People ask me what running a pest control company at this stage actually looks like. The honest answer is that it doesn’t look like much from the outside. There’s no big moment. No single deal that makes the day. It’s a stack of small decisions, parallel tracks, and showing up on the things most operators skip.
Here’s what one of mine looked like recently.
I pulled up to HQ in the morning, which is technically our second location, but it’s where we run the business from right now. First meeting on the calendar was a compliance training with the team.
One of the biggest things in our industry, and something most operators underestimate, is dealing with the state and the Department of Ag. As we’ve grown into multiple locations, every single office and every single technician has to be compliant. That’s the baseline. But there’s a second reason I care about it. Relationships.
My COO brought in someone from the state to run a two-hour training with us. The play is simple. If one of our techs gets pulled over on the side of the road, or the state stops by a job site, I want them to already know who Pest Badger is. That kind of trust gets built before you ever need it.
We walked the whole shop. Looked at what could be improved, what the state is actually looking for, where the gaps were. Then we went through a truck. Products, layout, setup. Asked them straight up if there was anything they wanted changed before we kept rolling. After that, we pulled everyone into a classroom setting for six to eight hours.
Two Tracks Running at Once
While that meeting was happening, my COO was running an interview for a branch and regional manager role. That’s how it goes when you’re building. You don’t pause one thing to do another.
Most operators stuck between $2 and $5 million got stuck because they did everything in sequence. Train this week, hire next month, fix sales after that. The companies that break through run parallel tracks. Compliance training in one room, leadership hire in the next.
I also wanted to verify a few specific items had been handled from earlier in the week. There had been a complaint. We’d found evidence. So we walked through every angle of it. That’s the standard. Even at the revenue we’re at now, the way we handle these moments is what carries us forward.
Where We're Going
I think about the trajectory a lot during these days. We plan to open five to ten locations a year going forward. The numbers I’m modeling are $50 million, $70 million, and $105 million over the next five years.
I took last year’s revenue line and stacked it against where we’re going. The shape is real. But only if the foundation holds. That’s why I don’t want to hire some massive compliance team on day one. I want to build the muscle now, while we’re still small enough to do it right.
The morning meeting actually went better than I expected. Super engaging. There’s something about bringing in an outside expert that changes how the team shows up. It’s not me or my COO telling them how it has to be. It’s the state, in our shop, walking them through it.
Gym With the Boys
After the meeting wrapped, we headed out for a quick lift. I’m not going to pretend the gym is a side thing. It’s part of how I run my day. The guys who are going to take this from where we are to $105 million are the ones who can carry the weight. Literally and otherwise. Train the body, train the team, train the business.
Then a quick dinner. Not a long one. I don’t waste time at meals when there’s still business to check on.
Sales Check-In
From there I checked in with the inside sales team. They were having a really good day. Then I checked the outside sales numbers, and it was a different story.
It had been raining across most of the country. Light rain, not heavy, but enough thunder and lightning to slow the guys down. That’s the reality of door knocking. Some days the weather just gets a vote, and you have to absorb it without letting the whole team’s energy take a hit.
The Real Win
Even with the weather headwind, the day was productive. We hit a lot of breakthroughs. A bunch of the bottlenecks we were dealing with last year, the ones that were quietly costing us deals and time, we got those mostly solved.
That’s the win for me. Not the revenue, not the location count, not the number on the wall. The breakthroughs. The bottlenecks that came off the list. Because every one of those is the difference between where we are now and a $105 million business.
That’s the day. Not glamorous, not complicated. Just compliance, hiring, training, lifting, and chasing down the things that were slowing us down. Stack enough of those days and the rest of it follows.
If you want help knocking these bottlenecks down faster, that’s exactly what we do inside our coaching program.
