We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stuart Babcock a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stuart, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

How does one get into the bug business? It’s not like the most of us as 5 year old kids ran around the house playing bug catcher/killer. My granddaughter may be one of the few who loves to bring me bugs to ID and go on black light hunts for monsters in the night. I have always been in the service business. I started as a volunteer firefighter in Wyoming. I moved to Arizona and got my post baccalaureate in education and taught High School for 10 years in Scottsdale, during that time I joined the AZ Army National Guard. I left teaching and the artillery in early 2000 to be a Police Officer. A decade and a half goes by (LOVED police work) and I had an opportunity to exit police work and join my business partners in starting up Complete Pest Management. Why make the jump. Well if you knew my business partners it was a chance to be my own boss, no cap to earnings, do it my way! My one partner is a savant in sales – I have learned by fire hose information flow. My other partner has run pest control companies from small startups to multimillion endeavors. How could I lose? I haven’t, we had grown by 12-20% annually for 10 straight years. What was different was the market analyzation and execution of our business plan from day 1. We do not want to battle for the lowest price service niche and we do not want to go toe to toe with the mega corporations. The financial layout was done by setting up within the umbrella of my partners other business (we worked out of the back room with 2 computers, a phone, and a warehouse closet for chemical storage), bought some trucks and started the search for employees. Here is the key component to success. Your Employees! You must hire for attitude with an eye on experience. Experience does not dictate success, it is only a measure of time in a seat. A great “can do” attitude coupled with solid people skills and your business will knock it out of the park. I like to hire servers. Once you have been a successful server and had to work for a tip and be on top of multiple tables, all while smiling…. you will understand people and what it takes to be good at what you do. The next huge component is knowing your products forward and backwards. You have to know the selling points, pros, cons, labels, ingredients – the good and bad of your products. A good salesperson knows how to show off the good stuff, address the weaknesses, and make the entire process a win by, here it is…. the Gold… providing a solution to your client’s problem or need. That’s all – I could sell anything with that simple approach: know your product, learn to read people, provide a solution to their problem. For my business it is fairly repetitive. We have clients that are serviced every month or every other month, year in an year out. That means my technicians should be so polished and perfect with 10-15 times a day repeating the same process over and over, month in and month out. Sound boring? Not even a chance. When you are dealing with crawling insects, termites, or weed control the pest’s entire survival drive is to live, to eat, to engage in breeding. it can get exciting. There is a huge aspect to understanding what you are seeing at a clients home. It is very much like an police investigation: seeking clues, finding patterns in behavior, what activity is being observed, and using nature against nature to get a solution beneficial to a client’s needs. I also deal with political views on insect survival, needs for organic processes, as well as how to do what I do when against a client compromised immune system (a lot of clients are dealing with illnesses or elderly family members, babies, etc.) who cannot be exposed to a chemical treatment but want no bugs or pest activity. The answer? That is why I am successful and growing. I have learned by trial and error with great mentoring, and strive to not repeat the same mistakes in their various forms.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am most proud of my employees. They strive to engage in continuing education and licensing. The biggest compliment I can achieve is bringing in an employee who is a small peg is a faceless corporation and teaching them, helping them get all aspects of the business training and when they think they are ready – set them free to be their own Boss. Free to work as hard as they want, successful as possible. Think how awesome it would be to train and teach someone who grows their own business and comes to buy you out. Now that is success.

For our clients and perspective clients: Pest control is not rocket science. But what is important is just not anyone can be a technician – this means you. Yes you can fill a bottle and squirt something around that kills insects or weeds (and hopefully not yourself – think of Glyphosate). Everyone must practice safety measures and industry standards for personal protection. You must understand the nature and driving forces behind the pest and use that knowledge to control the population. This is getting into breeding harborages, time of year when they are breeding or active, when it would be a waste of time applying a treatment, what they eat and hunt, times of day or night when they are active, etc. There is a lot more to pest control than just a spray. Boo! IPM (Integrated Pest Management) is huge. A lot of time you can take away where they hide and it solves the problem. You can effectively address a problem or situation and not use chemicals. A big one is baits and rodents, the effect on secondary populations who are hunters like coyotes, birds of prey, family pets, etc. The client and the technician must discuss and make a plan best suited for the environment surrounding. There are situations I refuse to use baits and prefer nontoxic control measures like flip buckets, snap traps, or more importantly – exclusion. No one measure will be perfect 100% of the time- you have to inspect, monitor, adjust, and keep pressure on your desired pest control. It is always a tailored approach specific to your home and your needs.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Not everyone is the same as far as what drives us. We all have a life language. To feel fulfilled we chase our proverbial tail by striving for success, or driven by a need for recognition, by financial security, attention from a boss, top performer acknowledgement, or a mix. The hard part is also what I want today I may not want in a hour or tomorrow but will again next week. That’s the rub.

You must figure that out for each and every individual employee. If you are in a large company, then the span of your influence. At Complete Pest Management we have both teams and individual needs. My advice for maintaining high morale is taking the time to know team members, what they like and don’t like, observe the process and honor individual needs.

I have an employee who couldn’t care less 100% of the time unless $$ are associated with this involvement – He does great work and is a very kind person but expects to be paid. Period. He does not attend happy hours or workday parties for staff birthdays – no pay there. That’s his way. Another is happy with their compensation and strives to have fun in the office and creates our sales incentives. Works hours on it on his own time even after being told to submit the OT.

I maintain high morale by acknowledging each individual. I block time in my calendar to casually meet with each individual, find out what going on in their lives, any work issues they want me to address, etc. I very specifically maintain an open door. You have something on your mind, I want to hear it. I’ve bought cars for employees, I paid for funerals, It is what you do for family. It is what you have to do to sacrifice for the good of the business. When the employees are happy and want to come to work, they will work hard for you, for their own pride in their skills, and for the success of the company – I want them to look back and say “I did that!!”

Have you ever had to pivot?

I lost a job due to a personal reason. I woke up that next morning and said “Damn, This isn’t me”. I had to change not just to get a new job and be employed with a paycheck coming in, but I didn’t like myself. You can run away from a lot of stuff but you cannot run from your inner voice. I had to sit down and write out a plan, set goals, set timelines – make direct changes in friends, in life choices, in circumstances. It was a full on “who do you want to be?, where do you want to live?, what makes you happy?, What do you need to get from A to B?. This was a full blown paradigm shift. It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. Having measurable goals, set with specific dates, and lots of help from my close friends. I went running a lot in those days, miles. I chose a mentor who didn’t take BS and asked a lot of questions on goals, direction, suggestions how to, successes, and failures.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.completepestmanagement.net
• Instagram: @completepestmanagement.phx.az
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CompletePestManagement
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-babcock-b55867109
• Twitter: @pest_complete