I just had Mat Rogers back on the show, and he has been on more times than almost anyone. We sat down to talk about one thing: how you set up next year right now, before the busy season hits. I came away with a full page of notes, and here are the lessons that stuck with me most.
Mat kept coming back to a line he loves from Tom Brady. "Football's not won in the off season. Games just reveal what you did when nobody saw you." That is the whole idea, and it is true in pest control too. The owners who blow up next year already started planning a month ago, and the ones who wait will get left behind.
He hates when guys treat the slow months as time off, and his dad used to call November and December the national screw-off months. Mat does the opposite. In October he looks at the first three quarters and projects where the year will land. Then he builds a budget for everything: salaries, chemicals, gas, and marketing. He even sent a mass text to his clients offering to build their forecast for free.
I run my company the same way, pulling all the partners in to set goals and budgets together. Our CFO runs the numbers on every line, from customer acquisition cost to ad spend. We also build vision boards each year, one for the company and one for each person.
A new marketing partner needs time
This is a big one: if you switch marketing companies, give them room to work. Mat says his paid search team needs a solid 90 days to dial things in, and his old mentor wanted 120. Google does not know who you are on day one, so someone has to teach it.
This is where his horror story comes in. Last year a group of about five companies came to his agency at the same time. They all showed up well into the season, in April and May. Then they got mad that the leads were not great right away.
One owner came in May and quit around day 50, and Mat did not sugarcoat it. "Of course it's not working. You came to us in May." All five left for the same reason every time: no plan, started too late, and expected magic. That is why you start in October, not May.
The plan is your measuring stick
Here is the part people get wrong. Mat has never hit a forecast dead on, not once, and that is fine by him. The plan is not a promise, it is a way to check your progress month to month. As he put it, "You will never reach a goal if you don't order your steps."
The goal should sit just outside your reach, and his dad used the carrot picture to explain it. Not so close it is boring, but not so far that you give up. I call it a big goal worth chasing, and I would rather set a huge goal and hit 80% than set a tiny one and crush it.
Plans and people beat spend
This one hit home. Mat's agency runs the same team for all their pest control clients, doing the same work, yet the results are all over the place. Why?
The answer is what happens inside each company. Take Eric, one of Mat's longtime clients. Last fall Mat's team listened to 430 of his calls and built him a big spreadsheet. Eric used it to fix his sales process and move his spend to what worked. "His average cost per qualified lead was $74," Mat told me, and that is cheap when the contract is worth $700 a year. Another client across 10 markets sits around $94. The same team made both leads, so the difference was the owner.
Close rate matters too, and we track ours every week by location. Most of our offices land between 60 and 70%, and if one drops we dig in and find out why. Mat's point is simple: you need real salespeople on the phone, not just a nice voice. His old company was the priciest option in their market and still grew to 34,000 clients. You only pull that off when your team can beat price objections.
Answer your phone, because Google watches your answer rate. Miss too many calls and you get fewer leads. We run at 98%, but Mat saw one company with offices answering 73%, 64%, and even 60%. That means 40% of calls went nowhere. For local service ads, miss more than 10% and you get penalized.
Saving money is a goal too. One company he worked at set an 11% efficiency target, which meant tighter routes for less gas, better chemical deals, and smarter staffing. Spend is only half the plan, and how much you keep is the other half.
AI already changed your buyer
We talked AI again, and it has moved even since last time. Mat was blunt: "I'm done saying this is where things are going. This is where things are." People plan their whole Thanksgiving on TikTok now, and they find you the same way.
So the game is being the answer, which he calls answer engine optimization. Ask ChatGPT where it pulls its info from, then make sure your company is one of those sources. AI looks at four things: experience, expertise, authority, and trust.
That changes where you show up, so TikTok needs to be in the plan and so does LinkedIn. Mat said AI pulled from LinkedIn eight times more than Google for some answers, and Reddit matters now too.
Reviews tie in here. If you have under 100 reviews on Google, you will struggle to serve local service ad leads. Use a review tool to grow them. But grow them slow and steady. As Mat said, "Artificial intelligence cares about consistency, not this great big spike of reviews and then you just kind of abandon it." Do not dump a pile and quit.
AI helps inside his shop too, because they transcribe every call. Then they feed it back to learn what is working and to coach owners on weak spots, like missed calls or price problems.
Stand out, then go win
The last thread was standing out. The companies winning my market do not look like everyone else, and their brand is sharp. With us, every single job has to include one act of kindness, and I do not care if the customer ever sees it. Mat's old crew did the same. They pulled trash cans up from the street and planted flowers for old ladies who could not, and he called them the Chick-fil-A of pest control.
Here is the takeaway: if you have a real plan, you are already ahead of most owners out there. So make it now. Build your budget. Pick partners you trust and commit to them. Get on AI, then go win 2026.
