that you'd get an accountant to do, I can now do myself. All the accounting packages help you through that. So I don't engage an accountant until the end of financial year to do the whole complete taxes, not my quarterly BAS or quarterly gst. I can do all that myself. So during the day I can get phone calls from clients, they call me, they require certain services, we talk about what they require. I can either give them a quote over the phone sometimes or I can schedule in to go to their place to provide a quote for a service they may require. I can do this all on my phone with the CRM book in an appointment, I can check my whole calendar work out day. That works best for me, works best for the client. We can book that in and get that done pretty much as quick as possible. If a lead comes through to the call centre, the girls will take down all the details, they'll enter that into the CRM. They'll then shoot me through a text message to let me know that I have a new opportunity and that I've got two hours to contact the client and work out a time to arrange a quote. I can then just flick over to the CRM. All the client's details are in there, their address, their email address, their phone number. Give them a call straight away, then we can book in a job from there. We have a two hour window that we're supposed to call in. I'd recommend getting it done in the first 10 minutes. When I call within the first 10 minutes, I'll get 90% of my work.