About Pest2Kill
Pest2Kill is owned jointly by Julian Bracewell and Phil Taylor. It is Sydney’s largest independently owned (and award-winning) pest control company, with a team of 25, providing a wide range of pest control services across Sydney in the residential, commercial, and termite sectors. Let’s chat to Julian and Phil and find out a little more…
How did you get started in your industry and what has your journey been like?
Phil: “Julian started the business in 2015 having previously owned a carpet cleaning business. He could see more commercial opportunity in the pest control industry and the barrier to entry was appealing. To operate in the pest control industry, you need to be trained and licensed, making it a more professional industry to work in.“
Julian: “Phil joined me at Pest2Kill in 2017. We already knew each other through our football club. It was just the two of us back then. We’ve since grown into a team of 25. Before joining Pest2Kill, Phil was a podiatrist, looking for a new opportunity, with a passion to run his own business. Like me, he could see a lot of opportunity in pest control.”
What is it like working with a business partner and how do you define your roles?
Julian: “Our relationship began as football teammates and business has now become our sport, competing, improving the team, and improving skills.
We have a great relationship and have a lot of fun working together. In fact, we get along better at work than on the football pitch. If you saw us at football, you’d never imagine we’d make good business partners!
Working together successfully is all about respect and compromise, recognising each other’s differences, skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses – and sometimes putting our egos aside.
Phil is the dreamer – he will have 100 ideas a minute and though many don’t come to fruition, there are some real gems that move our business forward. He takes care of strategy, vision and culture.”
Phil: “Julian is the doer – he takes my ideas and makes them a reality. He is also in charge of sales. When the business was smaller, we didn’t have clearly defined roles. That has become crystalised in more recent years. It’s important to have the clearly defined roles because it also helps our team understand who they can go to.”
Julian: “It’s a blessing to work with Phil and the company would not be where it is today without him. I love his vision, hare-brained schemes, and ideas. Letting the other person be creative is important. We tend to not put up barriers when it comes to ideas. Sometimes we give it a go and it will hit the mark, and sometimes it won’t. And that’s ok.”
Phil: “It’s such a great partnership, working with Julian – together we make more bold decisions. It is great to have Julian as such a thoughtful and discerning sounding board who makes sense of my ideas and knows how to implement our innovations successfully.”
How would you describe your leadership style and how does it influence your team?
Phil: “I’d say we’re very supportive, always looking to develop people. Highly people-focused, continually seeking to maintain a high level of morale and job satisfaction with an emphasis on personal development and growth. Something I feel is generally lacking in the industry.
We hold regular 121 meetings with staff to learn whether they are happy and have a clear vision or pathway for their future. These regular discussions ensure each team member is on the right track. Being understanding that these are people, they have personal lives, we need to complement their personal life with a happy working life, which will work better for everyone.
I try to be very clear and consistent, setting clear expectations for the team, so there are no surprises.”
Julian: “Haha, my answer is much shorter, best described as lackadaisical. I’m too loose sometimes and that is why it is good having Phil. I’m probably more the ‘arm around the shoulder’.”
What makes your company stand out in the market?
Julian: “Our People are the main stand-out. We have such an amazing team – we get fantastic feedback about our customer service. We always aim to provide a continually improved customer experience. Our size is also pretty rare in the industry. Being mid-sized means we are able to service the needs of both small and large clients. We have the capability and accreditation of a large company and the responsiveness and attentiveness of a small company.”
Please share a little a little about your purpose, and aspirations for the business.
Phil: “I would like to continue growing the company at a sustainable rate. To be considered one of the industry leaders across the country.
We are intentionally a pest control company that, from an office perspective, doesn’t feel like a pest control company. We want to be the desired employer of choice in the industry to attract the best talent.”
Julian: “Agreed, we definitely want to grow, set targets and keep reaching them. In the service industry you grow or die. We will grow consistently and carefully to ensure we keep the quality of our work and maintain our team culture.
Our short-term goal is getting the delegation part right – making sure we have the systems and processes in place, so the business does not rely on Phil or myself.
Our long-term goal is to be an inspiring leader in the industry.”
How would you describe your core values?
Phil: “It’s not about the pests; it’s about the people. The people are the most important part of what we do. If we lose sight of what our people need, both staff and customers, then we’ve missed the mark.
We also want to be a positive influence in the community, in everything we do. Either by providing great service, charitable donations, polite and helpful staff, clean vehicles, responsible drivers – all these small things affect other people in our community.”
Julian: “A passion to create leaders. Developing more leaders in our business will help with delegation and facilitate our drive to become decentralised. To always remain people-centric.”
What drives you every day? What feels most important about the service you provide?
Julian: “Our team. Always being happy to come into work and looking forward to seeing everyone. Working towards a common goal of growing and improving.
Focusing on all the people we touch, be it customers, our team members, and their families too.”
Describe what challenges have you faced along the way, and how have you overcome them.
Phil: “The main challenge for us is the seasonal nature of the industry. Something we’ve managed to overcome by securing regular long-term commercial contracts and not letting go of staff for these short periods of quite time.
Instead, we maintain our team members and use slower cycles of business for training, so we hit the ground running once the busy season starts. You just have to hold your nerve through these times, and before you know it, we’re busy again. This practice is much better for functionality, team security, and loyalty in the long term. We also encourage leave during these quite periods.”
What advice would you give to others looking to solve similar challenges?
Julian: “Consider the cost of letting people go for a temporary downturn in revenue. What will you do when you get the revenue back? Look at long term impact of that decision. By holding onto your staff, you don’t need to retrain, you build skills and get consistency and value.
We made changes to how we recruit 5 years ago, recruiting from both inside and outside the industry. Pest2Kill provides more training than other companies and we teach the team the “Pest2Kill way”.
Having a mix of trainees and experienced staff has helped retention and provides career progression for staff. They can go on to being termite techs, supervisors, and office staff. When recruitment is effective and you have options, your standards and quality of work are higher.”
What innovations in your industry are you most excited about?
Phil: “I’m not especially excited by it, but everyone is talking about AI and what it will do. It will be interesting to watch how it plays out in the pest control industry. AI is definitely creeping into the admin side of things and we’re watching it closely.”
Julian: “Our next challenge is transitioning from a mid-size company and building a scalable middle management team. We are on the right path.”
What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received from a customer?
Phil: “Twice now, customers have asked chat GPT who would they recommend for pest control and chat GPT recommended Pest2Kill. As long as the robots are on our side, I don’t mind.”
How do you define success for your business?
Julian: “We want to build a business that the whole team is proud of and can share in the success of.”
we’d love to ask a few questions about the service we provide to you…
Firstly, can you tell us what were you looking for in a bookkeeping service?
Phil: “Essentially to save time, particularly to gain time back for me to focus on more strategic development. We were looking for accuracy and responsiveness – and a firm with clear processes. Me doing the bookkeeping was causing stress and I wanted peace of mind that it would be done right. With Blue Amber, it was all tick, tick, tick.”
What made you choose Blue Amber?
Julian: “Phil and Lucy are in the same networking group and the testimonials spoke for themselves. Lucy and her team are highly regarded, and Phil had the utmost confidence he was making right choice.
However, the tipping point that made Phil decide, was a presentation Lucy gave at their networking event where she presented a case study and did a live interview with a client on how they benefited from using Blue Amber Bookkeeping. Seeing the case study of another person in a service-based industry of a similar size and seeing how he got so much time back made Phil question why we weren’t doing the same thing.”
How would you describe the value of our product/service in one sentence?
Phil: “It has given me time back to focus on building and growing our business, which has been invaluable.”
I love Julian and Phil’s sense of community, which they carry internally throughout their own business, through all their partner and customer interactions, and their dedicated connection with the local community. From dressing up as cockroaches for the annual mini fun-run, to hosting bug show workshops in primary schools and daycare centres, to supporting kids’s sporting teams, and a number of local charities, the team clearly enjoy giving back. They have absolutely nailed just the right mix of professionalism, community spirit, and fun, making Pest2Kill a total pleasure to work with.
I love Julian and Phil’s sense of community, which they carry internally throughout their own business, through all their partner and customer interactions, and their dedicated connection with the local community. From dressing up as cockroaches for the annual mini fun-run, to hosting bug show workshops in primary schools and daycare centres, to supporting kids’ sporting teams, and a number of local charities, the team clearly enjoy giving back. They have absolutely nailed just the right mix of professionalism, community spirit, and fun, making Pest2Kill a total pleasure to work with.
