PPC123 | INTERVIEW

An interview with Marcus Scruggs from the Licensed to Kill community.

PPC Marcus, you spent more than a decade working in pest control before starting Sasquatch Pest Control. How did that journey begin?

MS Like a lot of people in this industry, I kind of fell into pest control. I started working for Cypress Creek Pest Control and ended up being there for more than ten years.

When you first start, it’s easy to see it as just a job. But the longer you’re in it, the more you realise how much there is to learn. Pest control is really about problem-solving. You’re learning pest behaviour, understanding structures, figuring out how pests are getting in and how to stop them coming back.

After being in the industry that long, you start thinking about what you want the future to look like. For me, that eventually meant starting my own company. But honestly, the thing which made that possible was the community I built through Licensed to Kill.

A gaming session that changed a career

PPC How did the Licensed to Kill (LTK) community influence that decision?

MS Through LTK I started networking with pest control owners and professionals from all over the country. That’s actually how I met the owner of Sasquatch Pest Control, Christopher Elling out in Washington State [Sasquatch Pest Control is a franchise].

And the funny thing is we met through gaming. We were playing together online, running raids and hanging out in voice chat. If it hadn’t been for those late-night gaming sessions, we probably never would have crossed paths.

It’s a good example of what the community does. People connect socially first, but over time you realise you’re talking to incredibly skilled professionals.

Inside the community you’ve got people with advanced certifications, people servicing government facilities, hospitals and large manufacturing plants. There’s a lot of expertise in the group.

Pest control as a career

PPC Do you think the industry still gets underestimated as a career?

MS For the everyday technician it can sometimes feel like a stepping stone job. But if you stay in the industry long enough, you start noticing something interesting. Pest control attracts a lot of people as a second career.

You see people who realised they didn’t want to spend their lives chained to a desk or inside four walls. Then they discover pest control and end up loving it.

In the US, it’s a career where you can earn a living wage fairly quickly. There’s also a pathway to business ownership that doesn’t require huge barriers like expensive degrees.

If you’re willing to learn and work hard, there’s a real opportunity to build something. That’s part of the message we try to push through LTK. Level up your game, treat pest control as a profession and keep improving your skills.

The (virtual) water cooler

PPC Let’s talk about LTK some more. How did the community begin?

MS Technicians don’t really have a water cooler to stand around and talk at. Everybody’s out on route, everybody’s in their trucks, moving between jobs. If you let it be, the job can get very lonely.

There were years where my whole day was just driving between jobs listening to podcasts or talk radio. The only conversations I had were quick interactions with customers.

It prompted some of us to start doing group phone calls while we were working. Almost like a party line where technicians could talk throughout the day while they were on route.

Eventually, we realised we needed a better platform for it, and that’s how the server started.

PPC Did you already have experience running an online community?

MS Yeah, before LTK I had run a gaming community for the game Conan Exiles. That gave me experience with Discord, organising events and managing an online group.

When we started Licensed to Kill, I realised those same tools could work really well for pest control.

At first it was just a small group of technicians talking shop and playing games. But over time more people joined, and it started turning into something bigger. Now we’ve got more than 500 members.

PPC What kind of discussions happen in the community?

MS A lot of knowledge sharing. One of the coolest things is seeing technicians from completely different environments learning from each other.

The US alone has almost every biome you can think of. So someone in the Deep South might be dealing mostly with insects, while someone up north might have rodents making up 80% of their work.

If you talk to someone who specialises in rodents, they’ve got behavioural insights and trapping strategies you might never have thought about.

When those experiences get shared, everyone benefits. You start seeing technicians adapt techniques and improve results in the field. That kind of collaboration is really valuable.

Connecting younger technicians

PPC Does the platform also help bring newer technicians into the wider industry?

MS One thing we noticed is that the younger crowd, especially the under-45 group, isn’t always connected to traditional trade associations the way they probably should be.

Through LTK we can share industry news, updates from organisations like the National Pest Management Association, BPCA and other useful resources.

But we’re also doing something slightly different. We’re helping technicians build professional networks earlier in their careers. That networking is already leading to real opportunities.

PPC What kind of opportunities?

MS We’ve seen a lot of career progression happen through the community. I started my own company.

Another member moved from being a technician into a branch manager role. Two technicians recently moved from residential work into commercial food-grade service positions.

These kinds of stories are popping up all the time because people are starting to network with each other.

They’re learning about companies, sharing job opportunities and helping each other move forward, and the interesting part is how naturally it happens.

There’s no subscription, no sales pitch, no pressure. People are just hanging out. But over time relationships form and people realise they trust each other. 

LTK gives people a place to share knowledge, ask questions, network and sometimes just unwind after work.

PPC Have you taken LTK offline?

MS Yeah, we’ve done things like beer and wings nights, water park meetups during the summer, Christmas events and even trips to the Renaissance Festival in Houston.

Because members are spread across the country, those events happen in different regional hubs.

Gaming as the social glue

PPC And of course, gaming plays a big role in the community?

MS It does. Gaming is kind of the social glue that brings people together. We host gaming nights, tournaments and streams. Sometimes we’ll do digital dinner nights where everyone jumps on voice chat and eats together. We’ve even done movie nights.

One of the funniest things we did was during the Covid-19 lockdowns. In our Conan Exiles game server we dressed our characters in green, grabbed in-game beer and marched through the city for a digital St Patrick’s Day parade.

It might sound silly, but those shared experiences build real friendships.

"It’s basically a digital water cooler for the pest control industry."

Automation and gamification

PPC You’ve also added EXP and level-ups to the server.

MS Yeah, we’ve deployed bots that manage different features of the Discord.

Some of them add experience points and levels when people participate in discussions or share knowledge. It’s a simple gamification system that encourages engagement.

The bots also help organise events, run competitions and keep the server running smoothly. Discord is really flexible, so we’ve been able to build tools that work well for the community.

PPC And I heard you run gaming tournaments and competitions?

MS We’ve got a Fall Guys tournament coming up where we’ll have big lobbies of 40 to 100 players competing.

And we like to make it interesting. We’re giving away a FlowZone backpack sprayer and an Arclight probe as prizes. There’s no entry fee. It’s just about building camaraderie across the industry.

PPC What games are you and the community playing at the moment?

MS Battlefield has been a big one for us, especially early on.

But the games change pretty quickly depending on what’s popular. Fall Guys works well for big community events because you can get large groups playing together.

The games themselves aren’t really the point though. They’re just the thing that gets people into voice chat. Once you’re there, the conversation naturally shifts to pest control, business ideas and everything else.

Looking ahead

PPC What’s next for the community?

MS The goal is just to keep building it. We want to keep growing the network, keep sharing knowledge and keep creating opportunities for technicians.

If people can level up their skills, improve their careers or even start their own businesses because of connections they made through LTK, then I think we’re doing something positive for the industry.

GET INVOLVED

Interested in joining the conversation? Licensed to Kill is open to pest professionals who want to connect with others in the industry, share ideas and unwind after work.

You can listen to the Licensed to Kill podcast here: spotify.com

Or join the Licensed to Kill Discord community to chat with technicians and business owners from across the industry.