I Found an Untapped Home Service Business with 75% Profit Margins

Welcome to the Kerner office, the show where we discuss business ideas and niche business deep dives. Today we are learning about JND Lake Services, which is a pond cleaning company. Which means these guys literally went to Home Depot and bought a garden rake and started scraping the bottom of ponds for rich homeowners with 75% net margins. Before these guys, there was one type of pond cleaning company, one that would dump a bunch of chemicals in a pond, kill the fish, kill the plants and, and leave a bunch of dead weeds. Then these guys showed up and they said, why don't we just pull the weeds in the pond? Yeah, it's hard, it's ugly, it's sweaty. But 75% net margins, no competitors, is a good business. That's all I'm going to say. These guys are awesome. They're college students and they are crushing it, and they're going to continue to crush it. Enjoy. Please share with someone that might benefit from this idea. Why don't you guys just start off by telling me who you are and what you do?

Yeah, I'll start. I'm Joe Weinberger. I'm the J of JND Lake Services and I am a sophomore here at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

And, yeah, okay, my name is Declan, obviously the D of the jnd and I am also a sophomore, but at the University of Missouri.

Okay. So big football fans, I'm sure.

Yeah, some exciting games.

All right, so you guys, as I understand, were high school buddies that started doing some side hustles in the summer, and then you went off to separate colleges and then you go home every summer. And that side hustle is now morphed into a pretty good looking business, right? That's right. Tell us, kind of like we talked about yesterday. Tell us how it all got started.

Yeah, so pretty interesting. We were just kids and I actually had a neighbor who called me up one morning and he's like, hey, I have a lake house that's a little bit far away, but would you be interested in helping install this dock for me? And so I'm like, yeah, sure. I mean, you want to pay me? Okay. And so he said, grab a buddy or two, come meet me at my lake house and, you know, help me install the stock.

And so what was he paying you guys per hour?

It had to be like 15 an hour, something like that. Pretty good for, you know, a couple of.

Yeah, I'm just trying to set. To create some context around what we'll talk about later.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it wasn't paying us much but for us, it was great. So I called Declan, my best friend at the time, still is, and we went over there and we basically just helped him install this dock. It's. If you're installing docks in the Midwest, it's very cold, so we had to put us in these waiters, and we basically just helped install this dock. And afterwards we kind of looked at each other and we're like, there's a lot of people on the lake who have this problem and need their dock installed. And so we said, let's keep doing it.

Any idea how many people are on the lake? For context, is it like 100, a thousand?

That specific lake? I did count it. There's 74 homes on the lake that we started on. So it's a smaller lake, and some of the properties have a little bit more land and some are a lot tighter.

Do the homes surround the whole lake or like a certain side of it?

Yeah, they surround the whole lake. The only parts aren't surrounded by the house of the public beaches. There's three main public beaches and then some private beaches, which we've also cleaned some of those beaches.

Okay. All right. Sorry, Joe. Keep going.

So, yeah, so we probably did maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 dock installs, and then we also took them out in the spring in high school. And it went fine. It was good. It was hard work. The next year, we had a woman call us up and she said, hey, a little bit of a weird request, but I have some grandkids coming over and I have all this seaweed around my dock area. Would you be interested in coming and removing this lake grass and seaweed? And I was just like, hey, Declan, you want to make some money? You know? And so we said, sure. And so we end up. We go over to the house and she hands us this interesting looking rake. And she said, yeah, just jump in there and you rake it out and you just. You can put it on my dock. And I'll actually have some people take it away. Just get rid of the stuff. And so we spent the first four hours at that house just pulling this stuff out.

And for Those watching on YouTube, I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures of what this looked like. Right. Like, I think people, it could help to see some context, like, is it algae floating on the water or is it weeds growing on the lake floor coming up all the way to the top?

So, yeah, absolutely. For this particular client, they had a ton of weeds that were growing, like, on the bottom on the lake bottom. And so we spent probably four hours there just pulling the stuff out. We were really inefficient looking back at it, but, you know, we did it. And that same day, neighbors on both sides came out and said, hey, we want you to come and do our shore area next.

Keeping up with the Joneses.

That's right. And so the light bulb just kind of went off and we said, there's all of these people that have these lake houses and everyone deals with this problem. No one likes swimming off the dock and getting covered in seaweed. And so no one really did it in our area and still does it. And so that's when we started this.

Okay, so what were you charging hourly for this first customer? And how did that evolve over time?

So we started out just charging 20 an hour for the jobs and like, it was really good money. At first it was pretty much always only Joe and I going to these shorefronts and it was two man job. And so we would charge 40 an hour total. But then once we started to take on bigger jobs or try to take on multiple jobs a day, we needed to hire a crew. Our rates aren't going to be the same. We can't all just be getting paid hourly. So then we started to try to find where, where we would fit, like the accurate rate. So we were just like, how much money would we want to be making? And both of us were like, we want to be making a hundred dollars an hour and then we want to be able to pay our crew guys 20 an hour because we were doing the same work for $20 an hour. So then we would quote our jobs at estimate how many hours it would take and then go off of that and just do like $240 an hour to. So for both of us to make 100 and for our crew guys to be making 20.

Okay.

And sometimes it would take longer or less. So our estimates were not always accurate, but overall we got pretty good at quoting just being able to do a lot of jobs. You just know, know how long it will take when you see it.

Yeah. So I think this part of the conversation is really important because a lot of people out there want to start a sweaty startup like this, but they have no idea how to price. Right. Me as a homeowner, I would love for all of my contractors to charge me an hourly rate. I love that. And they hate that. Right. They want to kind of guesstimate a project, work in a bunch of buffer and say, hey, for these trees, it's going to be three grand. And I want to be like, how about 60 bucks an hour? But it's. That's not best for them. So I get it. So how did you come up with that hundred dollar number? Did you talk to someone in a different industry and think, oh, we could charge that, or is that just a nice round number?

We actually. So we have a pretty good friend. He's kind of like a mentor to us. He's in a totally different industry. He's actually in the real estate industry. And we were telling him about our business. He's like, I love this. You know, it's really interesting. It's cool. But he said, when you're thinking about, in terms of charging, how much do you think you're worth? What do you want to be making? And we're like, well, I mean, a hundred dollars an hour sounds pretty good. And so he said, okay, well, if that is what you want to be making, then that's what you have to charge. And so just work that into your price. And so really how we started charging around the lake is we worked out that we were making around like $250 every single time we would go do a client. And so we literally, just for the first year of just doing the seaweed, we charged $250 or $250 for everyone, flat fee.

No matter like, how big the radius was around the dock or was that always the same?

No matter how much the radius was? We basically. Because every single home on that lake has a very similar shore area. So that's why we kind of worked out that price. And honestly, for the first year, it was pretty good. We definitely got burned on a couple jobs.

That's how you learn, right?

Yeah, but that's how we learned. And what we really realized was it was great to just say it was very easy to quote, because we said, Yep, 250. But the problem with that is that you have those certain outliers that are way, way more difficult. Like, why did we charge $250 for this?

Are they outliers because the weeds are much more dense, or it's a bigger.

Area, or there's a ton of different kinds of weeds that we deal with. So we deal with weeds that grow on the lake bottom, and that's essentially just us coming in and raking the bottom. But we also deal with clients that have floating wheat. So just weeds that are already cut or already dislodged, and then they're just floating in their shore area. And so it's a different time frame to remove things that are already floating than to rake stuff. And then we also found that there's certain people on the lake who have three lots. And so, you know, that ends up taking longer. So we really started to just mainly do more project based quoting. We quote every job differently now.

Yeah. And how did you decide how big the radius should be? Or was that up to the customer? Like what if they want it 50ft out from the dock and what if they just want it five feet out from the dock?

So that's why it's really important that we quote in person. Like we, we do use Google Earth to be able to take some measurements. That's primarily for ponds. But it's important for us to go in person and talk to the person who lives there. Because even if they're not there, we'll send them a video or call them because the price will differ. We'll say, hey, we can for 600 we'll clear out everything. Or 300 only the floating weeds. And then they say like, hey, I only want the floating weeds or whatever. So every time we're kind of working with the client just so that they clean the area that they want and they only spend the money that they're willing to spend.

So you're charging 250 per, then you realize this isn't working. What was the big unlock to switching away from 250?

I think the big unlock was one primarily that we were starting to do more pawns. So we got exposed to making a lot more money in one day focusing on one job. So then we realized that some late jobs are just going to differ and some are horrible and some people are a lot more willing to pay than others. So if you're able to up your price a little bit and have a couple fewer clients and then cut out some of our jobs that people that like, we actually have very few people that are unhappy with it. But when you have your price too low, you're gonna have people who are barely willing to pay it and they're gonna not be happy with the smallest little things that we already talked about. And you can't remove every single piece of seaweed. So a lot of people who are willing to pay a little bit more understand the aspect of that. You can't do a perfect job in here, but they value it being cleared out a lot more. So then we have a lot more like happy and satisfied clients. So it feels more like a win win.

Tell me about the pond business. How did that differ and how was that an unlock?

The ponds are Interesting, because that is something that we can charge a lot more for. And we realize that because the reality is we have so in our market, basically, there are only a couple of other companies that will do basically spraying or chemical application to ponds. So we're really the only physical removal where we don't use any chemicals. And so, like, we would get different referrals just from the lake or. Actually, Declan, I know you can speak more to this about the golf course that you caddy at the. But we actually were in contact with a golf course, and so we did some work for local golf course as well. But what's great about those is that a lot of people have ponds in our area and in the Midwest, but not many people have much knowledge on how to control them. And so a lot of homeowners, we realize, are kind of like, we have this pond, we want to swim in it or we want to fish in it, but it's just a mess, and I don't know who to call. And so once we realized there are so many people that say, yeah, we have no one to call for this kind of stuff, we're like, okay, we can really double down on this. And so this past season, actually, we just started going door to door to. We would go on Google Earth, we'd find homes with ponds, and we just knock on the door and we'd say, hey, we have our own little business. We do pond grass and seaweed removal. We'd love to give you a quote on what it would be to. To help control your pond. And the responses have just been amazing.

What percentage of those people that you knock on their door cold actually need work in their pond versus already have a clean pond?

I. I'd say that it's a very high percentage that actually need a clean. Sometimes when a pond looks absolutely beautiful, we'll literally just knock on the door, hand them our card, and be like, hey, your pond is absolutely beautiful. I don't think you need any work done, but if there is, contact us. But I'd say it's one out of every ten ponds doesn't need any work. Most of them need work, but some are horrible. I'd say most of them tend to just need, like, cleaning up on edges or algae and not like, absolutely horrible. So there's no, like, insane projects, but I'd say majority of them do need work done.

It's interesting because those people with pristine ponds, you might think, oh, they're not a customer, but they are like, those are the people that care about their ponds. Maybe the guy with the disgusting gross pond, even if he has a lot of money, is not a good customer because he doesn't optimize for that. He doesn't really care. Do you find that as well? People are like, oh, yeah, my pond's terrible, but I don't care.

Yeah, that's actually very true. Our first pond that we got off of going door to door was that exact thing. Like, they have a very nice pond. There was some things that needed touched up, like there was branches along the edges, there were some weeds just growing up around. But overall, you know, it was a pretty good pond and they do put time and effort into it. So they were a lot more willing to put more money into it and they really appreciated when it was done because they already have a lot of value in their pond.

All right, if you are watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube and if you are a fan of podcasts, please check out my podcast while you're at it. Because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTubes that aren't on podcasts. So check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform. Or you can go to tkopod.com also my newsletter will throw that in there. There are no ads, it's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter.chrisjkerner.com you'll see the link and we'll see you there. Would you rather do a job that's like disgusting but higher ticket, higher margin or something that's quick and easy, in and out?

I'll go first on this. I would say disgusting and high margin. What I have learned, because I've done a bunch of different side hustles and what I have learned is, you know, you can go and knock on it on a house and say, hey, I do window cleaning. And they're going to be like, I know 50 people who do window cleaning. I don't really care. My windows look fine. But when you knock on someone's door and you say, hey, I do pond grass removal, they take a second, they, they take a step back.

Yeah.

Really? Okay, I want to know a little bit more about this. And so we have found that every single time we go to a new home like that and we offer our service, people are like amazed and they want, they are want to help you. And I think it's such a stark difference. I mean, we will watch different door to door salesmen and try to pick up little things. You watch these pest control videos and the guy's like, hey, I'm with this pest control.

Everyone's, I can't stand.

Everyone's like, get off my lawn. I don't want to see it.

But when we get back on your little hover.

Yeah, right. But when we come up there, they're like, oh, actually, this is really cool. Like, okay, yeah, yeah. It's funny. We have walked away. I both Declan and I separately have walked away from homes, and clients have been like, thank you. Thank you for coming to my door and knocking on my house. Even people with no soliciting signs, thank you for coming up here and offering this. I think, yeah, a lot of these businesses are not cool. They're not like, you know, really nice and cooled up to watch or whatever. But these are the businesses that are need needed the most.

So, yeah, that touches on a framework I have, which is to sell something new in an old way. Which is exactly what you said. Like, door knocking is very old. Like, that is not new. But when your pitch is different entirely, it sells so well. Like, I. I did a whole tweet about buying electronics door to door to sell on ebay. It is door to door sales, but you're selling them on the idea of buying their electronics. And you're saying, you're gonna have to test this, wipe it, take pictures of it, list it on Facebook, marketplace, meet people up, or I'll just buy it right now. And it sells so well because nobody's doing that. Like, nobody gets pitched that at the door. So when you do knock, it sells really well. So I love that you discover that on your own. I also love the framework here of there's a selection bias at play. Like, you get such a positive response because, A, there's a need for this, B, no one else is fulfilling that need, and C, your customer, because of the fact that they have a pond or lakefront property, they can afford a high ticket service. So it's just this perfect alignment of all these things that no one is tapping into except you guys, seemingly. So can you talk about the difference between a pond maintenance company that relies on chemicals and what you guys do and what the differences are?

Yeah, completely. And a, a great example is the golf course that we maintenanced, So I caddy there, so I know the staff very well, and I would talk to them about we. What we can and can't do and what they were doing to maintenance the ponds. We would learn from each other, help each other out. And they went through like three or four different chemical companies not satisfied with Any of them. Because the chemical companies, they'll come in primarily one time, sometimes they'll set up maintenance plans. But for most of it, they'll come in one time and they'll do a spray and have. It was like $1,000 a pond that they come in and they, they spray everything and it kills everything and it stays in the pond after it's killed.

So does it kill the fish?

It doesn't kill the fish. Like there, there is some fish, but primarily on that course, the, the vegetation was killing fish more than the chemicals. But some chemicals do kill fish. Like we even see some of our competitors on their websites in like hazmat spraying chemicals into swim areas. So there's a lot of reasons why like the chemicals are definitely not it. And it's hard to use the same chemicals in different, like agricultures. Like every pond is different. So when you only have like one or two chemicals that you're using, it's not going to treat every pond the same way. And we learned through going door to door, when we go up just to random properties with ponds, obviously they've already tried to find their solution and go with the chemical company and they'll explain that the, the chemical companies aren't good with maintenance. Like, they don't check in, they don't consistently clean. Like, they'll just dump the chemicals in a spot and just hope it spreads throughout. Like, they don't really target specifically like a swim area. They'll just dump the weeds and have it maintenance the whole pond and putting in an aerator. But a lot of people like our business style a lot more that we're a lot more present, a lot more specific to their exact needs rather than just putting in chemicals to help the whole pond. There's several reasons why people have specifically told us that they're not satisfied with the chemicals and how next year they'd be very interested in having us come with zero chem and rake stuff out and see the difference firsthand.

Yeah, Jeff Bezos likes to. He has a framework where he likes to build businesses around consumer behaviors, first principles of things that will not change. Right. A lot of times we're looking for like, where's the puck headed? Where's everything going? AI this, AI that. And Jeff Bezos is like, people will always want amazing customer service. They will always want their package faster. A lot of trends come and go, right? History repeats itself. Women liked baggy pants in the 80s, then tight pants, now baggy pants. Like a lot of things repeat themselves, like hairstyles, everything but some things are just the same. And I don't envision a world where people are going to start being like, you know what? I want more chemicals in my water. Everything's headed the opposite direction. But it's, that's hard. It's hard to do. It's like these other pond maintenance companies have gotten fat and happy by just spraying a hose and sending a thousand dollar invoice. Because the alternative is much, much harder. And you guys are willing to do the hard work, which is why you're successful.

Yeah. One thing I'll say to that and why I think that a lot of customers choose us over chemical companies is because we have an immediate result that we can show them within minutes. So a chemical company will come out, they'll say, hey, we're going to spray your pond. I know there's a lot of seaweed out, you know, but guess what, it's going to take a couple weeks. So we'll come back in a few weeks and maybe it'll be gone, maybe it won't. When they hire us, we walk in, we say, okay, where do you want us to dump the stuff? Okay. And then we roll up and we start pulling that stuff out immediately. And the client sees that, they're like, oh, they're actually pulling this stuff out. I see a real difference, like right now. And when people see that, like, immediate difference, it's a big factor for people.

Yeah. Have you ever heard of the painkiller and vitamin analogy in business?

I don't, I don't think so.

A lot of people are looking to sell a vitamin, like, all right, this will make you bigger, better, faster, stronger. This will optimize your skin. This will yada, yada, yada. But painkillers provide immediate, an immediate fix. Right. Like, I have a real problem in my life. My back is hurting, I take this pill and it doesn't hurt anymore. A vitamin is like, okay, in 30 years, maybe I'll feel better. Okay. Maybe now there's still a business for selling vitamins, literally. Right. Or for selling an E Commerce widget that's a little better than the one before it. That's, that's a thing, right? People are successful with that. But when you have a painkiller, you get that immediate gratification. And people think of the painkiller vitamin analogy as you want to sell something that people really, really need. But that's not all of it. The other part of it is exactly what you just said, and that's the immediate gratification, the visual aspect of it cannot be undersold. Okay, so let's talk about ticket prices. How, what are you guys charging today and how do I know you're quoting flat fees? Are you just guesstimating? All right, this is going to take a couple hours from us, couple hours from our two guys at our hourly rate. Let's work in a little buffer. Is that kind of how you're quoting? And what does the average ticket price look like for a lakefront property or a pond? Yeah, all that.

Yeah. So our lakefront jobs, they range pretty significantly. So our cheapest that we're charging now is about 250 to 300. And the most expensive shorefront, just one home that we did, was a $1200 job. So they range pretty significantly. But I'd say we fall at about majority of the time. For lakefronts. For lakefront.

And then what's your margin on that?

It's pretty high because we only pay, we normally bring one to two guys, which is 20 an hour. And that's truly our only expense for the lakefronts because all of our equipment's been covered for a while and we just bring the same equipment over and over afterwards. Most of those will take about three hours. So we're paying 60, 60 bucks to each guy per job. Normally then we can fit in multiple jobs a day so they can make a decent amount. But then for the ponds, the ponds tends to be a whole day thing where it'll be about a thousand to three thousand. And our margins are going to change significantly this past year to next year because this past year we were still using the same tools that we didn't have to spend any money on and it was just straight manual labor. But now that we have our new boat, we are going to be adding in an equipment expense for every day, which will be a minimum of $700 a day of an operating cost. So then we'll have that plus our labor costs. So then our margins will be different and we're not exactly sure what they're going to be. So our prices may vary, but this past season, majority of our highest pawn job was quoted at 4, 500. And the lowest, I believe was 1200.

Okay, so let's say you got a two thousand dollar pawn job. What was your net profit on that this season versus next season with your boat? Like just guesstimate. I know you said you don't know exactly, but what would you guess it to be?

So my guess, that $2,000 job would be about a 10 or 11 hour job. So then we'd be paying our guys four to $500. We'd be buying random stuff like waters or snacks on top of that. And then we would both be profiting or our business would be profiting about 1400-1500 of that 2000.

That's absolutely outrageous. 75% net margins on a sweaty startup, man, that's like software margins, right? That's unheard of. All right, so that's going to be. Go ahead.

Well, and what's a crazy percentage and why we love our clients so much is we get tipped all the time on top of our rates. So it's really, truly like, we make great profit. And sometimes we can give those tips straight to our employees or add it to cover whatever we bought and, like, food and snacks just for that single trip. But yeah, it is pretty crazy.

So obviously the margin will drop when you're out of the business, but. Oh, darn. I have 55% net margin instead of 75. Oh, I better go, you know, apply for food stamps. But. So is that margin on a job with your boat next season or last season?

This was this last season.

Without the boat?

Without the boat.

What would it be with the boat? Then you'll just add that $700 fee.

Or we'll incorporate that into our estimate, and it will just be part of the invoice. And so instead of only a labor as the expense, we'll just throw it in as whatever it is on the operating costs.

Okay. So you'll have like one or two less guys, but you'll have the expense of the boat. So it'll be about the same.

Yeah.

Accurate there.

We'll still have to develop, like, the systems for the ponds. We. We think that we may have the same amount of crew guys or maybe just one less. Just to motion of like the pond cleaning going smoothly, the dumping, the raking, and just everyone on the. On the machine.

Do you use any, like, math or Excel formula to quote jobs? Like, I'm thinking like the radius of the pond and the depth and the approximate percentage density of the weeds. Or is it just like, we've been burned on this? We learned from that. We know from this. It's just kind of like a gut feel eyeball test.

Yeah.

It is really like. I. I like what you're saying because it would be amazing if we could quote this, like lawn mowing or power washing. Hey, it's 2,000 square feet. You know, let's do it. It's X price. We charge X price per square foot. But the problem is with the amount of range of services that we provide within this, it's just too much to really give someone a full like this is exactly to the T why it's going to cost this much. Because we're removing floating weeds, removing lake grass, we're removing cattails and it takes longer. And sometimes cattails are in the muck and sometimes they're not in the muck and you know, sometimes people just want the edges of their pond. So it, again, I think the first part is just being really open with the client of, hey, what are you looking to get done? So we really do spend time like in the consultation of like, what is your goal, what do you want?

And then they might want to leave the cattails.

Right, right, right. So that's why every pond is different. We have a, you know, specific custom price because what we do is just there's such a wide range, like Declan said, we can estimate. You know, we look at it, we're like, this is going to take us longer. But we do put in a pretty good buffer. If I look at something and I think, ooh, that's going to take a long time, I'm going to add maybe an extra thousand, 1500 because I want to make sure that our guys get paid and that we're, we don't get burned on any jobs. And that just comes from learning. So yeah, so it is hard to, you know, to specifically price one.

I'm glad you said that. I was hoping you would say that. Like it's really easy to have a spreadsheet and let that rule your world. But I don't know, I'm a gut.

Feel wish I wish that we could do that.

And we've learned that we always over quote. We've never really had too many people saying no, we, we sit there and I'll look at this pond and be like, that's a fifteen hundred dollar job. All right, we can do this for two thousand. And they almost always take it and we always leave that room of comfort where we're not ever really getting screwed over.

Do you have any idea what your close rate is like? I think it would be very, very helpful for you to keep track of all of those quotes. What your quote was, what they said, was it yay or nay? Cause over time you're really going to get a good feel for where that sweet spot is.

Yeah, that is very intriguing. We don't know exactly what it is, but we do know we have a very high close rate because it's so specialized to like targeting homes. That already have the pond.

You're competing against them deciding if they want to do it or not. Not with the next competitor, right?

Yep.

But that's still. That's still a competitor. That's still very real. Right. Like, you might quote too high and they can afford it, but it's just not worth that much to them.

Yeah.

What we've found is that this really is a pain point for so many people. And when you solve a pain point, people are willing to pay whatever. If it's a problem that doesn't really bother them, I'm not going to pay for that. I'm not spending this much. But we have found is, like you said, we're competing on whether they want to do it or not. So we've given out prices before, and I've been like. I remember when we were first starting, there was one particular client, and they were like, hey, can you do a discount? Can you do this? I'm like, hey, sorry, it's 250. That's what we charge. And he's like, how about a discount? I'm like, no, sorry, that's what we charge.

I'm gonna regret saying yes to you. I can already tell.

And yes, that too. But then 10 minutes later, he's like, all right, come do it.

Yeah.

So it really is, like, it is good to be in a business where we don't have a whole lot of competitors, But a lot of people are like, well, if I don't have them come do it, it's just not going to get done. And so it's like, do you want it done or not?

It is interesting also, because competitors come in different shapes and sizes. Right. Like, you don't have a literal competitor, but you're competing with people deciding whether or not they want to do it. When I was in college, literally your age, I had an iPhone repair store, and I was the only guy in town for a while. And. And so for a while, I was like, I don't have any competitors. But then it was like, oh, well, my competition is the fact that most people don't know I exist. Like, they have a broken iPhone in their pocket, but they don't know I'm here yet. That's a real competitor. Right. So now. Now that I realize that I need to get in front of their eyeballs. Like, not just anyone's eyeballs, but the people with a broken iPhone, that was kind of a big unlock for me. I'd love to hear hard numbers, so I'd love to hear what percentage of your Business this season, do you think will be recurring next season and what your revenue and profits were this season?

Yeah.

So for this one, basically this past season, I believe we had around 45 clients around there. That's doubled by now, actually. But we had around. We did around 45 to 50 clients, and we had a. Around a profit of around $40,000. I would say.

Months.

Sorry, revenue.

Revenue.

Revenue of around $40,000 and profit would be around 30 of that. So it's a 75%. 75%.

Right.

Like we were explaining, it's a very high margin business because we have almost zero costs, except for the fact that we pay some employees to come in.

We were working.

Our time frame was pretty much May, like mid May to mid August.

Okay, so three months.

Yeah, literally three months. And we did a little over $10,000 a month doing this.

A little. Little side note is we were even able to get jobs on vacation. Just posted on our Instagram story, northern Wisconsin. And with an Airbnb hit us up and we made.

Oh, like you. You did the job while you were on vacation somewhere else.

It paid for our vacation.

Oh, man, that's amazing.

Yeah.

Like, did you go to Home Depot and buy rakes or what?

Someone happened to have one.

We found one. That's the craziest thing.

Yeah, we were just got garbage bins and other rakes and went on vacation. And she tipped extra because we were on vacation, too.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, that was. That's a funny little side story. We were up in northern Wisconsin and Declan, go, you know, we're up there. We're just having a good time. We're at a little lake house. And he posts on our story. Hey, just kind of for fun. Hey, JND Lake Services is in northern Wisconsin. Someone swipes up on it and says, hey, I have an Airbnb. Could you please remove this stuff for my guests? And we're like, I mean, why not? We'll take a look. And we found a rake in the shed of the place we were staying and some garbage bins. And we went over there and we're like, hey, normally we have a dump area, but we're gonna have to dump this on site because we don't have our trucks or really our equipment. They're like, yeah, sure. And so we come in, we spend two hours there. I think we made 4, 500 bucks.

4.

And then she tipped 100. So 5.

Okay, 500 bucks were there for two hours.

We showed up with the minivan.

And that was it. We're like, well, that just paid for our golf and. And everything.

Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. You. I call the MIH Gene the make it happen gene. You guys have it. You either have it or you don't. I have people ask me all the time. They're like, how did you build this business? And I'm like, oh, I did this. And they're like, oh, I wouldn't even know where to start. It's like you just do it. Like you ask Google. Now you can ask ChatGPT. Like, you go to Home Depot and you buy a rake. Well, I don't even know what type of specialized pond equipment do you need a rake? You stand in the water, it's very cold, and you rake the bottom of the pond, and then you put it up on the deck, and it's very heavy because it's full of water. And hopefully they have a landscaping crew that can come take it for you. That's ideal. If not, it kind of sucks. You got. Got another a hundred bucks or two, but you just literally, like a leaf rake. That's what you buy. You buy a rake and you start raking, like, what? It's that. Yeah. Well, it's not that easy. The concept is. But in practice, it's very hard. So is that accurate?

Yes, it's very accurate.

Yeah.

Most of our tools you, we literally already had or just bought from Menards or Home Depot.

Yeah. It's like some guy just looked at a rake, and he's like, if I raked a pond. That was you guys?

Yeah. We started out with little garden rakes.

Oh, have you ever found anything crazy in a lake or a pond or like, just a crazy story around the business?

Yeah, I mean, we've had a couple. Definitely. One of the craziest things we pulled out was a drone. We were in. Actually, it was a golf course pond. We were raking it out, and one of us was like, what is this thing? We pull it out, and it's like a DJI. Like a $2,000 drone just pulled right outta the water. We're like, wow, did it work?

No, no.

This thing.

So it been a while. I mean, what shoes do you wear? Do you wear, like, waiters or. And what did it start with? Like, you're rocking crocs for the first week, and then you're like, okay, this is not gonna work.

Yeah.

That is a culmination of years of learning the hard way. We started out where I think I honestly, we were probably in waiters at least once. Just because we're like, we don't want to touch it. Nasty. And then we realized when it's 90 degrees in northern Illinois, I don't want to be in waiters. So we kind of went from waiters to where we were either just wearing bare. Like, either bare feet or just, like, Crocs or sandals or something. But the problem is those kind of fall off. And so we're like, how do we find a shoe that, like, stays on your foot, doesn't get little things in it, but it doesn't make you so hot. And so we found these things called dive boots. They make the. This is what divers wear. You can buy them on Amazon. They're like 30 bucks, and they're literally.

Like, hug your feet, right?

It's like a little neoprene boot, and it goes up to, like, literally, like, your calf, basically. And it is perfect. It's not hot. It doesn't get stuff in them. And so we just wear these little dive boots whenever we go out. So.

Man. Okay, so I want to talk social media, because you guys are doing it. Well, that's how I found you. You have 15,000 followers on Instagram. How many on TikTok?

I think we're at about 2,000 right now on TikTok.

Okay.

Haven't been too active. And then a decent amount on Facebook as well.

And, Declan, I've been posting YouTube shorts as well. This is my new thing, so I'm posting the shorts, too.

Guys, there's no reason for you not to post to all four platforms. Platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts. I keep everything under 60 seconds, so I can. I love you. Had the million view video of, like, the rake lines, right? Can you tell me about that video and the backstory there?

So this was actually one of the slowest climbing videos. Like, we didn't even realize he was getting a bunch of traction. And then just all of a sudden, a video from a while ago had, like, 900,000 views. And this is actually our number one client. We are at her house every single week, and we rake up the entire swim area, and it's just a little rocky and primarily sandy, and we leave it perfect every time there's perfect rake lines. It takes us about an hour every week. And, yeah, we just thought it was really cool how, like, the sunlight was going through the water and showing the line. So I just quickly pulled out my phone first go. Just videoed talking about it, pointed at it, and was like, we're kind of like landscapers. Because Joe told me. He was like, when you mow A lawn. You go like half over where you mowed before sometimes. So then I was like, yeah, we're like landscapers. Like, you go half over before. And that's how we made the video. And so Joe kind of gave me the idea and then I just did it. And it was a super successful video and it caused a lot of hate and a lot of love, which is always good.

Well, that's. It can't go viral without that.

Yeah, right.

That just comes with the territory. What was the hate?

Destroying ecosystems. You're hurting the fish habitat. Like, you.

You know, you're personally putting. You're personally putting straws on all the turtles noses.

Yeah. And I love how most people don't actually take the time to see that. We're in Northern Illinois because everything we say, seaweed removal. So then people in the comments be like, you can't do that in the ocean. And it's like, yeah, we're not like.

Honestly, like, you need to do this sounds obvious, but you need to do more polarizing videos like that. Like, with. You need to invite more haters to your feet.

Lily pads cause the most hate because people adore lily pads. So when they see us just ripping them out and taking rip. Oh, it causes a problem.

Oh, yeah, Good. Yeah, you need to make videos of just you ripping them out, like, violently throwing them to the shore. Honestly, like, the zoom close up on the lily pads, like. Or like an underwater camera, like, showing the roots come out of the ground. Right. Oh, yeah, that would look cool. And that would slap.

Joe made a video about, like, lily pads being gross, and it was like the throwing up emoji.

Yeah, I think.

And like, people just hate that too. It's just so funny.

Well, if they lived on a lake and they had grandkids that wanted to swim and their deck was surrounded by lily pads, they would want them out too, period.

Yep.

You need to get a drone and do time lapses of your whole job. Like, I know drones only last 30 minutes in the air, but, like, you could pay a guy just to swap out batteries every 30 minutes. That would crush on social media.

We just purchased a drone. It was a little late into the season. We got it just before the boat just so we could get some footage of that and everything. But hopefully when we come back for a job and in the next season, we can get a bunch of really cool drone footage.

Yeah, I would also, if I were you, I would. When you do a job, I would quote it with this in mind. Offer them, like 1 or $200 off or back. Like if you had Amazon gift cards in your truck and say, hey, if you post a. Here's. Here are the pictures, I took them. Post it before and after to social media and I'll give you. I'll give you 100 bucks. I'm just working into your quote. Yeah, nothing sells like before and after pictures. Like, that's why there are so many successful weight loss drugs and pills, because it's all the before and after pictures. And it would also crush just on your channel too, right? Like, they post them to their 300 followers and. But some of them are going to be potential customers, local customers, and then you post it just to your feed.

That's an amazing idea. And, like, what we've heard too, is like, Facebook groups. Like, if you can get Facebook groups and be like, hey, it's hard, you know, if JND Lake services posts, hey, we do this, you know, people are like, yeah, what's cool? But if an actual person says, hey, these guys JND came in and they did a great job, like, people really pay attention to that.

They do. Yeah. We do that for our tree trimming business. It's a very systematic process. We don't just go in and start posting, like, it is very thoughtful to get, like the algorithm on your side and to get people on your side, and then eventually you start posting little calls to action here and there. And it was actually so successful that we. We have an agency that we work with now that offers this for other people because it's. Facebook groups are so overlooked. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the boat story. Tell me about the boat. What's the story behind it? How much it costs? That's an amazing story.

So it's funny how that kind of started. We were actually at a job and I got a call from. He said, hey, you know, I've got a pond. It's kind of near. Down near Chicago, which is about like an hour ish away from us. And could you come take a look at it, clean it? And I was kind of like, yeah. I mean, I talked to Declan. Like, yeah, it's kind of far away, but, hey, let's just go take a look at it.

Why not?

We went down there and he had told us that basically his grandson had found us on TikTok and told him, hey, call these guys. So we go down there and. And we're looking at his pond, and it's a big, big job. And we're just like, this is out of our Wheelhouse. We told him, yeah, this is too big. And he's like, hey, I've been seeing this cool boat. It's like a seaweed removal boat. It's called the We Do Boat. All this stuff. And we're, like, just laughing to each other because we're like, yeah, this is our dream. We want this thing. We always.

I have a video that's saved in my camera roll in December 2021.

It's like, on your dream board, like, you're manifesting it.

And so he brings that up, and this guy is an entrepreneur himself.

And.

And he was just like, hey, this thing is so cool. And we're like, yeah, we. We want to get it someday. We're trying to. He's like, I love your business. He said, it's. No one's really doing it, and I think there's a lot of potential in it. He said, what if I buy this boat and then I'll just, like, rent it to you guys so you guys don't have the debt. I know you guys are young. You don't have the debt, but you can still use this boat and build your business. And if you want to eventually buy it from me, go ahead. And we're like, okay, so this is the jackpot. This is the best.

We met you 30 minutes ago.

Yeah.

And he's like, okay. He's like, if you want to do this, we got to do this soon, because I know you guys are going off to college. This is like three weeks before we go to college. He talks to us.

So he.

We're like, okay, we're going to get it done today. So we're in the car going home, and Declan is, like, calling the manufacturer and is like, hey, can you buy one of these boats?

And.

And they're like, oh, it's going to be a four week lead time. And we're like, we can't do that. We leave for college in four weeks.

No, I'm sorry, ma'. Am. We don't take no for an answer.

And we're like, we have a gentleman that's willing to pay cash. Can you bring it to us in two weeks? And they're like, okay, maybe we can get it done.

Yeah. Because how many of these do they sell every day, right? Like, not a thousand.

No, rarely.

It's.

It's a smaller six employees. Yeah.

Okay. And.

And so literally that day, we're making all these calls. We're trying to get this done. The gentleman that we were working with and wanted to invest in us, he's like, yeah, tell them I'll pay cash. I want to get this done like this. This guy didn't mess around. He stood on his word.

Wow.

And two weeks later, the thing arrives.

So you only had a week to use it before leaving?

Yeah, we had around a week and a half.

Okay.

So literally, I just. Both of us try to get as many drone. Little drone videos and everything we could of this thing.

We just thought it'd be really important. We're like, we have no idea how this operates, how it runs. Like, it's so important that we get used to it before next season, like, have some practice, know the ins and outs of it before we get our first job next season or have to have do one more thing of, like, train ourselves. We got it a good amount of time riding that thing. Joe got a little bit more footage on it, which was nice. But then we're also going to be going back not this weekend, but next weekend and hopefully be doing a job with the wedo and get some more footage and just fully understand, like, how to use it. And we were lucky enough that that company built us a new bucket, a better bucket than the one that came with it. And they are very advanced with. With their, like, expertise of equipment and maintenance, so they're able to fix it and add things to improve it. And so they're excited about it too, that it's going to be a really cool piece of equipment because it has their own little special attachments to it.

Yeah. Do they work with you pretty closely? Since you guys are like young entrepreneurs like you, you could be a great success story for them.

The company itself, we do. Technically, we don't have any ties to. You know, we do. If you're watching. Sponsor us, please.

We don't now, but we do. We want to.

You know, we drive millions of videos to your company, but yeah, that's something we're looking forward to doing in the future. It would be really cool if they wanted to send us, like, a cool new attachment or even like, they have other different types of boats. Like, send us a boat, we'll test it out, post about it, you know. Yeah, that's the thing we love to do.

What do the terms look like with the guy who paid for it? Like, is it a monthly payment? Did it just sit for the off season or what does that look like?

It's through his company. He owns a lift and, like, equipment rental company, so it plays in perfectly to what he does. So that's why his crew is so awesome, because they know Everything about the equipment that if we bought it on our own, eventually down the road, we wouldn't know what to do when it broke or if it leaked or anything. Which it's really nice that they're used to being around that equipment a lot. So they're the ones that. They're the ones that we do work with, and they're very helpful. But the actual we do company. No, they. They do not too much. And what's intriguing is there is. There's another company that makes a very similar boat who was trying to sell it to us through, like, they contacted us through TikTok and everything, and they had wedos, and then they started to create their own and they're trying to sell it. So that. That was very interesting, too, just to learn that there are other boats out there that are similar, and those companies do know about us, so there is something that we could do there with working with them or if they'd be more willing to work with us than we do, or different aspects of that. But it's just nice to know that there are those options.

Yeah. That's amazing. This is just, like, I'm very excited for this to come out because it's just so many of my, like, isms are in this. Like, say yes to everything. The younger you are, the more you should say yes to. Unless it's drugs. Don't say yes to drugs. And you. You did that. You're like, hey, can you help us put in our dock? Yes. Hey, can you clean these weeds out of the lake? I didn't know that was a thing, but yes. Like, where would you be today if you're like, eh, eh, you know? So say yes to everything. Work hard. Like, don't be too proud to do ugly hard work. And just be curious. Like, what if we just, like, literally grabbed a rake from Home Depot and started scraping this pond? Hmm. Well, what if we just started knocking doors of people that owned ponds? Based on what I see on Google Earth.

Hmm.

Like, what if this? What if that? Like, there's a whole world on the other side of what if? Right? And, like, my whole career has been built on answering that question. Like, refusing to not answer that question as soon as possible. The sooner you answer it, the sooner you will answer it. Because if you just have the question and then you're like, oh, get around to it later, you want to answer it, you have to do it then. So sounds like you guys have that MIH gene, which is amazing. So thank you for coming. Like, where can people find you if they want to get in touch.

Yeah. So obviously our Instagram is the biggest thing we have right now. So follow us on Instagram @JNDlake Services, or I think it's JD Lake Services. You can look for us on YouTube. We're on YouTube. Same thing. We're on TikTok as well. But yeah, find us on social media. Go like. And follow.

Okay.

Our Facebook as well. Super Car Blondie actually just posted us on their Facebook.

Super Car Blondie. I don't know what that is, but okay, so if you're over 50, go to Facebook. If you're 25 to 40, go to Instagram. If you're 15 to 25, go to TikTok. And if you're any age, go to YouTube. Well, thanks, guys. This went even better than I expected and I had high hopes. So I appreciate your time and I will link to all the things in the show notes and we'll go from there.

Awesome.

Okay. Please share this episode with someone. Be sure to subscribe here and on YouTube and we'll see you next time on the Kerner Office.