Offering good service and being punctual has resulted in word-of-mouth referrals.

My name is Lloyd Totten. I'm a pest control operator. I own Personal Touch Pest Control. I've been in business for ten years now and I've been in the pest control business since about 1972. I started by buying a small route from a termite company and I took over the general pest control, which are household pests.

In the very beginning, I took a part-time job. On Fridays, Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays, I was delivering flowers while I was building up my route. While I was delivering flowers, I was always giving my business card out to the same people I was delivering to, and a lot of them were businesses and homeowners.

At the very beginning, I took all the crappy jobs and wouldn't turn down anything. I did night jobs and a lot of restaurants. Now I don't do any restaurants anymore. I've kind of learned the hard way. Sometimes I drove 50 miles to one stop. After a while, I weeded those out, too.

I now specialize mostly in apartments, management companies and homes. To build up my business, I target management companies that are required to have pest control because of the Health Department. They manage apartments, businesses, warehouses and laundromats. They have to have pest control.

Offering good service and being punctual has resulted in word-of-mouth referrals. I had saved some money, but then when you're waiting on people to pay you at the beginning, you go through that quickly. And then you find out a lot of costs you didn't think about. The insurance is real high. I could have done things a lot better and should have planned for a lot longer time to become profitable.

Now that I've been in the business for about ten years, I'm pretty happy. I do like the route. As to trying to grow, I have two sons; one is 16 and one is 20. If they're interested in it, then I will try to make it grow a lot more. Otherwise, I'm happy with what I have now.