Jeff Stafford on 40 Years of Commercial Pest Control, Bird Netting and Bed Bug Dogs

00:00 Dan Leibrandt

Hey everyone and welcome back to Pest Control Legends. I'm your host, Dan Leibrandt, and today I'm with Jeff Stafford, president of Innovative Pest Solutions. Jeff has been in the industry for over 40 years, and in 1994, he started Bird Solutions International, a specialty bird control company that has taken on some of the wildest jobs in pest control, like a 1.2 million square feet of netting at SeaTac Airport, the San Onofre nuclear plant. Pearl Harbor, Petco Park, and Amazon distribution centers across the country. He duplicated that specialist playbook with Bed Bug Solutions, where he was one of the early pioneers of heat treatment, and then rolled it all into Innovative Pest Solutions, a family-run company serving all of Southern California. In this episode, we're going to talk about how a family company wins contracts at airports, stadiums, and military bases, how to stack specialty niches into one operation. And how he's built a culture around faith and servant leadership. Jeff, without further ado, welcome to the show.

01:04 Jeff Stafford

Morning. How are you?

01:06 Dan Leibrandt

Good, good. So yeah, tell me about how you initially got into pest control over forty years ago.

01:12 Jeff Stafford

I was actually a good friend of the family. That actually my mom's fiance at the time, well, when I was about seven, eight years old, he worked for a company here in Southern California and even though my mom and him didn't end up getting married, he remained a constant in our lives and so I was really kinda raised around the industry. Young age, he was in charge of the fume department. I remember they used to do commodity fumes at one of the mills and twice a year and I can remember, being eight, nine years old, going out there untaping the vents and, riding these handheld escalators eight floors up where it's a straight drop down and you're just hanging on and looking and while they were ventilating the fumigation. So I so I was really grew up around the industry grew grew up around a lot of people in the industry and the day after my eighteenth birthday, I was taking the test at a local branch office for that company and tossed in the field. And I've been doing it ever since. It I was I didn't seek the school or the college route, so this was a route where I could go and, make a decent income, 'cause at the age of eighteen I already had my first child on the way and needed to support a family. And this was an industry that could do that.

02:41 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Awesome. So you started your first company in ninety four. Is that right? T tell me about that.

02:47 Jeff Stafford

Mm-hmm. Well, I had gone to work for a company called Chemco. That was a really good company. Everybody loved working for Chemco. It was owned by Bob Keith. And Bob Keith actually became a mentor of mine. But in the right around eighty nine, Bob was made an offer from a company out of Tokyo, 'cause they wanted to get into the US market and they bought and he was he was doing about five million a year then, but it always had steady growth. Was really a mentor on how to build a company, how to treat your employees. And I had come out to San Diego to help get their footing in the San Diego market. They had been trying to get out here for five years and in five years they'd gone through five different technicians. So I relocated my family down here and my first year I put more work on than five guys have done in five years and really, started getting a foothold for them down here. With the acquisition to the Japanese company obviously the culture had completely changed within that company. The Japanese you really felt like you were valued no more than the service vehicle. You were just a unit where Bob Keith's attitude was his first customer that he had to take care of was his frontline technicians that were, out there sweating in August heat, making sure that the, clients would be taken care of. And so th that culture change was a big shift and I had made the decision that I s came down here to San Diego and gotten a good education on how to build a company from the ground up and went out and I got my operators license. Well, backstory is I applied for my operators license with the intent of maybe starting a company in a year or two. I had a young family. I had a total of fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and Bob Keith was still with the company, doing his, time that he'd committed to after the sale and I got a call from him and he said, Jeff, he goes I got some good news and I've got some bad news for you and I said, Okay, what's the good news? He goes, your testing for your operator's license is this state. The bad news is you didn't tell me in advance you were taking the test. The new owners know about it and I have no choice but to let you go.

05:31 Dan Leibrandt

Hm.

05:31 Jeff Stafford

So I was basically my boats had been burned at that point, I had to pass that test, and I had to get my company started. And that's what I did. I just I was two weeks away from the test. I studied like I'd never studied before. I passed for the first time out. I did have a partner at that time that helped get us started and just went out there and just started building the business. And that that was the beginning. When I started out I knew I wanted to do bird control alongside pest control because back in ninety four hardly anybody was doing bird control and I wanted to do something that was a little bit different to try and find a niche. And so the bird control took a little longer to get going. The pest control of course 'cause I already had a lot of contacts and I knew a lot of people. That that started happening right away and we started building. So that was ninety-four. I ran that till about ninety-nine, and we were growing, doubling the company every year. Growing really quick, all commercial, same as now. One of the things Bob taught me, which I have found to be true, is 'Cause I'd asked him a long time ago, why why is Chemco almost all commercial? And he said when, the economy gets tough, he said, with residential, we're a luxury. We're the first to go. With commercial, we're a necessity. And I have found that to be true in my forty years.

07:13 Jeff Stafford

A lot of people look at COVID as an example of how resilient we are, but the reality is, why why was residential so good during COVID? Well everybody was getting paid to stay home. You go back to 2008 when everybody was losing their jobs, that wasn't the case. I saw some big residential companies get hurt pretty hard in two thousand eight. So, I've always stuck with the commercial end of things and not not that I think residential doesn't have a role, it's definitely more profitable, but I went for stability and I have found that there's a lot a lot of stability in the commercial market.

07:38 Dan Leibrandt

Hm.

07:56 Jeff Stafford

Ninety-nine I ended up selling that company 'cause as we discussed earlier, I was a technician with barely a high school education and didn't know how to manage, didn't know how to manage the money, didn't know how to manage all the growth. Really learned a lot in that period, but ended up selling that company out of panic. But I retained Bird Solutions. And took that company and really worked on building a national company and a reputation and did that for several years and after several years well one of my old bosses approached me and said he was ready to leave. He was with Terminix through an acquisition and I said, Okay, I said if you're ready to leave I'll set this up, I'll fund it, you build it and we started a pest control company together. That's how I got back into the pest control business. The difference between bird control and pest control is bird control really is like a we're a construction company. Most of ninety percent of our work is tied to construction. We work with some of the biggest contractors in the country. So it's one and done. There's not a lot of relationship to it. And I really miss the relationship aspect of pest control. I absolutely miss the residual income. I had another friend that's in the bird control business ask me why I would start a pest control company again. And I explained to him, I said, I said Mike, January first in bird control, you and I start out at zero. I said if I end December thirty first with a million dollars in reoccurring revenue, I start January first with a million dollars in revenue and I build on top of that. So that's why I miss pest control. So and that's why I got back in. I said I miss the relationship aspect of it and I miss the residual income and not only that is I've gotten to grow and understand the business.

10:05 Jeff Stafford

The valuations and the security with residual income off obviously bring a lot more to the table. It's a lot more difficult to, if you want to retire to at some point to sell and get a decent price for a company like Bird Solutions. Even though we are a nationally recognized name, at this point Bird Solutions I would say is probably the top company in the nation as far as a locally owned or p bird control company. Within the construction industry, we probably have the biggest name. But the value for that company compared to Innovative Pest Solutions is entirely different. So there's a lot more security in pest control, tha that that's really where my focus is now. As I told you earlier, we actually separated Bird Solutions and broke it out into a separate company. I brought on a partner, Josh Pierce. He was the sales manager for Bird-X and I watched him take Bird-X from probably the well when I first met Josh and he was trying to s get us to buy bird products from him. I explained to him that he had signed on with the Kmart of bird control suppliers. They were great for the maintenance guys that managed buildings, because that's what their forte was doing mass mailers and selling products. But for professional installers, we worked with, companies like Bird Barrier and Bird-B-Gone and Nixalite. Bird-X just wasn't a player there. But I watched him take that company and within ten years turn Bird-X into, one of the top I'd say top two players now. That company with with I would have had Bird-B-Gone up there but with their acquisition we've seen them step back and I would say Bird-X filled that spot. So with with knowing what he was capable of doing it was a no-brainer for me. I had taken Bird Solutions as far as I could take it and I felt what we really needed was somebody that could put together a professional sales team to take it to the next level. And that's what Josh has done.

12:33 Jeff Stafford

Josh has been w with us for a little over a year now and our backlog of work is more than o almost three times what we would traditionally see. So he's I'd say so he's had a substantial impact. So, th that that has a been an interesting transition too because the pulling Bird Solutions out of Innovative, one of the two reasons I did that is being a construction company, you're always in highs and lows. And it was definitely having a big impact on the numbers for Innovative. And once we separated those two companies, numbers for Innovative just completely flipped over, from a company that I knew was healthy but didn't look nearly as healthy as it was on the books. But once we extracted Bird Solutions, the health of the company completely rose to the top. And, the it's really clear that we're we're doing great. Which is nice. It's a lot of stress when you're trying to explain people how you're doing, but, your bankers are going this doesn't look so good. So now now they're looking at it going, this is amazing. We now I just got my second quarters and we are our second quarters showed that we were for the co year we're at twenty-one percent but June we did twenty-nine percent EBITDA and we're averaging about a 65% gross margin. Those numbers were nowhere near that when I had Bird Solutions tucked in just because they were like I said dramatically affecting our numbers with their peaks and valleys. And what I mean by peaks and valleys being construction you're you're either in between jobs and you gotta support technicians even though they're not working, because installers are hard to find. A good installer takes a year or two to really get up and running. So if you've got no work for you gotta find work for to keep going. And sometimes that's at a negative that was pulling from Innovative.

14:45 Jeff Stafford

And then you go into jobs, most of the jobs we do are prevailing wage. So all of a sudden you see this massive spike in your payroll where you're not going to see a payout from that spike for 60 to 90 days, post completion going through the billing cycle. So that's when so when you're working like that, that's where it's significantly impacted the Innovative's books. And best thing we did was separate the companies.

15:15 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, gotcha. I wanted to jump back to you selling out of panic in nineteen ninety nine. So if you were to redo that or maybe even give advice to your older or your younger self, what would you say or what would you do different? Hey guys, Dan Leibrandt here. Real quick, if you're a pest control owner looking to grow, I have two amazing resources for you. Number one is our free Pest Control Millionaires Facebook group. We have over 4,000 owners just like you in our community and would love for you to be a part of it. Go search Pest Control Millionaires on Facebook and request to join the group now. Number two is our book, Zip Code Kings. This was authored by me, Jonas Olson, and Jake Sheldon to be the ultimate guide to pest control marketing. We discuss everything from branding and traditional marketing to local SEO and Facebook ads. Go to Amazon and search zip code Kings to get your copy today. Now that being said, let's get back to the show.

16:09 Jeff Stafford

Do not make decisions out of fear. Bye, sweetheart. Sorry. My wife is leaving. So yeah, do do not make decisions out of fear. I also surround myself with good people that I trust and I listen to now. I was out there, I kinda felt like on a boat on my own back then. And now I'm surrounded with a team. I got into a lot of debt with that company and tha that's one of the things whenever I have somebody new come to me and ask me, what's the biggest mistake that, I made that I would advise them to do and I would say, debt would be the biggest one. Yeah, I got a perfect example. I've got a friend in the Midwest, one of the best salesmen I ever met. The he came out of the pharmaceutical industry and jumped into pest control and in the Midwest, I think his first year he sold three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, his next year a half a million thousand. And in the Midwest commercial, that's huge because, he has to cover three, four states to get the density that I have just in LA County. And I told him that and he took it seriously and his company has been on a cash basis since day one and he now owns one of the most profitable companies I've ever seen. And his company is growing in leaps and bounds and he's doing a phenomenal job and he's building a name for himself in the Midwest with he's doing nothing but auditing facilities, hospitals. He knows his market, he sticks to his market, and he has avoided debt like the plague and he's got some of the highest paid tax I think probably in the Midwest as a result. So that that's one of the ones I advise and it's one that we're still working out of, because we got deeply in debt and now we're working out of it. But our our goal is to have our company on a cash basis within the next five years.

18:21 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. You've mentioned EBITDA several times. I is that would you say that's the main thing you're optimizing for? What are some of the key numbers and key KPIs that you're keeping track of?

18:34 Jeff Stafford

We're we're actually looking at key KPIs more and more. And we were just talking about this the other day. Definitely looking at gr at margins, definitely looking at EBITDA, but also looking at employee retention. Also looking at, not just our growth, but our customer retention. We're we're looking a lot at our our performance. I never for the longest time I didn't understand financials, and I'm still not gonna say I understand, them like a CFO, but I've got a better idea of what my numbers are now. I do think it's important that you start to learn your numbers if you don't know them. And that's something that has been an education process for me is to start to know and understand my numbers. To be able to sit down and look at financials and see what's your percentage of expenses for each category and know where it should be is absolutely. Important. So and our our n our our numbers we've all said the for the most part they're they're all in check. We've got all of our expenses right down to where they should be. Our goal as a company going back to some of my original teaching is we really want to grow. One of the biggest issues with our industry is obviously retain is finding and retaining good employees. Our goal is to grow and become successful by trying to find the best employees we can in our region. Building a company where we can actually build a bench where there's people waiting to come on board. And doing that by, offering a company that is going to be the highest paying, offer the best benefits, have a work environment that people are proud to represent, and really try and retain high quality people. And you can't do that if your numbers aren't going to allow you to put a package together, for employees. It's expensive now. When I first started, I could pay a hundred percent of somebody's medical insurance. It was a hundred dollars a month.

20:46 Jeff Stafford

On average. That for employee family. Now we're looking at well over a thousand dollars. Sometimes, $1,500 a family. So it's a lot more difficult to try and put together a premium package. That's some of the stuff we're shopping and we're looking at right now is how can we put together better packages and try and not only increase pay but reduce some of the expenses the employees are having to put out to support their families. We're we're we're in California. It's a very expensive state to live in. One of the things I've told my wife, with with all the inflation we've gone through the last couple of years, if I'm looking at the price of ribeyes before I make a decision to buy imagine what our frontline guys are going through. So, yep.

21:37 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

21:41 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I want to jump to you niching down because I find it interesting. And I've similarly niche down in my own space and in marketing and only in pest control. So you chose to niche down on birds, which I find really interesting. Very very few people do that. So there are I would assume a good amount of owners listening to this that maybe haven't started their company yet or are just starting their companies, would you recommend these people niche down as well or no?

22:24 Jeff Stafford

Niching down is what blew Innovative Pest Solutions up. When I restarted and got back into pest control, the company really floundered. My partner was focused on mainly getting into audited accounts and because that was his background. But I it just didn't work and after it was about four or five years we looked at it and really Bird Solutions was supporting and that's right when bed bugs were starting to really become an issue in California. I had I was one of the original heat companies in the late eighties, early nineties or actu or actually no sorry, the nine late mid to late nineties, when it was a patented process and you had to buy a license from the patent holders. And so I was very familiar with heat. I loved heat. It was for termites. And I knew immediately when we started seeing what was going with bed bugs that heat was gonna play a role. At the same time I was learning more about canines and I started studying canines. So what I decided to do when it was floundering is I decided okay, I'm gonna start putting some of my time into trying to get the pest control going. And I put together a program that involved canines. I flew out to Florida and met with Pepedogs out there and got trained on how to work with canines. Bought our first dog, got extremely lucky with our first dog. We have a lot of dogs now with and what I mean by we got lucky is I got a dog that loved to work. And it made it very easy. Leroy to this day I'll say is probably one of the best dogs we ever had. Our second dog didn't love to work at all and it was, totally different, but we got lucky because if we the second dog we got, if that would have been our first experience with canines, we probably wouldn't have stayed on the canine road.

24:41 Jeff Stafford

So I basically invested in canines, I invested in all the heat equipment, and I started Bed Bug Solutions. And Bed Bug Solutions basically we went out, we didn't obviously because we had audited accounts, we didn't have a market to tap into. So we did a lot of marketing on Google. And Bed Bug Solutions within three months was doing more revenue than my pest control company at the time was. It blew up right away. And the reason I chose the name Bed Bug Solutions, because the again, bed bugs were just starting to become a big issue. I immediately recognized that this could be a niche market like Birds. And so that's how I approached it. I put together a program. I had a warranty that blew everybody out of the water. So and I was going head to head with, companies like Western, like Orkin, Terminix. And that's why I chose a name just for that department, because, the pest control company nobody knew. But my f my idea was if an apartment building was having a problem with bed bugs and they had a quote from Orkin, they had a quote from Terminix, and they had a quote from Bed Bug Solutions, well Bed Bug Solutions would stand out because it says right in the name they specialize in bed bugs. And Bed Bug Solutions really blew up Innovative Pest Solutions because the property management industry got hold of our program and our warranty and they saw how effective it was right away. So as we were going in and we were solving bed bug problems that nobody else was solving, it naturally gravitated towards us starting to pick up portfolios. Come 2017 my partner and I for the pest control had gone our separate ways. He'd gone off and started his own company and I let him take the audited accounts with him. I kept some of the base accounts, but really was starting the pest control all over from scratch.

27:00 Jeff Stafford

I had landed one big major account with the VA because we were already doing a lot of government work through the bird control, so I knew the government end of it. The West LA VA came up for bid on an emergency contract because a national was failing miserably. They'd had over 90 surgeries get canceled in three months due to a phorid fly issue. And we had a GSA contract, so we landed that that was a $750,000 a year contract. Gave us foundation to work off of. And then in 2017, I brought on board Miguel Garcia, who was the top salesman over at Isotech. I'm sure you remember the show Verminators. That was Isotech and Isotech got sold to Rentokil.

27:53 Jeff Stafford

And Robert or Miguel also brought over Robert Gregorio, who is probably the best canine handler in the nation. Most of your canine handlers are taught just how to handle dogs. Robert can take pups and basically train them from the ground up. So rather so he just he lives and breathes canines. So the two of them came over because they saw our bed bug program and they saw the value in it and they knew that they had a customer base that would eat it up. And from that point forward, we were like a rocket. We were we went through up until COVID a period where, we were buying one to three new trucks a month to try and keep up with the growth. And, just took off wildfire. And it was an exciting time. It was a difficult time, but it was an exciting time. A lot of lessons were learned during that period. Probably the biggest lesson we learned towards that in that period was how fast we were growing. We were just grabbing bodies as fast as we can and throwing them in the field. So our employ our employee retention was real low. But our customer retention was real high because we were succeeding especially with the problem with bedbugs. That went like that until COVID. COVID hit and bedbugs came to a screeching halt. Nobody was going anywhere. Our bed bug department was probably doing 200,000 a month, a combination of heats, canines, chemical treats. It dropped down from there to about probably 30,000 a month. But what was happening though is our recurring revenue growth never stopped. It kept going. Our cash cow at the time, which was bed bugs, that stopped growing. So, we pivoted, we had the right licensing to do disinfections for COVID. So, we did a big pivot there and started doing that. We also as a result of that started doing light janitorial at apartment complexes because when we were doing the sanitations they started asking us if we could pick up the light janitorial. And that that's something we jumped into and as it was cash flow. And it was recurring cash flow.

30:37 Jeff Stafford

It's something that post-COVID a couple years later we took another look at and we realized this isn't us, it's not our market, and we ended up letting that that division go. But it served its purpose to COVID. So th that's one of the other lessons that I would say if there's any is, we didn't panic during COVID. We looked at everything. We looked at where there was opportunity and we made some quick decisions and pivots, and that that got us through. And again, the exciting thing was our recurring revenue growth didn't miss a beat. It was our cash cow of the time, which was bedbug. And bedbug numbers have only started to come up to where they were pre-COVID within the last 12 months. We're we're seeing those type of numbers again.

31:29 Jeff Stafford

We're our canine inspections are are through the roof. As I told you, we added rodent dogs. The rodent dogs have especially over the last year, have really taken off. Not just direct business, but we have other pest control companies reaching out to us. We just had one national reach out to us. They had a major airport that they were just having huge issues at and that they could not figure out. And we sent our our rodent canines out there for a week and really got a lot of stuff figured out for them at that airport that they said they never would have found without our dogs. So...

32:16 Dan Leibrandt

I so I wanted to ask you, first off, real quick, how many canines do you have right now?

32:27 Jeff Stafford

Right now we have I'm gonna say six bed bug. We have three rodent and we have one termite dog, but we've also cross-trained him for bed bug, and so we're using them more for bed bug right now. We will probably get more back into the termite side with him because we do have plans to start doing more of a residential push in 27. And with that's gonna come residential termite and I think a termite dog is gonna be a big big component to not only going out there and doing something different, but a big marketing tool for us. So hoop hoop. Yep.

33:07 Dan Leibrandt

Mm, totally. Okay. So you have ten canines, which most people have no canines. Most owners I talk to aren't doing anything in that regard. So would you recommend companies start using canines? What are the pros and cons there?

33:21 Jeff Stafford

I would recommend that you get educated highly on the responsibility of a canine before you go out and get one. It is a most pest control companies that I've seen that try to get started into canine end up with a $15,000 to $20,000 pet. Because the dogs require a lot of work. They require a commitment of somebody that's gonna take care of them seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. You've gotta have a compensation plan in place that takes that into consideration. These dogs on top of working have to be trained regularly. You're constantly training. Being in the field isn't training. What training does is you are constantly looking at new bad habits the dogs are picking up and you're finding those in training and working them out. So you're getting the most efficient dogs. That's where I was talking about Robert Gregorio has just been phenomenal for that department. Canine basically when it started coming into the pest control industry the guys like Pepedogs, they're used to training dogs for the DEA, the military, police departments, and they're working with professional canine handlers. For for pest control, they took canine and they dumbed it down to our industry, if that makes sense. A good example when we got our first dog Leroy and they were putting us through training handler told me, next time I see you and this dog, if you tell that dog to sit and I see it sit, our name is off the dog. You can only teach this dog to run bed bugs. That's how much they wanted it dumbed down. They didn't want you doing anything outside of their program because they'd seen so many failures out there. If you don't have the time commitment and an owner can't do it. I did it and quickly realized that I could not be the canine handler of my company. You cannot go out there and work a dog while you're dealing with taking phone calls, dealing with the stress of the day. These dogs feed off our energy. If we're having a bad day, that dog's gonna have a bad day. If that dog's having a bad day, he very well could be giving you false alerts.

36:05 Jeff Stafford

I it happens. They're living, breathing creatures, they're not infallible. That's why one of our policies is, we will not call c bed bugs on a canine alert unless we visually follow up behind it and find what the dogs told us is there. So that that's just a good a good practice policy for anybody running dogs. So, dogs are a big commitment. So I tell people that are thinking about it, I said go into it with with open eyes and really understand the commitment before you make the decision. And if you're an owner, don't think you can do it as an owner. You're gonna have to find somebody that can do it for you. I got really lucky. I had a good friend at the time who was looking for work who was also a vet, from Afghanistan. And it was a perfect thing for him because most vets he was dealing with PTSD and canine was a perfect partner for him. And he loved the work and I was able to bring him in, get him trained, and he was our first handler before Robert came on board and took the whole department and took it to the next level.

37:20 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. That's great advice because it I don't know, it seems like maybe a shiny object, I want to get into canine stuff, but I'm glad you've brought some reality to the situation. No, it is really tough to train these dogs, you're gonna need someone to watch it, twenty four seven, all that. So good to know there because most people don't know about canines at all.

37:41 Jeff Stafford

Well, most most canines that are out there deployed are dogs like beagles. Those dogs are food driven. Their reward system for doing work is food. So the only way they get fed out is through reward. And that means that twice a day, seven days a week, you gotta run that dog through training sessions to make sure it gets fed. We've taken a little bit farther, we have Belgians, we have golden retrievers, we still have beagles too, but we know we've got some bigger dogs that I would never recommend to anybody unless they had a strong canine because the Belgians are a whole different animal to deal with. That's why most of the companies that train bed bug dogs, that's what they're training. They're training smaller dogs like beagles. And I said they're they're food driven reward dogs. And that was the problem we had with our our second dog. Our second dog hated to work. She would starve herself rather than work. And so after, a while we just said, you know what, if this dog hates to work, I ended up giving one of our our employees a fifteen thousand dollar dog to make a pet because I just didn't think it was to me it was cruel to have a dog that would rather starve itself than go out and work. So...

39:10 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to pivot a little bit here. So, Jeff, you've done some of the biggest commercial pest projects in the US. I want you to walk me through one of the craziest ones you've worked on and what that was like.

39:28 Jeff Stafford

That that would probably be the pest control, the West LA VA. Like I said we do a lot of government work and the core that was in charge of that project when I walked in he basically said you better make sure you're prepared for this because this is the biggest VA west of the Mississippi. You're a government contractor If you fail, this is going to end up on your report card as a government vendor. So I made the decision right then and there that I was only gonna do this if I could get the price that I wanted for it so I could hire the right people for it. And I got the price I wanted. And I went out and I recruited three very high-end technicians. Two of them were already handling the pest control for Cedars-Sinai. So they knew that environment. And we went in there and we tackled this. The West LA VA to give you some the main campus was over six hundred acres. I believe it was a hundred and eighty buildings. The other campus, I think I believe that was about a hundred and twenty acres. As I told you, there had been multiple surgeries that had been canceled due to phorid flies. So that was our our first thing that we needed to take care of was what's going on with this phorid fly issue. So after doing a lot of inspection, we discovered on the other side of the building where the surgeries were done there were these giant cisterns where people going through dialysis, all their biomatter was going into these huge giant cisterns. And we found that they weren't sealing properly and phorid flies were basically breeding in the seals, getting into the false ceiling, going clear across the hospital through the false ceiling. And then following the lights getting down into the surgical room. It was some really fun detective work. And the answer to it was gonna cost them, I believe seven figures.

41:49 Jeff Stafford

And it wasn't pest control, it was, they had to basically make some major changes and move those cisterns and operations. They so initially they did not believe us and they asked us to bring an entomologist out. And we brought an entomologist out and he spent an entire day out there and at the end of the day he said, We nailed it. And that that problem was solved. That was one of many problems there but that was that was an interesting one because there was some real detective work there, there's some real homework there. And again it was the fix was the they basically had to remove those cisterns to a new location and, there was some heavy construction involved. It wasn't necessarily the phorid flies getting into the surgical room were more of a symptom of the problem. The problem had to be eliminated and removed. So that was that was probably one of the more interesting ones.

42:53 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah. How how okay. How long did that project take and would you do it again if you got the opportunity?

43:03 Jeff Stafford

Well actually I d I just bid the project again. Government project, it has to go back out for mandatory bid. And yeah, we would we would take it again for the right price. The unf what they've done basically is they changed the policies with VAs. All VAs need to go out DVBE, which we're not a DVBE. That's a disabled veteran business. Which which I'm all for. I don't have any issue with that. I think it's the VA. I think it's great. Matter of fact one of the first things I asked them when we got the contract is do you have any resources where we could possibly interview vets? I was surprised to find out they didn't. I just thought it would be great to be able to offer, a vet, a job through this contract. But there was there was no resources. But now they go out DVBE which which puts us, we got to partner with the DVBE company to be able to bid it. So we just bid it. We didn't win. We would have liked to have won when w w one of the one of the feathers in our caps where I remember we were through our first year out there and somebody from DC had showing up on the project and he spent I want to say three or four days out there inspecting everything, didn't even call me and let me know, pulled all our texts in that worked there and ran them through interviews. And at the end of it, contacted me and said, look, we just had the person in charge of pest control for all the VAs nationwide out. And, this is coming from the Corps at the time. The Corps's in charge basically all the facilities out there. He said our program was the best program he'd seen nationwide.

45:05 Jeff Stafford

And he said he basically told them if there is any way that you can basically, figure out a way to write the contract up to keep this company on board when you guys go out to bid, because again, they've got to go out to bid, it's mandatory. He goes, I would figure out a way to secure this company because they're doing such a great job. Matter of fact we were even getting calls from VAs as far away as Philadelphia asking if we could come out and help them with problems. By the time the contract went back out for bid the only person that was left on staff there that knew what we had done for that VA was the chief surgery. And he jumped up and down and screamed and did everything he could to keep us on board, but really the people that were in charge of the contracts, the purchasing agent, the co we had a brand new core, all those people that had either retired or moved on to other places. So we didn't have anybody to go in there and really fight for us, and all they cared about was the lowest price. So that's the difficult part with government work is it really comes down to lowest price. And low low price was actually the initial contract is about half of what we were doing it for. And we would not have done it for that number. It was too much responsibility. To give you an idea, we had to have a two hour response time seven days a week for that project for emergency calls. And response time wasn't a phone call, we had to have somebody physically on site. In three years we only missed that response time twice and it was by minutes. But we there there were times we would get three, four emergency calls a night because it was usually homeless people being brought in to the emergency room with bed bugs on them on person. And we'd get an emergency call and have to run out there and deal with it right away.

47:04 Dan Leibrandt

Dang. Huh.

47:05 Jeff Stafford

So...

47:05 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, no, that's crazy. And that whole project that you mentioned. And it you also talked about you got that project, you've gotten a lot of these other huge commercial projects. And for other people that maybe are already doing commercial or looking to tap into commercial, how do you win these big contracts?

47:29 Jeff Stafford

Well, I have one I've got I really above par employees. Or I prefer to call them team members. Miguel Garcia, who I told you about earlier when we came on board. I actually made him a partner within the company. He's very, very responsible for for the success of our company right now and that was a promise I made him that if he could achieve A, B, C, and D, then I'd make him partner and he knocked it out of the park. And he's and having gone through a couple of partners that, where it was more of a difficult relationship, Miguel and I really got to know each other because a partnership is like a marriage. So you gotta know what you're stepping into. And I think we've had a great partnership. We work very well together. We both know our lanes and we try to stay in our lanes. But Miguel has taught me a lot, especially on the sales side. I've one of the things I love about Miguel is I s would sell apartment buildings and I would go out there and do a great job and then one by one pick off a portfolio. Miguel walks into a new management company and he just asks for the whole portfolio right up front. And I'd say, that that's one of the things that's don't don't be afraid to ask. I learned that from him. The worst thing you're gonna get is a no or not yet. Let's try you out first. But he is not afraid to ask for everything. It's also it's relationships. Miguel and I are both on the same page with this is a relationship industry. If you don't have a relationship with your clients, the next guy that comes by that's a quarter a service cheaper, can pick your account off. If you're out there you're doing a good job, even if your tech is doing a bad job and you don't know it yet, if you've got a relationship, they're gonna let you know, hey, you've got a problem out here you got to fix. If you don't have a relationship, you're gonna find out you have a problem you've got to fix when you have the cancellation.

50:08 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Gotcha. Also, Jeff, I wanted to ask you what is your favorite type of commercial work? Is there one you prefer over others?

50:20 Jeff Stafford

I can tell you what I hate. My favorite type of commercial work is one that we're trying to get more into because I feel like it profit wise I would align it up more with residential. And that is your industrial parks, your office buildings, your shopping centers. You just go out there and you take care of the client, you make sure that their rodents are squared away, you make sure their ants are squared away, and th there's no headaches. That's all they want, you they're they're they're easy clients to take care of. We built our business on multifamily, which if anybody asks me, I'll say multifamily is probably the most difficult because they are the most needy, obviously. They're our our job with multifamily what I tell all of our techs is to make the managers look good at all costs. Our job is to make the property manager in the eyes of their residents, look like a shining star. If they forgot to add a unit and you get that call at four o'clock, and with 'cause the tenant thought you were gonna be there at ten o'clock, but it wasn't our fault. When you run back there and you take care of that unit, you fall on the sword. You don't say the manager forgot to put them on the list, sorry. You say, Sorry, I missed it, and you fall on the sword. You do everything you can to make that manager look good. Because that manager there is there, five days a week, fifty two weeks out of the year. We maybe have to deal with that tenant once. So you we built our business a multifamily. We love the relationships. They are definitely a much more difficult client to take care of. I think that's one of the reasons why we do well is because we do take care of them and we do go the extra yard. But I definitely do like the other side of commercial, which is the office buildings, the industrial parks. And then as I said, we're gonna start building more residential. We will never be a residential company, we'll always be a commercial, but I look at residential.

52:40 Jeff Stafford

As a great way for us to build density in between our commercial accounts.

52:46 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, totally. Also also I want to piggyback off what you said in the last question. You talked about relationship building. So for someone again, because a lot of people who are listening to this are just starting out or planning to get started soon. How do you start building those relationships?

53:05 Jeff Stafford

Don't sell an account and walk away. Check in with them. How are we doing? Find out when they're every property management company will typically have a monthly meeting. Find out when that is. Can I come in and give an educational class to your team? We do a lot of hotels. We'll go in and we'll give educational classes to the all the facilities people. A good example is a hotel. How do bed bugs spread in a hotel? Well it's generally the staff not knowing how to deal with it when they find bed bugs in a unit, So we teach them basically what to do. So they're not taking that problem and then spreading it to the next unit. Be willing to go out there and, buy some bagels and donuts and coffee and set up for their meetings and, just be a presence with them and don't always try to sell them. Just let them know that you're there to be of service.

54:07 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm, totally. Love that. Well, cool. We'll start to wrap up here, Jeff. I've got one more question for you that I like to ask all my guests. And that is, what is your message to the other pest control owners out there? What do you want to tell them? What do you think they need to know?

54:22 Jeff Stafford

I've been doing this for over 40 years and I think the industry is more exciting than ever. I think there's more opportunity than ever for small and mid-sized companies as we see the big companies creating more consolidation. With the larger companies, no matter how big the account is, they can't help it. They the customers basically become an account number. Smaller companies have the opportunity to personalize it. And that's where you create your going back to creating your relationships. Is, you personalize it and you build those relationships. We w one of the things that lines that I've used when I've talked to people, is and I'm talking about when you're talking to a larger account. That might be a think that they have to go with a national is I say no, you want somebody that is large enough to tackle any pest control problem you have because they have the experience and the know how behind them, but small enough that you just don't become an account number. That, we still have pride in having you as a customer and we're gonna do everything we can to, make sure that your service is above par. So a and I think there's just a lot of opportunity for smaller and mid-sized companies to be able to fit that niche because as we have seen a lot of consolidation in our industry the last five, six, seven years. Especially with the mid-sized companies. The mid-sized companies there are there's fewer and fewer of them out there because they're getting gobbled up.

56:08 Dan Leibrandt

Mm-hmm. Totally. Yeah. No, of course I've seen that too. And you're you're totally right. A lot of these companies, once they reach a certain size, which we could debate on what that size is, but they customers just don't get as much care. And you can't give as much care to them. So that that's the advantage that these smaller companies have, is that they can give that care.

56:32 Jeff Stafford

The biggest complaint that I've heard when I've seen the regional companies get gobbled up, I can't call my technician anymore. I've got to call a call center. And it takes two or three days for somebody to get back to me when I've got a problem. Where before that acquisition they were able to call the technician and if you talk to the technicians about it because that's the other thing that where the opportunity is there is a lot of the technicians, there's some really great experienced people out there that don't want to work for a national and we have an opportunity to pick them up and give them a home. Because they want to be able to give that personalized service. And I've gotten the complaint reverse where I would get in trouble if I picked up the phone for my client, or I'd have to pick up the phone for my client and say, sorry, I can't take your call, you have to call our call center. And they would just cringe having to do that. Because they'd spent ten years, of a relationship where this person could always call them directly. And now they're having to tell them, I'm gonna get reprimanded if I take this call.

57:42 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. Yeah. Makes sense. Well, sweet. That was great advice. I appreciate you coming on the show here, Jeff. I learned a lot from you and really interesting to learn these different deep facets in the commercial world because most of the people I talk to are mainly residential. So a lot of good nuggets here. And Jeff, where can people find you and connect with you online?

58:03 Jeff Stafford

Well we obviously we said we divided the companies, Bird Solutions International. We do do a lot of subcontract work, so if somebody out there is looking at a bird control job that they need some help with and we also will will help train people too. We feel like there's enough work out there for everybody. But Bird Solutions International for Bird Solutions and then Innovative Pest Solutions dot com for Innovative Pest Solutions. And the same thing with our bed bug and our canines. Our our business model isn't to do subcontract but we do do a lot of subcontract work for for other companies. So as I said, we have a niche with especially the dogs where they might need a canine and it's better for them to subcontract it out.

58:50 Dan Leibrandt

Yeah, sweet. And where can people follow you? Are you on Facebook or LinkedIn or anything?

58:56 Jeff Stafford

Yeah, I've got a LinkedIn site that I'm s I'm as we do zero marketing. Believe it or not. Well our we know we grow an average about thirty percent a year and we do zero marketing, but we are we are s starting to dive into the world of marketing and AI and we're gonna do a lot of that in twenty seven and LinkedIn's probably gonna play a big role. So yeah, I can be found on LinkedIn. So Yep.

59:03 Dan Leibrandt

Ha ha.

59:20 Dan Leibrandt

Okay. Sweet. So all those links will be in the description. Anything else you'd like to plug or promote?

59:27 Jeff Stafford

No, not at all. I thank you for the opportunity. I've been following as the podcast world has gotten more and more I've been following and as I told you earlier I felt commercial's been under represented because we've seen this big rash of the door knocking residential companies just explode across the country and they're getting all the attention. But I think commercial is a market that if somebody's looking for security, maybe it doesn't grow as fast. But It'll definitely give you the security you want if you do it right.

1:00:07 Dan Leibrandt

Totally. Yeah, I interviewed David Poplin, you probably know him. Interviewed him a month or two ago. And I didn't realize how vast the commercial world is. But yeah, you're right. It's a big opportunity. Everyone's really focused on the residential. But there is totally a play in commercial too.

1:00:13 Jeff Stafford

The...

1:00:25 Jeff Stafford

Yep. No, Dave David Poplin actually is a DVBE and he's the one that's doing the West LA VA now. So yep. Yep.

1:00:31 Dan Leibrandt

I was gonna say that. Well, that's funny. Yeah, I think he might be the number one company doing those VA. It's veteran affairs, that that's what VA is?

1:00:42 Jeff Stafford

I yeah, it's Veteran Affairs, basically they handle all the hospitals. There's just not a lot of DVBE pest control companies and that's created an opportunity for David to take advantage of.

1:00:52 Dan Leibrandt

Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Well, sweet. Jeff, thank you so much again for coming on the show. And yeah, I hope we stay in touch.

1:01:00 Jeff Stafford

Thank you, I appreciate the time. You have a good day. All right.

1:01:02 Dan Leibrandt

Of course. Yeah, you too.

1:01:03 Jeff Stafford

Thanks.

1:01:04 Dan Leibrandt

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