Profile: Brock Lawn and Pest Control
Heading:   Population growth and internal change help Panhandle company boom.
By:  Ernie Neff

Give booming population growth around Panama City some credit for Brock Lawn and Pest Control’s recent double-digit revenue growth, including 33 percent in 2003-04 and 25 percent in 2004-05. But population growth alone wouldn’t have brought the frothy expansion Brock has enjoyed.          

Corporate growth is largely the result of conscious internal changes that Brock began in 1996. That’s the year Tim Brock, fresh out of Troy State University, joined his father and company founder Doug in the family business at Lynn Haven, just north of Panama City. “With Tim coming on board, we made a commitment to build a business as big as we could,” Doug recalls.

Pre-Tim, “I was handing out work every morning,” Doug says. The son with a business degree and father with life experience agreed to create departments, with individual supervisors, for termites, lawn and ornamental (L&O), and general household pests (GHP). 

Around 2004, Doug says, “We went through a complete redesign of our image.” Consultants and an advertising agency helped. “You need outside experts sometimes to run your business,” Tim says. The company took its current _ and fourth _ name at that time. It previously was Douglas Pest Control, then Douglas Brock Pest Control and Brock Pest Control.  

The company uses several strategies to get, on average, more than $150,000 revenue annually per truck. Switching from monthly to quarterly service increased productivity. The use of global positioning systems (GPS) and mapping programs integrated with service software to create the most efficient routes also increased productivity. Training the office staff on the geographic area Brock serves helped. “They get enough information to schedule service as efficiently as possible,” says Tim, who’s pursuing an MBA from Troy State.  

Upping its advertising budget to 6-7 percent of total expenditures helped Brock bring in more business. Forty percent of the ad budget goes to yellow pages; TV and radio get 20 percent each; 10 percent buys billboard space and 10 percent goes to other ad mediums.  

Tim, who became company president this January, thinks having everyone at Brock certified QualityPro by the National Pest Management Association increased the company’s professional image and aided growth. He adds that better, longer-lasting insecticides that came on the market in recent years made technicians more productive and aided corporate growth.                                     Corporate revenues that hovered around $1 million for several years started bounding in 2002 and 2003. This year’s revenue will be close to $3 million. The company had about 20 employees when Tim joined it in 1996; today it has 35, including 18 technicians. There are seven GHP routes, six termite routes and five L&O routes. 

Seventy-five percent of Brock’s business is in its home county, Bay. It also services Franklin, Gulf and Walton counties out of the main office. A branch established two years ago in Marianna services Calhoun, Holmes, Jackson, Liberty and Washington _ all rural Panhandle counties.  

Technicians drive pickups; three salesmen make calls in Volkswagen Beetles. All vehicles are bright yellow with green lettering. They bear the slogan, “Our family protecting your family since 1968.”

FAMILY DISCORD, AND HARMONY

 Doug’s father, Ernest Brock, started a pest control company in the Panama City area in 1965 after working eight years for Orkin. “I joined my daddy’s business in 1968 after serving four years in the U.S. Air Force,” says Doug, a retired National Guard major.  

Doug was stunned when his father told him he had sold the business to Redd Pest Control in October 1973. When Doug asked if he could buy the company instead, Ernest said no, the deal was done. Doug declined to continue working with his father in the business that was being sold. “That very much disappointed my dad,” he says. “Because of that, he and I had no relationship for 12 years.” 

A month after Ernest sold the business, Doug started Douglas Pest Control as a one-man operation and added his first technician in 1975. He started with GHP and termite service, adding L&O in the late 1970s. By 1980 he had seven employees. 

Ernest by then had left the pest control company he sold to Redd and opened another company that competed directly with his son’s operation. “Probably the most difficult business situation I’ve been in in my life was having to be in competition with my dad,” Doug recalls.   Doug bought Ernest’s new pest control company in the mid-1980s, ending the father-son competition. “That was probably the best family decision I made, in that since then, he and I have had a very good relationship,” Doug says. Doug also bought the pest control business that Ernest had sold to Redd a dozen years earlier. 

In recent years, Ernest has appeared in some Brock Lawn and Pest Control advertising, including TV commercials.  

Tim says, “Now I’m getting the opportunity that he (Doug) never got” _ to learn the business from his father and have the chance to take it over.  

Doug adds, “That’s one of the goals for him (Tim), for him to get the opportunity to grow the business that I never had and to have the legacy of maybe passing it on to his kids.” 

Tim and Doug remain committed to building as much business as possible. “We are always looking for ways to expand our business within our current market,” Tim says. “But, we also plan on expanding our service area in the Panhandle and possibly into other states as we are fairly close to three other states.”

Cutlines for Photos:

L-R: Doug Brock, Jim Strickland, Jimmie Bass and Tim Brock.

Doug Brock with photos of two service trucks numbered 207; both were damaged in wrecks. Brock retired the number after the second wreck.

"Everybody acts like family."

Get employees talking about Brock Lawn and Pest Control, and it won’t be a minute before they’re mentioning the family atmosphere.

 “Everybody acts like family,” says Sentricon technician and self-described “termite sniffer” Burton Funchess. The 13-year employee likes doing what he does, and says the company respects that. “They give me opportunities (to advance) but I don’t always take them, because I believe I’m most effective where I am.”

“They take good care of me and I love what I do,” says Jimmie Bass, termite service manager. “If I get in and get all my guys ready and get them out, and they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’re fine.” Bass, who’s been with Brock 12 years, says he’s stayed “because of the family-oriented atmosphere.”

You’ve got to believe Vice President of Operations Jim Strickland when he says, “They are a good family company, and I’m sure you’d hear that from every employee here ... I’ve got the best job I’ve ever had in my life and I work for the best people I’ve ever worked for.” His opinion is backed by experience. The retired Army Airborne first sergeant and manager at another pest control company for seven years has had many bosses _ good and bad.

Company founder Doug Brock and son Tim, the recently-named president, both say taking care of employees is the top priority. “I’ve always felt like if you take care of your people, they’ll take care of customers and my customers will be loyal and take care of me,” Doug says.

 “We feel like we’re in service to our employees,” Tim adds. “We’re here for them, to make their jobs easier and enjoyable.”

RECOGNITION AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

Tim says he believes employee recognition is the number one employee motivator. “And a good environment to work in,” Doug chimes in. Brock employees get lots of both.

A Goal Cup is presented annually to individuals, departments and office workers who meet annual goals. That recognition is accompanied by a plaque and a gift certificate, usually to a restaurant.

An Extra Mile Award, again including plaque and gift certificate, is presented once a quarter to employees who go “above and beyond the call of duty,” Tim says. These awards, presented every fifth Friday during a company cookout and training session, honor employees for something they do outside their job description to help customers or co-workers. 

All employees receive cards and movie tickets on their birthdays.

Money, of course, is also an employee motivator. Everyone at Brock has opportunities to earn sales and production commissions. “We basically incentivize the pay scale,” Tim says.

Funchess says the Brocks provide coffee in the morning and popcorn in the afternoon. But there’s something even more important than all that, he says. “Mr. Brock’s (Doug) like a father figure,” he says. “When you come in and Mr. Brock or Tim pat you on the back, you’re ready to go out and work. That means a lot.”

Tim says his wife, Natalie, plays a key role in the company even though her main corporate involvement, coordinating special events, is part-time. More importantly, Tim says, “I can do so many good things at the office knowing my wife’s taking care of the (three) kids.”

COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY

The company is active in the communities it works in, supporting the Panama City Rescue Mission and other charitable and service organizations. Once in 2005, Brock Lawn and Pest Control was recognized as business of the month by the Bay County Chamber of Commerce. 

Doug and Tim say when the company supports youth sports and other activities, it puts emphasis on those in which employees’ children are involved. “We look to our employees first,” Tim says.

Both Brocks have put in much volunteer time as leaders of the Florida Pest Management Association. Doug was FPMA president in 1996-97; Tim’s on the association’s Executive Committee.

Open range

Doug and Tim Brock are proud of their family roots that date to 1836 in the Florida Panhandle. Before Doug’s father, Ernest, got into pest control, he worked with his father grazing thousands of head of cattle on open range and some land of their own. Doug, who herded cows in his youth, lives on property his great-grandfather owned in northern Bay County.

Doug and Tim smile when they recall how Ernest and his father sold chunks of land on the Gulf of Mexico cheap because they couldn't graze cattle on the beach.  A few acres of that beach land could now be sold for several years’ worth of pest control company revenues.