Susan Fries: My name is Susan Fries, and I am the President and Owner of Ecola Termite and Pest Management Services. We are the alternative treatment methods that can take care of a situation and do it in a healthier way. So, what we mean by that is we use Mother Nature to take care of the problem. We’ve been doing it a long, long time. We were green before it was nothing more than a color. The reason I do that is because I had a chronic asthmatic (still do)—36-year-old now— son, who had almost died a couple of times.

When I got in the business 38 years ago, I was looking for another way to get rid of the problem. Pests and termites are going to be around forever, especially in California. I was in the industry, I was working with my husband and we were doing traditional methods—fumigation, chemical application— and I had this son. He almost died a couple of times, and I’m thinking “Gosh, if I can come up with a way to take care of this problem and do it healthier, naturally, environmentally more friendly, then I’ve got to search that out.” And so, I did. I found a company that was doing some of it and I decided it was a good thing for me to look into it more, and it ended up that I bought that company. It’s kind of like the Gillette razor commercial where: “I like the Gillette razor, so I bought the company.” It was kind of like that.

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