Maybe you wonder what ever got me started in this business? I get asked that a lot. Why do you do this? How can you do this? Well, it’s kind of a funny story. I’ve been in sales for years and one of my long time clients was telling me one day about her problem with skunks. She had a skunk under her house and it continued to spray. She had moved out of the house….it was no longer habitable because of the smell. Well, she was my friend and I felt really badly for her after she told me she had already spent over $500 paying a guy to come and “get rid of the skunk. ” Clearly he had ripped her off. She was desperate.
I have to tell you that when I came home from work that night and told my wife I was going over to a client’s house to “help her with a skunk problem” I got quite a look. Good thing my wife trusts me. When I grabbed my respirator and suit I had been using to fiberglass my new boat (that’s another story…) she knew I must be serious.
When I arrived at my friend’s house I found an unbelievable mess. Skunk smell so bad you could hardly breathe, permeating everything in her home. It made my eyes water and let me tell you, she was already crying. When I crawled under the house I quickly saw the source of the problem: one dead and rotting skunk and one badly injured skunk that was spraying out of control. The “pest guy” had put some poison under the house, charged my friend $500 and called it a day. He figured she was never going to go under the house and I guess he was crossing his fingers that the skunks would go off and die somewhere else. No such luck.
So, what started as me helping an old friend led to a new business. She was thankful for my honest approach and my willingness to get under the house and deal with the mess. She couldn’t believe I not only cleaned up the mess, but also prevented any future critters from getting under her house. To top it all off, I came back several times to deodorize both under the house and in the house. Those are two skunks she and I will never forget….although I’m kind of grateful to them now since they led to my new company.
It may sound crazy to you, but I actually really love what I do. I get to meet interesting people each day and I get to help them out of inconvenient and messy situations. At the end of the day, everyone’s happy….even the skunks.