Every Thursday at 11 o’clock, my executive team and I meet. Same time. Same cadence. Every single week.
We’ve been following this system for years now. It’s based on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System from Gino Wickman’s book Traction. I’ve read that book probably five or six times. It’s one of those books I like to reread every single year. Actually, Traction is usually my first book of the year.
I run Pest Badger, and we do over $10 million a year. And I can tell you that this weekly executive meeting is one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to scale that fast.
We catch problems early. We solve issues fast. We track everything that matters. And everyone on the team knows exactly where we stand at all times.
Let me walk you through exactly what we track in these meetings and how you can implement the same system in your business.
How We Run EOS at Every Level
We follow the EOS model really closely. And we don’t just run it at the executive level. We run mini EOS meetings for each branch too, every single Thursday.
These meetings are usually pretty action packed and quick, but you can catch a lot of things as long as you’re tracking everything correctly.
Let me walk you through what our executive meeting looks like. Then I’ll show you what we track on the scorecard.
The Executive Meeting Agenda
We meet as an executive team every Thursday at 11 o’clock. Same time, every week. Here’s the flow.
Customer and Employee Headlines
First thing we talk about is any customer or employee headlines. Good or bad.
Are there any customers who had issues this week? Any immediate problems we need to solve?
Are there any employee issues? Anyone doing really well? Anyone struggling? Any conflicts we need to address?
This could also be good stuff. Maybe we landed a big customer. Maybe a tech did something awesome. We want to celebrate wins too.
Quarterly Rocks
Next, we go through our quarterly rocks. These are big projects that the executive team is working on.
Maybe I’m working on a big project. Maybe Trisha’s working on something. Maybe Brian’s working on something. We check in on where those projects are at.
Do they need any help? What are they waiting on? Are they on track?
This keeps everyone aligned on the big picture stuff while we’re also managing day to day operations.
The Scorecard (This Is Where the Magic Happens)
Then we go through our scorecard. This is probably the meat of the conversation and what most people want to hear about.
The scorecard is what we watch at each branch on a weekly basis. Our last conversation was about technician KPIs that we watch daily, pulling reports every single day. That’s route by route, tech by tech.
Now we’re checking branch by branch, looking at the bigger picture metrics.
You can catch a lot of things here. Let me explain what we track.
The KPIs We Track Every Single Week
Here are the metrics we go through on our scorecard every Thursday. Some of these we review weekly. Some we also review monthly at the end of the month.
Total Sales
We start with total sales for the prior week. How much did we sell?
We break that down branch by branch. How did each location perform?
At the end of the month, we do a month end review where we go through the entire month too.
Total Production Revenue
Next, we look at total production for the week. How much revenue did we generate from actual services performed?
We’re separating this from sales because we want to see both. The sales team, inside and outside, is generating new business. But production is what the techs are actually doing in the field.
How many technicians do we have? How many jobs did they complete? We’re tracking all of that.
Total Stops
We track total stops for the week. How many properties did we service?
But here’s the key. We also track how many total stops we have left for the month.
Let me explain why this matters so much.
If you’re looking at your routes early in the month and you see that there’s no way you’re going to get all these jobs done, you can catch that early. You know you’re going to need to add a truck or hire another technician.
We do a lot of future projection too. But this weekly check keeps us from getting blindsided.
Preventing the Hiring Crisis
Let me pause here because this is really important. A lot of people aren’t tracking what’s been completed and what’s still left in the month. And they don’t look at it weekly.
So they run into a period where they’re like, “Oh my God, I am so full of work. I need to hire a technician right now.”
Then they’re rushing to hire someone. They’re missing jobs. They’re having to put off jobs. They’re a month behind on work.
This is how you prevent that. You track jobs completed versus jobs remaining every single week.
You can forecast how many jobs you’re going to have in June, July, August, September, October, whatever month. You can say, “We’re going to have this many jobs come May 1st because all our mosquito services are ramping up. We need to make sure we have enough technicians.”
This is something you should be tracking even in your off season. Because you know spring is coming. And this helps you know how many techs you’re going to need for that month.
We’re always looking at actual jobs completed versus how many jobs are still left in the job pool for that month. We want to make sure we’re going to get all our jobs done.
If there’s going to be any rollover, is there a way we can shift people around so we don’t have rollover?
There are some cases where you might have a day or two of rollover. Customers aren’t going to be thrilled, but it happens. We do our best not to do that.
But this is how you get to that level. It’s by tracking.
Revenue Collected
Next, we look at revenue collected. Of the $10,000 you serviced that week, how much did you actually collect?
Did you collect 20%? 40%? 50%? Obviously we want to see 80% to 90% or higher.
Ninety percent or higher is good. You might have some commercial work in there where payment takes longer, and that’s just how it works. But we’re watching this closely.
Cancellations
Super important. We track cancellations for that week. Is there a spike in cancellations?
We talked about this in the technician KPIs article. Is it per technician? But we’re also looking at it per market and per branch.
Is one location seeing way more cancellations than the others? What’s going on there?
We’re checking cancellations all the time. It’s critical.
Accounts Receivable (AR)
From there, it’s AR. Accounts receivable. Thirty days, sixty days, ninety days.
We watch this really closely. We’re at the point now where we’re doing ACH and cards on file. But some people get new cards and they don’t update them. So we have to reach out and get new cards on file.
Or someone’s card didn’t go through. Or we have big commercial jobs where payment takes longer.
AR is money that you didn’t get paid for yet. Of course we want to see that at zero, but that’s just not realistic. So we’re watching it closely because you don’t want to get behind.
This happens a lot. I learned this early on too. I was terrible at billing. I’d go do the work and then I was terrible at billing my customers. I couldn’t keep up with billing.
Then accounts receivable adds up, and it’s hard to grow any company off accounts receivable. No matter how big or small you are, you can’t grow off AR.
So make sure you’re staying on top of your cash flow. Make sure you have someone on top of AR. Calling customers if their card didn’t go through that week or that day. Getting a new card on file.
If you get to the point where it’s two months out and someone still hasn’t paid, you need to stop servicing them until they pay.
If you’re not tracking that and you do four or five jobs and the person hasn’t paid, you’re like, “Oh crap, they owe me $500.” Or making up big numbers here, but you just don’t know.
So just make sure you’re staying on top of this every single week.
Leads Versus Sales
We track how many leads we got that week and how many sales we closed.
We already talked about total sales earlier, but we want to see the conversion. Leads versus sales tells us how our sales team is performing.
Are we converting at the rate we should be? If not, what’s the problem?
Where We Spend Most of Our Time: Solving Issues
Honestly, the majority of the meeting is spent on issues. This is where we solve a lot of problems.
We’re watching all these numbers, right? And sometimes something just seems off.
Here’s a real example. I noticed our COGS percentage in one branch seemed weird. I didn’t understand what was going on.
So I asked questions. Kept digging.
Turns out they had an initial truck where they were only doing initial services. Initials take longer because it’s the first time the property has been treated. It’s still dirty. It might take 45 minutes to an hour to do an initial.
Well, they had two people in the truck. So they were only doing twelve stops a day with two people.
I only caught this because something didn’t look right in the numbers. It only happened for a week, but I saw it because I’m in these numbers every single week.
I asked questions. Found out what was happening. Then we fixed it. We took that same tech and put them on a recurring route instead.
By tracking these things week after week, you start to see where the numbers should be. And when something is off, you catch it immediately.
A million different things come up throughout the week. Truck issues. Accidents. Insurance claims. Sales rep problems. Technician issues. Equipment failures. AR problems. Whatever.
We’re really trying to solve the issues we’re having and spend time fixing those things. A lot of our meeting time is spent right there, just solving problems.
The Monthly Review: Going Over Profit and Loss
At the end of the month, we do a whole month in review. We go through the entire month’s numbers. And we go through the profit and loss statement.
Every month. Not a yearly thing. It’s hard to fix anything after the year’s done.
We’re watching this stuff weekly, but we go over profit and loss every single month. And we show the whole team where the profit’s at.
Very open book.
The Power of Open Book Management
I believe in open book management. Everyone on the team can see the financials. They know how their role impacts the bottom line.
If they’re not profitable in their jobs and they’re losing money on certain deals, they see it. Most of them aren’t, but things happen.
I think being open book helps people understand the business. It helps them see how their job impacts everything we do.
The 100 Pennies Exercise
Here’s something I do that’s not my idea, but it’s a great example. I call it the 100 pennies exercise.
You take 100 pennies and throw them on the table. Then you take 50% of that and slide it to the side. This is what covers all our overhead.
Then you take the next 20 pennies. This is what covers this expense. This is marketing. This is insurance. This is whatever.
Then you’re left with 20 pennies. And you say, “This is our profit for the end of the year. This is what the company is making after everyone gets paid and all the bills are paid.”
When they see it in person, with actual pennies, and there’s only 10 to 20 left out of 100, they’re like, “Holy crap. It takes all those pennies just to run the company? And we only have 20 left? That’s not a lot.”
And if profit gets impacted even more and you’re down to 10% that month, now you only have 10 pennies. They see the direct impact.
The more they know what’s going on, the more bought in they are to the company. They want to push the profit of the company higher.
And if you do profit sharing every single month, which we do, they want as much profit as possible. So they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure those branches are profitable.
Building Culture Through Transparency
What I love about this system is that you’re tracking everything. You’re going over everything that could be affecting your profit. But you’re also building culture at the same time.
You’re communicating with your team. You’re getting everyone bought into the company. That’s massive.
A lot of technicians didn’t come from a finance background. They just don’t understand business. They don’t know what it takes to run a company.
They think you’re just making all this money and keeping it for yourself. They think they’re doing all the work and you’re just taking all the profit.
But when you show them the 100 pennies and they see overhead, COGS, and everything else, they understand. They see how their job impacts the company as a whole.
I like the open book policy. It creates trust. It creates buy in. And it makes everyone want to perform better.
The Biggest Mistakes I See
The number one mistake is not knowing your numbers. You have to know your numbers.
If you don’t know them, get help. There are a lot of people out there. Financial guys. Accountants. CFOs.
I have a full time CFO. This isn’t my forte either. But I know enough because he’s taught me a lot. I’ve had mentors who have taught me a ton over the years.
But you have to know your numbers.
The second biggest mistake is not tracking any information at all. And if you’re not tracking now, start when you’re small. Because it doesn’t get any easier as you get bigger.
The longer you wait, the harder it is to implement. Start now. Even if it’s just a simple spreadsheet. Just start tracking.
Implement This System in Your Business
Look, I know this seems like a lot. Weekly executive meetings. Scorecards. Monthly P&L reviews. Open book management. The 100 pennies exercise.
But this system is one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to scale to $10 million.
It keeps everyone aligned. It catches problems early. It solves issues fast. And it creates a culture of transparency and accountability.
If you want to grow past a million dollars, you need systems like this. You can’t just wing it. You can’t rely on gut feelings. You need data. You need meetings. You need accountability.
Start small. Pick a few KPIs to track. Have a weekly meeting with your team. Go over the numbers. Solve problems together.
Over time, you’ll build a system that gives you complete visibility into your business. And that visibility will help you scale faster than you ever thought possible.
If you want to learn more strategies for building a million dollar pest control business, join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We’ve got over 2,000 active members sharing what’s working every day. And if you want the complete playbook, grab a copy of our book, Zip Code Kings.
Now go implement weekly executive meetings and start tracking your KPIs.
