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Why is pest control the best industry?
Each tech can service >$400k in a year
Quarterly services cost $125 and take 20 minutes to complete
Compare it to trash pickup where they charge $40 a month and service weekly.
Labor is cheap
Products are cheap
Margins are insane
Each tech can service >$400k in a year
Quarterly services cost $125 and take 20 minutes to complete
Compare it to trash pickup where they charge $40 a month and service weekly.
Labor is cheap
Products are cheap
Margins are insane
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We’re selling an old ford ranger.
Listed for $12,500.
A guy wanted to look at it tonight at 6 pm.
A dealer was interested in a Tacoma that were also selling.
The dealer realized we were also selling the ranger. He offered $14,500 for it.
I’m a man of my word so I texted I had a better offer but if he still wants to see it at 6 he can buy it for $12,500 but I’m firm on price.
The guy shows up and offers me $10,000.
I will never understand how the human brain works. What a waste of time.
Listed for $12,500.
A guy wanted to look at it tonight at 6 pm.
A dealer was interested in a Tacoma that were also selling.
The dealer realized we were also selling the ranger. He offered $14,500 for it.
I’m a man of my word so I texted I had a better offer but if he still wants to see it at 6 he can buy it for $12,500 but I’m firm on price.
The guy shows up and offers me $10,000.
I will never understand how the human brain works. What a waste of time.
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You guys are in some tough industries.
We keep one month’s expenses in the bank, grow at 80-100% a year, and still have 25-30% net margins.
We have never worried about not having cash in the bank, needing a credit line, or missing payroll.
Grateful to be in pest control every day.
We keep one month’s expenses in the bank, grow at 80-100% a year, and still have 25-30% net margins.
We have never worried about not having cash in the bank, needing a credit line, or missing payroll.
Grateful to be in pest control every day.
our friend @RealTommyMello joined the boys in Cabo
some of Jameson’s highlights:
-if you’re not at 10% net, something is broken and you need to cut (cut your worst customers, your worst installer, your worst lead source etc)
-look for who not how
-you need 6 months in opex you push to grow hard
S/o to @bestdoorguy (wiser and cooler than all of us) for teeing this up
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This is so interesting. The entire premise of the tweet is “how to beat Orkin.”
It’s really not all that difficult at the local level. That’s not a shot at Orkin specifically, just any of the national brands.
Their brand is great and because of that they charge a lot of money. Any local shop can undercut and make good money.
Orkin is like McDonalds. You can trust it’s the same everywhere but you’d never choose it over a great local joint.
We have twice as many reviews as our local branch and we’ve been around 4 years.
I am so grateful they put out so much good data like this so we can continue to stay competitive with everyone in our market.
It’s really not all that difficult at the local level. That’s not a shot at Orkin specifically, just any of the national brands.
Their brand is great and because of that they charge a lot of money. Any local shop can undercut and make good money.
Orkin is like McDonalds. You can trust it’s the same everywhere but you’d never choose it over a great local joint.
We have twice as many reviews as our local branch and we’ve been around 4 years.
I am so grateful they put out so much good data like this so we can continue to stay competitive with everyone in our market.
Orkin's parent company, Rollins, told investors in September that leads had been falling by double digits since May.
Its CEO's best guess is that at least half of that drop comes from the shift to AI search.
So we went through all 461 of Orkin's U.S. Google profiles, every last 30 days, the map results in 15 big metros and the whole website.
(Bookmark this)
1. What Rollins told investors
Orkin is the flagship brand at Rollins, a public company that did $3.76 billion in revenue last year. Orkin alone has more than 350 company-owned branches in the U.S.
In May, Orkin's VP of marketing, citing recent reporting, told investors that Orkin had the number one share of AI visibility among pest control brands. In September, at a J.P. Morgan conference, Rollins CEO Jerry Gahlhoff described double-digit lead declines and said that if he had to name it, "at least 50 to 60% of what we experienced is probably related to this shift in the LLMs."
He also explained what changed. In the old search world, "Google ratings, or your Google reviews, were the key driver of a lot of that search." Now, "Chat's not going to use Google's reviews, they're going to use someone else, and they partnered with Yelp." And about the company's own websites, "We have 400 branch web pages that all have to make sure we have the local feel."
Rollins' October earnings deck lays out the fix, including "optimizing business listings and reviews," "expanding locally relevant content," "greater price transparency" and "same- and next-day availability." It also says Orkin showed "early but encouraging signs of progress" by the end of the quarter.
That's the list we checked Orkin against.
2. How Orkin's local setup works
The foundation is clean, and it's more than most home service companies have.
> Nearly every office has its own Google profile, its own local phone number and its own page on orkin.com, and the profile and the page almost always match. The numbers are assigned in blocks, like 786-868-1001, 1002 and 1003 for three Miami-area offices.
> 449 of the 461 profiles send the website click to that office's page, and 444 of those links carry the same tracking tags (utm_source=local, utm_medium=local and a campaign code that's usually specific to the office). That's how Orkin can see what each profile brings in.
> 448 of the 461 profiles are named just "Orkin," with no service or town in the name. Ten of the others belong to its insulation business and are named "Orkin Therm" or "Orkin Insulation," and a few of those sit at the same address as a pest control office.
The website follows the same structure. There are 49 state pages, about 1,600 town pages and 469 branch records. Each office page sits under the town it's in, and most town pages are for towns without an office. Each of those names the office that serves it, so the Temple, GA page points to the Carrollton office.
The office pages we checked name the branch manager and say "Call Before Noon for Same-Day Service." Residential calls, commercial calls and customer service each get their own toll-free number. The homepage runs a different promo code (50OFF) than the estimate page (APPLY75), which is a simple way to see which page drove the first job. There's also a quote tool that asks for your address, bedrooms, bathrooms and yard size.
Part of why it's all so consistent is ownership. Orkin started franchising in 1994, mainly for smaller markets, and its filings describe a contract option to buy franchises back at a formula price. Today it has nearly 50 U.S. franchises against more than 350 company branches, and on the website, you can't tell which locations are franchises.
3. The reviews
In the last 30 days, all 461 profiles got 3,339 new reviews combined. That's about 7 per profile, and the median is 6.
72 profiles got zero, and about 7 in 10 got fewer than 10. Only 19 got 20 or more, and only 2 got 30 or more: Sterling Heights, MI with 32 and Indianapolis with 30.
For comparison, when we pulled A1 Garage Door last month, it got 3,806 new reviews in 30 days across 111 profiles. That's about 34 per profile, almost 5 times Orkin's pace.
Big review totals don't mean the reviews are still coming in. Orkin's most-reviewed profile, in Crestwood, IL, has 4,391 reviews and got 1 this month. Cherry Hill, NJ (3,693), Long Beach, CA (3,372) and San Antonio (2,934) got none. Across all 461 profiles, there's almost no link between how many reviews a profile has and how many it got this month.
One pattern stood out. In 14 cities, Orkin has a big profile that stopped getting reviews and a smaller profile in the same city that's getting them. In Charlotte, the profile with 2,470 reviews got 0 this month, and the one with 307 got 17. In Jacksonville, the profile with 2,072 got 1, and the one with 579 got 22. Both profiles in each city are live branches with their own pages on orkin(dot)com, and from the outside, there's no way to tell why.
Two more details. A third of the new reviews (1,079 of 3,339) are star ratings with no text, so they don't mention the service or the town. And 83% came in Monday through Friday, with almost half landing between noon and 5 p.m. Eastern, which fits techs asking on the job.
4. Where Orkin shows up on the map, and where it doesn't
We searched "pest control" and "exterminator" in 15 big metros and pulled the top 10 local results for each. Orkin showed up in 16 of the 30 result sets. It didn't show up for either search in Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago, New York, Seattle or Boston.
In four of those six (Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and Boston), Orkin doesn't have a profile with an address in the city. Its Dallas town page lists offices in Forney, Wylie and Carrollton. In the Chicago area, Orkin has 14 profiles and none in the city. The Crestwood profile has more reviews than any company that showed up for Chicago, and it still didn't make the list. It's 17 miles from downtown.
New York shows it isn't only distance. Orkin's Astoria profile is in Queens, Queens companies showed up in the New York results, and Astoria didn't. It has 341 reviews and a 4.1 rating.
Phoenix has a different problem. Orkin's Phoenix office has 392 reviews, while Moxie has 7,503. Orkin's biggest profile in the Phoenix area is in Peoria, with 2,254 reviews, and it got zero new ones this month.
In 11 of the 15 metros, a smaller competitor has more reviews than Orkin's most-reviewed profile anywhere in that metro:
> Houston: Kindred has 11,394, and Orkin's top profile has 2,327
> Phoenix: Moxie has 7,503, and Orkin's has 2,254
> Seattle: Insight has 7,361, and Orkin's has 2,632
> Atlanta: Hawx has 6,786, and Orkin's has 3,152
> Denver: Berrett has 6,443, and Orkin's has 2,559
> Charlotte: ClearDefense has 6,381, and Orkin's has 2,470
> Nashville: EcoShield has 6,035, and Orkin's has 1,330
Every Orkin profile that did show up has an address in the city that was searched. Its best showings were first for "exterminator" in Denver, second in Miami and second for "pest control" in Los Angeles.
My read is that the map comes down to distance and reviews, and a famous name doesn't override either one.
5. The website is wide, but thin
Most of Orkin's roughly 1,600 town pages are one template with the town name swapped in. Lines like "Proudly serving [town] and the surrounding areas" and "Most [town] customers get same-day or next-day service" repeat from page to page. The part written for the town is usually a sentence or two, like "Forney, Texas, is known as the Antique Capital of Texas."
None of the 21 town pages we sampled showed a review. Atlanta's page asks "How much is pest control in Atlanta?" and answers that costs "can vary depending on the service, frequency of service required, and the size of the area affected." Meanwhile, Orkin publishes real price ranges in a cost guide elsewhere on the site, like $120 to $441 for ants, spiders or roaches and $1,000 to $2,300 for termite baiting.
There are cracks in the structure too. The California and Texas state pages stop at exactly 100 town links, so pages like San Diego and San Francisco aren't linked from them. The towns each office serves are listed as plain text instead of links. And the San Diego commercial office page says Orkin's "commercial pest control services in Doral can help." Doral is in Florida.
That lines up with what the CEO said about all 400 branch pages needing "the local feel."
The strongest part of the site is the pest library. It covers 59 pests across at least 300 pages, plus 321 "Ask Orkin" question pages, and most of them link to the matching service, the quote form and the branch finder.
6. The Top 50 lists
Four times a year, Orkin ranks the 50 worst cities for termites, mosquitoes, bed bugs or rats, based on its own treatment data. Local TV stations and news sites pick them up, and the bed bug list has been running since at least 2010.
The miss is that each 2026 list links only 1 to 12 of its 50 cities to Orkin's own town pages.
Any home service company can do its own version, like the towns where you replaced the most water heaters this year or found the most hail damage. Link every town on it to that town's page.
7. The multi-brand play
Rollins keeps the brands it buys under their own names. It paid about $137 million for HomeTeam in 2008, about $400 million for Clark starting in 2019, $350 million for Fox in 2023 and $207 million for Saela in 2025, and none of them became Orkin. Its CFO told investors in May that the approach "enables multiple bites at the apple with potential customers."
You can see it in Denver. For "exterminator Denver," Orkin came up first out of 9 results, and two Saela Pest Control profiles came up fifth and ninth. That's one parent company in 3 of the 9 spots. The Englewood Saela profile has 3,817 reviews, more than Orkin Denver's 2,236.
The home service version is a separate, real brand with its own location, like a plumbing brand alongside your HVAC brand. It isn't the same office listed twice, which Google doesn't allow.
8. What I'd copy
> Give every office its own profile, its own page and its own local number, and point the profile at that office's page.
> Tag every profile link so you can see what each one sends you.
> Build a page for every town you serve, even where you don't have an office, and name the office that serves it.
> Put the manager's name and a same-day promise on every office page.
> Publish real price ranges, and put them on your town and service pages too.
> Turn your own job data into a yearly list that local news can pick up.
> Use different phone numbers and promo codes by line of business and by page.
9. Where a local company has the edge
> Get more new reviews every month than the Orkin office closest to you. The median Orkin profile got 6 this month.
> Put a real office where your customers are. Orkin has no office address in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle or Boston, and it didn't show up in any of them.
> Use a real DBA with the service and the town in the name. 448 of Orkin's 461 profiles are named just "Orkin."
> Ask customers to mention the job and the town in their reviews. A third of Orkin's new reviews have no text.
> Build town pages with reviews, prices, real photos and local detail. None of the 21 Orkin town pages we sampled showed a review or a price.
> Grow your reviews on Yelp and the BBB, not just Google. Rollins' own CEO pointed out that ChatGPT doesn't use Google's reviews.
Our ramp for a new Google profile targets 40 to 45 reviews a month by month four. Orkin's best profile got 32 this month...
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Inside sales rep just closed a deal for $10,400.
Big ticket pest control deals? I’ll take them.
Big ticket pest control deals? I’ll take them.
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Kyle and I are doing something a lot of you might not agree with.
We just rented office space #6.
We’ve outgrown headquarters but we aren’t ready to buy our forever building for 12-18 more months.
So, Kyle and I are leaving our entire office staff in headquarters for a g here.
Ideally it solves several problems:
- the company being dependent on us being under the same roof and heavily involved
- receiving shipments. We receive 2-3 pallets a week and it’s a pain to haul them inside our office space piece by piece.
- Kyle and I overstepping our managers
- not having a place to do vehicle maintenance
- not having a place to keep equipment without it freezing
We will see how this goes and if this is a disaster.
Officially moving everything over by end of month.
We just rented office space #6.
We’ve outgrown headquarters but we aren’t ready to buy our forever building for 12-18 more months.
So, Kyle and I are leaving our entire office staff in headquarters for a g here.
Ideally it solves several problems:
- the company being dependent on us being under the same roof and heavily involved
- receiving shipments. We receive 2-3 pallets a week and it’s a pain to haul them inside our office space piece by piece.
- Kyle and I overstepping our managers
- not having a place to do vehicle maintenance
- not having a place to keep equipment without it freezing
We will see how this goes and if this is a disaster.
Officially moving everything over by end of month.
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I hope our employees know how spoiled they are. No cheap random winter gear.
Carhartts only. (Tag them so they sponsor us?)
Beanies, mugs, vests, and a nice little bonus coming their way very soon.
Carhartts only. (Tag them so they sponsor us?)
Beanies, mugs, vests, and a nice little bonus coming their way very soon.
One of my favorite little perks we do at our pest control company
Year one, you get a nice winter jacket. Year two, you get upgraded to a really nice Carhartt.
This year we’re mixing it up with Carhartt vests and hoodies, all embroidered with our logos.
I like buying the guys xcited to wear. Makes this part of owning a business pretty fun.
Also, I might be a little too excited to get my own.
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New half marathon PR. 1:33:17
I really should train for one of these before race day.
Blessed to have a healthy body and such beautiful views today.
I really should train for one of these before race day.
Blessed to have a healthy body and such beautiful views today.
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Garrett wanted his wife to have a natural experience choosing a pest control service.
He didn’t influence her at all despite the fact that we do his commercial property and his mom’s property already.
His wife organically chose us.
I talk a big game online about how we are to hear that consumers feel like we are backing that up on a daily basis.
I appreciate Garret’s business and the kind, honest review he left us.
He didn’t influence her at all despite the fact that we do his commercial property and his mom’s property already.
His wife organically chose us.
I talk a big game online about how we are to hear that consumers feel like we are backing that up on a daily basis.
I appreciate Garret’s business and the kind, honest review he left us.
I put my money where my mouth is.
Haul American 🤝 King Pest Solutions
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Orkin had the right idea.
Have franchisees pay 6 figures to buy in and take the brand across the nation.
Then buy those franchisees out one by one.
At this point Orkin is about 90% corporate owned locations and I assume the way they did it allowed for incredible cashflow using other people money and time to get things rolling.
Truly brilliant.
Have franchisees pay 6 figures to buy in and take the brand across the nation.
Then buy those franchisees out one by one.
At this point Orkin is about 90% corporate owned locations and I assume the way they did it allowed for incredible cashflow using other people money and time to get things rolling.
Truly brilliant.
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Second place at the chili cook off.
Trunk or treat.
Advertising.
Great night.
Queen bee, baby bee, beekeeper.
Trunk or treat.
Advertising.
Great night.
Queen bee, baby bee, beekeeper.
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Guys, we’re not the same as the other bug companies.
Products, labor, training, vehicles, equipment, etc.
So many things the customer will never see.
We just don’t cut corners.
Products, labor, training, vehicles, equipment, etc.
So many things the customer will never see.
We just don’t cut corners.
Our supplier took us to lunch yesterday. We’ll finish this year just shy of $150k in products ordered.
I asked him what other pest companies are doing well. Any products we should try? Better ways to rotate what we use?
His answer surprised me. He said our product rotation system was the best he’s seen.
Then he mentioned some companies use the same product year-round.
That’s wild to me. The same product might work well for some pests, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for every pest.
We’re intentional about rotating products with resistance management in mind and choosing products for the pests we’re treating. Price matters, but it can’t be the only thing driving the decision.
From the beginning, we’ve committed to doing things right, even when it costs a few extra bucks.
We still have plenty to improve. That’s why I asked.
Here’s to building a company that spends $800k a year with our supplier. A lot more customers to earn and take care of between here and there.
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We currently have 2 office staff and an office manager.
By April we plan to have 6 staff and a manager.
The additional 4 roles will all be specialists (billing, retention, scheduling, and sales).
If revenue can support the payroll bump initially, we should be in for a dramatic improvement across the board next year.
By April we plan to have 6 staff and a manager.
The additional 4 roles will all be specialists (billing, retention, scheduling, and sales).
If revenue can support the payroll bump initially, we should be in for a dramatic improvement across the board next year.
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As much as people want to act like finding a boomer run company on pen and paper, you have to realize finding a company with a CRM is actually elite.
It’s easy for office staff to input paper records into the system but a lot of customers actually don’t like it.
- They want to be called to schedule, not automatically emailed.
- they want a paper copy of their receipt ,not a customer portal
- they want to write a check and mail it, they don’t want to be on autopay
Obviously some customers have been very happy about the software we have but a huge chunk of older people that have been with these legacy companies for 30 years don’t like change and some rarely log onto a computer.
PE knows this and they don’t want paper records.
I know this and I promised my office staff we will never buy another paper run company unless it’s simply too good of a deal to pass on.
We want to find companies that have a CRM in place and just use it poorly. That’s where the money is made.
It’s easy for office staff to input paper records into the system but a lot of customers actually don’t like it.
- They want to be called to schedule, not automatically emailed.
- they want a paper copy of their receipt ,not a customer portal
- they want to write a check and mail it, they don’t want to be on autopay
Obviously some customers have been very happy about the software we have but a huge chunk of older people that have been with these legacy companies for 30 years don’t like change and some rarely log onto a computer.
PE knows this and they don’t want paper records.
I know this and I promised my office staff we will never buy another paper run company unless it’s simply too good of a deal to pass on.
We want to find companies that have a CRM in place and just use it poorly. That’s where the money is made.
Private Equity investors want to see professionalization in HVAC, plumbing, and roofing companies they buy
✅ ServiceTitan 🚨 Paper
✅ Processes & KPIs 🚨 “What’s a KPI?”
✅ 5yr old Trucks 🚨15yr old Trucks
✅ Managers 🚨 Owner Dependent
PE doesn’t want a company that needs a huge investment go get it to the 21st century
If they do, it’s going to come at a discount to valuation
There’s real value in a professionalized business that doesn’t need a huge undertaking to integrate post close
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I am 27.
Our company’s average age is 32.
Median is 29.
Useless data but I was just curious today and you’re allowed to share anything online.
Our company’s average age is 32.
Median is 29.
Useless data but I was just curious today and you’re allowed to share anything online.
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A bunch of reasons to add Crawlspace encapsulations (and attic insulation)!
- higher tickets
- we’ve maxed our ad spend in some markets. There aren’t enough LSA leads for us to spend more on pest control
- will increase customer LTV
- gives us a bigger service line to cross sell. Whether a customer signs up for pest control or the Crawlspace, we can cross sell them the other product when they trust us
- a lot of these will have a $0 CAC which means we either have great margins or we can cut the price to win more jobs
- this IS pest control. Putting a physical barrier and reducing moisture in the crawler leads to less pests in the home
- this is as natural of an addition as adding mosquito, termite treatments, or wildlife to our service line
- higher tickets
- we’ve maxed our ad spend in some markets. There aren’t enough LSA leads for us to spend more on pest control
- will increase customer LTV
- gives us a bigger service line to cross sell. Whether a customer signs up for pest control or the Crawlspace, we can cross sell them the other product when they trust us
- a lot of these will have a $0 CAC which means we either have great margins or we can cut the price to win more jobs
- this IS pest control. Putting a physical barrier and reducing moisture in the crawler leads to less pests in the home
- this is as natural of an addition as adding mosquito, termite treatments, or wildlife to our service line
Why diversify? Why not just more pest control?
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We had our first Crawlspace encapsulation bid accepted yesterday.
$6700
We’ve got over 5000 recurring customers and more than 15,000 people in our database to market to.
I’m thinking we should set a goal for the crawlspace division.
Just not sure what target to set for ourselves.
$6700
We’ve got over 5000 recurring customers and more than 15,000 people in our database to market to.
I’m thinking we should set a goal for the crawlspace division.
Just not sure what target to set for ourselves.
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I probably let outside factors affect me too much but I’m so much happier now than I was when I lived in Salt Lake City.
No hate to anyone in the area, it just wasn’t for me. I’m a country boy not a city kid.
Back then, I would struggle to pull myself out of bed to get to my home office by 9 am.
Now, I can wake up everyday and be in the office or at the gym by 6 with problems.
Where you live, who you surround yourself with, what you’re actively engaged in can all have huge impacts on your life.
Life is short. If you aren’t happy, I’d recommend you make some radical changes.
If you still aren’t happy then it’s probably a bigger underlying core issue you should look into.
No hate to anyone in the area, it just wasn’t for me. I’m a country boy not a city kid.
Back then, I would struggle to pull myself out of bed to get to my home office by 9 am.
Now, I can wake up everyday and be in the office or at the gym by 6 with problems.
Where you live, who you surround yourself with, what you’re actively engaged in can all have huge impacts on your life.
Life is short. If you aren’t happy, I’d recommend you make some radical changes.
If you still aren’t happy then it’s probably a bigger underlying core issue you should look into.
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When we started our business, I used to ask how companies even got into commercial work.
All we knew was residential door to door sales.
Fast forward 5 years and we’re firing off 5 figure commercial bids almost every week.
All we knew was residential door to door sales.
Fast forward 5 years and we’re firing off 5 figure commercial bids almost every week.
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My small hometown in southern Colorado flooded over the weekend.
The national guard was helping some people evacuate. Their truck got stuck.
What did they do?
Call the town which is run by the people who chose not to evacuate.
The townspeople pulled them out with a road grader.
If this country were run by rednecks, maybe we wouldn’t have so many issues.
The national guard was helping some people evacuate. Their truck got stuck.
What did they do?
Call the town which is run by the people who chose not to evacuate.
The townspeople pulled them out with a road grader.
If this country were run by rednecks, maybe we wouldn’t have so many issues.
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Revolutionary use of Grok Bot.
Had him login into my city market and Walmart account. Gave it a budget. Told it to clip coupons and plan a week’s worth of meals.
Usually my wife handles this and I know she’s tired of planning meals and buying groceries.
I’m not looking for AI to work any miracles but these are some small things off my plate and will also save us a few bucks.
Had him login into my city market and Walmart account. Gave it a budget. Told it to clip coupons and plan a week’s worth of meals.
Usually my wife handles this and I know she’s tired of planning meals and buying groceries.
I’m not looking for AI to work any miracles but these are some small things off my plate and will also save us a few bucks.
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