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Do you think it's possible if someone were to go all in on this, everything, go all out. This could be a million dollar business.

Yeah, very easily. One of the grounds guys that we were speaking with, he does a million and a quarter just in Christmas lights.

What would you charge for a house like this?

An average home of this size is $1,500 to $2,000.

If you could like wave a magic wand, would you prefer to go all in on Christmas lights or lawns?

I prefer to go all in on Christmas lights.

So a commercial customer can be worth a hundred times more than a home like this.

Yeah. What I'd recommend is just try it. The worst you could do is have a ladder that you get to keep for your house. Now it's much simpler than you might think.

What's not to love about the Christmas light business? Make 1000 dol hour. Never quit your full time job. Do it yourself or hire a part time guy. Today we're diving deep on everything Christmas lights business. How to find customers, how to make money, how to install the lights, how to price it. Let's get going. So you pick this as a franchise. You like the seasonality of it. You don't have to go all in on just cutting lawns. You can do other things. What are the margins on a MoW like this?

Margins for mowing is 10 to 15%, particularly commercial. It's lower because the comparison, the competition is much higher. As opposed to holiday lights. It's a significant risk, climbing 20, 30ft in the air.

That's what you're charging for the liability.

And then also, not only that, but like if you have a bulb go out, you don't want to go pull up a ladder to replace that one bulb. So we come and do, you know, as part of the services, we're coming and replacing those. So the margins on holiday lighting increases each year because the first year you have to pay for the material. So it'll be much lower. 20%, 25%. And then if you have the same customer year over year, you can be increasing that margin up to 50 and 60%.

And I would think that people don't start shopping around for a different provider every October. They're just going to call you, right?

Yeah. As long as we did a good job. As long as anytime they called, we came and serviced them if there was issues and then you know, we take them down. We just have to schedule with the customer for install and takedown. We give them a week time span as far as install. Same thing as Takedown because we'll route our areas so that we can take down multiple homes in the same area. So as long as you did a good job and you know, I think communication is probably the biggest thing. Whenever they call you, they get ahold of you, then there's really no reason to reshop it because next year, you know, they might end up paying a little bit less too. We give a discount, you know, two years, three years in.

Yep.

But even with those discounts, we still have the margin still increased. Because you don't have to pay for material. You've already got them cut. The time is less to install in the second, third year.

Okay.

Because you're not recutting them. You've already got them set to the house, so the install time is less.

Have you started your marketing efforts yet?

Yeah, we have a little bit. And we also. We've kind of combined efforts with the grounds guys at Grapevine. So they had a couple customers that we're taking over for them. And so they have a big cross commercial customer, around 40 to 50,000. That will worth the revenue that we'll put in for that customer as well as.

That's amazing.

We have a handful of. We have quite a few leads that we're marketing to our own internal CRM system. So we'll be doing a bunch of that this year for that.

So a commercial customer can be worth a hundred times more than a home like this.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's talk about the two different models you have so. Of installing lights. So on one hand, you cut them to size and they use them every year. And then what was the other model? Or is that the only.

That's really the only professionally installed way to do it. But we lease the lights versus the customer can own the lights. So a lot of companies, other competitors will do it where they'll sell the lights to the customer, they'll cut them to fit their home. And if for some reason the customer says, I don't want you back next year, they get to keep the lights, but that are already fit to their home.

Okay.

We cut the lights and we keep the lights. And we're essentially leasing them to them. Where we fit them to home, we store them so they don't have to deal with pulling them in and out of the attic. Every year we'll bring them to the customer's job site. Whenever it's time to install, we install them. And then same thing. When it's time to take down, we pull them all down and we haul them off.

Okay.

They don't have to worry about how install them to store them properly. We keep them indoors. That way they're not dealing with getting hot and cold or under the wet in the weather, whatnot. But yeah, those are kind of the two main ones is either lease or let the customer own them.

Okay.

Just a difference in pricing on how you do that.

So for a house like this, this is like a three to four thousand square foot house, I imagine. Two story, three car garage. What would you charge for a house like this?

An average home of this size is 1,500 to $2,000 for an install. And it's by the linear foot. So most of the time, what we'll do when we meet with the customers, we'll just, we'll come, we measure everything from the grounds. We'll measure all the roof lines, mostly roof lines. What customers want. Oftentimes they'll do other stuff, but roof line is kind of the number one service.

And how are you measuring those?

We use a measuring wheel. So we'll just basically walk it off from here. As far as the pitches, you know, you just have to walk the distance from the side to the center. And then, you know, there's a little bit of math involved doing the pitches, but it's not really that difficult. Measure everything from the ground, we get a total linear footage and then we have a linear foot price to give the customer for roof line install.

So 1500 to 2000 for the first year.

Yeah.

Okay. And then what would it be next year?

And we'll discount 10% each year until the third year and then it just stays the same.

Okay.

So they'll discount the second first year or the second year is 10%, third year is 10% and then it stays the same. If they were with us for 10 years, you know.

Okay. And then you store the lights on your property.

Yep.

Okay, cool.

And that's the thing too is if a customer is with us for five years, they don't have to repay for material. We might be repaying for material, you know, year five or six, when the product starts breaking down or bulbs are burning out, but we're the one replacing it.

Yeah.

So they don't have to worry about that price really changing because it stays the same. 3 as long as they're with us. Really?

Yeah. Which model do you prefer?

We like the leasing.

Yeah.

Because we can essentially reuse material if someone doesn't want us to come back. So we have the material already and that way we're kind of keeps cost down on material.

So for A job like this, let's say it's $1,500. What would be your profit margin on year one versus year three?

Year one will probably be in the 20% range because you're pay that material for the first year and then year three will be around 50 to 60%.

Okay, wow, that's awesome. And then that's with you installing it yourself or your employees installing.

Employees installing.

Okay, so if you were to do it yourself, the margins even higher.

Yeah, if you're doing it all yourself. Again, depending on if you have a full time business doing it and you're paying for insurance and all that, which I wouldn't recommend a customer ever really hire someone to get on their roof without insurance. But it happens all the time.

So what does your insurance costs run.

With all of our insurance, which includes auto insurance and everything, we're paying about $12,000 a year for vehicles. For general liability, workers comp.

It's not as bad as I thought, honestly. Thousand bucks a month. I wonder what it would be if you didn't do Christmas lights at all.

It would drop. Yeah, because they rate this as a higher risk activity. So we pay for that. Same thing with we do ice melt, which is technically snow plowing is where they categorize it.

Yeah.

Which there's no snow plowing here in our market. But we do ice melt and they charge us for that as well because it's a higher risk activity.

Okay, cool. I've never really said this out loud before, but my mission with this channel is to inspire 1 million entrepreneurs to start or grow their business. So if you've been inspired by this, please just say thanks by hitting subscribe and it would mean the world to me. Do you guys do anything with regards to marketing and like yard signs or knocking doors or like talking to the neighbors? How does that go?

We do door hangers. We've done a lot of yard signs. However this year or Texas passed something where yard signs are now technically illegal. But we do door hangers. And again Facebook posts. Or Facebook, we'll do our own posts, you know, before and afters as well as the Facebook marketing. That's kind of the main lead generation for our holiday lighting.

And do those work pretty well like the non digital methods?

Yeah, yard signs. I mean I had a. Another neighborly brand. I kind of was following him, what he was doing. He, he would put out 80 yard signs a month. Sometimes he gets calls and people complain about it, but it still brought in the. Generated the lead. So it was worth, you know, worth the risk, I guess, at that point.

When you're putting out door hangers, who does it? Do you hire a company to do it? Do you do it?

It'll be our crews. So a lot of times when we do one home like this, we call it box nine. So we'll do the two homes on each side, two homes on that side, and the five homes on opposite side of the street. That way, all the, you know, when we're here installing, if customers or neighbors, we go put a door hanger on, that's two touch points. One, they saw us, and two, they got a touch point from the door hanger.

So that's like when customers start to think in that direction, but strategically. When do you first start marketing for Christmas lights and. Or installing for Christmas lights?

That would be July. So you do a Christmas in July campaign to say, you know, we do install lights. Get on the schedule early. Essentially, you can offer discounts for getting on earlier, especially when the route. When your route fills up a lot. So the earlier you get on, you get discounts. Because if everyone's stacking into November, then you just don't have time to install for everyone. So July, Christmas. July, Christmas. And July is kind of the time frame when to start it. And then again, you'll start again end of September, early October for the actual marketing of this time of year.

Okay, and then when do you start taking down? 27th, 26th.

We'll start after New Year's, so it'll be the week after because typically a lot of people are out of town. Still a lot of people on vacation. So we wait a full week into January and then the first. So basically, second week of January, we'll start taking down.

Do you do any permanent lighting?

We don't.

Okay.

We are going to. We're planning to get into it. We just haven't got to that point yet.

I have a friend that has a Christmas light business in Pennsylvania, and he says he hates permanent lighting because it's one time.

Yep.

He says he only does it when people insist on it because at least he gets something out of that customer. But he would much prefer to come back every year.

Yeah, right. I mean, for the install, it's two to three times the amount.

Yeah.

So if you're getting permanent lighting, you'll expect to pay three times the amount you would for. This isn't permanent lighting, but it's permanent on there for the season.

Yeah.

But two to three times more if you're installing permanent lighting.

Well, why don't we get into the Specifics of, of this job.

Okay. This is our socket wire. You order them in bulk rolls. So 1,000 foot, 5,000 or 500 foot, whatever the bulk roll you get. And so this is where we'll cut the lights to fit. You put in the fittings everywhere you want. And so you can just cut anything in any length. And we've got what we call zip cord, which is how you get from different areas. If you're going from a peak to an area where you don't want bulbs to be hanging, you know, where they shouldn't be. That's one of the differences between doing yourself and having a professional do it is you don't have bulbs hanging from, you know, this peak here down to that peak there where it would look odd.

Yep.

You can use zip wire, try and hide it and you can cut it to whatever length you want. So when we do a customer's home like this, we'll basically just have that 500 foot roll down here. We'll pull it out, we'll be hanging it and then we'll cut it to fit where, where it needs to. And then we use different fittings. So whether it's a male or female fitting, pretty much exact same fitting. One's a male, female and you just have a different slide on the back.

Would you be able to show us like what that process looks like to cut?

And yeah, we've got some extra cord. We'll use a male fitting here. We just got the actual piece here. It's got prongs inside of there that'll just, it'll puncture the wire and then a slide that goes on the back. Cut the wire to whatever length you're doing it at and you'll separate the two wires because this is just a two wire system. Slides down in there. So it hasn't punctured the wire yet. And that's what the purpose of the slide on the back is. You got a, you got a directional.

Slide, pushes it in and that punctures it.

As soon as you put the slide on, it's now puncturing the wires. And so that'd be a ready. That'd be ready fitting.

Wow. So if it's easy to cut it, then, you know, heaven forbid this customer cancels next year. You have custom fit lights, but it's not that big of a deal to re customize it to the next house.

Right. So I can just. In this here, right here, we've got a 40 foot length of wire. So if we were on a customer's house where we need a 30 foot length. We can cut that 30 foot and we have 10 foot of waste.

Yeah.

That might not be able to be reused. Okay, same thing. All the bulbs, all the bulbs we can pull out and put in storage and when we need them, we'll put them back in.

How long do the bulbs typically last?

So these ones, they'll last five, six years where you really have to do anything. Sometimes you'll have defaulty bulbs. Really? In this case you can send them back and say we ordered 5,000 this year and 100 of them were bad from the start. They'll replace those. But five to six years generally before it starts breaking down so much. The longer you leave them up too, the more they degrade from the sun. Especially here in Texas.

All right, so you get to a job site, what's the first thing you do?

Well, we've already got the measurements, we already have all that. We'll have pre bulbed wire. So in the shop. That way we're not doing it on the customer's property. We'll bulb, you know, 500ft or however many whatever length we need to in the shop. So there's less of that here. We'll have that all reeled up on the spool and then we'll have one person that climbs the ladder that's kind of fitting everything. Person on the ground that's holding ladders, giving material, things like that. But that spool will just be on the ground and you'll basically pull. You'll have it hanging in the air as you go up and you'll have it pre clipped as well so that we can make it faster. Yeah, we want to be on the job side the least amount of time. Do all the easy stuff from the ground and in the shop. So we'll have that big spool here and we'll just start pulling up the ladder. We'll have someone down on the bottom that feeding material. And then as you go, you just fit it up as each clip goes on. Then you'll cut it at the exact length once you get to where you need it.

So for a fifteen hundred dollar house like this, how much in wire are you spending?

Let's see. Well, we buy all the material early on in the year and then they ship it around September time frame that's coming out of Utah. You can buy them from locals, local stores. There's local stores here, you can pick it up. They're just different bulbs, but for the cost of material, I'm not actually sure on that because there's cost per bulb. There's cost per linear foot of wire, but for $1500, it might be $200 worth of material. Most of it's going to be the labor. That first year, you have a lot of time spent cutting fitting, so a lot of it goes to labor. That's why the significant cost is in the labor. You know, the time you do it, the second year is significantly lower because you're not cutting the fit. All you're doing is hanging and plugging in.

Well, I'd also think like one of your biggest competitors is the fact that people move, right? Yeah. They leave you because they move. But if you already have everything, custom fit, you knock on the door of the new homeowner and say, hey, you're probably going to get Christmas lights. I already have your lights. They're fit just to you, so I can give you a good deal or whatever.

Yeah, you could do that. We haven't tried that yet. We do have a customer, like, and he had a pretty significant amount of lights, so we have an entire bin full of them for that customer. But we could go knock on the door and say, hey, he moved. Do you still want lights? Yeah, I got them.

Cut your house, it's a pretty compelling offer. Right.

And you could even. You could discount that more than you would a first year normally, because you've already paid for that material for the last, you know, the previous customer or previous homeowner.

Yeah.

What type of material you can do? You can get all different types of colors, and they're, you know, in this particular case, we have something called light stream, where you can change the color yourself if you want.

Okay. Yeah.

So that's an offering. You can ask, you can offer to the customer. If they. If they don't know what they want, you tell me. Here's the colors we have. And then let's say you put it up that first year and they're like, it was great, but I wish I would have chose a different color. You can change out the colors.

Yeah, easily.

Yeah. So before, you know, when we pre bulb the lights, before we come back to your house again the next year, we're gonna pull all those lights out. And if you want to change color, we'll change all the colors from warm white to green and red or whatever it might be.

Is there a price difference that you charged?

We don't.

Yeah.

Just because we already have material anyways. The only added time is, you know, unbolting, debulging or whatever and then rebuilding all the wire again.

Yeah.

But we don't charge it. But you could. And it would very easily be something they would probably be willing to pay for. Yeah, for safety equipment. These boots are something we use. We use a handful of things. We have a. These boots called Cougar Paws, they have a felt mat on the bottom so it gives better grip on the roof. We have a pitch wedge, which is a very similar thing. Just has a felt mat that you can stand on. It makes a. A level platform.

Do you have any minimums on a job? Like what's the least amount you'd charge on a small house?

Yes, we do. We are typically about $800. And those generally are for single level homes where it might be 150 to 200 linear feet worth of wire. The other thing you're trying to do with, with bulbing is you want to end on corners, you want to, you know, end on peaks. So I wouldn't want to end back here. It just looks better when you're able to end.

Yeah.

You know, here's the replacement duckbill clips. Okay. So that's a duckbill clip there that comes on the socket wire. But if you needed a replacement one. So I'll replace those three up there that have broken duckbill clips.

Do these have to be two man jobs or can you do them by yourself?

You could, but the most difficult part is getting the ladders up that high. So trying to move this type of ladder by yourself is fairly difficult.

Yeah.

And it gives risk of, you know, damaging customers property.

If it's a single story property, will you send one guy?

We don't usually just because there's always kind of someone on the ground that can provide material. So two would be the minimum. You could have three on a bigger house because you could have someone, you know, two people installing on the house and you can have one guy installing around beds, around driveways. Because we do, you know, lights with stakes. So you can do all that type of stuff from the ground with one person.

Okay.

Or trees. You can do trees by yourself.

Do you do a lot of trees?

Trees are fairly expensive, so not a lot of people want them.

Yeah. Because the labor kind of tedious.

Yeah, the labor involved is just as much installing versus as taking down. So if you're doing trees, they're a pretty significant cost and it takes a lot of light. So we have many lights that will wrap around trees, but we do them just not as many. Most people want the roof line because that's the most bang for your buck.

If you're more of a Doer and less of just a watcher. Then you need to join us@team tkowners.com it's my private community where me and 500 other entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are actively building starting and or growing businesses. You will not regret it. Tkowners.com so what are your go to tools in your tool belt here?

Really all you need is just a set of wire clippers. In colder climates it's a little harder because it's much colder. So here it's not so bad really. Where your hands aren't so cold and hard to do. Fine work with them because you're trying to peel wires and stuff them in the little fittings. But really this is all you need.

Okay.

As far as that. And then zip ties are another one. Sometimes we'll zip tie certain areas, but when you use zip ties, when you're installing the lights you're trying to install to where it's as easy as possible. Tear down.

Yeah.

So typically when we're tearing down lights, we're not even bringing ladders. We don't need them.

Wow. You just.

We're using a, you know, painter's pole. And so in this, you know, in this case we'll reach up and pull that and that, that painter's pole can get most. You don't want to, you want to install it in such a way that you can tear it down easier because your time tearing down is significantly lower. Five to ten minutes.

Well, every minute you spend on this thing, your risk increases that too. Risk of death.

And then, you know, Putting up a 30 foot ladder takes two people. So there's risk of breaking windows, things like that. If you're not, if you're not paying attention, being careful.

Yeah.

So we're always in our minds and when we're installing, we're trying to figure out how do we make this easy to tear down.

Yeah.

And then same thing when you tear down. We're trying to keep as many of the strands together as possible. We'll label the strands so that strand one goes to this peak, strand two goes that peak type of thing. Yeah, same thing there is. We're pulling them down, trying to keep them together as much as possible to where when we reinstall the following year. Makes it easiest.

Yeah.

Least amount of labor to do that.

Assuming you have everything prepped beforehand as you should, how many minutes will you spend on a job like this to set up and take down?

There'll be a little bit of setup time in the, in the shop, so maybe half an hour to an hour of setup time, especially if you're changing bulbs. And then the install for a house about this size, an hour to an hour and a half.

And then take down.

Takedown will be 10 to wow. Because all you're doing is you're reaching up there and pulling it. And then you're labeling the wires. Labeling. Or the strands you put down. And then we have a drawing, which you don't have to be. You don't have to be all that sophisticated. But as long as you can read just a sketch, I mean, that's all I really do. We label the wire runs, and each, you know, each one we. On the wires, we label. What we do is we'll label the peak light. So in this particular run, I've got a red zip tie that indicates that's where I want that to be on a peak. Because we always want a bulb on a peak.

Okay, interesting. It just goes to show, I mean, 10 minutes to take down, 30 to 60 minutes to set up, 30 minutes in the shop goes to show how important your route density is.

Right.

Because you could easily spend more time driving than you spend on the entire job site.

Right? Right. Absolutely.

So if your ride density is good, your margins are a lot higher.

Yeah.

Or you're able to charge less.

And then the more you make sure you're doing on the ground, less callbacks or less service calls.

Yeah.

So service calls, if you have to come out and replace a bulb, you have to put up this ladder for one bulb. So ideally, you're trying to minimize the amount of. Of service calls. That's why you want to make sure everything's good on the ground first.

Yeah.

Stuff happens. We've had squirrels chew the wire. Nothing we can do about that. But we go and repair it. Yeah, but sometimes we'll just burn out, or sometimes heavy winds might pull some clips off. So we'll go replace those.

Okay. And do you set them up with timers?

Yep. So we have a timer. I think it's in the bucket.

And that's included in the price.

Yes. So we'll just set the timer to whatever the customer wants. In this case, you know, you got different hour settings, or you just don't do dawn to dusk. That way the customer never have to really deal with it.

Yeah.

The other thing I would recommend is not installing this up high in the air, where you have to get to it with a ladder.

Yeah.

Because if you have to adjust something now you have to get a ladder for adjusting that. Using your timers somewhere where they're still hidden, but accessible. Yeah. And one of the things we're doing when we're installing is we're trying to hide as much as we can. We don't want wires hanging.

Yep.

So anywhere we can stuff them under. Under ridges or whatever might be behind gutters. A lot of times we're trying to hide those wires so it looks more professional, looks better.

Well, that's probably something that the cheap guys don't care about, right?

Yeah. You'll see. If you look, you'll find it where they have a bulb hanging from another one. You just got dangling wire that aren't attached to anything.

Yeah. All right, Jeremy, tell us who you are and what you do.

I'm Jeremy. I'm the production manager at grounds guys for Wesley.

And what does a production manager do?

All right.

So I get to manage all the crews and the schedule. The main thing is communication with the customer. That's what they like the most, and that's what we offer that most don't. I'm available to them any time of the day.

What do you love the most about this job?

Honestly, I really like the outdoors.

Yeah.

That's kind of why I took the job in the first place. I enjoyed being outdoors. All this kind of just fun to me, almost. You know, I actually enjoy being out here working.

Yep. Do you have any horror stories from being on the job doing Christmas lights specifically?

I wouldn't say horror, but kind of.

Yeah.

Because, you know, if you have any kind of fear of heights, which I'm not terrible, but, like, you get me up high enough, you know? But there's some of them that are so slanted. And even with the safety equipment, like the boots and the, you know, the triangle, and then we have a bar that goes over the peak so you can kind of hold on. Even with that stuff, you still kind of slide, you know, and so it's kind of. It's kind of spooky, but I guess after a while, you kind of get used to it. But you also get that mindset of, we got to get this done, you know, so you just get brave.

If someone's watching this and they're thinking about starting a Christmas light business, what advice would you give them?

It's not difficult to figure out as far as the wiring and all that stuff. I would say watch videos on safety, because that's the number one thing. I mean, one, you don't want to get in trouble, but two, you don't want to get hurt. You know, it could be a serious injury, you know, falling off of one of these roofs. Even a one story if you land wrong.

Yeah.

So I would say safety, you know, just focus on that at first. You'll get your own groove after a while.

And what about how to talk to customers or communication? Do you have any tips for people about that?

Just be open, be willing to talk to them. Sometimes customers just want more than just the information you're giving them. They want almost a friend.

Yeah.

So you just, you just talk to them as if you're a friend, you know, and then they will be more open to you because that way if they. Sometimes customers, if they have a complaint, they almost don't want to tell you because they feel like you're just going to ignore them anyway. But if you start off as a friend, you know, they feel like they can tell you about it and you'll.

Take care of it. Yeah.

And they'll be more likely to buy stuff from you too.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't stress communication enough. That's what will build any business.

I used to tell my employees that communication covers a multitude of sins.

It does, right?

If you screw something up and you get ahead of it, like proactively, a lot of times you can turn that into a good experience where they buy more stuff.

You can, you know, because like even when the crew's like, say they run into a mailbox, if they'll call and tell me the moment they do it, I can call that customer and head them off and like, hey, we hit your mailbox today. I will take care of this. And then they don't call me mad because they don't have time to pester about it. So it does help with the communication.

So if someone were watching this and wanting to start a Christmas lights business, what advice would you give them?

Hire someone software to get on the roof. Because I've hired a few people that they said they would and then come, you know, when push comes to shove, they don't want to be up there.

Okay.

We don't always get on the roof. We try to use the liner as much as possible.

But so that's like the first question you ask because it's really the non negotiable landscapers.

I'm asking them that, like I'm hiring them to mow.

Yeah.

I'm telling them that in the fall we're going to be doing quality lights.

And climbing the roof because you just can't work around that.

Right.

Okay.

The other thing is, I guess I would probably recommend using Facebook as a. As a means of Getting leads.

What about safety?

There's a few pieces of equipment I'd recommend you get. You don't have to get everything and you can generally try and use the ladders as much as possible. And you might even start on some of the easier roofs. There's single story houses that you can do that are much easier to do, easy to get your feet wet. But safety equipment, I would get these boots or cougar paws. Pitch wedge is another big one. Sits on the roof and helps you sit on a level platform as you're standing on the roof. Then 30 foot ladder, you're gonna have to have one of those. Really?

Okay.

And then I guess what I would recommend is just try it. The worst you could do is have a ladder that you get to keep for your house now.

Yeah.

Then you can. You'll start on your own home, put the lights on your own house. You'll get a feel for how it goes. And it's much simpler than you might think as far as how to fit them together and how to do it that way.

Can someone go to Home Depot and buy lights or would you not recommend.

That you can get some of that? Typically there's. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Home Depot because they're not really made to fit to your house. Yeah, you can get 100 foot lengths or 50 foot lengths or 25 foot lengths, but pretty much anywhere you live, there's probably going to be some sort of supply store.

Okay.

So you know, where I live here, there's somewhere I can go that's one mile away to get those supplies.

Okay.

But wherever you live, there's going to be a supply store that's selling all day. Lights.

All right. What are the startup costs for this business?

Best to buy the stuff you can in bulk because, you know, the more you can get in bulk, the cheaper it's going to be per foot, essentially. So really it's just the materials. That's the materials. If you've already got a vehicle that can kind of haul the stuff you need and the materials, you can buy them in bulk. But it's, you know, maybe two, $3,000 the first year we spent about 4,500, $5,000 in all the material that we were kind of expecting to do. About 15 homes.

Yeah.

So we bought that much material kind of ahead of time. You don't have to buy that much. You could just buy, you know, one reel of this, a couple boxes of the lights fittings, all that. So you might. Only if you were just trying to get started you might only be 4 or $500 as far as material and then a couple pieces of equipment, safety equipment, ladders.

Do you think it's possible if someone were to go all in on this focus, do paid ads, everything go all out? This could be a million dollar business.

Yeah, very easily with good profit margins. I was just on a call with, with grounds guys, you know, talking to other. Other grounds guys, owners throughout the nation. One of the grounds guys that we were speaking with, he does a million and a quarter.

Wow.

Just in Christmas lights. Just in Christmas lights. The rest of your. He's doing the landscape lighting.

How much of that commercial?

He didn't say. He didn't have that breakdown. But a large portion is going to be commercial and then. Yeah, you know, as far as, as residential customers, you know, you might have 200 to 3, 400 commercial customers. If you're doing a million plus.

Okay.

Then the rest of that would be the commercial customers.

Any horror stories from this business?

No real horror stories yet. I guess the worst that we've had, if you want to call, it's not a horror story, but we just had some squirrels that did some work on a customer's property. So they said all the lights weren't working. It'd only been maybe a month. They were up. So we go out there and investigate it and find that the squirrels had chewed through four or five locations of it. So we went and just snipped it and patched it up and it happened.

Once out of 20, 30 times.

Right.

Okay. And what are your goals for this business?

Our goals are like we really want to increase this line as well as landscape lighting. So two lighting areas that we want to increase in for holiday lighting. We'd like to do half a million to a million a year within the next two or three years. So we're, like I said, we're three years in. So if we continue to double down on all the holiday lighting and landscape lighting, you know, between those two, we'd like to be doing over a million a year in just the lighting.

Yeah. All right. Well, Wesley, thank you for your time today.

Yeah, appreciate it.

If someone wants to check out your business, where are you and how can they find you?

We're grounds guys of Keller, so we're in the DFW area in Texas. And then you can go to groundsguys.com, you can get to any wherever location you're in the country. You can just type in your zip code and it'll take you to the local spot where you're at, but ours is groundsguys.com KellertX if you want to.

Find our specific location for anything landscaping.

And or Christmas lights, Christmas lights, landscape lighting, irrigation. If you're doing installations or maintenance as far as landscaping and then holiday lighting this time of year, obviously.

Okay, grounds guys. Keller.