As a former U.S. Army Reservist (serving as a combat engineer) stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks, Will White understands the importance of keeping a level head when faced with a coming storm.
“When you’re handling explosives, you have to remain calm,” said White, owner of Nexus Pest Solutions. “You can’t be too nervous.”
It’s a mantra that’s stuck with him during his years of government service all the way through his 16 years as a pest control technician. At the heart of his work, White always understood that the key to getting people to trust your business comes down to understanding that pest control is a preventative measure.
“The first thing that comes to people’s minds about pest control is that if you need it, you must have roaches, rats or mice running all over the place, and nothing can be farther from the truth,” said White. “Ninety-five percent of our customers don’t have a problem because we’re there to protect their home, their most valuable investment.”
Having patience to educate customers and taking the time to build a long-lasting relationship is key to making sure people understand that pest control is the foundation to a happy, healthy home.
“Pest control today is about flipping the script on what pest control is,” said White. “Pest control is probably one of the cheapest maintenance things you can do on your home.”
For example, a couple years ago, White got a call from a frantic customer. She was a snowbird who had returned to her home in a high-end neighborhood to find a dead mouse at the bottom of her basement steps. She wanted to find someone to remove it for her and she had been referred to his services by a neighbor. When White arrived, he discovered her basement was unfinished.
“I started doing some inspecting, and I noticed a ton of mouse droppings all around the basement,” said White.
The customer had never had a problem upstairs on the first floor where she lived, so he suspected there were more mice living in the basement. To get at the root of the problem and uncover any remaining pests, White sold her a contract for rodent control. Over the next couple weeks, White removed 36 mice from the home. Turns out, the mice were using her basement for shelter and eating out of a bird feeder in her backyard. “The mice never had to leave the basement because all of their needs were being met there,” said White. “Once that was explained to her, she was a customer up until the day she moved.”
It’s that kind of relationship that fuels White’s work, and the main reason why he left his former employer after 16 years to start his own business in January 2007 — at the start of the Great Recession.
“When I left my former employer, it was supposed to be one of the worst recessions of all time. I knew if we could make it through that, we could make it through anything,” said White. “I wanted to try and do this my way before I died and left this world. And it was never going to be a good time because I had already put it off for three years before I finally said I was going to do it.”
Business has boomed ever since, and White, who’s largely operated on referrals, now has three employees. Where he once relied on door knocking and the yellow pages, he now relies on pageviews and Google searches to get the word out about his business, all thanks to TV spots and a seasonal podcast he runs and records himself.
“You have to have content for your website to stay relevant,” said White. “To me, having a podcast is like having a salesperson that works 24/7, seven days a week.”
White covers a wide range of subjects — from why you should be on the lookout for the invasive spotted lanternfly to the truth behind northern giant hornets — all in an effort to build trust.
“These days, a customer is doing their research before they even call,” said White. “Having that research available to them positions you as the expert on the topic.”
It’s all part of what White calls “the thousand little things” it takes to run a successful business. And thanks to a mentorship program hosted by Black Ownership Matters, White is now positioned with a forward-looking plan to grow his team to 10 technicians and sell his business in the next five years.
“I didn’t have an end game and never knew what the end would look like, but having this mentorship program has made me think about that more,” said White. “I do believe that if you build a business the right way, the right folks will show up to buy it.”