This article was originally published in the Albany Business Review.
The owners of Thomas Pest Control have come a long way from building the business with one employee out of their basement.
In the last year, husband-and-wife owners Bill Clark and Sarah Thomas-Clark have bought a new headquarters in Albany and booked $8.6 million in revenue.
The firm has grown to more than 60 employees, and will likely grow to 80 when the weather warms up in April.
They now provide pest management services for homes and businesses, eliminating ants, bed bugs, mice, roaches and spiders from the Adirondacks to the Hudson Valley. Plans include expanding their coverage area to the southern tips of Dutchess and Ulster counties.
"We’re not growth junkies, but we definitely… we can’t be bored," Sarah said. "We need something that we’re kind of chasing after that motivates us and keeps us excited."
Bill and Sarah started the business nearly 16 years ago when they were 25 and 23 years old, respectively. Sarah grew up in the pest management business — her grandfather and father ran a company out of Poughkeepsie.
When her father sold his company, the couple moved north and took over a small business here. The first two years they worked out of their Clifton Park basement and brought in $50,000 a year.
"We bought out a really small Hudson Falls company. I remember riding with the guy, and we were done for the day at 10 a.m. Somebody called him and he said, 'We're not taking any new customers,'" Bill said. "We took that on in 2010 and started marketing the company."
After a few years, Thomas Pest Control moved to a building on Central Avenue, then they bought a property in Rotterdam.
Last March, they bought a new 8,900-square-foot building at 60 Loudonville Road in Albany for $880,000. The purchase was financed with M&T Bank and Pursuit through a U.S. Small Business Administration loan, according to county records.
Thomas Pest Control moved into the new building in October. That move sets the company up to expand more, including plans to extend their services south in the Hudson Valley to the Westchester County border, and eventually out of state.
“The plan: grow south to that border, do not cross the border, continue to build that density, and then probably head into Massachusetts,” Bill said.
As the company has grown, Bill and Sarah have focused on improving company culture to attract employees. Thomas Pest Control offers a four-day work week to in-the-field technicians, which about half of the technicians opt into. For in-office employees, the company offers a hybrid work schedule as long as they're meeting performance metrics.
Bill and Sarah have formalized their business growth process and goals, working with a business management system called EOS.
Back in 2024, they hired Shawn Saville, who worked for years with National Business Technologies, as director of operations. Saville is now in more of a day-to-day CEO role, which frees up Sarah and Bill to work on company culture and managing the divide between work life, family life and spending time with their two children.
"We’re probably targeting that 15% to 20% year-over-year growth," Bill said. "It’s sounding a little more challenging the bigger we get."
"But we still do it," Sarah added.