From Professional Hockey to Wildlife Control

Bill played Junior A hockey in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's nation's capital. He was drafted by the New York Islanders in the early 80s when they were winning Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup. He played a few years and bounced around the minors throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

He never really got up to the big league with the Islanders. At some point, he thought it was time to move on with his life. He went back to school, got an education, and then saw this need for wildlife control. That's how it all started.

After getting into wildlife, he eventually got involved with Truly Nolan. Bill used to vacation down in Florida every summer with his family. People would ask him, Bill, where are you going to Florida in the middle of the summer? He'd say there's an ocean, there's a pool, what do you want me to do?

One day he saw this car driving down the road. A Truly Nolan car. The yellow Volkswagen with ears on the top that came down at stop lights and popped back up. He was like, wow, this is cool. Back then, most pest control operators had unmarked vehicles. This was marketing brilliance that Truly Nolan had with this car.

A couple years after that, he started seeing Truly Nolan ads. This was when Yellow Pages was the thing, no online SEO. He saw these Truly Nolan ads in small communities and wondered what they were doing there.

Long story short, he found out they had expanded into Canada. Someone owned the master franchise rights for the entire country. He partnered with them and started operating Truly Nolan franchises in his wildlife control locations. That's how he got involved with Truly Nolan.

The Seven Years with Truly Nolan

The partnership with Truly Nolan was quite interesting. Coming from a wildlife background, Bill had people on staff that loved insects and bugs. It was their passion. His senior leadership team really took to it, and they opened all these locations in the areas they were doing wildlife control.

They Canadianized everything. In Canada, the rules and regulations and products and materials are a lot more restrictive than what you use in the US. When they first started, the franchise gurus at Truly Nolan said they don't have certain products. Good luck getting rid of those ants.

So they Canadianized the entire system. The products they used, the procedures, the techniques. They even created a Canadian website for Truly Nolan, which they didn't have. Bill's team instigated that and developed it.

There came to be a point where, as all business relationships go, sometimes it's time to break away. They had an amicable separation where they removed themselves from Truly Nolan and sold it back to the person who had the original franchise rights for all of Canada.

Now they operate their pest control division under Skedaddle Pest Control. Before, they went from a green shirt to a yellow shirt with Truly Nolan colors. Now they just stay all in green, Skedaddle green.

How They Came Up with the Name Skedaddle

I was curious how Bill came up with the name Skedaddle because it's so unique and memorable. He told me it's a great story.

Being an ex-athlete, an entrepreneur, and wildlife professional, he thought he'd come up with a name. But it's more difficult than it sounds because nowadays everything's online, SEO, AdWords, what have you. You had to get the .com, but in Canada they have .ca, which is their local internet domain.

They had to come up with a number of names. They tried it themselves with his marketing team and senior executives. The best thing they could come up with was Chubby Raccoon. Family and friends were saying, Chubby Raccoon, Bill, you can't do that.

So they went to a local marketing company. Those marketers, you get what you pay for. They changed the logo a bit, made it a little more friendly, came up with the green colors. They really focused in on the marketing with Skedaddle.

They have other animals they call Scoot the Raccoon, Scram the Skunk. They just play on all these names and numbers, and it's really made a huge difference.

"Skedaddle is kind of one of these old names that people remember you know in the old days people say I don't know if I hired you or hired somebody else now everybody just remembers the name scadaddle," Bill explained.

He was on a job site yesterday with a gentleman in town looking at purchasing a franchise. The homeowner's first thing was, Skedaddle, I see your truck everywhere. How did you guys get there? Where did you come from? They changed their name about 10 to 15 years ago, but it's one of those names that's highly visible and people get a kick out of it.

I told Bill I love it. It's super memorable. I've never heard Skedaddle for any other company. I'd argue that's maybe the number one thing when it comes to choosing a company name. If some local business owners haven't even gotten to that, picking a business name that is super unique and people can remember immediately is huge.

I've seen so many pest control companies. I'm looking at them, maybe auditing them or talking to them. I've seen so many Advanced Wildlife Solutions or Pest Control Solutions or Absolute Pest Control. A lot of them are kind of the same thing. When you see something that sticks out like Skedaddle, you remember it.

I remember a few weeks ago when I first reached out to Bill, I saw Skedaddle and I still remembered it today. I saw it for maybe a few minutes, then I was starting to do research a few days ago, and I still remembered it. Having a brand like that is huge, and I think a lot of companies overlook that.

Bill said I'm exactly right. There are so many names that are so similar and people get confused in the marketplace. They can't remember who was doing their service last and what's the name of that company. When people look at the name Skedaddle, you see that light bulb go off. It's really helped from a brand recognition standpoint.

Especially now that they're awarding franchises throughout America, it's really helped. When you see one of their trucks driving down the road or see them in these bright green shirts, you tend to remember. Word of mouth in any business, whether it's pest control, wildlife, Christmas, word of mouth is great advertising. The best.

The First Few Years and the Wildlife vs Pest Control Split

I asked Bill what the first few years of Skedaddle were like. Was it smooth sailing because he was already doing it at Truly Nolan, or were there big obstacles?

Thirty-five years ago, he was kind of the only name in town. Back then, Yellow Pages was the only advertising they did. Pest control operators would see what's this Skedaddle, what's this wildlife company, what are they doing, how are they doing?

Slowly, he started seeing pest control operators kind of dabbling in wildlife. But it really is not a job that you can dabble in. You have to be in wildlife control full-time.

"Our Pest Control technicians we don't let them climb ladders they don't deal with Wildlife you know and our Wildlife technicians don't deal with with with pest issues it's it really is two separate lines of business," Bill explained.

Pest control is get that route, get in, get out. Commercial clients, same thing. Get in, get out. Higher number of clients at a lower dollar value. Wildlife control, in most cases, they have two technicians on a job site for the entire day. The dollar value is higher than the pest removal.

For pest control operators who are strictly into pest control, that just blows their mind. What, you have technicians there all day? How are you making money?

The wildlife is a lot different in how they do business. They're focused on animal-proofing the structure, so there's a lot of repair work and sealing up the home, which generates those revenues. As opposed to a quick go in and change the rodent stations or a quick wasp spray. Totally two different lines of business and work.

I asked if wildlife is more one-time or still recurring. Bill said it's one and done. If they've got to go back, then they messed up.

With Skedaddle and all their franchises, once they've done the work, they give a lifetime guarantee. Once they get those squirrels or raccoons or skunks or birds or bats or mice out, and they mouse-proof a home or rat-proof the home or raccoon-proof the home, that homeowner gets a lifetime guarantee.

If animals get back in, if mice get back in, that's on their dime. They go back out, get them out, fix the entry areas again, not charging the homeowner. It's a different philosophy and how things are done.

Why He Prefers Wildlife Over Pest Control

I asked Bill personally, since he has tons of experience in both industries, which one does he like more?

Since wildlife was his first, he has to fight on the side of wildlife. There's nothing even to this day, during baby season when they get their first babies, when one of their technicians has crawled through that attic and finds those first litters that they pick up in their hands and carry out, he still gets excited to want to be at that job site.

They got babies again. It's a little more interesting. Homeowners like to come out. They'll take pictures of you holding the babies and tell all their friends, put it on Facebook, and share it. Now with social media, there's a bit more of a warm and fuzzy feeling with wildlife control versus doing a bed bug job or a cockroach job. There's not much glamor in those types of services compared to baby squirrels or baby raccoons.

So yeah, he'd have to slide into the raccoons or wildlife would be his more favorite of the two.

I told him I never actually thought about it that way. Pest control is almost repulsive, and that's kind of the selling point. No one wants to touch the spiders or the bed bugs. But with wildlife, no one wants to deal with the squirrels or raccoons, but it's like, oh my God, they're so cute, but just don't live in my house.

I've pretty much solely been in pest control. I'm starting to expand into wildlife as well for my clientele. I was just talking with a guy the other day, and I didn't realize how expensive these jobs are. I heard about a $30,000 bat exclusion job. Is that pretty common?

Bill said a $30,000 job isn't that common, but they do come in. They've had $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 jobs for bats. He had a potential franchise owner spend the day with him yesterday. They went to a church, and it was $77,000 to get the bats out and exclude them.

Wildlife work can be quite lucrative. Same with commercial bird issues. Birds roosting in a retail outlet or garden center where they have to net the entire ceiling of a structure. Commercial bird work can be fairly pricey as well. But it's the expertise, the material costs, doing it properly so homeowners never have to worry about having an animal or bird in their home again.

The Story of the Japanese Snow Monkeys

I asked Bill if he has any crazy stories. There's got to be one where there's tons of bats or tons of squirrels.

He said they could write a book on some of the weird and unique stories. Probably the most famous is when he was just starting out his business, just graduated from university. Back then, he had a pager on his hip with an answering service. You'd get calls at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning. His old university buddies would buzz his pager at 3 in the morning saying there's a giraffe in my attic or a hippopotamus.

But they got a call about monkeys that were on the loose. Japanese snow monkeys. These are from Japan. They live in the mountains, they eat fruit, and they were in the Niagara region. They have snow in Japan in the mountains, so they're used to cold winters in Canada. They eat fruit, and Niagara is a big fruit-producing area, the Niagara fruit belt.

It was actually the government that called because somebody had them in a private zoo and they released them. They're running around the wild for a good year.

The mother stood about four feet on all four legs. One of her young was a male and he started showing his dominance and would start attacking people and biting people. They carry hepatitis, HIV, a bunch of communicable diseases for humans. So the government called them in.

They used the farmer sort of as bait because the female would go in heat once a year and she would try to mate with this farmer. They would drive over to Buffalo, which is 10 minutes across the border. They'd drive over to Buffalo Zoo and get primate food, bring it back. So they're feeding them.

When Bill pulled up, it was like they were in Africa. The monkeys were swinging from the trees. The farmer comes out in Canada carrying a hockey stick, and he would use the stick to gently keep the mother at bay.

They used him as bait to get the mother into one of his storage sheds. They caught the mother, then used the mother as bait to catch the babies. Once they had them, they were like, okay, what do we do with monkeys?

They thought they'd call the Metro Toronto Zoo, the biggest zoo. But the zoo said no, they can't introduce those monkeys to the troop that's already there. They'd be killed within 15 minutes.

They did find a smaller zoo that took them. The gentleman actually had to go down to Atlanta to the CDC for testing because he had all these scratches on his neck from trying to keep the mother at bay.

Last Bill heard, they were flourishing in this zoo in Northern Ontario. It's a bittersweet story because they're used to taking animals, getting them out of structures, and letting them loose. These monkeys were in captivity, they had a chance at freedom living in the wild in the woods of Niagara, and then they caught them and they had to go back into captivity.

A little bittersweet story, but they had to do something to catch them. That's probably the most unique story.

I told Bill that was way better than I expected. The government contacted you, there's these crazy monkeys on the loose from Japan. That is awesome. I love that.

Adding Christmas Lights as a Third Revenue Stream

I was interested in how Bill started doing Christmas decorating 11 or 12 years ago. Why did he start doing that?

It's one of those things. In certain parts of Canada, winters can be pretty bad. Pest dies down. There's not many ants or spiders crawling around in the dead of January and February in Canada. They kind of slow down going into Christmas season.

Bill thought, we should do Christmas decorating. We'll just keep our guys busy. It's really taken off with their marketing, with their SEO, their online presence. Now it's a whole other business line.

Some of his staff that have been with him 20 to 25 years are like, okay, we'll deal with that when it's the slow time. Bill's like, there's no slow time anymore. It's lost season, it's bat season, it's spider season, now it's getting into Christmas season. These are all different service lines that all of their franchisees can add as revenue streams into their businesses.

I asked Bill what he likes better, wildlife, pest, or Christmas. Christmas has got to be up there too because whether people have spiders or ants or cockroaches or bats or mice or raccoons, people have to do something. They have to solve the problem. They don't want to, they have to.

With Christmas decorating, it's a whole different buying cycle. People don't have to, they want to have Christmas lights put up. They want their home stunning for the holiday season. If you or me had to change our tires or brakes on our car and it's $2,000, okay, I got to do it. Versus Christmas, I've got to spend $2,000 and my house is going to be the best-looking house on the street? Sign me up.

Christmas is a lot more affluent homeowners that have disposable income. They don't want to get on their roof from a safety perspective. They want their house being stunningly lit up for the holiday season. That's where Christmas Lights from Skedaddle comes in.

I told Bill I haven't heard of too many Christmas decorating businesses, but it makes complete sense. We decorate our house every year, and most houses do on the block. But it's usually the parents decorating it, maybe they do it pretty minimally, and as they get older they do less and less. But if you have someone come in and it's maybe not too expensive and it looks amazing, then it makes complete sense.

Bill said there's always a market. There's always people out there. It's a real feel-good business too. Their pest technicians do a cockroach job, they're not going to take their family and say, this is the apartment I took care of. I took bats out of that house.

But with Christmas, a lot of their staff will take their spouses and their family and say, here, look at this house that I decorated. Look how beautiful it is. It's a real feel-good business. It keeps morale up for the staff. They get a change of pace. Dealing with squirrels or raccoons all year long or bed bugs or spiders, if you want to come over and help with the Christmas decorating at that time, they can.

Their pest operators who aren't used to being on ladders and roofs, they keep them on the ground. They do the decorating on the trees and shrubs. The wildlife technicians that are used to being up and down ladders and on roofs all the time, they'll take care of all the roof lighting.

It really keeps the company growing and keeps the profit margins high.

I told Bill it makes complete sense. With all the pest control companies I've seen, every single time it's winter, the leads almost fall through the roof because there's just not much business. When it's summer, there's more moisture, all the bugs are coming out, they're having babies, now there's all these infestations. But winter, it's usually pretty calm.

He might have figured out the perfect way to combat that: having some kind of winter season business. I think that's a really smart idea.

SEO as the Main Customer Acquisition Channel

I asked Bill what's his main way of getting customers. Is it a vast variety of everything?

"SEO you know really yeah our website," Bill said.

They've been running so long. They spend a lot of money on their website, a lot of money on organic leads, whether it be blog posts, updating the website, local pages for their individual franchises.

Nowadays, everything is online. It's a bit of a scary thought when they first pulled the plug on Yellow Pages because he was in whatever 70 different directories and spending over half a million dollars on Yellow Pages ads.

Pulling the plug on Yellow Pages and putting everything online was very, very scary. This was 10 to 15 to 20 years ago. But they made that leap and have never looked back.

Just based on the size of his company, he has a whole marketing department. They have outside agencies that do SEO and work with his marketing department in-house in Canada and in the US.

Their website gets more hits from America than Canada, even though their presence isn't as vast across the country in the US as they are in Canada. He thinks it's just that Google is recognizing them as an authority on wildlife control and pest control. All their efforts to make the website searchable at the top of Google's list mean people see them no matter what city they are in in America.

I told Bill I love to hear that, especially as a mainly SEO guy. I 100% believe in SEO as well. I think that's where it's at. At least in my experience, people I know usually scroll past Google ads. Of course Google ads still work, but SEO is where it's at.

Especially also ranking in the map pack, having your Google Business Profile ranking. If you have one of those in each of your main cities and you have even just over 100 reviews on each one, you're going to get a lot of customers just from that.

I asked if when Bill says SEO, is it mainly the website or are they also getting customers from Google Business Profile?

They're using Google Business Profile as well. Every day they're tweaking it. With wildlife control or pest control, the search terms matter. What are people searching? For example: raccoon removal, raccoon on roof, raccoon in roof, raccoon in attic, raccoon in yard. There are so many different search terms.

They know those keywords, what people are searching, so they can capitalize on that. Also based on different seasons. When are babies coming for raccoons? When are squirrel babies coming? Winter's bat season. As they're getting into fall, everyone in the pest control industry knows they're getting into rodent season when rodents start really invading homes.

Knowing those seasonal changes and the inside changes means they can capitalize on Google My Business, the SEO, blog posts, videos, YouTube. They like to think at Skedaddle, they just happen to be a marketing company that happens to catch raccoons, squish bugs, and hang lights.

Advice on Finding a Good Marketing Agency

I asked Bill what advice he can give to fellow local business owners about finding a good agency.

His answer: do your due diligence. Don't try to do it yourself. This is best left for people like me who have that experience and knowledge and know what to do.

As a business owner, you can't do everything. You can't be good at SEO, you can't be good at sales, you can't be good at production, you can't be good at marketing, HR. As you grow your business, you need to hire those people and build a team.

"I think you know my my previous life as as a as a professional hockey player you know you you you realize it everybody can't score goals everybody can't stop goals everybody can't be a checker or playmaker so do what you do and do best," Bill explained.

For anyone who's starting a pest control business, he hopes they'd call Skedaddle first and say, hey, you've got something going here, how do I learn from you? But if they're going to do it themselves, don't try SEO yourself. Find a reputable company, someone who's got some good reviews. Talk to them and see what they can do for you.

I told Bill basically what he's saying is you want A-players in every single field of your business. Once you grow large enough, maybe $10 to $20 million a year, then it probably makes sense to hire someone in-house and build an SEO team in-house.

But if you're maybe $200K to $5 million a year, it usually makes sense to hire an SEO agency. You don't have the financial bandwidth to hire a three to five-person SEO team that you'd get from an agency like mine. That's kind of the caveat. The goal actually is to eventually hire in-house, unless you're super happy with your agency.

Bill said that's exactly what they did. Before they got to the size they are, even before they got into franchising, they were using SEO companies. As they continued to grow and got bigger, it was like, okay, this is now time to bring it in-house. That's exactly their path. They hired and used other companies, then as they got bigger and built that marketing team and had the revenue to do it, they brought it all in-house.

The Franchise Opportunity

One of the big opportunities with working with Bill is basically that someone who wants to be a pest control company owner or maybe they're just starting out can franchise out Skedaddle. I asked him to tell me what that process is like and what people would do to franchise Skedaddle.

They have a company based in Denver that does their franchise development because everyone wants to be a business owner, but most people don't realize it takes money to start a business. Proper projections, website development, everything that goes into it.

This franchise development company will bring people through the pipeline. What type of business are you looking for? Pest control, wildlife control? Do you have the financial money to start this business? To get launched and cash flow to continue it as you grow?

Working with that company, they're looking for anyone who's out there struggling in the pest control industry. Maybe you've started your pest business and you have one truck on the road, you want to grow to two. Bill's grown it from one truck to over 170 trucks on the road right now.

How do you get to that second truck? How do you get to third, then fourth, fifth, sixth? How do you scale that? That's something they've done previously and know how to do.

Maybe you've started your pest control company and you want to grow it quicker. You want to jump onto their platform and their website that's already getting hits. Name any city in the US and they're getting hits from that city because Google is serving up their website.

Or maybe you've been in the pest industry for quite some time, you dabble in wildlife. It's not your main source of business, but you want to keep your clients happy. You're spending a lot of time and energy and probably not doing it properly, probably not doing it efficiently, and probably not being profitable in your wildlife calls.

Maybe you have a successful pest business and you want to add wildlife control. They can work with those companies and add the Skedaddle wildlife portion of it. Either let that company continue with their pest name or rebrand as Skedaddle Pest Control. Lots of options there for someone who's looking at growing a business.

They're entrepreneurial. They're not going to be happy with two trucks. They want 20 trucks on the road. They want better work-life balance. They want to spend time in the field, but at some point, they want to start managing people and start working on the business rather than in the business on a day-to-day basis.

How SEO Traffic Has Exploded

I'll give a quick look at the SEO perspective on why franchising with Skedaddle is such a huge competitive advantage. It's not so much about putting a ton of money into SEO, but one of the main factors is that they've been around for so long and they're a recognized name.

Google takes into account not only what search traffic you're currently getting but what search traffic you've gotten over the years. If you have consistently gotten 10,000 search traffic every month for the past 20 years, that is going to come to Google as super authoritative. Same way with backlinks coming in nicely.

That's why usually smaller companies get dominated by bigger companies with SEO. When you're something like a franchise or multi-location, you're getting much more traffic, much more backlinks, just naturally because that's what will happen.

If you have one location, maybe you're getting 500 traffic a month. If you have five locations doing the same exact thing, 2,500 traffic a month. That automatically seems more authoritative to Google.

Bill told me about the gentleman that was in town yesterday looking at purchasing a franchise. They had the marketing team in. When they first moved away from Yellow Pages, they were getting maybe 1,000 to 1,500 hits to their website a month.

Now they're over 100,000 hits to their website. It just explodes. A lot of that is because somebody's in Cleveland or Salt Lake City or Denver, and they type in raccoon in attic, raccoon in chimney. Google is still serving that to them because they realize, oh, here's the authority in raccoons: Skedaddle.

Even though they're not in those cities yet, but they will be soon hopefully. That's a great advantage because they're being recognized by Google already and how long they've had their website and everything they've done to promote it with Google.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Bill is the power of building a memorable brand. Skedaddle is not Advanced Wildlife Solutions or Absolute Pest Control. It's a name you hear once and remember forever. Bill went to a marketing company and invested in creating something unique with the green colors, the playful animal names like Scoot the Raccoon and Scram the Skunk. That brand recognition has been a massive competitive advantage, especially now that they're franchising across North America. If you're starting a business, don't settle for a generic name. Make it memorable.

The second takeaway is understanding that different service lines require different business models. Bill made it crystal clear: pest control technicians don't climb ladders and don't deal with wildlife. Wildlife technicians don't deal with pest issues. They're two separate lines of business. Pest control is high volume, lower dollar value, get in and get out. Wildlife is two technicians on a job site for the entire day with higher dollar values and lifetime guarantees. You can't dabble in wildlife. You have to be all in. That specialization is what allows them to charge $30,000 to $70,000 for bat exclusions and still deliver exceptional value.

The third insight is the genius of adding a winter revenue stream. Bill figured out the perfect counter-seasonal business: Christmas lights. When pest dies down in the dead of winter in Canada, Christmas decorating kicks in. It's a feel-good business that keeps morale up, keeps staff busy, and serves more affluent homeowners who have disposable income. They want their house stunning for the holiday season. It's not a "have to" purchase like pest control, it's a "want to" purchase. Finding a complementary seasonal service is brilliant for any local business dealing with seasonal fluctuations.

The fourth thing that struck me is the courage to pull the plug on what's working and bet on the future. Bill was spending over half a million dollars on Yellow Pages ads across 70 different directories. Pulling the plug on that and putting everything into SEO was terrifying 10 to 15 years ago. But he made that leap and never looked back. Now they're getting over 100,000 hits to their website monthly. That willingness to make a scary transition from old marketing to new marketing is what separates businesses that grow from businesses that die. You can't stick with what's comfortable forever.

The fifth lesson is about hiring A-players and building systems. Bill emphasized you can't do everything yourself. You can't be good at SEO, sales, production, marketing, and HR. His previous life as a professional hockey player taught him that everybody can't score goals, everybody can't stop goals, everybody can't be a checker or playmaker. Do what you do best and hire great people for everything else. That team-building mentality from hockey translated directly into building a company with 170+ trucks. Hire attitude and train the skills. Very few people say they want to be a raccoon catcher when they grow up, but if you have a great attitude, the opportunities are immense for future growth.

If you want to learn more from Bill, check out SkedaddleFranchise.com for franchising information and SkedaddleWildlife.com for their main website. You can also find him on LinkedIn where he has 23,000 followers, as well as Instagram and other social platforms. Bill's journey from professional hockey player to building the number one wildlife franchise in North America is proof that with the right brand, the right team, and the willingness to make scary transitions, you can build something truly extraordinary.