Profile: Hulett Environmental
Services
Small twins help create a large pest control company.
By Ernie Neff
 It
was a fateful day when Tim Hulett met the world's shortest
living twins in 1990. Hulett, then 37, had turned a one-man,
$1,500-a-month pest control route he bought from his father
after graduating from college into a million-dollar-a-year,
20-employee West Palm Beach-area business in 13 years. The
company was by some people's measure successful, but he had
bigger plans.
Hulett had achieved championship status in sports, and wanted
to do the same in business. His high school football team,
Cardinal Newman in West Palm Beach, went 10-0 his senior year
with Hulett as its hard-charging fullback. In 1985, he drove a
stock car to the four-cylinder modified division championship
at Hialeah Speedway. I often wondered, How can I relate my
life lessons I have learned in sports to business? he
recalls.
In the quest for a championship company, he displayed a few
eye-catching billboards along major highways, including I-95.
Only windshields kill more bugs than we do, declared the
signs for Hulett Environmental Services.
Those billboards would soon bring Hulett and West Palm Beach
celebrity twins Greg and John Rice together. The twins,
standing about three feet, had become successful real estate
salesmen and investors in their 20s and 30s. We'd fix one old
house up, rent it, have the tenant trash it, and fix it up
again, Greg Rice says with a smile. John and I started
getting local publicity at first; people where intrigued with
how these two little guys were buying and selling all these
houses.
Eventually, articles about the diminutive twins and their real
estate savvy started to appear nationwide and they began
traveling to present sales seminars. Their appearance in an
eight-minute segment of the network TV show Real People in
September 1979 brought more opportunities, Rice recalls. It
launched a national speaking career for us. The brothers
were all over the world appearing on TV and radio talk shows
and giving
seminars.
By 1989, the Rices were hosting Television Home Hunt on a
West Palm Beach TV channel, showing viewers how to buy and
sell houses. We did our show in a fun and entertaining
format, Rice says. The show, which was syndicated in 30 other
markets around the country, featured homes for sale in those
local markets. In a search for local West Palm Beach-area
advertisers, the Rices, then 38, called on the largest local
pest control company in West Palm. That company was already
advertising heavily on TV, and passed on the offer to
advertise on the Rices TV show.
THE BILLBOARDS,
HULETT AND THE TWINS
 Hulett's Only windshields ... billboards had just gone up when the Rices' began looking for a pest control company to advertise on
their TV show. We're seeing these darn billboards all around
town as we were driving down the road. At about the same time
both of us said, That's neat! Rice says. They called Hulett
Environmental Services. Tim said, We'll buy a spot every Sunday, but we want you
guys to do our commercials for us, Rice recalls. They struck
a deal. I told them, just make sure you say Hulett three times in
each
30-second spot, Hulett says. Having watched them on TV for
several years, I knew they knew the difference between
fool-hardy humor and professional humor, and they do.
The Rices' immediately produced three Hulett commercials, one
each for lawn, termites and general household pests. In each,
John would try to fight an aggressive pest on his own with bad
results, like falling through a termite-riddled floor. Brother
Greg would shake his head and say, Better call Hulett or
Just call Hulett.
It took a real bold move for Tim to let us do that back
then, Rice says. In 1990, he explains, pest control companies
weren't yet running light-hearted TV commercials.
It was bold, indeed. Hulett had three small children then.
When he paid bills, I said at least I'm paying for the TV
commercials, he says.
Laughing, he recalls that the commercials cost more than I
was taking out of the business. He says he knew it would take
two or three years for the TV commercials to bring the kind of
increased sales results he wanted. He sees long term, Rice
says.
Soon after the first three commercials were produced, John
Rice broke his neck in an automobile accident and was
hospitalized for 15 months. So we couldn't do any new
commercials for two-and-a-half years, Rice recalls.
THE PAYOFF
The company rotated the three commercials, and people couldn't
help noticing the attention-getting ads. It started
increasing the
number of leads coming into the office, Hulett says. After
the
commercials had run a year-and- a-half, he gradually added
more employees to accommodate the expanding business.
After about three years, they (people around West Palm Beach)
were saying, Oh, that's Hulett; they've been around
forever, Rice says.
The commercials expanded the company's name recognition and
credibility far faster than word of mouth could.
John Rice recovered from his injuries and the brothers cranked
out more Hulett commercials, adding two to four a year. The TV
spots reached north as far as Vero Beach, and Hulett
Environmental started getting numerous calls from the Ft.
Pierce area. The company couldn't afford to send technicians
that far, so it opened its first branch in Ft. Pierce in the
mid-1990s. He (Hulett) increased his advertising budget and we just
hammered the TV stations and cable channels, says Rice, who
joined the company as marketing director nine years ago. The
advertising kept working. There were three years in a row we
grew more than 30 percent during the mid-1990s, Hulett says.
The company actually reduced advertising for a while because
it wanted service
to keep up with demand. Too much business is as bad as too
little business, Hulett declares.
To keep up with growth, the company gradually added more
branches. In addition to Ft. Pierce, (where a new building is
currently being built), Hulett Environmental has branches in
Broward County, Daytona, Ft. Myers, Melbourne, Orlando (two
offices) and Sarasota. Hulett says Rice, who has expertise in
real estate as well as marketing, has helped the company
acquire property for branch offices. We're now in what we call responsible growth mode, Hulett
says, explaining the company now grows about 15 percent a
year. As a $30 million, 300-employee company, 15 percent means
$5 million in extra revenue and 50 new employees a year.
We're happy with that growth rate.
General household pests and termites account for 80 percent of
Hulett Environmental's business; the remaining 20 percent is
lawn and ornamental. The company has approximately 50,000
customers.
Growth will continue for the business that PCT magazine rated
fifth in Florida and 25th nationally in 2004 revenue among
pest control
companies. Hulett says the company plans to open eight to 10
additional
offices over the next two to three years. To make sure demand
remains strong, Hulett still spends about
five percent of gross revenues on advertising.
In February 2004, Hulett Environmental moved into a new
22,0000 square-foot, two-story headquarters building on the
western side of West Palm Beach. It's already planning to add
an adjoining 30,000- to 33,000-square foot building next door.
We need it, we're in the growth and acquisition mode, Hulett
says.
IT'S ABOUT
THE JOURNEY,AND THE PEOPLE
 Hulett
says his company's phenomenal growth hasn't surprised him.
This was expected, he declares. Everything we do, every
place we go, we strive to be the best. He immediately adds,
My people are the reason I'm here, it's not me.
The journey's been fun, he adds. A big part of the reason
for that is that he considers Rice and other employees to be
his friends. I don't hire anybody I don't like. We're almost
like a bunch of brothers and sisters Ð the brothers and
sisters that like each other.
Hulett Environmental works hard at finding the kind of people
it wants. Almost finishing thoughts for each other, Rice and
Hulett explain their hiring procedure. Rice: We look for
people with good people skills. Hulett: We hire for
attitude. Rice: And teach them everything else. Tim enjoys seeing other people grow, Rice says, and Hulett
adds, If we can't provide our team with the tools and
training to grow and succeed, then I failed.
Asked about his long-range plans, Hulett says, Keep having
fun. We really enjoy what we do. My son wants to move into the
business so he'll be able to take the helm when I'm ready to
retire, although it will be hard to retire from a business
that
you love so much.
Managing: Number one,
take care of your employees.
Pest control companies often cite customer service as their
number one management priority. Hulett Environmental Services
has a slightly different view: Number One; take care of your
employees, says President Tim Hulett. He explains that it's
the employees who deal with customers, not management. If the employees are happy, they'll take care of our customers. How do you do that (take care of employees)? Hulett asks,
answering, Help them with their problems.
Hulett says employers decades ago routinely told their
employees not to bring their personal problems to work. Today,
we want to help solve their problems. He offers the
not-unusual example of a single mother who gets to work late
several days in a row. When Hulett management finds out that
the mother is late because she has to take her children to
daycare, We'll change her hours, Hulett says.
TRAIN
We invest heavily in training, Marketing Director Greg Rice
says. People want to be better at what they do. The better
you are at doing something, the more you're going to look
forward to doing it. So, we give people the resources they
need to be the best they can be.
The company recently established a team of 12 people to run
Bug U (short for Hulett's Bug University) at its corporate
headquarters in West Palm Beach. Hulett says the trainers will
teach everything from technician training to learning our
software to running a branch office. If there's an
educational need, Bug U will do the training.
LISTEN
Be a good listener, Hulett says. Management can learn
how to run a better business by listening to employees
ideas. No one person has all the best ideas; a
successful business is a team effort.
THINK LONG TERM
Be a long-term thinker, Hulett says, listing what he
describes as the fourth most important management concept.
Long-term thinking includes making the commitment to
advertising in new areas where branch offices are just opened.
We break even in year three. Fortunately, we're profitable
enough in the other offices to be able to do that. Hulett
goes on to say, If I hadn't made the sacrifice to stick with
our advertising back in 1990 when we teamed up with the Rice
brothers and made the decision to invest in the company's
future, you probably would not be interviewing us today!
Tim Hulett
OCCUPATION: President-entomologist, Hulett
Environmental Services, West Palm Beach.
AGE: 52
BORN: Columbus, Ohio; moved to West Palm Beach at age
one.
DEGREE: B.S. in entomology from the University of
Florida, 1975.
HOW ENTERED PEST CONTROL: After college, worked 18
months for his father, Guy Hulett, who started Hulett
Exterminating in West Palm Beach in the late 1960s. He (Guy)
was a mom and pop and wanted to be a mom and pop. Tim bought a
$1,500 a month route from Guy on Jan. 1, 1977 and went on his
own.
FAMILY:
¥ Wife, Liz; Hulett met her at the University of Florida.
¥ Son, Randy, plans to join Hulett Environmental Services
after finishing his MBA at Florida Atlantic University in
2006.
¥ Daughter, Lesley, a University of Florida animal biology
graduate, plans to become a veterinarian.
¥ Daughter, Katie, is a University of Florida sophomore
majoring in education.
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