Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSC an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSC and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House, here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
There's something bugging me. While today's pest control industry is, according to Fortune, a nearly $20 billion market, most folks think of it as still a local, independently operated exterminator. The friendly fellow who showed up at mom and dad's house with a backpack tank of insecticide and the pump sprayer as the winter freeze gave way to summer warmth, bringing with it the annual invasion of carpenter ants or worse.
I could tell you about the swarm of flying squirrels that invaded our attic in the Catskills a few years back, but we'll put that aside for now. In fact, this sector can be traced back to that first moment a human swatted a mosquito or shooed away a bothersome fly. Are we talking about the Paleolithic era roughly 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 B.C. when early humans lived in caves or simple huts or teepees or were hunters and gatherers? Or was it the earliest days here on Wall Street 400 years ago when the Dutch settled New Amsterdam and contended with whatever wildlife preceded them in Manhattan?
In any case, while everyone has their own personal method for evading or counter-attacking the insect, the commercial side of the industry has evolved significantly, introducing newer and more effective techniques for managing the common household pets that plague us all. As civilization transitioned from villages to cities and populations expanded so too did the challenges posed by pests.
The ancient Sumerians around 2500 B.C. documented the first use of a chemical compound to deter insects. Unlike the modern bug sprays or insecticides, they relied on sulfur compounds to combat infestations that they faced. Today we would call that organic pest control.
The ancient Romans took pest control a step further by emphasizing hygiene, implementing strict cleanliness codes and developing rudimentary sewage systems. And these systems, covered by stones, directed waste through central channels into main systems, ultimately leading to nearby waterways.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire during the subsequent Dark Ages, scientific advancements nearly vanished from Europe along with many sanitation and health-related practices. This decline in hygiene significantly contributed to the Black Death pandemic that swept across the continent from 1346 to 1353, claiming the lives of an estimated 50 million people.
It wasn't until the 1690s that the first official pest control company, H. Tiffin & Son Ltd, in London was formed with the Royal Warrant proudly proclaiming bug destroyers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family, they surely strutted their stuff in the basement and back alleys of Buckingham Palace. Promoting rat and bed bug control using methods and chemical compounds of their own proprietary invention.
230 years after Tiffin & Son's start in 1925 Rentokil was founded by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, professor of entomology at Imperial College in London, who had been investigating ways to kill death watch beetles that had infested Westminster Abbey.
Today, Rentokil, that's NYSC ticker symbol RTO, has grown into a global brand with a workforce of over 56,000 employees. As the prominent figure in the pest control sector Rentokil oversees well-known names such as Terminix and Western Exterminator positioning itself as the leader in the industry.
At the forefront of Rentokil's innovation is today's guest, Cassie Krejci, a board-certified PhD entomologist, Cassie's at the helm of creating new technologies for this company's North American market and constructing the new Rentokil Terminix Innovation Center in Dallas, Texas. She joins today's episode to detail the center's development and go in-depth on the present and future of the pest control industry. Our conversation on all that and more with Cassie Krejci, Rentokil's, head of science and innovation, it's coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Josh King:
Welcome back Inside the ICE House. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us.
Our guest today, Cassie Krejci, is the head of innovation and science North America at Rentokil Initial. That's NYSC ticker symbol RTO. A board-certified medical and veterinary entomologist with a PhD from Texas A&M, Cassie brings close to a decade of experience in the pest control industry and has been at the forefront of Rentokil's development of the new Rentokil Terminix Innovation Center in Dallas, set to open on June 6th, World Pest Day, among other things. Cassie, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House. Welcome to the New York Stock Exchange.
Cassie Krejci:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It is my first time.
Josh King:
So with spring arriving in New York City, we're approaching mosquito season, the Midwestern region joining us, while the south, southwest and west experience a more year-round insect cycle, are we entering the entomologist busy season?
Cassie Krejci:
This is our busy season, this is the time when we come alive again. We spend a lot of our time in the winters planning for exclusion and rodent services, but we get to go outside and be where the bugs are a little bit more when the weather warms up.
Josh King:
Today, when you and I are talking, happens to also be baseball's opening day, so do entomologists, like baseball managers, get a particular thrill when spring comes around?
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, there used to be a saying before termites were quite as prolific as they are, we always said they swarm on Mother's Day. And now they've started swarming much earlier in the season. But we definitely use common holidays and colloquialisms to relate to insect behavior.
Josh King:
How's this season shaping up, warmer climate, more bugs?
Cassie Krejci:
Warmer climate, more moisture. So a climate in relation to temperature has a ton to do with insect behavior, but moisture is a bigger indicator of insect pressure. They're more reliant on moisture than heat or cold.
Josh King:
In North America, particularly for your role in pest control, how challenging is it to manage diverse weather conditions and patterns and living conditions across the country? Does the lack of consistency from one state to another present unique difficulties say that Iceland doesn't have to deal with? Iceland has one kind of climate.
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, exactly. I think it's one of our unique challenges. I don't think I'll ever master managing the weather, but I do know a ton about bugs. And I say, as long as I know about insect requisites for life, their dependency on temperature and humidity and all the other things, then I can use the indications from the weather to get the best of them. I will say that's one of the benefits of our organization is that we exist in so many different parts of the world that if I want to test a theory in many different climates, I'm able to. Because as I say, the bed bugs in a brownstone in Brooklyn are different than the bed bugs in a slab-on-grade in Dallas, Texas.
Josh King:
Well, I want to get to the bed bugs in the brownstone in Brooklyn in a second, but let's spend a minute in Dallas, who are your most frequent insect visitors in Dallas?
Cassie Krejci:
Termites and mosquitoes are definitely our market drivers down in Texas, we have a ton of rodents as well. But from the insect perspective, termites and mosquitoes are really what have our customers giving us calls. We do have specific insects like red imported fire ants that other folks don't have, and those would be medically important from their bite. But across the board I think everybody can relate to termites and mosquitoes.
Josh King:
We can all relate to termites and mosquitoes. Let's say I live in the suburbs of Dallas, I've got a lovely backyard with a outdoor kitchen and a lot of comfortable chairs, and I like to have people over around sunset for a couple of drinks and a burger, but there's a swarm of unfriendlies flying around my head, what's the best way to combat them?
Cassie Krejci:
In that instance I'd call Terminix. So mosquitoes, they're flying insects, and that's different than other things like termites, which are crawling insects. So what's really important about mosquito control is that you and your neighbors all do mosquito control because even if you provide protection in your backyard, there's not a lot stopping them from hopping over into the neighbor's backyard. Now, it depends on how you feel about your neighbors. But providing area-wide control and education just to say this is what we can all do to combat the mosquitoes in our neighborhood, maybe that's through HOA recognition or just communication at the area level helps improve mosquito control in your own backyard.
Josh King:
So I'm sandwiched between two neighbors, I'm the lucky one because I can talk to my friend on the right and my friend on the left, and we can all call Rentokil together, split the difference. But that leaves the people who are ultimately on the flank a little exposed, right?
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, in some instances of the word, I think that pressure will also vary on things that you can't control, like standing water, unseen standing water, maybe you love looking out at that green space behind your fence. But because it has so many trees and so much uncontrolled brush, that's really what's feeding the mosquito population. So just aerial awareness about what feeds mosquito populations is a huge part of the story too. But that's where our business comes in and says, "Hey, we can provide this residential service." But we also have commercial arms of our business that can help large commercial partners provide area-wide control along with companies like VDCI that provide area-wide control in the sense of if a hurricane comes through we can react quickly.
Josh King:
So let's follow the flight path of your trip up here from Dallas to New York City, I'm going to say 1500 or so miles. You land at Newark, Kennedy or LaGuardia, and you now are at a place with compact living spaces, dense population, underground mass transit, I mean, who can forget one of our city's most famous pests, Pizza Rat back in 2015? I want to take a listen to Stephen Colbert describing just how commonplace something like Pizza Rat was here in Manhattan.
Stephen Colbert:
Now if you're not familiar with Pizza Rat, you might want to check your Wi-Fi settings because yesterday the internet blew up over this video of a rat carrying a whole slice of pizza down the stairs of a subway station. Americans from all walks of life were inspired at this rodent's struggle to lift his own weight in pizza. And we've all been there. Now this video, this video right here, shocked the tourists and the sanitary, but for those of us who live in New York it's really not that big of a deal.
Josh King:
So Cassie, when it comes to pests like Pizza Rat roaming around in New York, how would you describe the uniqueness of the pest control challenges here in this city compared to Dallas, the rest of the country?
Cassie Krejci:
I will never stop being surprised by insect and pest behavior. Honestly. They keep us entertained and they keep our profession famous if you will. Because people automatically thought of pest control and what can I do to keep rats out of my house, I don't want Pizza Rat showing up.
So New York City and condensed areas, even like London, have unique challenges in that everybody is very close. And so maybe it's rats, maybe it's bed bugs, maybe it could be termites. The fact that you are in so much shared space means you're also sharing the organisms.
So urban encroachment is a term that we use when the city and the country start coming together. And all of those pests that once lived there are then forced upon the living spaces that we would like to keep comfortable. But urban encroachment almost happens at the micro level in New York City because there's not a lot of new development happening, but environments are changing from residential to commercial and back, and food is popping up and disappearing. And even during Covid, trash was left unkept, and that's where Pizza Rat came from. So yeah, I think human behavior effects pests more than anything, and they're quick to adapt.
Josh King:
They are quick to adapt. And I'm not sure how you Cassie would deal with Pizza Rat. But as warm weather arrives here in the northeast, so do other home remedies, the things that we all kind of think, oh, this is, I could call a professional exterminator, but I've got my special approach to this thing. Things like garlic, dryer sheets, eucalyptus, coffee grounds, often used in the place of traditional proven repellents. I'm sure through your years in the industry you've been introduced to many of these novel bug barriers. Any unique unproven home remedies or pest control myths that stand out of things that you've seen and learned about?
Cassie Krejci:
Oh, there are so many. And I tell people, don't stop trying those because I believe in innovation and I believe there's always going to be a new better way to do things. But there are so many that have been disproven and let me write a book on them.
I think some of the most famous are the penny in a bag, and maybe that's a southern thing, but it's a penny in a bag of water that folks will staple to the outside porch. And it's supposed to keep flies away. There's tons of information about different household plants that should keep mosquitoes away, and I think to some degree they can be distracting to mosquitoes maybe behaviorally-wise, but there's not much repellency unless you're able to condense down those oils and create a very short-lived repellent. None of the above in the oil family that you would home remedy is effective at killing mosquitoes though.
Josh King:
What is the secret sauce of killing mosquitoes?
Cassie Krejci:
The secret sauce starts with source reduction. It really starts with us understanding where they're breeding because we can kill the adult mosquitoes that are flying around all day, but 80% of the population really exists in immature form. So if you're only focusing on adult population control, you're ignoring 80% of the problem that's coming down the line. So let's start with dumping out water, drying out sewers. And ultimately Pizza Rat may also suffer if we're able to reduce some of the conducive conditions for mosquitoes.
Josh King:
Before we get a little deeper into your background, Cassie, you have an active presence on social media showcasing the life of an entomologist, not the profession that many people share around the country, and the work within your profession. I want to listen to one of your posts that went viral informing viewers on the steps to take to inspect hotel rooms for bedbugs.
Cassie Krejci:
First thing that I do is I take your sheets on the mattress and I pull back the sheets and make sure that they're all clean. But then you take your bottom sheet and lift it up as well. Go ahead and lift it up off this corner. And make sure that you don't see any spots. You're not just looking for bed bugs, you also don't want to see any brown spots. Those brown spots are what we call fecal spots because when bed bugs take a blood meal, they digest blood and leave behind brown fecal spots resembling that of blood.
Josh King:
A blood meal, the clip Cassie has over 10,000 views on TikTok. Do you feel it's your responsibility with these posts to act as a teacher informing the non-entomologist general public of these pest control basics for everyday life?
Cassie Krejci:
I do. People ask where do you get your content? And it really is just walking around and seeing entomology in everyday life. So in that instance, I was on the road and checked into a hotel and thought, I have moved past checking for bed bugs, maybe it's just out of dull awareness of them, but essentially I'm like, "Most people want to check for bed bugs and they're not being thorough, so why don't I shoot that TikTok?" And so it's content like that where I think, would someone benefit from this? Not necessarily another entomologist or a pest control professional, I do shoot a lot of that content, but would my mom benefit or my best friend benefit? And that's really what guides the conversation.
Josh King:
Okay, so your mom or your best friend. Let's telegraph the next 30 seconds or so to my wife Amy, who is somewhat kind of focused on what happens with bed bugs, and whether we are entering a guest room of someone's house or a hotel room. You said you've moved a little bit beyond it. Should you put people's nerves aside to say they shouldn't be stripping the sheets off of a brand newly freshly made room at their hotel and say it's fine? Or should they go through a specific routine to give themselves some sense of surety that they're in an okay place?
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, I think, back to the mosquito and the source reduction conversation, you can take the same approach with bed bugs, prevention is way better than control. I've moved on because I have this confidence of if it happens I can take care of it. But it is, truth be told, an expensive thing to control for most homeowners, and they don't want to go through that experience. And so if I can share information about how to prevent you from having to call Terminix or Rentokil to provide those services, then that's what I want to do more than come to your home.
Josh King:
You've told us what you're looking for in those sheets, then you just suggested you know what to do to take care of it if it happens. How do you take care of it? What's the most efficient, best way?
Cassie Krejci:
Bed bugs really are a professional only solution. There is not a lot on the consumer or what you would buy at a home improvement store market that is going to do a complete job. Specifically in situations like New York City where walls are touching other homeowners, you can see bed bugs move between residences really fast. And there's a ton of studies out there that show how fast and how efficiently bed bugs will move through wall outlets or just down the hallway. And we can begin mapping the population movement just with good inspections and create a barrier to keep them from moving further.
But based on the last 30 seconds of me telling them that, you don't want to go through that. So if you are visiting a hotel or a family member, I would continue your inspections. It's not a foolproof way, because as that TikTok showed, some bed bugs are almost invisible because they have just hatched and they have yet to take a blood meal, which means they're essentially see-through. But it's a good way to know how severe a problem could be and get your stuff out of there.
Josh King:
Your academic journey began at Texas A&M with the ambitions of pursuing biomedical science and ended up almost a decade later at College Station with a PhD in entomology. Where did that initial interest in insects and focus come from?
Cassie Krejci:
It was a little bit of a journey. I never thought that I would become an entomologist. I wasn't the kid that played with bugs. I really barely knew what entomology was. In fact, as a biomedical science major at Texas A&M, these are the doctors, the dentists, the veterinarians that are all in that major.
And I remember a girl said, "I'm going to be an entomologist," first lab of our freshman year. And I thought, why would your parents send you to school to do that? What would you grow up to be? That's like underwater basket weaving.
Two years later, I take an elective of veterinary entomology. And I realize because of what I know now about the insects, I can do what I really want to do, which is controlling disease in humans and animals just by taking the insect factor out of that. And so I switched my focus and I thought, this is the mechanism for my happiness and my fulfillment in a career, is just to know everything that I can about insects. I can help people and I can help animals with something that is slightly entertaining as insects.
Josh King:
The mechanism for your fulfillment and your happiness. Perhaps following your example, more academics are considering entering the pest control industry. But traditionally, Cassie, it's been a sector viewed more as a trade than a academic pursuit. As a degreed entomologist, how do you perceive your role in a field that's predominantly associated with hands-on fieldwork rather than research or innovation of the type that you're doing in Dallas?
Cassie Krejci:
So it's funny you brought up the trade side because I am really proud of that. My license plates on my car say bug doctor. And I stepped out at a coffee shop the other day and this guy, he goes, "Oh, are you an exterminator?" And I hadn't heard the word exterminator in so long. I paused and I was like, "No." I said, "But I do work with a ton of really good exterminators."
And that really is my position is that the tradesmen, the tradeswomen that are doing pest control every day are my customer. They are the reason for what I do in the science is to make their job easier, safer, more efficient. So it's something I'm really proud of honestly. My dad was a police officer and my mom was a teacher. And so I come from it honestly saying I want to make people have a safer role in their job, but also be really feel like they have the best information to go forth with. And so that's what I do. I translate the science into something that's digestible by everybody.
Josh King:
And I'm sure that you make your colleagues at Rentokil proud, all 56,000 of them spread across the globe in roles like yours focused on science and innovation as well as roles on the ground, working in homes and businesses throughout our cities. How does what you do filter down to those field technicians? The people who might have the license plate bug doctor and really are the exterminators or addressing bed bug infestations underneath mattresses and working to get termite colonies out of wooden structures.
Cassie Krejci:
So innovation can be thought of a lot of different ways. In pest control, I try to, and especially innovation at Rentokil Terminix, I try to show that innovation is more than just something you can hold in your hand, that it is service-based innovation. And we accomplish those goals with partnerships outside of our company. We are creating new science internally but also partnering with great partners outside to, again, make everybody's job easier, safer, more efficient.
So again, I think that the field, the folks that are providing services to all our wonderful customers are my customer. Yeah, what I do eventually makes it to a homeowner or a business owner, but ultimately I'm bringing in the unmet needs of our technicians and saying, "How can I solve this?" And that's how I choose to look at it is I'm selling internally more than anything.
Josh King:
When people hear pest control, they often think of ridding their areas of bugs or rodents, just get them out of here. But your work at Rentokil also includes, if you take the aperture more broadly, preventing the spread of disease, food safety, other things like that. How does your team and Rentokil overall relate to the common consumer, this person who just wants the mosquitoes gone, exactly what Rentokil does, what an entomologist does and how you're working to protect more than just that house and their neighbors from the flying swarm?
Cassie Krejci:
Giving people an understanding of all mosquitoes can do, since we'll use that example, mosquitoes are vectors of pathogens of disease, meaning they may cause disease to your dog, they may cause disease to a small child, they may infest the wildlife. And so understanding the full disease cycle and the impact of them often helps folks understand why we're doing the things that we can do. So it's more than just spraying and praying and hoping that they don't come back. But it is all the parts of pest control, which we refer to as integrated pest management, that help prevent the overall disease cycle from continuing. So I mentioned source reduction earlier, ultimately that leads to control of the immature insects and ultimately, again, reduction of the adults maybe by adulticides or repellency.
Josh King:
And adulticides or repellency in Dallas or New York, curious how that translates across the oceans, across continents. And while we're here focusing on North America, Rentokil serves areas in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Australia. How closely does everyone in science and innovation, while the regions they oversee are different, work together comparing notes between Dallas and London for example?
Cassie Krejci:
So I sit on an innovation and product development team for the global organization, and I have five other colleagues that sit in the UK and Scotland. And so I share the vector, the mosquito, and the tick onus of pest management with my colleague, Lizzie Jenkins. And she talks about vector control rest of world, whereas I handle vector control in North America.
And that conversation's like, okay, one country versus the other 88, what does that mean? And it just means that we deal with vectors so much more frequently and professional pest management here in North America than we do elsewhere. And it has to do with our business models. We provide residential pest control here along with area-wide municipal vector control for your cities and towns along with commercial vector control.
And if you look at other countries like the UK or Scotland, those are more municipal programs provided. Residential pest control just isn't a big deal. Nobody's calling up Terminix or Rentokil in those regions and saying, "Hey, can you come to my house and my house alone?" The responsibility is different based on which country you're in.
Josh King:
So you're talking about that kind of collaboration and they depend on you for your expertise. And as that expertise began to develop, Cassie, after you got your PhD, you got experience at smaller pest control companies before joining Terminix and Rentokil in your current role as director of technical services. These roles included time as a technical field specialist as well as a research and technical sales associate. How did all that prior work help in your development for your two leadership roles you've had so far with Rentokil?
Cassie Krejci:
So before I came to Terminix, I was in product development for manufacturing. So what I was doing was going into various sizes of pest control company and saying, "Let me help you solve these problems." And not just based on the products that we had on the shelf, but how can we future develop solutions? And that's really where I got my start to begin asking the right questions and understanding what people found valuable.
It's really how I started listening to podcasts too, is saying, "Okay, if I listen to pest control business podcasts or even just business podcasts in general, how are people valuing their companies and how as a technical expert can I help them get there?" It's not as an owner of a business, whether you're the CEO, like Andy Ransom, or a small mom and pop company that you have to know everything about insects the way I do, and I don't know everything about insects, but you don't have to be a PhD entomologist to be successful. You just have to know how to source the right information. And I wanted to be that source. And that's really where I learned the most is just asking questions.
Josh King:
Your career arrival at Terminix and Rentokil is interesting in and of itself. It started with a period of transition for Rentokil because it had just acquired Terminix. You had accepted that offer with Terminix on the same day that the purchase was announced. Going from a Terminix to a Rentokil employee within a matter of hours. What was your experience navigating the acquisition process and transitioning into your first role during this period of pretty profound change? And here at ICE, we understand what it's like to acquire and integrate companies, and sometimes the cultures are totally different. As it might've been between Terminix and Rentokil.
Cassie Krejci:
It was seven hours difference between accepting my role and waking up to my notifications at 2 AM from the London Stock Exchange saying, "Rentokil is acquiring Terminix." And I was like, "What does this mean?" Because Terminix was also the first publicly traded company that I was going to walk into. So I had already evaluated that risk as I made my decision.
But I took my own advice and I said yes. And at Terminix, my leaders there called and said, "You don't have to do this. We didn't know it was coming. But you don't have to go through this." And I said, "I've done a lot of thinking over the last seven hours." And ultimately in the six weeks through this interview process, I met the team and I liked these people. And if I can lead them through this integration, I can learn both companies really well. And that's ultimately what happened.
It was the best way to integrate a company is coming in with a fresh set of eyes and beginning to understand both sides. From the people perspective, I really love the team that Terminix gave me. And I'm proud to say that two plus years later, all of those people are still at the Rentokil Terminix organization doing things that they love. And I'm really proud of that because we navigated it together.
But again, I would say yes every time. Yes, it was hard, and it continues to be challenging, but I think we all look for that in our careers. And so I'm glad I said yes, and I'm glad I stayed. And I'm really just enjoying this joint company and how much synergy happened when we brought them together. They really were a perfect fit.
Josh King:
Perfect fit. Great synergy. Now that you're a couple of years past that moment and that you know considerably more about a publicly traded pest control company. If you take a 30,000 foot view on what Rentokil brought to Terminix and what Terminix brought to Rentokil, if you look across the pond and look at Rentokil, what do you think they sort of brought in terms of knowledge and resources and approach that legacy Terminix might not have had?
Cassie Krejci:
I think that Andy's leadership is one of those consistent things that Terminix had not had for a long period of time. We had gone through leaders every handful of years, which tends to happen in North American traded companies, but it was a little different with Rentokil. They had had the same global leader for quite some time, and that was rare. So you almost saw a little stability across the pond.
And now I work for the global organization, but sit in North America, and have the privilege of not just translating the science to our North American teams, but between the North American organization and the global organization, with two different personalities. But it's a great place to be to, again, translate what's a priority for the long term.
When I was with Terminix, I did a lot of firefighting, and I always wished I could spend more time on the proactive side of pest control saying, "Oh yeah, we're going to bring this in, we're going to work on this." And as Rentokil and Terminix came together, Rentokil brought things forth that said, "Hey, we have dedicated resources that spend all their time thinking about pest control from two years from now." And I was like, "I want to be a part of that." So that's what we did is we set up North American Innovation where all I do is think about pest control two years from now, and it's a privilege.
Josh King:
Pest control two years from now. A major resource soon to be at your disposal in terms of thinking about that is the Rentokil Terminix Innovation Center. It's set to open in Dallas on June 6th. But before the doors open, innovation never stops, Cassie. How rapidly is technology advancing in the field, enabling new solutions to surpass outdated practices?
Cassie Krejci:
So quickly. I think technology is one of those that if you take your eye off it for a second, if you go on spring break vacation, it's different when you get back. I have a really diverse team across the globe, but also within the team I've begun to hire and put together in Dallas, that look at all of the important parts of connected solutions and insect biology and behavior, and talk frequently about how we can bring those together. So I think just as it is important not to take our eye off of the evolving technology, we also don't take our eye off of the evolving consumer need. I think that there are influences like social media and disease that will cause us to pivot very quickly.
Josh King:
Before we hit the break, insect populations are resistant and can adapt to changes in methods and technologies, you talked about that a little bit before. How frequently do you need to adjust and innovate, throw out the recipe book, start over again to keep pace with an insects or rodents learned behavior and prevent that pest control industry from lagging behind to be ready in two years hence, as you say, you're thinking about pest control in two years?
Cassie Krejci:
I would never throw out the recipe book because the recipes have been around for a long time and people have spent a lot of time on them. But I do think that we as scientists create models within our own brains. And the stronger you can make that model based on what you learn about insect behavior and human behavior, the more effective you're going to be. So I urge people to never stop observing pest behavior and successes. Looking is different than observing. And if you are observing what pests are doing and where you're finding successes, you're continuously creating this model for good pest management.
Josh King:
After the break, Cassie Krejci and I are going to detail the new Rentokil Terminix Innovation Center as it prepares for its grand opening June 6th, 2024. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Welcome back. If you're enjoying this conversation, want to hear more from guests like Cassie Krejci, remember to subscribe to the Inside the ICE House Podcast wherever you listen. And give us a five star rating please and a review on Apple Podcasts, that helps people know where to find the show.
Before the break, Cassie and I were discussing her career as an entomologist and her current role as head of science and innovation North America at Rentokil. That's NYSC ticker symbol RTO. So Cassie, before we dive into the purpose and goals of the Rentokil Terminix Innovation Center, which you're spearheading, I want to discuss the rarity of such new investment in your industry. How unique is it for Rentokil to allocate as much resources as it has, both financially and in terms of manpower, to create a dedicated innovation center like the one in Dallas?
Cassie Krejci:
Initially I would've said, "Man, what a leap of faith that is to take such a huge investment in innovation." Something that is riddled with perceived failure, innovation, not everything's going to work, right? But the more and more I get to know Andy, the more I think it was strategic on his part to say, "We've invested and we've seen so much success within the UK in our technology centers there." And then we purchased technology center in Israel. Why not? I mean, that's where 70% of our business exists, so why wouldn't we invest in North America?
So I think, again, it was strategic. And the verticals that I have the privilege of spending time on are very specific to North American pest control. And so it's where they should live. And I think the growth that we will experience is going to be pretty profound.
Josh King:
When I open the door of the innovation center, what am I going to see? Who's working on what? How many people are going to be there? What'll be the experience?
Cassie Krejci:
It's beautiful. I hope that when you walk in the front door, you see the theme of all of our businesses coming together and it really is the home services, the comfortable environment, the clean living aesthetic, that is the impression that you get.
But inside right now, I have three lead scientists that have teams of people. Three different verticals that they're working on are termites, somebody only focused on termites, can you imagine, all day long. But a very passionate scientist that only works on termites that affect our homes and businesses. As you know, termites cause billions of dollars worth of damage every year, and they're a huge leading indicator of loss.
And then I have a vector specialist, a principal vector entomologist. And her whole job is to work on mosquitoes and ticks and make sure that we're managing that ecosystem. And then I have a principal chemist that will start on Monday, and so he's jumping on the train as we roll down the tracks. But his focus is to look at fumigation with a brighter lens.
Josh King:
Cassie, you mentioned Andy a couple of times, that's Andy Ransom, he's led Rentokil for over a decade as CEO, starting with his appointment in 2013. In March last year, he joined Paul Giannamore, managing director of the Potomac Company, to discuss innovation and its importance to Rentokil. I want to just listen to a clip from that conversation.
Andy Ransom:
For us innovation, I will say innovation's not a product and it's not a process, it's a state of mind. Innovation is are you open to new ways of working, new ideas? And whatever your job in the company is, are you open to that? In fact, we encourage you to innovate and then share it with the rest of us. And even when it's been a failure, please share it with us because we won't then copy it somewhere else because we know you've already tried it. So I think innovation really is very, very important.
Josh King:
Innovation not a product, it's not a process, it's a state of mind. Someone like you whose sole focus is science and innovation, you have to agree with Andy's assessment?
Cassie Krejci:
I do. And I take it, I have, again, some very talented scientists that work for me, but I think when I was able to evolve my state of thinking as a scientist into why it mattered, that's when I really began to pick up speed. And so a lot of the tools that I equip the innovation team with is things like improv and acting and thinking outside of the box and the whole say yes paradigm. To say it's a state of mind, to constantly challenge and think we can be better, faster, safer.
Josh King:
A Brit like Andy, he finds himself drawn to Dallas and wants to roll up his sleeves and sort of think about that whole process inside the innovation center as well?
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, he's given me some very big verticals to work on. I mentioned fumigation, termites and vector control, but he also handed me residential pest control. I mentioned earlier how residential pest control really isn't a thing we do in a lot of parts of the country, United States definitely, Australia definitely, another like tiny pockets of residential. But how can we equip people with the tools, the home services to keep their space healthy and pest-free?
Josh King:
I'm curious how you think the center is going to facilitate transparency, enabling visitors like me if I were to come down to Dallas to gain a better understanding of the technology, the progress being made and efforts to make innovations more sustainable?
Cassie Krejci:
I've tried to show it through social media that it is understandable, that the science behind bugs is just that. And I want pest control to be something that people don't fear and do fully understand what we're doing in their backyards. I do invite you to visit and hold a bug. One of my entomologists just brought in a whole pack of hissing cockroaches for folks to hold when they visit. And so definitely more of the pet bug of the bug world. But I want you to see the damage that termites can do live and the things that we're doing beyond, again, just spraying and praying for mosquito control.
Josh King:
Do you have an affinity for hissing cockroaches? I mean, if you're handed a bag and can put your hand into that bag, do you feel comfortable and feel a certain kinship with these little critters? What is your sort of emotional psychological state as you confront a more benign version of some of the insects that we try to control?
Cassie Krejci:
I don't give them any type of anthropomorphic characteristics, I don't name them. But I don't have a lot of fears and it maybe is just overexposure to all the different bugs. I do understand though why folks are a little more standoffish to bugs. And fear's a learned behavior, at some point somebody taught every human being to be scared of whatever they're scared of.
Josh King:
And what's the bug's motivation? How are they trying to get through life? What's in their head?
Cassie Krejci:
Oh, I think it changes based on everything we're looking at. For mosquitoes, their goal is to take a blood meal because if they take a blood meal, they can lay eggs. They cannot lay eggs without that. For termites, they're social insects meaning they have to go back to their colony every night. And so they're very much marching towards the food source and marching home. And they love that structure. And so I think the driver, back to requisites for life, is understanding what motivates bugs helps us control them as well.
Josh King:
We touched on the idea of sustainability. And in an industry like yours, as the trucks move from location to location, and certainly you're creating and consuming a lot of inputs to your chemicals and formulations, Rentokil is actively working to reduce its emissions, lower its greenhouse gases, develop innovations for more effective pest control and minimize its environmental impact. How do you work with federal agencies as well as the greater company-wide Rentokil team to create sustainable products to reach the goals that you've all laid out?
Cassie Krejci:
I will say providing pest control in 89 different countries is wild because you have all of those different regulatory officials also saying, "This is what we find important." And we really try our best to say, "Here's the science and we're willing to share that with you for the environmental good because I do know it's a shared interest for both parties."
So I would say, specifically here in North America as it relates to all of our sustainability goals, we partner with regulatory officials and say, "This is the rate at which we're decreasing this contaminant," or whatever it may be. And we just take a really transparent position.
But with that coming, the education behind what we are doing to protect people's homes, their families, and your food supply. I think the carbon footprint behind rebuilding a house when we couldn't control termites is much higher than that of just controlling the termites or being able to control a stored product pest in a shipment of coffee beans is very minimal to us getting rid of all the coffee beans and having to start that process over. So it's very much a relationship of give and take and balance.
Josh King:
And here at ICE, we know something about coffee beans as operating the exchange where coffee futures are sold and traded. I'm curious about the journey from something that you discover in the innovation center to actual deployment in the field. As the center becomes operational and the new technologies get developed and tested, how do they get deployed to the wider Rentokil network? Take us through those steps, from moving from the inception to the ultimate implementation of the technologies.
Cassie Krejci:
I feel like it's a long one because I look at three, five, 10 years down the road. But it all starts with a sandbox. And last night I was at an event with all of the regional directors in North America and they all came to Dallas. And somebody said, "How do I get an idea to you?" And I said, "You call me."
Right now I think I can sustain it. But eventually I'm hoping that the calls get so frequent from our technicians saying, "Here's how I think we can do this better," that I have to figure out a different way to do it. But right now just call me.
And it goes into the sandbox. And once a month and once a quarter, me and my team sit down with marketing and say, "Here's the unmet needs and let's put them together and figure out what our priorities are." But it moves from there, from an idea to a business case to understanding can all these markets around the world use it?
Then we place it in a team for development and failure because that always happens and redevelopment. And we get it through to what's called deployment. And again, all those hundred people I talked to or I just mentioned, they will take it into the field. And they'll say this is successful or here's what I think you should change. And then we go back to the drawing board and safety takes a look and sales takes a look and marketing takes a look. And everybody gets a buy-in. And I think that's the best part of this, what we call a stage gate process, is from the sandbox to what you see as a homeowner, a business owner is something that we all have a hand in.
Josh King:
I'm thinking about, Cassie Krejci, the student in medical science at Texas A&M and wondering where your career was going to take you. And as I hear you talk about what you're building in Dallas and the team and the things you're trying to innovate on, do you see what all that is doing is playing a part in recruiting the future Cassie Krejcis, recruiting, cultivating, developing professionals for the pest control industry?
Cassie Krejci:
I hope so. It is probably the funnest part of my job is seeing people come up and say, "Hey, I saw what you did," or, "This is what motivated me," or, "This is what inspired me." Because if I can sponsor or even have a conversation with somebody that says, "This is how I want to help people," then I think it's good.
I do this because of the people. And Rentokil is a great organization and I enjoy that part of it. But the people that we serve are really what I get a lot of my inspiration from. And I hope that somebody else can find that as well.
Josh King:
You and Paul Donegan, who's the director of Rentokil's digital innovation work, came together for a series of videos in November. You explored the impacts of AI and camera technology in pest control. I want to listen to a segment of one of those discussions where Paul highlights the advantages of these innovative technologies.
Paul Donegan:
And like everyone asks me for sure, can you predict when the next infestation is coming? I say, "We're not there yet." But if you look at that historical evidence, record it, capture it, store it, and then start to trend it, you can spot patterns through one site, but also similar sites in that sector and similar sites in that one customer if they're a multi-site customer. So you get real ability to use all of those more modern technologies, whether it's AI, whether it's cloud storage, whether it's analytics all coming together to really give that insight that we probably never had 10, 15 years ago.
Josh King:
10 or 15 years ago, Cassie, in your view, what are the most significant changes or benefits that AI has brought to pest control?
Cassie Krejci:
Our ability to create cloud systems for all of our customers. If you think about a residential customer, whether you have an apartment or a home or a town home, you're using a cloud network to maintain all of your devices. And if pest control can become a part of that on-demand service or understanding of what's happening in your own ecosystem, we want to be the leading drivers of that.
Within a business, say you are moving coffee beans around the world, we want to be able to create models using cameras and digital traps and counters to say, as we sit in this room in New York City, I can tell you what is happening in your facility in California or Singapore.
And as we continue to add data based on weather patterns and past captures of different pests or even just shipments coming in and out at different frequencies, we begin to predict what could happen. Right now we take in about nine million data points within the United Kingdom every minute.
Josh King:
And these are absorbed by cameras and traps and sensors, what's the type of gather technology?
Cassie Krejci:
It's a little bit of everything, and it depends on what that focus is. Within the UK it's mostly rodents. So you have not just the devices doing the work, but I call this not-so-artificial intelligence because technicians are also putting data into their service reports. What time was it? What was the weather? What type of prevention did they provide? And that all feeds into the model of how insects are responding or rats are responding to what we put out there.
And so if you take nine million data points every minute within the UK and then think, well, the UK could fit inside Texas, and scale that up to our 50 states and our North American continent, the potential is unmatched. And that's what we're hoping to do even outside of rodents is say, "Let's put a bedbug trap in half the hotels in New York City and see what kind of model we could create."
Josh King:
As we begin to wrap up, Cassie, I just want to ask about the innovation center's plans to prioritize between, I don't know, those short-term, urgent projects and the longer term innovations, considering the need to stay ahead of the resilience of rodents and insects, as you talk about planning two years ahead, how are you going to balance focusing on the here and now, what Terminix and Rentokil need today, and also dedicate resources to endeavors that have an extended timeline?
Cassie Krejci:
Yeah, I think that that is the sweet spot of all innovation. And it's what keeps me up at night. I mentioned the proactive versus reactive. At Terminix, we did a lot of reactive control because it's what we had known. We had a handful of accounts that had problems, we needed to solve them very quickly. But we didn't have necessarily really the focus on long-term preventative control.
And so when we brought the organizations together, I said, "Yes, Terminix and the technical services teams coming together is really important because you still need to have those people who are going to solve today's problems. But adjacent to that and complementary, there needs to be an innovation team that focuses on the two years from now."
And so as we do long-term experiments, specifically termites take forever, they destroy houses in a relatively fast pace, but the research behind long-term control can take five to 10 years. We don't need to look at them every minute in those five to 10 years. And so how fast can we use data that we currently have in those legacy systems to create the world's best termite protocol? As we bring two organizations together, look at the history of successes, the history of could have been better, and make better termite control for all of our customers across Rentokil and Terminix.
Josh King:
Well, I completely get the idea of the need for secrecy until the big reveal. Is there anything that our listeners could get a sneak peek about or a teaser in terms of what your team is currently working on and what can get people excited about the future of pest control?
Cassie Krejci:
I think if you think about the world of all of the connected solutions you have in your home or your businesses already, and then look at them with a pest control eye, you could begin to imagine what we're up to.
Josh King:
Looking at everything with a pest control eye, I can't wait to see what that actually results in. Looking forward to hearing about the opening of the innovation center on June 6th. And greatly appreciate you coming into New York Stock Exchange. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Cassie Krejci:
Thank you.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Cassie Krejci, the head of innovation and science North America at Rentokil. That's NYSC ticker symbol RTO. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or hear from an expert like Cassie Krejci, make sure to leave a review. Email us at [email protected] or also tweet it us @icehousepodcast.
Our show is produced by Lance Glenn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Ken Abel. Pete Ash is the director of programming and production at ICE. And I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange where I hope there are not any termites lying about. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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