Pest & Termite Control in Hawaii w/ Taylor Bramwell

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Interview Transcription

ATTILIO:
If these Welcome to the show kill away a pest controls Director of Sales and Marketing Taylor Bramwell.

ADRIENNE:
Welcome back.

Hello. Hi, welcome. Welcome. Welcome back. He’s been on the show a couple of times. And then also calling him with his tips to you like Michael Baldwin on Saturday Night Live. Repeat. Repeat host. Yes.

TAYLOR:
Love it. I love coming on the show. Yeah. So

ATTILIO:
in a second, yeah. In a sentence or two, tell us, you know, how’d you get into pest control, pest control,

TAYLOR:
pest control, I built the owner for a while I started out doing door to door sales for him during college pay for tuition. After school, I went off and did a couple other things, preceding couple of things. And I came back on full time, roughly three and a half, four years ago or so nice. And I’m working on projects, and working with cable and pest control. So

ATTILIO:
yeah, and you guys have grown quite a bit because we started with you guys way back in the day. And now I went we went to your little you guys annual training thing. And it was like it was a lot of people’s people there. It was nice.

ADRIENNE:
Yeah. A lot of different divisions, right. Everyone has their, like their lanes to support the company

ATTILIO:
to provide a higher level of service to the end user of which we both

ADRIENNE:
are. Yes. And, and Taylor was there reading the PowerPoint, and you know, the marketing, the marketing support?

ATTILIO:
Yeah. So um, so pest control. Tell us more?

TAYLOR:
Yeah, yeah. Oh, go ahead.

ATTILIO:
No, he just got a question.

ADRIENNE:
Oh, yeah. Let’s start with the name. Yeah. Let’s just start with that. Yeah. How about control? Yes.

TAYLOR:
I love this question. So kill away. Of course, it’s, it’s named after it could be named volcano, different regions and other islands and here in Oahu, but it’s also bad or good dad joke with depends on how you get it and your level of humor. Right? Kill away a pest is also like killing away the pest. Right. So it’s a play on words. And yeah, it can get a little or

ATTILIO:
tell John speed. He’s so funny. He’s very funny.

TAYLOR:
That’s definitely a John speed joke. Yeah, straight from that. Yeah.

ADRIENNE:
And then what kind of pests? Or are you guys killing away? Like, what kind of pests are there that you guys specialize in? Yeah, I hear there’s a lot. Yeah.

TAYLOR:
We pride ourselves on being a one stop one stop shop. And so you mentioned that we are, you know, we have different divisions. And so as we grow, we’re able to compartmentalize and specialize in and really have like, technicians focus on certain services, as well as other things. But we can really focused on you know, we have bird specialists, we have commercial technicians that work just with restaurants and hotels and things like that. And we have residential pest. And then we have our termite termite technicians that will also work with the ground and dry wood termites. So we cover a variety of pests and services because while he’s got a lot of books, they’re everywhere and they’re they’re not exclusive to one area of island and so we do the whole island and we do a lot even down to we do different trapping of larger animals sometimes to working with the Humane Society stuff on that. So variety of things, the most basic our answer, which isn’t centipedes and mice and rats, though, I think. And then, of course, termites everywhere, too. So,

ATTILIO:
you know, I was always put this request in, but I think you guys should have a few again, that can go over the fence for the neighbors who do bad karaoke at two in the morning. It knocks them out. And then it removes any kind of desire to do karaoke ever again. I would pay big money for that. Might be like, am I getting arrested? But based on the song I heard the might be worth it.

ADRIENNE:
So Taylor, you talked about like being all over the island? Is there any? I guess, do you see differences in the kind of pest depending on the part of the island that you’re on? Like the west side versus North? Shore? Like, is there any kind of differences? What do you see? Yeah,

TAYLOR:
yeah, a little bit. You know, like the other major, general common pests are kind of everywhere. They might be a little bit more in other areas and others, like, for example, the beach, I know, tends to have a lot of the labor ants or the small black sugar ants. And we do know that every beach used to be a massive sugarcane field too. So I mean, they’ve been around for a long time. There, they’re there. A couple other things like scorpions, there’s not a lot of scorpions on Oahu, but there are some areas that do have them I know like market Kibo and some of those places might quite high area. Yeah, I’ve seen some of those too. So

ATTILIO:
yeah. Oh, we do have regional pass. Like in town we have super loud mo moped moped souped up mocha rapper man. Super loud mocha guy. Ever beach we got the obnoxious Long, loud stereo and then Kapolei. We get the illegal fireworks during the middle of the week. And then why we have excessive use of CI, who? Those are regional pests all around Oahu. That’s a that’s a totally different conversation. Yes. So

ADRIENNE:
let’s talk about the services. Like what are the services that you guys offer? I know you guys do a lot. But let’s just let’s touch on that.

TAYLOR:
Yeah, sure. But the bread and butter of the business where it all started back in 2002, when John and his wife started when he was a technician, and she was working in the office. And so now we’re making said, we’re 50 plus employees and technicians and trucks on the road. The bread and butter of it, although is is residential pest control. So everyone in Hawaii has bugs, whether they like it or not, you can be super clean, you can be major packrat, you’re going to have some kind of tests. And so either a bi monthly or a quarterly pest control maintenance program is is kind of the bread and butter of the whole thing. And so what that includes is us coming by every two or three months to do a regular Pest Service on the outside and inside as needed. And identifying specific areas to treat. And then in between that we do offer free resources in between. That’s really important because just because Hawaii because there’s there’s just a lot of bugs, right. And so even from like bringing boxes back from Costco, riches love to lay their eggs. They’re called muhfuckas. There’s little capsules that have 30 to 40 roaches in them. They love to put their eggs in that coordinations, the cardboard. And if you bring one box back from Costco, leave it in your house and sort of throw it outside of the dumpster. You could have 40 roaches overnight, and you might start seeing a few so that’s when you call us and be like, Hey, I got this weird thing got a few roaches that show up can you combine do a free service and so that’s included in that too. And so that’s kind of the baseline of it all but we also offer a commercial services to restaurants that you know that have a little different type service and might need. Then ground treatment and base stations for ground termite fumigation, dry wood spot treatments, we do a lot of orange loyalty, which a lot of people like it’s an alternative to another type of natural treatment for termites. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Comes from oranges. smells really nice. Right? And then we do things like birds exclusion and wrote an exclusion and Audubon. Want to learn more about?

ATTILIO:
Yeah. What about excluding older kids that move out and you don’t want them to move back? popular here in Hawaii.

TAYLOR:
I think what you got to do is turn their bedroom into a gym or something fun. So they can’t they have no bed left.

ATTILIO:
Yes. Make sure. Make sure that conditioning in that room is always broken.

ADRIENNE:
Now, Taylor, you guys are running some specials?

ATTILIO:
Where you have a church lady special?

ADRIENNE:
Yes. Tell us about this church. Lady special.

TAYLOR:
Yeah. Church lady special. Can you do that in line first?

ATTILIO:
Yeah. So you can tell them, they can call in and they’re like, I heard that you guys have a car special? And then your whole staff is trained to say, Well, isn’t that special? And then they’re gonna tell them?

ADRIENNE:
Why did that come from Attilio because not everyone RV knowing that not every

ATTILIO:
economy Saturday live. I’m aging myself here. But he also has a lady. He also has a really good song called chopping broccoli. So she’ll get up on YouTube,

TAYLOR:
I think we’re gonna do Attilio is clip that you saying that now and cancel it and use it for all our text messages ringtone? For Our Future commercial commercials. You think isn’t that special? Is it very special indeed. But our special promo for a team, all the radio show listeners is we do that general pest service that I was talking about by monthly or quarterly, usually that that if you’re starting a new service, you have a full initial service, which is a little more intensive. So what we do for for people that sign up for a year program like that, we go ahead and do a half off special for that, that initial service to get half off that initial service. And we’re kind of running a promo already, right now, but something extra for the tamales listeners in the hoody of lolly. We’re doing a free car treatment for all those roaches that might be popping up in the car and roaches

ADRIENNE:
that came from Costco, those Costco roaches,

ATTILIO:
roaches What are you talking about? We know what you’re talking about Willis? We got no cheese down here. Costco.

ADRIENNE:
We’re hiding in the cardboard. Yeah, that’s why.

TAYLOR:
Yeah, warehouse stores right. So we’ll do a free car treatment. And you know that roughly that’s normally 100 $150 treatment. So it’s a pretty large value. You get extra on top of that. We’ll do one or two cars you got there. If you got something going on for prevention, or if you got roaches or answer whatever living in your car,

ATTILIO:
you know, it’s like, we had one where the lady is like, oh, there’s like these these lizards all over the place in the poop. And I’m like, well, that’s called one Gecko. And I was like, yeah, don’t you have GEICO Insurance in the mainland, you should know what a gecko is. And the problem in Hawaii is that, you know, we don’t have the winters that kind of kill everything off and get everybody you know, have it. Come back and stuff like that. We just get it all the time. The pests here are just like the tourists. They don’t want to go home. They want to go to your next day. And so just be thankful that they’re not wearing really loud Aloha attire. Funky sunglasses, they’re just eating your food

ADRIENNE:
and pooping on your floor and

ATTILIO:
pooping on your floor. That’s why we tell people like when you get kitchen cabinets, don’t get the gecko poop cabinets make them go all the way up to the ceiling. So there’s no space in between for your children’s trophies and Gecko pool. Yeah, that’s what we find out there when we helping to sell the houses. So centipedes is a big one. I noticed since you know I when I first moved into this brand new house centipedes was coming in. And since you guys took over the pest control, I really haven’t seen it, you know, which your Gandalf type, YOU SHALL NOT PASS thing that you guys spray or whatever you guys spraying all the way around. I like the fact that you guys move the doormat. So I don’t stay very thorough, you push your doormat back so that they spraying on the concrete and making this protective barrier. What’s the talk about the the strategy of that spraying around the exterior of the home?

TAYLOR:
Yeah, and we’ll move your dorm and your slippers. Outside, that’s important. Because the outside treatment, you’re looking at a few different things, you’re looking at conducive conditions, things that are attracting the bugs to so first before you even apply any material. And so we’re looking at foliage and types of really still like a rica palm in the middle of palms tend to attract a lot of ants and things like that, because the root system is evolving systems, a whole lot of moisture. And so a lot of times a an ant colony do live in the bottom of that palm, and then eat the residue off the leaves. And then if that palm is next to your house, especially the leaves touching your house will walk right into your house on your roofline or down below. And so look at trees like that, and, and kind of analyze where the hot spots might be. But a general look at what we do is we’ll treat the fence line, as long as it’s not a 10 acre property, right, yeah, but we’ll treat that nice barrier around the area of the house, or trees around the hardscape. And the reason why is moisture is also trapped and sealed underneath your foundation, your your slab underneath your house, unless it’s supposed to appear, you know, we’ll turn around around that area as well. But that’s where ants and other bugs are gonna live as well. So they’re on the hardscape and especially cold joints where there’s corners, and then we’ll treat the base your house and a lot of houses with that sighting. There’s a little gap between the siding and the wall right at the base. And that’s so wide open Avenue entry for a lot of books to crawl right into your your voice and what’s there in the wall place around the plumbing where they’re, they’re using the condensation from the pipes and put the humidity in the air in Hawaii. They’re naturally just going to start showing up in kitchens and bathrooms and other places inside and then it comes up on other issues went to extra trim. It’s really important, right?

ATTILIO:
Yeah. And doing that perimeter treatment. It’s important that the homeowner to have some help you guys out too, because I think I was talking with this PhD entomologists on the research he did and I forgot what the Latin term is for that stuff around the outside of the house. Junk. All the junk that people pile around outside of their house and they wonder why Where’s all the bugs in the in all this stuff coming from because they’re all gathering around all that junk pile their home outside of your house? Yeah.

ADRIENNE:
And then also, the you had mentioned the plywood that’s like a buffet for termites. So don’t be storing that in your backyard or any easily accessible.

ATTILIO:
No, come on. You guys been there? Plywood was there since 1967. You’re not making the kids you had the plywood. It was for the Playhouse in the backyard. They’re already in college, get rid of it, get rid of the plywood.

ADRIENNE:
So Taylor, as we’re kind of wrapping things up with you, I know that you have some interesting stories to share. So why don’t you share one of those stories with our listeners? Yes, yes,

TAYLOR:
sure. I got a little story for you. I recently watched that movie The Batman and the new Batman was really a really more detective like and it kind of got me thinking about different story test stories that we have, where we have to put on our detective cap and our Sherlock Holmes like width and kind of figure out what’s going on and so an interesting what actually happened i’ll just say the sidewalk it’s a high rise condo. There’s a woman that was one of our customers or friend referred one of our good friends that was having issues or potential issues with bird mites. high rise condo, she was pretty high up I don’t remember which was a pretty high up and an all steel concrete building right so and then around her condo there’s there’s no like gaps or areas for birds to hang out and so she had been having this issue for a while having bites in her body. Suspecting goes bird might, however if she would tell the general building manager and the neighbors and all these other people and trying to get things done about it, and no one believes her because they’re like, Where would the birds be nesting there’s no chance to revert back here. And they started accusing of delusional parasitosis which is which means like, it’s all in your head, you’re so it’s such a logical you need to go see a therapist or something, but I think get over it. And she’s like, No, I have like these are real. So we got referred to her and we sent some technicians out and a few of us went out looked at it as a few different visits, we started taking samples of lint blowers and sticky monitoring traps, like lint rollers on the bed and different places in the apartment and worked with New Age tickets their lab to have them study to figure out what’s going on. If they could get any identified bird mites or something else in the samples that we got a each time results came back with nothing, nothing to go off of. So we’re like, okay, we kind of put that detective cap on, like, where what else could be going on? And still, she’s being blamed, that is all psychological. So we’re like, no, it’s got to be something. So we found out that she likes to go to the building pool pretty much every day. And where she sat at the building pool, reading her book hanging out and drinking

ATTILIO:
my ties,

TAYLOR:
iced tea or something like whatever it is, right? There was a huge banyan tree that had like branches hanging right over the chairs, the launcher to hang out on and come to find out there’s a massive vine a bird nest in that banyan tree. And she would go down in school every day or the fool every day. And bird mites were falling from the banyan tree

ATTILIO:
on jumping onto her back.

TAYLOR:
Exactly bungee jumping, biting and going back up now. But yeah, so turns out, she wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t having delusional parasitosis. There wasn’t really she and then we got to work with a building manager and help resolve that issue. But I think it gave her some validation and not feel like oh, what is going on here? So that’s just a an example of you know, when there’s something going on, you got to find out the root of the issue. And sometimes it’s something as taking care of something.

ATTILIO:
You save a ton of money on therapy.

TAYLOR:
Exactly. That’s the world.

ADRIENNE:
Guys are excellent problem solvers. You know, when it comes to these, these kind of things? That’s it, you know, think outside the box and

ATTILIO:
not not, you know, not that we want to rid the world of, of bugs just you know, in the areas that we want to enjoy? Because Jonah Saul, do you guys know who Jonas Salk is? You see him up the polio vaccine? Oh, yeah. And he’s famously he said, you know, if, if all the bugs in the world if all the if all the bugs in the world were to disappear overnight, life on this planet would would just cease to exist because we’re all interdependent on the things, you know, bees for pollen, and fruits and vegetables and all of that. If all the human beings were gone overnight, the planet would flourish. So again, the message is we don’t want to totally nuke all the pests off the off the planet, but they’re only a pest because they’re in our spaces. And that’s where we need to relocate

ADRIENNE:
them elsewhere, especially the bees. And I know that Callaway a pest control is very friendly with their relocation program.

ATTILIO:
Yes. So and bug witness protection rights. Some of these bugs are in the mafia. Yep.

TAYLOR:
So yeah. Well, we’ve worked with, we’ve actually worked with new H on a few different studies, we helped identify a new bed bug and why that was never not a big bug, tropical bed bug. And then we’re currently working on some studies with us again, with there’s some entomologist and PhD there to, you know, bedbugs, studies to getting samples. So we’re always about like figuring out the best way to control the bugs, work with them, and keeping where they should be in the environment, helping the environment and then keeping out of our homes and structure stuff.

ATTILIO:
Oh, thanks. So thanks so much for being on the show. He’s got it awesome. Yes.

ADRIENNE:
Thank you, Taylor.

ATTILIO:
Thank you, Taylor. Thank you.

ADRIENNE:
All right. Well, thanks

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