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Tim: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Surviving the Pride. I am your host, Tim Am.

Jourdyn: I Jordan.

Tim: And you might be asking, what is Surviving the Pride? Well, Jordan, I would tell you Surviving the Pride is all about marketing, explaining all aspects of marketing to help a business grow, importance of having a website, SEO, social media. And we're also going to be talking about starting a business as well.

Jourdyn: Yeah. So in addition to that, we're also going to give you guys some helpful hints, tips, and tricks about current and upcoming trends within whatever industry our guest business is from and give you guys a bit of general information in regards to that. In our very first episode, we have the owners of Express Pests who provide pest services in Shawnee, Oklahoma. And basically we'll be describing them, their company, and why they decided to start their business.

Tim: So before we go ahead and bring on Express Pests, I just want to give a brief rundown on some of the segments that we have planned for him during this podcast. One of them is titled technically the Hot Seat. Usually within this segment, we kind of just introduce the guests. We put them in the hot seat, asking them questions about customer experiences and how to deal with the branding that they have currently been doing with social media, and if they have anything that else that they would like to describe or say about their business. And then also near the end of it, we're going to be playing a little game with them. Just called word association. Typically with that, each round entails for our guests to give us a phrase or words that first come to their mind based on our randomly generated word selection.

Jourdyn: The first segment is really simple. I call it the hot seat. Basically, I put you on the spot. I'm asking you, okay, like, introduce yourself, introduce your brand, your company. What made you decide that you wanted to start Express Pests?

Eric : So if you could just easy enough. That's easy enough.

Jourdyn: Easy stuff.

Eric : All right, so right now you're good.

Jourdyn: Go ahead.

Eric : I got into pest control when I was 18, literally right out of high school. Now granted, I took a little break for about three years, ran a restaurant for a little while, but it got right back into pest control. Been doing it ever since. So it's been about 17 years. I've been in the industry myself. I worked everyone typically starts out working for another company, and I was working for a very large family owned company. They had seven locations. It was a very large family owned company. And they were really good at a lot of things. They taught me a lot of things, what not to do. But I'm not saying anything negative at all about them. They're a good company. They've been in business over 60 years. They're what they're doing is working. But, you know, the older I got and I became a father during that got married. I became a father during that time I was with them. And there are certain things that companies do behind the scenes that can just kind of it's not right. It's not ethically right. And anyone that knows me and I mean, people can check our reviews. I mean, we really try to stay honest about everything. I mean, if it's a simple thing and you can do this yourself, instead of paying me however much money for bedbugs, I mean, you picked up two or three. I'm going to tell you, like, hey, you can handle this, okay? I want to make money, but I hate making money off someone's misfortune, and that's what that type of situation would be. But when you work for those big companies, you see things, you get so many employees and things fall in between the cracks. So I just kind of told myself that I can do this myself. I'm good at this. This is what I love to do. Every job is different. Every house you go into is different. You get to meet a really lot of really cool people out there. It was really just tired of working for the big dogs, and I thought I could do it myself. And we've been open for almost five years, and I'm very excited about the future. We've just gone up and up and up and up every year. And the only thing I can I have a small crew. I have a small crew. There's five of us here total. But the one thing I instill, it's pretty much our mission statement. Here's what I tell you. Be honest. Be honest, be honest. No reason to lie about anything. Make something up. If you don't know something, you just simply tell the customer, I don't know, but I'm going to find this out for you, and I'm going to come right back. Let me make a phone call. Let me do some research, something I've never seen before. Because every now and then you run across something. You're like, what in the world bug is this? There's a lot of different bugs and insects out there, and every now and then you run across something. When I moved from Arkansas back to Oklahoma, I had to relearn ants because Oklahoma has so many more ants than the state of Arkansas does, in my opinion. And man, they've got a ton of different ones here than what there are there. And I ran my first year doing it back in Oklahoma. I ran across some things. I was like, I have not a clue what ant this is. I ain't got a I had to go back to school again and do things for this region and figure out you always have to educate yourself. But our mission statement is pretty much the way we live it's. Work for a cause, not an applause. Live life to express, not to impress. Don't strive to make your presence notice, make your absence felt. And I believe in that so much. I actually got a sign made of in that hangover. That's awesome.

Jourdyn: That's so crazy.

Eric : I really do believe in that. It might be a little cheesy, a little corny, but I believe in that. And I believe that people still want the best bang for their buck and be treated like you're taking their money. Treat them well. You treat them like they're your grandparents. And it's true.

Tim: If you really wear that mission statement out there and you show it in your work, people actually pick that stuff up and notice.

Eric : Absolutely. The best thing we can ever ask our customers to do is leave us a review. And that's another little thing I tell customers, too. If we leave your home when this job is complete, if you cannot leave us a five star review. We didn't do our job right, plain and simple. Every job that we do, we should be able to walk out of there expecting to get a five star review every time. Always ask my customers before I leave, is there anything else that you feel like you need us to do? Is there anything else you want us to look at? The answer is no. And I feel like I did all my complete job. That's the best I can do. Pest control, wildlife, lawn service, whatever it is that we're out there doing, inspect, inspect, inspect. That is the number one thing a pest control guy does, is inspect, inspect, inspect. Figure out what needs to happen and make it happen, and give the proper expectations to your customer. Because if your expectations are different than mine, we're probably not going to get along. But there's no magic pill, and sometimes it's going to take two, sometimes three trips to solve a really bad problem. Sometimes, you know, yeah, but we finish the job every time. There's not a job. I can't think of a job one that we left incomplete. I mean, we do 30 day services, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly, the whole nine yards. But if you sign up with us for a 30 day service and say, we got bad weather like this and we got to reschedule, and it pushes you back out of your 30 day, a couple of days, I don't charge you anything more to continue that we're going to come out and finish the job. We don't charge for follow ups. I feel like that's what separates us from a lot of the competition around here, is you call your company back, well, they're going to charge you $35 to come back, and we don't do that. What's the incentive for the technician to do a good job if he's going to make a couple of bucks every single time he comes out? We charge you one price for the entire service, and we're going to complete that service. Now, granted, things happen. We've had especially during two and a half, three years ago with COVID My goodness. We had a whole lot of accounts that people got really scared about people coming in their house, and we had to pause that account. I mean, what can you do that makes sense? We try to work with everyone. We're not corporate. I'm never going to want to have that corporate feel. I always want to be able to look my customers in the eye, shake their hand, explain exactly what we're going to do. I still believe that is the best way. I'm an old school, old soul when it comes to that type of thing. That's just how I like to do things.

Tim: What's the difference? You could definitely tell from a little hometown thing versus, like, a corporation.

Eric : Like how you're sure keep your money local. Keep your money local. You want to help your town out, your community out, keep it local. That's best advice I give anyone when I purchase my home or my hats, my hoodies and all that stuff. I use people right here in Shawnee, right here in our town. I don't like to outsource that stuff. Keep it local. Keep it all local.

Jourdyn: You know, I think it's funny, you've hit actually, like, almost every single question that I have for you in the hot, on the hot seat.

Eric : I'm good like that for me.

Tim: I do have a question, though. Out of all the stuff that you guys have done, what was the craziest one you've seen?

Jourdyn: Do you have any horror stories?

Eric : I have plenty of horror stories. And without putting someone's information out there, I mean, I've had a customer that had husband passed away seven years ago. They had a bed bug problem then, but she was so concerned with having to get rid of some of her husband's stuff because of the bed bugs that she lived with them for seven years. One to five eggs per day. All right, you want to talk about seven years of that? But again, to be honest with you, half of our job is psychology. When it comes to certain jobs with certain customers, we are therapist half the time, especially in that situation. Go in there and ma'am like, I see one or two items that we really need a discard here, you know, we really need but I also have to explain to them, like, this is 80% of your problem is on these two pieces of furniture. Like, we get rid of this, we're getting knocking out 80% of this right off the bat. I mean, but again, you know, bedbugs, you know, so many horror stories about bedbugs because they can get so bad so fast and people are so concerned that it's going to cost thousands of dollars to get rid of them. Well, if you call some of those big name companies, you're going to pay thousands of dollars. A lot of people going to pay for a name. Don't pay for a name. I tell everyone, go with who your heart tells you to go with who you need to hire. The only thing I can guarantee you is that we finish the job. I don't guarantee you to eliminate the bugs in one trip. I give you a warranty for my seven years. I can't guarantee the bugs are going to be gone in one trip. Especially, the longer you have them, the more it's going to take. Typically, how long does it usually take.

Tim: To get that service completed?

Eric : We put them on a 30 day. But I have a goal, we all have a goal to eliminate any infestation within 30 days, within three weeks, if possible, but give ourselves 30 days. And granted, I'm not going to lie. I mean, there are sometimes that the job is so severe, whether it's roaches, fleas or bedbugs. And that's typically the hardest things and the most expensive pest control treatments that you're going to get. But sometimes those are so bad that when you go out there and your initial inspection, you just have to be honest with the customer. Like, I cannot do this in 30 days. I'm going to put you on an initial service for this 30 days, and then I won't be out here every seven to ten days treating. And then I'm going to put you on the monthly for $50, $60 a month, whatever it calls for, until your problem is taken care of. We don't lock anyone into a contract when it comes to pest control. None of my pest control customers sign any contracts. It is our job to make you happy every month, bimonthly or quarterly, whatever service you have. In order for us to keep your business. That's another thing that separates us from our competition. If you're unhappy, you can't quit any time. It's our job to make you happy, keep you happy. If I cancel an account, I have to sell two to make it to grow. I don't want to cancel an account. You're going to people are going to move. People are going to pass away. Somebody might cancel because their expectations are different than yours. And that's why I'm so big about setting that expectation, a realistic expectation. And the most important thing is when they call you for a follow up. If we get a big rainstorm and they get ants around their kitchen sink or something after that rainstorm, they want you out there when they call you. I typically tell everyone, 24 hours, we will be there. That's why I named a company Express, because there's no reason in the world to put someone off who's having an active problem, who's already paid you to do the job. Sometimes we might have to schedule a new customer out seven, 8910 days sometimes, because our priority is our current customer base. Of course we want to grow. But if you're a current customer and you're having an issue and you call, by all means. We need to get out there ASAP to solve your problem. You know that. And you know, we work anywhere from seven in the morning, sometimes 637 o'clock at night if that's what it calls for. The summer rolls around. I don't want to work my guy till 07:00 at night, but sometimes we're going to have a couple of weeks in the summer where it's going to be like that. You're just that busy. Do what you got to do. You got to do it. You either got to hire or work a little late. Either way, you're spending money. But like I said, we really strive to impress with our service. I'm a firm believer in all the guys that we have back there in our shop. That's why I keep it small because I like to make sure my guys are always on the ball. And the bigger you get, the harder it is to control that. I will hopefully one day have 50 employees in the back one day. But we're far from there. At times what I said, that's okay. But other than that, right now our wildlife service is taking off like crazy. And we started getting into lawns and weed control and mowing and stuff last year, but I didn't advertise any of that until the beginning of this year. And just simply putting on our website, our businesses, it's every day people are calling for lawn services and getting signed up for that. And the wildlife, I don't know if enough people know about our wildlife yet, but it is definitely taken off. And right now we're getting calls for beavers. I would never have thought we'd get called, but that's what we're about right now. A lot of it, I guess with the flooding and stuff, they've kind of moved down and migrated a little bit. But we were getting calls about beavers quite more than I would expect right now.

Jourdyn: That's a very weird question, but I always wonder, like, are they aggressive when they move around because they seem like such docile creatures.

Eric : All right, confuse me. The most experience that I have with them is that a lot of people who go fishing or fly fish that get out there in the water, in the inner tubes and stuff like that, if you run across the beaver coming to their territory, they're going to come out and give you a couple of warnings. They're going to come out and slap their tail on the water a little bit and tell you, hey, where you don't belong, pretty much. And I have heard one or two stories about being nipped on the leg by them. Listen, you hear a lot of things whether it's true or not. But I do know they will give you some warnings. They will slap their tail on the water to tell you like, hey, leave us alone. But some of the ones that we pulled out of this pond is not too far down the road here. I mean, we're pulling them out and they were £52, I think was the biggest one. And yeah, this is our first beaver call. That was my first experience with it. And now, granted, I have a technician who is our wildlife guy. I mean, I go out there and watch him, but I don't touch the wildlife stuff or nothing like that. I have a guy that he's solely wildlife, and that's what he does. That's what he specializes in. I have a guy that solely lawns. That's what he specializes in. Then I got a guy who takes care of our pest control and that's what he specializes in. You know, I got to know a little bit of everything. Oh, yeah. But the other thing is that we can constantly go to our CEU training courses, our continuing education. We go to that about four or five times a year, and I try to take different people through the company. Whatever the CEU course is that time, whoever is more into that one, I'm going to take them. This gets some extra training, gets you a little bit more knowledge. Knowledge is power. The more knowledge you have, the better you can communicate with your customers, you know, best thing in my opinion about it. But other than that, we're a young company. Like they were going into our fifth year, almost in our fifth year. But we have been very blessed that the city of Shawnee here has accepted. They just accepted this right and I'm wrong. I didn't truly feel like there was a lot of competition for me. I feel like I am the competition, to be honest, because I love capitalism and I love being able to give you the best price that if someone else did provide the same service. But I'm giving you a better service at a better price. I truly, truly believe that. I believe once people who are used to having a service company come out to their home and maintain their bugs, if they experience us, I don't see us losing those people because we go above and beyond for every single customer. Everybody's $99 every three months is the same. It don't matter where it comes from. That's another thing we treat inside, outside and your yard. A lot of our companies are going to up charge you to treat the yard. It's built into our price. We're going to cover 50ft around the outside. And I have to put a footage on it because some people call you and man, they got five acres for their yard. About 50ft around the outside is what we're going to do. But if you're in a cookie cutter neighborhood, we're going to treat that whole yard. I mean, it's not oversized or anything like that, but when you get an acreage, of course we got to upcharge you a little bit on that selling point, too.

Tim: Like having that included like, in the price with things.

Eric : Absolutely. Especially if other companies don't have that as a separate upcharge. Yeah, I've been doing this a long time, and I have experienced technicians from other companies, and they come in and they try to do things the way that they do things over there and like, it's not the way we do things. We build it into your price. Now, granted, there are other services that cost more mosquito services. We typically start that at $30 a month during mosquito season. It's very affordable. One of my favorite services, because I am always outside with my kids that time of year, and my dog has nothing about mosquito control. And I think the most important aspect of it, if you have animals, all right, mosquitoes are the only way your dogs and cats are going to get heartworms. And I know you can give them a pill and all that stuff, but get your yard treated for mosquitoes every now and then, and you really protect your animals. It's a great service. It's not just a luxury service to enjoy your outside. I mean, it's definitely a safety thing for your animals, a health thing. That's a great way to look at pest control, too, is that we make to bring the health of your home up to a proper standard. I've been doing this so long, I personally believe that doctors should go to people's houses and see how some search situations are, and they could really medicate them a lot better than just like, hey, take this. Look at where that comes from. Because when we go into homes and we go into, let's say, a roach problem or a really bad rodent infestation, the odor that these things put off, I can walk into a German cockroach infestation. And when they open the door, I can use my nose and tell you it's German cockroaches before I ever even step in. Well, I mean, sometimes that's what it is. But pets guy, like, say they inspect, and you use all your senses to inspect. I mean, a rodent infestation, you're going to open your door and I'm going to smell urine immediately. Because every time they move, every time they move, they're dribbling. They're not like us. They don't go at one time. Every time they move, they drip. You can see that you're not seeing their yearn. And that's why I say, like, the health of your home, when we walk in there and we see something like that and this person has a bad health problem like this goes hand in hand. It truly does. When people have terrible lung problems. Well, dead cockroaches in your home is the number one reason for asthma in children in the United States over there really having dead cockroaches in your home and they're not being cleaned up, they become dust particles and you breathe them in, and children are very susceptible to that.

Jourdyn: The way I'm learning so much so.

Eric : Like, for us, when we do a roach treatment, we always offer, do you want us to clean this up when we're done instead of just kill them? When we bring a HEPA filter vacuum in and we clean it all, we could disinfect everything. I mean, we try to bring the health of someone's home up to a proper standard and like, that if doctors will go into people's houses sometimes, like, this person is always seeing me for acute lung problems, let's go to their house and see what they're breathing all day long. That, to me, makes more sense. Like I said, health and pest control go hand in hand. We are considered essential services. We don't get shut down during the pandemics and things like that. Stinging insects. The health of your home is very important to us and more important to me. I mean, it's something that I really try to pride ourselves on, being able to help you live a better life. There's been some situations you walk in and you're like, okay, folks, we got to do some cleaning in here before we can really eliminate this problem. And it is a team effort. A lot of pest problems or team efforts can the homeowners and their technician, all right? That's why you got to set expectations, set standards. But I've walked into some situations before, numerous times over the years, and severe roach infestations, severe clutter, and all those people needed was a little bit of help. We go in, we do a roach treatment, and we knock out, let's say, 60, 70% of that roach problem on the first treatment. And I come back seven to ten days later, their house is spotless. Their house is spotless. They did everything we asked, and they just needed that little bit of help to get started. And when someone does that for us, we go back in there. Man, I do everything I can to eliminate that problem. They're really trying to improve their situation, and sometimes people just need just a little bit of kickstart, get rid of their bugs, and they're going to start getting touch. It because of the bugs or because of the mice or whatever it is that makes me feel good at the end of the day. This industry is something that when you start a job and you're the same person that goes each time and you finish that job, it gives you a sense of accomplishment. Like, man, this was bad. These people had German roaches for two years, and that's a lot of roaches you got. I better believe German roaches. Two German roaches give you 150,000 roaches in a year's time. So when you walk into a home and you see three roaches, I can see them. Like, you're literally fighting a million roaches. You're literally fighting a million roaches, and you're trying to solve that in 30 days. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but we always have a goal. Three weeks to eliminate this in three weeks to do the best job we can and get this done as fast as we can. It's not going to happen overnight, not with that many roaches. Well, I mean, you guys are probably going to be itching the rest of the day.

Tim: I would probably just burn my house out.

Eric : People say that all the time. It's favorable, but you got to get it disinfected. And, you know, in these days, especially since COVID the price of disinfectants have just skyrocketed, you can get kind of like a bug bomb, but it's a disinfectant bomb for your home. You can just pop a fogger in there and disinfect your home these days. But before the vid that hit, it was affordable for just about a year. And now the prices have just skyrocketed. On a case like anything else, like $250 for a case of those things. Wow. You only need one or two. But we offer so many wide range of services. I mean, pest control, there are so many things. The definition of a pest is anything that is unwanted on your property.

Jourdyn: So my job is so easy because the next segment actually goes into word association. I don't know if you've played word association before, but basically I'm going to give you a term and you have a little bit to just kind of like the first thing that pops into your head. You can talk about it and explain it. Which actually is funny, because the first topic was what's the difference between a pest and an insect? And you literally just answered my question there was answering my question. Let me see. The next one would be what are like the major categories of pests?

Eric : Like the major you guys like different species that we deal with?

Jourdyn: Yes.

Eric : Right now it would be it's that right after Christmas, so our phones are blowing up with bedbugs every holiday season, every spring break, at the end of summer, our phones are going to explode with bedbug treatments, inspections. This is because family got together. You go spring break, you went on vacation, you come home, you stay in the hotel and you pick them up. Summer rolls around, you went to church camp, bam camp, went to go stay with grandma for the summer. Whatever it is, you pick them up somewhere. Roaches are year round mice and rats right now because it's so cold outside right now. Those are really the big one, roaches bedbugs, always. I was actually under a house earlier today doing a termite inspection and I came out, I tried to inspect it as fast as I could. The amount of black widows that were underneath this house was insane. I counted those. I mean, there was quite a few of them in that crawl space. But the only way to know is he crawling right there and find out.

Jourdyn: Right?

Eric : But spiders are year round. That's just a seasonal thing in. Just another two months. Hopefully two months. Swarm season is going to start for termites, and that is my favorite time of year. All right. Termite season. Yeah, my favorite time of year. That's nice. It's a good time.

Jourdyn: My next word yes or phrase would be the warning signs of a possible infestation, whether that be like with rodents, with mice, bed bugs, anything like that.

Eric : Well, let's go with bed bugs. Bed bugs. 40% of people don't show symptoms of bed bug bites. Okay? 40% of people are not allergic to them. So sometimes you're going to have bites and sometimes you're not. But a lot of people find them when they go to change their sheets. You're going to find little blood stains or droppings. A dead bedbug, a casing. Every time a bed bug feeds, it sheds its skin because it grows. So it's kind of like a snake from time to time. The more casings you find in your home, the more you have been fed on. Things that I have noticed with bed bugs, in particular things to look for is if you've got your pillowcase, you're going to find these little plus signs, little dark plus signs, and that's going to be their feces. They always kind of look like a little cross or a plus sign when they're on your sheets and stuff.

Jourdyn: Not even distinctive mark.

Eric : I mean, when I see it, I know for a fact that's bedbug 100% when it comes to mice, of course, you got your droppings, you've got damaged holes in the walls. Go to turn on a light switch and it doesn't work. And you change the ball, but still doesn't work. Well, they probably chewed your wire. Why do they like wiring? It's not so much the electrical current going through it. I've been taught that it has more to do with the corn syrup that's in the coating of the wires. It's sweet to them. So they like to chew the coating of the wires because the corn syrup that's in them, that's how I have been taught about it over the years. I'm sure the electrical vibration has something to do with that. Corn syrup is what makes it so sweet, why they like to chew on it. You're going to hear rats. You'll definitely hear that. You're going to hear the thud. Anything you get in your attic, you'll probably going to hear a couple of thuds if it's a larger critter. And listen, sometimes we've been called out to a house to get into the attic, and they're like, man, I know something is in my attic. I know it is. I hear it. And so we go and we see zero signs. No valleys in the insulation where they've been walking, no burrows, no droppings, no odors, nothing. A lot of times when you have a big attic, especially when a critter gets on your roof, it almost sounds like it echoes through there. And it can sound like it's in your attic when it's technically just on your roof, but you just have to inspect to find out. There are symptoms for just about everything. There's odorous ants. You start having a pungent smell in your house, you can have an odorous ant problem. There are so many critters and so many different signs for them. I tell my technicians, especially when I start training them, it's going to take you a year to see the cycle of bugs. It's going to take you two years to remember the cycle of bugs. Then it's going to take you three years to have it down to where you know what's coming before it happens. You know what you need to do at this house. Because it's this time of year to be a pest control technician, it takes time. It does. It takes a lot of experience. The longer you do it, the more you see. I still see new things that I have been doing. It 17 years, and I run across something from time to time. I ain't got a clue. I have to take a picture, make a phone call, or get into my book and try to find it. Thank God for that CCAP these days. But it truly does. It takes at least three years, in my opinion, to consider yourself a real pet technician. Doing it day in and day out, it just takes time. The longer you do this, the more money you should make at doing this because your knowledge is that much better. You should be able to make sales to just about anyone just because your knowledge of whatever issue they're having, it just takes time. It's just like anything else. It takes time to be good at anything. I still try to learn. I still try to get better myself. Self motivation is the hardest thing, but you got to do it.

Tim: But you're doing it. And you guys are doing well for being there for what'd you say, five years?

Eric : Almost five years. Almost five years. August, you guys are doing it. Yeah, I mean it's. I'm excited for this year. My goal this year is to have a banner year. My goal this year is to double everything. I mean, I have a high goal this year. I have a high goal this year, but I have everything in place to hit that goal. I believe in my employees. I believe in the technicians that are out there, and I believe that they're going to be honest. I don't believe that any of the guys I have back here, because I really try to weed those individuals out. If I got someone that if your guts telling you they're not being honest with you, they're not going to be honest with your customers. You know what I mean? It's just the bottom line. Just be honest. That's like the number one thing I can say about being a pest control, and just be honest about everything. If you don't know, you don't know. Go figure it out. Come back. Don't try to get rich off of one person. Give good prices. Give fair prices. Times are hard for a lot of people right now, and they're going to get a little bit worse than 23. The way inflation and everything is gas going up, everything. I mean, it all plays a factor into us being a reoccurring service for customers. Our reoccurring customers. I can't decide how important that is. Their costs go up for everything else, man. Pest control is they might be able to do it themselves. So it's our job to always impress, always go above and beyond. And us be the last thing you ever want to cut out of your services. We're grateful for any and all services that we get from customers, and we really try to make our customers know how much we appreciate that's. Awesome.

Jourdyn: That's really crazy.

Tim: You guys are crushing it and everything. Just continue up the hard work and.

Eric : You'Ll reach that goal. And thank you. I appreciate that. And we got hefty goals this year.

Jourdyn: You guys should be able to get those done, though. But we do want to thank you for being in the first installment for the podcast. That was literally all of our questions, so thank you for joining us.

Eric : Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to this. Like I said, I really hope it really gets her name out there and what we do and what we offer, and to let people know that, hey, there's other options out there that hopefully more affordable and you get better results to make money and save you money. That's a win win for everybody.

Jourdyn: We are done here. Actually, that's everything.

Eric : Thank you guys so much. Yeah, of course. Happy to have you. All right, you guys have a wonderful day. Thank you. You too. All right, bye. Bye. Bye.

Jourdyn: On the next episode of Surviving the Pride, we're going to have onsite security, teaching you guys how to secure your spot.

Tim: Looking forward to that episode, but we want to thank everybody for being here for our very first episode, and we'll see you next week.

Jourdyn: All right, guys, see you later.

Eric : See you.

Listen to the full episode here

Timothy : Hello everybody, and welcome to Surviving the Pride. I am your host, Tim.

Jourdyn : And I'm Jordan, and you might be.

Timothy : Asking, what is Surviving the Pride? Well, Jordan, I would tell you Surviving the Pride is all about marketing, explaining all aspects of marketing to help a business grow, importance of having a website, SEO, social media. And we're also going to be talking about starting a business as well.

Jourdyn : Yeah, so in addition to that, we're also going to give you guys some helpful hints, tips and tricks about current and upcoming trends within whatever industry our guest business is from and give you guys a bit of general information in regards to that.

Timothy : So before we go ahead and bring on Express Pest, I just want to give a brief rundown on some of the segments that we have planned for him during this podcast. One of them is titled technically the Hot Seat. Usually within this segment we kind of just introduce the guests. We put them in the hot seat, asking them questions about customer experiences and how to deal with the branding that they have currently been doing with social media and if they have anything that else that they would like to describe or say about their business. And then also near the end of it, we're going to be playing a little game with them, just called word association. Typically with that, each round entails for our guests to give us a phrase or words that first come to their mind based on our randomly generated word selection. Eric welcome back to surviving the pride. This is for your second episode here with us that is very exciting and I'm so excited to have you back here with us. Now, before we go ahead and get started, do you want to go ahead and just reintroduce yourself?

Eric: My name is Eric Sprague with Express Pest Services. We've been in business for this year's five years. I've been in the industry for 18 years now and we've been rocking and rolling. We are in the middle of termite season right now. They are swarming and that's a lot of the calls we're getting right now.

Jourdyn : I was going to say with this specific episode, we will be focusing primarily on effective termite treatment and how to protect your property. So that's actually good that you kind of said that you're in the middle of that season. So would you want to define what a termite is and what their behaviors would be?

Eric: Sure. Here in Oklahoma, we deal with subterranean termites. Now there is part of Oklahoma in the southeastern three counties that get promotes and termites, but we don't have to deal with Formos and termites where we are here in Oklahoma. So we're going to talk about subterranean termites and they do exactly what they're called subterranean. They come from underground. Other termites can live above ground. These termites cannot. They actually have to live in shelter tubes, which we call termite tubes this time of year, they can swarm out. And when they swarm, the reason that they're swarming is that the colony is so large that the queen of that colony can't control. There's too many of her for them for her to control. She designates a certain amount of them and they become kings and queens and they turn black, grow wings, swarm out. Now, on average, in my opinion, what I've been taught is about 80% to 90% of those aren't going to make it. They're going to fly out, swarm and die. The other 1020 percent are going to make it in the next three years. That's another termite problem. After you get a treatment and you're having active termites this time of year, you should expect to see a swarm two to three weeks after your treatment. And that's because they are affected and they're dying. So the queen is like, hey, we got to save the species. You guys go make another colony. So she designates more to become kings and queens. They swarm out again, but they are already infected. They do not make it. I tell a lot of my customers, if you're having an active termite problem this time of year and we do a treatment and you don't get a swarm within a month, better call me back. We may have missed it. It's highly expected to have a swarm after a treatment this time of year. And granted, just because they're not swarming, you don't have a termite problem. I literally got under a house, I think it was Monday and found one tiny little termite tube starting on the bottom block, coming up the stem wall. I mean, he got real lucky. He called us out there before they made it to his subfloor and did any damage. But subterranean termites, they don't know if they're eating a house, a stump, a log on the side of your house, whatever it is, they just know it's a food source. What they do is they take that wood cellulose and when they eat it, it actually becomes sugar for them. They get the sugar out of it, and that's what keeps them going. And we like to use a product called Termidor for the treatment. And Termidor is a non repellent product. They don't know they're going through it. And that's the magic behind that product. They can't sense it. They just keep on doing their normal thing. Within 60 to 90 days after treatment, that colony is typically 100% eradicated. Other than that, I mean, it's the signs of termites that you can look for in your home beside the swarm. When you get a swarm, they're going to swarm in the hundreds, sometimes thousands. It's a lot different than swarming ants. When you get ants forming, usually get a dozen, maybe two dozen of those at a time. In 17 years, I've personally never seen an ant swarm into the hundreds in one location on a home. It's just never happening to me. But termites are going to swarm hundreds, thousands. I mean, you're going to know it's termite, but there are still a lot of technicians out there that misidentify swarming ants or swarming termites. And one big difference that a homeowner can look for themselves is that on a termite, it's kind of got a cigar shaped body. There's no segments to the body. On an ant, it's going to have an hour. It's going to have pinch segments on it. You can see different body parts on it. Head, thorax, abdomen. And also the wings on a flying ant are kind of like a fly. They're kind of in a V shape on their back, kind of. And termites wings are almost jet white, and they're twice the length of the body, and they're going to lay straight back on that termite body. And also termites drop their wings a lot of times, too, when they swarm. So if you find look at your window seal and you see a bunch of insect wings, there's more than likely some swarming termites. I don't know, too many other insects are going to swarm and drop their wings like that. I think termites are far as I know, termites are the only ones that I can think that do that. But other signs besides when they swarm, of course you're packing a pitcher up on the wall and the nail just goes right through the wall sometimes. Here in Oklahoma, it's different than other states. In other states, you're required to have a termite policy if you have a mortgage. So your home is getting inspected year after year after year after year, as long as you have that termite policy. Here in Oklahoma, the laws are a lot different. They're more what I would call free for the homeowner. In Oklahoma, it's not required to have a termite policy if you have a mortgage on your home. Other states it is, but you don't own your home, so the bank still owns it. Therefore, you got to have insurance for termites because homeowners doesn't cover it. That's the main thing that we were an insurance company for termites. But here in Oklahoma, when you do a termite inspection, I mean, you're looking down, you're looking up, you're looking under window seals around. There's not a lot where you don't look is where they're going to be. If you like, oh, yeah, this house is good. I don't need to look them. They're going to have termites over there if you don't look. That's why guys like, hey, when you're into that house and it's hard to get to that back corner, that's where the termites are. That's where they're going to be, where you don't want to go. But other signs are, of course, termite tubes coming up from your baseboards or just dirt coming straight out of the wall. It's like a termite castle, kind of don't build this little design coming straight out of the wall, and it is just you knock it open and it's going to be a hollow tube, and you can see the little termites stick their head out. I love termites. They're very cool species, and they work in such a manner that humans could learn a lot. I think that about ants, too. Humans could learn a lot. It's all about their species and the survival of their colony. It's not about the individual. The individual termite could care less about itself. It's there for the colony. When these workers of the termite colony go out and scavenge forage for food, they're constantly moving under our feet. There's a whole world underneath our feet under the ground, moving. Like I said, they are constantly foraging. They don't know if the house, a log stump, a two x four you threw out on the grass. But as they're going out foraging and looking, they're going to find a food source, and then they're going to leave those tubes. They're going to leave damage. And sometimes if you have a house that has wallpaper in it, you're going to pull that wallpaper back, and you're going to find termite frass, which is their droppings ****. And it just looks like a bunch of little specks all over the wall. It kind of just kind of looks like dirt in a way, but it's real sticky, and you can kind of see the veins through it. Homes that have wood paneling in there still, my goodness, man, that will hide termites like crazy. I mean, you got a gap between that wood paneling and the actual wall itself, and sometimes those termites can get behind there, and you don't see them until they make it to the ceiling. We can only do a visual inspection. We do the best inspection that we can. You cannot see inside the walls. So there are some circumstances out there. Homes that are stucco. That is a termite farm, all right? Termite farm I have treated since I've owned this company, I only have two homes under policy that are stucco because I usually walk away from. It is a termite farm. You could be getting yourself into a major headache down the road. We have a certain policy. If that stucco is off the ground a certain amount, we'll go ahead and do the treatment. But if you have stucco under the grade of the dirt, you are going to have termites, and you can get it treated. It's probably going to work for a few years, but you're going to get termites again. It is a termite farm. These homes that have the stucco, and then they got foam blocks inside the walls. Instead of using wood, they're using these foam Lego blocks that real popular out in the West Coast, but it's starting to move this way into Oklahoma. And I mean, that is just an insulator for the termites that we have here. I can't speak on drywood or damp wood I don't deal with those and don't ever want to. But those stucco homes and those block wall, the foam block walls, it is just complete insulation for them. In the wintertime, termites usually start moving really slow because the ground gets so cold and frozen. But when you have that type of home, it's just an insulator, and those guys go to town. I have a story. I have a guy who moved from california. He's from oklahoma, but he moved to california for 30 years, and he built his dream home here in BFE, oklahoma. Out here in the middle of nowhere, okay, nowhere. And it's a beautiful, beautiful home. But he called me. He was getting a refinance. So anytime you get a refinance, you got to get a termite inspection done. So I went out there, and he was like, hey, man, have at it. I ain't got no termite. This home is termite proof. And I was like, okay. So I went ahead and started doing my inspection and go around, start looking at baseboards windows. And within 8ft of walking through the front door, I found terminals so bad, they were on the second floor of his home. And that home had only been built for five years. But it's a stucco home with foam block walls. It's going to happen every single time. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I would never own a stucco home. Never going to happen. But other than that, I mean, your brick, your mortars, siding, homes, that's all very easy. But in my opinion, a stucco home is about the hardest thing that you can guarantee that you're eliminating termites on. There are so many places for them to be. And then again, this in person individual, he had stained concrete. He didn't want his porches drilled in his garage drilled. But there's no way around it. You have to get a treatment put on the home, and you got to drill through sometimes things that are really nice and really expensive. I personally hate drilling through tile, but I've gotten pretty good at it over the years. I've cracked one tile in the last five years in the corner underneath something, so they were okay with it. But people that get an add on to the back of their house, they build a beautiful sunroom on the back of the house, and they put bamboo flooring on that back slab. Well, you get termites. There's a crack there where that back slab butts up to your home, and there's a crack, and that's where those termites are going to come up. Oklahoma has a minimum standard. Every adjacent slab must be treated without exception. You have to treat them. If you've got a back deck built over a back patio, you're going to drill through that back deck. To get through that back patio, you got nice flooring in there. It has to be either carpet pulled up or tiled, drilled through. Sometimes your hardwood floors are getting drilled through and there's no easy way to tell your customer, hey, you got some really nice floors and I'm about to put a quarter inch hole or five eight hole every twelve inches on this wall. Every situation is a little bit different, but subterranean termites, you don't ever want to have your wood pile for your fireplace stacked up on the side of your house. You don't want to give them any easy access to your home. There's even a privacy fence, a wooden privacy fence, in contact with your home, in contact with the soil. Those termites can come up and get into your home. So if you have a privacy fence and you're having a termite inspection done every year, or you get an inspection done just to find out if you have them, they need to be looking at your privacy fence as well. Anything that the home is in contact with that's wood needs to be inspected. Just because it's 50ft over here, it does not mean those things are not going to make it 50ft in a few years. Your home is your number one investment, even though it's just a fence. Hey, get it treated. You stop them. You treat the fence, you can stop them before they get in your house, hopefully.

Jourdyn : Right? That leads me actually into another question that I wanted to get into, which would be the different types of treatment options that would be available? Do you see any options that typically you would see, for instance, what you were saying with the patios or with some of the wood paneling for some houses? Do you know, like some treatments would be better for certain circumstances? Are there more benefits and drawbacks to them?

Eric: Absolutely. In my opinion, and listen, there are 100 different termitocide liquid products out there on the market. We use one and only one when it comes to the liquid termite treatments. And that's Termidor Termidor is God's gift of termite control because it's a non repellent. A lot of the other competition for it is a repellent. So if your company misses a gap like that, they're eventually going to find that gap and get up in there. A non repellent is the best liquid to use on subterranean termites. There are baiting systems that are available as well. We do use a baiting system from time to time when someone is just trying to be proactive about their home, they don't have active termites. I will 100% say, hey, we've got this other option here. It's more affordable on your install, but it does cost more yearly through us to have the bathing system than the liquid termite treatment. So I mean, there's pros and cons to both. Even if you have active termites, and let's say you got active termites in your garage, nowhere else on the home, your garage, by law here in Oklahoma, you still really need to get a spot treatment with a liquid, and then you can do a bathing system around the rest of your home. The whole thing is to have 100% barrier around your home, whether that's baiting systems or a liquid. There are a couple of different bathing systems out there. One by dow industries. It's been on the market the longest. I actually used to do that many moons ago, right out of high school, and I thought I knew everything about termites when I was doing citricon and debating, and I didn't nothing when it came to liquids. Debate has its place, has its place in the industry. I would highly recommend a liquid treatment if it's possible to do on your home. Now, you get to some of these houses, you guys, and they got crazy expensive stuff around the outside of their home. Are you going to drill through marble? No. Granite? No. So there are certain cases where, yes, you need to get a bathing system, but even then, let's say you've got a major backyard and you've got concrete running 2020, 5ft out and a big drop off, and it's just a really nice patio area. Well, that's all concrete. You can't just install a baiting system out there on the grass 40ft behind the home. You're going to have to drill through that concrete to put a bathing system closer to the home. So, I mean, it really depends. In today's world, with everyone being finicky about insecticides, pesticides, chemicals, these chemicals, if they're using professional manner, are extremely safe. Extremely safe. If you get a guy out there who's like, yeah, brother, I got you, we'll get you taken care of here. He's probably not measuring nothing now, and he's just throwing it down. If I came out to your home, I'm going to inspect it, and then I'm going to measure how long your house is not the square footage, but how many linear feet is involved in your home. And that's going to tell us how many gallons of product on a liquid that your home is required to have. Again, we use terminor he, which is he stands for high efficiency. Termidor has some other products as well, but I like the high efficiency because it's two gallons every 10ft instead of four gallons every 10ft. And it's better for the environment, it's better for the ground overall. It's less volume that you're carrying with you, less chances of having a major spill, and it's better for the environment. So many people are saying, throw chemicals at it, throw chemicals at it, throw chemicals at it. There are so many other ways to do things besides chemicals. There's 100 different ways to do things depending on the laws in the state that you're in. Some houses need a liquid treatment and a baiting system. You want to be the most productive as you can, the most preventable for your number one investment. Get a liquid treatment, get a bathing system. And even with your bathing systems, a lot of companies are going to come out and just check those bathing systems. You need to have your home inspected at least once a year. Even with those bathing systems, if it's a crawl space, that company should be going underneath of it once a year. If it's a slab, they should be coming in it once a year, not just checking the bait stations, because you have gaps between those bathing systems, and they can make it through those gaps. That's why I like the liquid, is because there ain't any gaps. Ain't any gaps. There shouldn't be any gaps. And again, terminal being a non repellent, I mean, they don't know they're going through it. And the way that works, the non repellent is the soldiers and the queen. They have nothing to do with the house or the food source that they're on. It's only the workers. The workers actually go out, get the food, and actually bring the food back and actually put it in the queen's mouth and in the soldier's mouth, because the soldiers, if you were to look up a picture of a soldier subterranean termite, the mandibles on that, the head is huge on it. The mandibles are so big that it can't pick food up and put it in its own mouth. So the workers, is that's how they are protected by their soldiers? So they bring the food back, put it in the soldier's mouth and in the queen's mouth. Queen has to do nothing. She's Laser but all the soldiers, the only way they're protected is by their soldiers. So they are number two on the pecking order, getting fed way more soldiers than they all are. Queen. So most of that colony is bringing that food back to feed their soldiers and the rest of the workers. With a baiting system, it can take six months sometimes to eliminate a termite colony. With a liquid, it should be 60 to 90 days. So half the time, even a little less than half the time, for that colony to be gone. And here in Oklahoma, subterranean termites, you get termites on your home. Well, that colony doesn't have to be on your home like the nest isn't on your home. Those things can be 100 yards away because they're foraging out and finding it, and then they're sending pheromones back to the colony, hey, this is where we want to come. So more and more start showing up with Termidor. Let's say you live in a cookie cutter neighborhood. You got a house on each side of you, and you're right in the middle, and you got termites, and you don't know if they've got termites, but let's say they do. If you're using Termidor and it's the same termite colony, you just killed your neighbor's termites, and they didn't have to do nothing because it's one colony and that termitis eliminated it. A non repellent will not do that. A bathing system can do that. Over time, another thing with a baiting system, especially with that Dow Industries product, the Citricon, every time you find a hit, you got to add another baiting system and another baby and another bathing citizen. So there are hidden fees with those baiting systems out there. You got to pay for each bathing system.

Jourdyn : So my next question would be, like, since there is a difference between a non chemical and a chemical measure, what would be some of the preventative forms to make sure that you can kind of avoid termites or an infestation in the first place?

Eric: Sure, there's a fairly new product. It's been out for a little while, but it's not super popular here in Oklahoma. It's super popular out on the coastal states, but it's called termamesh. All right? Termamesh is something that it gets put when your home is being built. A termite company will come out. Instead of doing a liquid treatment and saturating the soil inside the foundation, they're going to come out and put what's called termamesh around all the stub outs, all the plumbing, and where the foundation, all the brick and everything sit on top of the footer of the foundation. And what termamesh is? It's one of the strongest stainless steel screens that's out there, and it's woven so tightly that the termite can't get its head through it. And if a termite can't get its head through something, it can't get through there. Now, that being said, you can do all that work. And if your landscaper comes out and builds dirt up 2ft high on the side of your house, that's not going to do anything for you. You can spend the money for that when you're building your home. It's not a guarantee, but it is a very good product. It's something that I really do wish was bigger here in Oklahoma, especially for the stub outs, the things that like your kitchen sink, water lines coming up, because that's one of the hardest places to get treated home with a liquid is when they come up through the center of the home. You're coming in and doing some major drilling inside the home.

Jourdyn : Right.

Eric: But as far as I can think of, I mean, termamesh is the newest, coolest thing out there that a lot of people are doing. And it takes a lot of time to go out there on the job site and actually install it. The bigger the house, the more plumbing, the longer it's going to take. The more square footage and leaner footage at home is, the longer it's going to take. I've heard of guys being out on a job site for 4 hours doing a term of mesh install. Before that's, a half a day on one job. And then of course, you got your vapor barriers. When you're getting a slab poured, you're supposed to get a piece of plastic put down underneath that slab to separate that slab from the soil. That is a termite shield. To an extent in Arkansas, when I used to do this in Arkansas, I can't think of one crawl space that I ever went to that did not have a termite shield put on it. Right underneath where the wood sits on top of that stem wall. They would either have shingles or a big piece of sheet metal that would come out, and it's considered a termite shield. I have also seen termites build up and build that shelter tube up and around that shield and go over it. But it is a deterrent of some kind. And here in Oklahoma, I honestly can't think of one crawl space I've been in that has a termite shield underneath of it. And again, that's kind of different state laws, different regulations with builders. I do wish Oklahoma would get on the would do what other states did when it came to termite policies about if you got a mortgage, you need to have a policy, not just an inspection because you don't own your home, the bank does. I do wish that law would change here in Oklahoma. I think a lot of people in Oklahoma have a termite problem and they don't even know it because it's not required to get an inspection. A lot of people don't do anything about it until they notice termite swarming or they go over to their window seal and they're like, what in the heck is all this damage? The window seal behind your couch that you never look at. And then one day you move your couch and you're going to change your drapes and you notice it. By then they're from the ground and done did a bunch of damage inside your wall. And that's another thing without opening up your walls, it's a guessing game how much damage is actually in your wall. What I tell my customers is, listen, if you got termites, if you're that concerned about it, hey, let's do some exploring and cut some squares out in these walls or one big long rectangle to check out your studs. But if you got termites and you get it treated and there's no damage to that wall, not any serious damage to the baseboard, I am not going to be one to rip that wall open just to find out how much damage is in there. You're just opening a bag of worms. The way lumber is if you touch that wall and that wall is moving, it's soft, it's brittle. Yes, you're going to have to replace that wall. But again, if you have a termite policy through a termite company, you should never have to replace anything, because that termite company should be responsible for any future infestations as long as you're paying your yearly renewal, paying your yearly insurance on it, that termite company should be responsible for any new termites that show up on the home. If you do get new termites that should come out, treat it, and then 60 to. 90 days later, get a licensed carpenter out there to replace anything that was damaged. And that's what we do. That is exactly what we do with the liquid termiticide. We're going to guarantee your home for three years on most cases. I will not guarantee a stucco home for three years, but a brick and mortar siding, all that, that's fine. And at the end of that three years, depending on what your square footage is, I'm charging you 149, 179 a year every year. Therefore, after you get termites, again, falls back on us if you get damage, and that damage, when we do your termite treatment, you get a graph of your home and where the damage was in the scope of work. And they say, in three years, you get termites on your back door. We're going to go back to that graph there's. Not marked any signs of termites on this back door, and they then did damage to your door frame. Well, we're going to do a treatment, spot treatment, 10ft in each direction of the activity to make sure we give them. So you're getting a 20 foot treatment, no additional cost. Then we do have to give it a waiting game to kill that colony and then get a carpenter out there to replace any work, any damage. And that is what we do. There are a lot of companies out there that do infestation only policies. What's the point of that? Yeah.

Jourdyn : You were at preventative measures, so some of the ways that you were saying to prevent termites yeah, I mean.

Eric: You'Ve got your pre construction, a few things you can do in pre construction. But again, the best way to prevent termites on your home, in my opinion, is to have a treatment and have a policy ongoing, have an insurance policy on your home and be proactive about it. Get it before you have termites. If you call me, you have termites and you've got damage, well, I'm going to kill your termites, but I ain't touching your damage. And a lot of people think we're going to fix the damage. It's like, no, that's not on me. That was prior. There are a lot of people out there, and this is just human nature, you guys. I mean, everyone tries to get stuff for free out there. I've had a few customers where we go out and we do a termite treatment, and they leave the damage for three years, and they try coming back like, man, if I got termite damage and I'm like, well, yeah, same spot it was three years ago, you never fixed your baseboards. I've gotten into a TIFF about it before, but not often every now. But that's why we have a graph. You got to receive a graph from your termite company with the scope of work, the graph of your home, where the damage was, where the termite activity was. You've got to be on termite on any wood destroying insect, all right? Not just termites. Carpenter ants, powder, post beetles, carpenter bees, all those are our wood destroying insects here in Oklahoma. You got to have paperwork. You got to have that guarantee on it. If you do not receive paperwork on that, these are the critters are going to destroy your number one investment. Where's your guarantee? Where's your warranty at for that? Make sure you get your paperwork. That's best thing that paperwork is going to tell you what time they got there, what time they left, the product that they used, which is extremely important. The most important part of it. You guys, I can go out and train a handful of monkeys to do a termite treatment, but it's the product that's being put in the soil. It is all about the product. There are a lot of products that will kill termites, but what's going to keep on working? What's going to give you the most bang for your buck year after year after year? That's why I give a three year warranty. I don't feel like anyone in our area going to compete with the three year warranty. I have a price per foot for the treatment, $4.99. A lean year foot. I'm going to measure it out, whatever it comes out to. I don't charge people because I got to drill more on this side than on this side of the house. We charge per foot. The work is included. The three year warranty is included. That is the best deal that I know of. But being preventative, I mean, you got a few things in the post construction, but other than that, your best preventative is to be proactive and get your home treated before you have a problem. That's the best prevention you're going to have.

Jourdyn : Most definitely. Especially since it's much harder for untrained eye to notice when there's a termite infestation. So I feel like now that our audience is going to know the signs and what to be aware of, they can definitely try, at least try to prevent it. If not, they can find some experts like you guys.

Eric: Well, that's the thing when you get a termite inspection, all right, a lot of guys are grabbing their flashlight and they're walking around just looking at your baseboards. You need to look at the baseboards, the windows, the crown molding, the ceiling, and the attic. You got to get in the attic, all right? Especially if you find activity below that area. If I go into a house and I find termites on that ceiling, I got no choice but to get in the attic. If you got a crawl space, you got to get in the crawl space. And another thing that gets overlooked a lot is your mulch beds. Your mulch beds. Your termite inspector should be going around the outside of your home and getting down on his knees and pulling mulch back from the foundation in a few spots and making sure there's no colony feeding on your mulch, which is in contact with your home. That gets overlooked a lot. Again, in my experience, that bright red mulch that people get around their house. So I find more termites in that than any other type of mulch. I don't know, it's a softer wood. If you're going to put a mulch around your home, you need that hardwood cypress mulch. That dark stuff. Termites don't like hard wood. They want soft wood. They want the softest, easiest wood to eat. So an inspection, I mean, there are some houses it takes me an hour to do a termite inspection. Some houses, it takes me 30 minutes. The more stuff someone has around their home, the more things you got to inspect. If you go out to a manufactured home and it's just a stem wall, no shrubs, no mulch, no decks, nothing, that's about the easiest termite inspection you can have. But them but even then, there's so many tools out there for us nowadays. You've got tools that listen for sound because termites are constantly chewing, right? So you can put these little sound sensitive tools along the wall. You can't hear it, but it'll give you a little reading that they hear something inside the wall. And then you can do a little bit more exploratory investigation and inspection on it and figure it out. We do use a lot of moisture meters. Every technician has a moisture meter that we'll bring into your home. If we find termite activity, we're going to test for moisture, because moisture without moisture, it's hard for them to survive. But a lot of times people have a leaky faucet on the outside of their house. And if you go out there and you look, it's even got an indention in the ground because it's been dripping so long right there. So when I do a termite inspection, I usually start on the outside and I look at the outside. I look for the wet areas. I look for the low line areas in the dirt. If you don't have gutter guards and the gutter is just dumping right there at the corner of your house, I'm going to go in there. I'm going to look at that closet on the inside of that wall because it's moist, that's where they're going to be at. More than likely heck here in Oklahoma, you guys, I can be in a house and looking down at the baseboards and see no activity. And I look straight up and I see it. I see nothing on the wall till 8ft up. And then there's a little dirt tube coming out. You have to look at the entire wall. You have to look at the entire property. If you get a 15 minutes termite inspection, that is not a termite inspection.

Jourdyn : Termite walk.

Eric: Termites are the number one liability for a pest control company that does termites because your home is your number one investment. Therefore, it's our number one liability. It's going to cost us the most money to fix that. If we speed through it. Don't put the proper amount of termite aside down. And also, it's also fraud. If you tell someone, I'm going to put two gallons every 10ft and you put one and a half, that's fraud. And that's a major thing that happens with termite companies. All right? Gosh, you guys. I mean, I have so many examples of going behind somebody else and clearing a house that someone bought and paid for because they got a clear termite inspection. I get out there and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this house is completely destroyed by termites. Like 100%. It's just gone. It's toothpicks. Holding it together doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. I did a termite inspection a month ago for a sales transaction, all right? And I found exit holes from termite tubes. There was just exit holes, little holes in the wall. There was no dirt coming out of it, nothing like that. I found them above a bay window in the den, and then also on the wall in the master bathroom. I found no live termites, but I found exit holes. I found signs of termites. The only place that house that you could see that has ever been treated was the front porch, because it was a monolithic slab. So you can't drill brick on a monolithic slab. You can only drill the adjacent slabs. You got to go inside and foam the walls with that type of construction. So I recommended a termite treatment on it. You can't prove that the entire house was treated. And he was like, I think it was treated five years ago. It's like, can you prove it? If you can prove it, we're good to go. He could not prove it. And it was twelve years ago that it came that he had it treated. Twelve. Big difference in five. So I get in a back and forth with the seller of the home. They're like, no, it doesn't have termites. I'm like, I'm not saying it does have termites. I'm saying there's exit holes up here, and I can't see that the home has been fully treated. That's what my report said, because that's the questions on the report. So I quoted it. The company that treated it twelve years ago came out and gave them another inspection. And this is a state inspection, all right? An inspection for a sales transaction. This is no diverting from this paperwork. Their graph was simply a graph of the house. Nothing marked. Nothing. Not wood, ground, not privacy fence in contact with it, not shrubs in contact with it, not debris that was around the outside of the home. So many things that they did not have marked on it that I did. And when I got that first phone call from my realtor saying, hey, man, they're saying, no, your inspection is wrong. I was like, well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I need someone to prove that I'm wrong. So they had this other company come out and did another one and he sent me that report and I was like, man, I'm sticking to my guns on this. Their report is incorrect. Their report is incorrect. 100% it's incorrect. So I stuck to my guns on it. I did not get the termite sale on it. But the new buyer of that home was able to get a termite treatment because of that report for the peace of mind that they had. Even if I don't get the business, I'm still going to be honest about this house needing to be treated or the house doesn't need to be treated. You can choose who you want to treat it. I was about $200 more than the other guy was, so I get it. And again, it was a 45 minutes drive for me. So it was like, whatever. But again, you cannot as a termite inspector just because another termite inspector says this house is good. I have got to put my own eyes on it. That termite inspector could have a year's worth of experience. He could have 20 years of experience and he's burnt out. He doesn't care. I mean, you cannot take somebody else's word on an inspection or the homeowner. Man, I had it inspected. It's good to go. Just give me that paperwork. Can't do it. I got it inspected. I can't do it. Like I said, the liability on the termite side. And you guys listen. I got so fed up with the ODAF reports for the state, for the home sales transaction. I raised my price on it because I got so frustrated with the back and forth of things. And for $75, it just really wasn't worth it. My prices, not a lot, but to make it a little bit more worth my time and it's not the inspection. It was all the back and forth. That's the time consuming part. I think I spent 3 hours on the phone about that than anything. But again, you want to make sure your inspection is being done proper. Don't let anyone speak through a termite inspection. Oh, yeah, it looks good. No, inspect it. Tap on the walls. Another thing we do is sounding. It's called sounding. It's an old school method. Been around since the beginning of termite inspectors, but I still use it. I take my screwdriver and I tap on the walls. I tap on your baseboards because you can hear solid wood from hollow wood. Termites are going to hollow wood out. So when you tap along and you hear a difference, you need to start doing a little bit more looking in that area. So, I mean, there's there's a lot of different ways. I've I've been been doing this 17 years. I was taught by an old school guy to do it. And the sounding has always worked for me. That's what I do. And old school way still works. But they do have a ton of new tools out there to help you with termite inspection. They've got an x ray machine. You can put a piece of metal on the backside of the wall or lead or whatever it is. I don't know what it is, but you can actually take an x ray of that wall and you can see everything inside of that wall. Yeah, I mean, I've got a thermal camera that I thought would help us with termite inspections. It does not it does not pick up termites, but it does pick up mice in the walls, critters in the wall. I mean, you can see the mouse running through the wall with an infrared thermal camera. Lots of tools out there, but there's nothing like getting out on your hands and knees and using a tool to sound, though. There's nothing that beats that, in my opinion.

Jourdyn : Wow. I'm learning a lot about termites. The last time we had a podcast, I learned so many things about the things that you guys encounter when it comes to pests, and then to find out even more stuff about how the termites high, how they make the little tunnels to get where they need to go, like, wow, their homes tested.

Eric: You guys, termites, in my opinion, are one of the coolest insects out there. I mean, the way that they are all about the colony, all about the survival. They will sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and ants will too. Bees are another great example of that. It's all about the hive, all about the colony. People could learn a lot on the.

Timothy : Last one that termite season is your favorite one.

Eric: It is my favorite season, man. You get to meet a lot of new people, you get a lot of new customers. But yeah, it is financially the best time of year for a pest control company.

Jourdyn : Yes, that's really informative. Okay, well, I think those are all of the topics that we wanted to touch on. Tim, do you have any additional statements?

Eric: No.

Timothy : I mean, I didn't know termites have wings, so I definitely knew a little bit about termites, but I didn't know they had wings, so that was new.

Eric: Only from time to time. Only from time to time. Like I said, this is subterranean termites. There are other termites in this country that we do not deal with. And you guys, I don't think I would ever be a termite guy if I lived on the coastal state. All right? You got to put a tarp over a house and get an air scrubber to clean the air. I mean, it is so much more involved. You have to tarp those houses on the coast. If you were starting a pest control company on the coast and they say you bought a tarp for 1500 square foot house and you sell a 2200 square foot house. You got to go buy more tarps. I know a company down in Mississippi right on the coast, and they had an apartment complex that had termites. He spent a quarter million dollars on tarts. Oh, my God. He said he was lucky to get the account because he was fairly new in it, but he had to call a lot of favors in, get a loan and to get the stuff he needed for that job. But if that's what your cost is going into it, imagine what the pay.

Jourdyn : Is going to be.

Eric: But like I said, Oklahoma is a lot easier when it comes to termites. In other states, we do have the easiest termite to control. In my opinion, treating the soil is so much easier than having to watch the sky for flying for termites that just live above ground.

Jourdyn : All right, well, we do want to thank you for the second episode for this podcast series. Hopefully we get a third episode. I want to learn more things, like, I'm learning so many different things about bugs and insects.

Eric: Well, I mean, at least you're not going to go home. Itching today, like bedbugs.

Jourdyn : Yeah. Thank God. Not like the last time.

Eric: Well, it was good talking to you guys again. I really appreciate it. And look look forward to the next one. Yes.

Timothy : Pleasure, Eric. Thank you.

Jourdyn : Thank you so much.

Eric: All right, bye bye. Bye bye.

Timothy : I hope everybody enjoyed listening to this week's episode featuring Eric from Express Pest talking about his favorite season, which is termite season. Please tune in next time for an all new installment of Surviving the Pride.