$1.1M in Revenue… With No Admin (Here’s the Problem)

If you're trying to grow a home service business from $0 to $3 million in annual revenue, this video is for you. I'm sitting down with 10 home service entrepreneurs to try to scale their business, and we're going to be talking all about delegation of sales, operations, and admin. What happens when I don't feel like I'm a good leader, but yet I need to get an operations person to run my $1 million business? We're gonna be talking about how to figure out marketing, just getting your first few customers, and when to focus on getting Google reviews versus building a great website. There's a lot of information, so let's get started. All right, Daniel, you're up.

Hi, Mike Andes, how are you?

Good, brother, how you doing?

Good, good. Uh, last year I tried to do— get an operations manager, and it didn't do too well. Like, he just wasn't a good operations manager. Um, and heading into my season, I just want to make sure, you know, we start off good and right foot during spring rush, right? Yeah, like last season we had 5 crews. Um, this season I want to have 8 crews, and I just need to have good operations manager. Right? Because at my stage, I should already have one, right? I just want to know, like, what do you do to find the right operations manager in terms of hiring? Like, what kind of questions do you ask? And, you know, and like, how do you incentivize them to, like, you know, to perform well?

Yeah. So first thing, how much in revenue did you do last year, Daniel?

Almost $1.1 million.

Okay. And then do you currently have an office manager?

No.

Got it. So this is my concern. When I think about the business, I think about there's 3 departments: sales, operations, and admin. And right now you're trying to delegate operations before delegating admin when admin is a cheaper role to fulfill. And going to be easier to train that person and you're definitely not going to have to give them equity. And so I would highly recommend finding the office side because by displacing your time from doing admin, you could spend more time in operations and potentially this year get through most of the growth staying operation. And then you hire next year or later on once you have a bigger business for an operations role and then you move into sales full-time.

Yes. Yes. That's what I was thinking too. And I tried doing that like this year. I want to get for sure what you mentioned, customer service and admin help, right? Either I get customer service, I get a VA or I do it in-house. But definitely admin I need to get. The thing is like operations too. I just feel like I'm not good at really, like, I feel like I'm not, I'm better in the back end. Like, I'm not really good leadership-wise. This leads to my second question about that is that I have a friend who he also has a lawn care business because we're in the same market and he does about, he has one truck. He started out last year, a year before, and he did about, like, I think $150K in revenue, something like that. But he's like my really good friend, really good guy. Like, I've been with him a long time and I I was thinking about bringing him in as a partner, and then that's what I wanted to ask, like, in terms of partnership equity, right? Because he's obviously much smaller. This year I have 8 trucks. I want to get to 8 crews. I want to get to like $2 million, hopefully $1.8, $2 million. And if I get— and he's a really good operations manager. He actually didn't have any work in November, so he came to help me for fall cleanups in November, and he did really well. So I was wondering, like, you know, instead of competing in the same market, he does his own business, I do mine, right? And I, like, go in this season, you know, like, you know, not having operation manager, not knowing if I can succeed in that, right? If I could just bring him in and give him partnership in the company, I just wanted to know your opinion on that and how to do it.

Yeah, like I would really avoid partnership. I would offer potentially profit sharing or him getting a percentage of distributions, for example, so that you avoid what happened last time. And now it would affect your relationship with him personally. And so that's the first thing. I would definitely not be offering equity. I would do profit sharing. Secondly, be careful thinking that he's good at operations because he is good at operations at 150. But he's never seen a $2 million business. And so it is most easy to bring in operations people that you know, like, and trust because you don't yet have systems to actually validate whether or not they're good at operations. Like if someone was coming from a $5 million company as their operations person, you would know, assuming they have been there for years, have great, great recommendations, that they can run that size of business confidently. He can't. We know that for certain. Now, he might have the raw talent, but you're going to have to have systems in place for him to actually be successful in that role. If you don't have systems for someone that doesn't have they don't have the skills, but they have the talent. Like, how I look at him, Daniel, is he has, he has talent. He's a great worker. You trust him. He's a great leader. He does not have the skills because he has not done it before. The only way to be able to make him successful is have systems in place that he can follow. If you have systems and operations that you can be like, hey, you're great talent, here's the roadmap to gain the skills, then I would give him the green light with profit sharing. I would be very careful though if you don't have a very systematization of your operations role and what that leadership role looks like, because you are going to throw him to the lions then, and he's go from $150,000 to a $2 million company, get more than a 10x, and it's likely he will fall apart.

Okay, great. And then if I were to do the profit sharing, like, like, how would I do that? Like, how would you recommend that? Sorry, what to add to that as well, like, we talked about it before briefly and he said that's the thing, like I mentioned about like giving just profit sharing, right? And he mentioned, oh, but like if I leave my company and join yours, we become partners, like like, I just feel like I want to— I already— I don't want to be work. I want to own— I want to own a business too. I want to be part of one.

That's what he—

that's what he says, right?

But well, yeah, if he's willing to take your salary, what do you take out of the business?

Last year, $100,000.

Yes. Like, it comes down to like what the investment is on his part too, right? I would also just say like the most— the reason I always stay away from equity is because it will eventually end 100%. And it is likely if you give him equity, when that business partnership ends, your personal relationship will also be ruined. It almost always happens. Everyone points like Charlie Munger and like Warren Buffett. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, name me 10 other people that have lived their entire life and been business partners. It never happens. I would mostly, if that's his, like, what he's saying, I would say, hey, look, I never want to lose you as a friend. You're my friend number one. And if we go into equity together, it is like having a marriage. And every business partnership, it's not till death do us part. It ends at some point. And when that happens, I don't want to lose our friendship. And so the only way I would do the equity split is if it's very, very clear in a very long document that is signed and legally binding as to what happens when someone wants to leave, because inevitably someone will want to, they'll, they'll be divorced. Someone will get injured. Someone will stop caring about the business. Someone will suddenly not become money motivated. All of these things are reasons why partnerships end. And I just don't want the personal relationship to also be ruined in that, in that process.

Okay. So then for the profit sharing, how would you do that then? How would you frame that?

In my book, I talk at length. Basically, for every dollar you take out of the business, he gets a percentage. So that way his motive is to get as much dollars in your bank account as possible. So, you know, if someone starts, for example, at 15% and then maybe after 2 years it goes 15% and then it goes to 20% and 20% I'm happy to give a GM that's running the entire business a huge chunk of profit sharing. But if you're going to be in the business, he's just doing operations. I might only let that cap out at 15 to 20%, but I would tie it to like his tenure. He gets more percentage as he stays longer and then make sure that you have a threshold of working capital has to stay in the business. So for example, what we do is one month of revenue. Anything above one month of revenue is distributable cash. And then if so, if there's $50,000 that have to stay in the business bank account, and there's $80,000, that's $30,000 distributable cash that gets broken up based upon the percentage that the owner and the GM are going to split.

Okay. Yeah, I get that. Should I do a salary for him though, or—

I would do salary. Yeah.

How much do you recommend for a salary?

I think this is a negotiation. Like, this is why, like, if he's coming off of ownership, you already know if he's doing $150K in his business, has a couple of employees, he's making no more than $60K or $70K a year, right? You can start there. Like, okay, I have to at least pay that just to make sure he's comfortable and then give an upside to where, like, hey, as this business grows, here's the roadmap and the on-target target earnings based on a 15%, 20%, 25% of profit sharing and what the expectation is.

Okay, okay, okay, good. And then build systems in place so he can succeed in that operations role, right?

Okay.

Yeah, if you don't have those and you hire him now, it will be pretty choppy.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then, and then how about P4P? Like, going— me from going from 5 crews to 8 crews, I have a couple guys coming back this season, um, but like, I didn't do P4P. I did it— I tried doing it last year, but I didn't disclose my numbers, right? I know you talk about you have to disclose your numbers. I know you— I watch your videos. I didn't do that. So I just told my guys like, hey, if you do, you know, this many properties per day, like the crew of 2, I run crew of 2, you'll get paid this much more per hour, this much per hour, right? And then like it just came so like messy with all the, in the books and everything. And like my guys, they would do sloppy work. Like, I don't know, like they would try to do so many houses, right? So should I do P4P this year? I just onboarded to HomeWorks yesterday and the onboarding Christian, I think it was, He told me that he recommends trying it out with one crew first and then see, getting to see the result and then using the results to show the rest of the team. Would like, what would you, what do you say about that?

Do you know what your base pay on P4P needs to be or not?

No.

Okay. What, what's your hourly wages that you're paying currently to your technicians? What's the range?

So crew member, I pay last year I started at $19 an hour. This year I'm going to start at $20 an hour. And then crew lead, this last year was $20, 2 starting this year. I'm going to do 23, 24 starting for crew leader.

And what's your hourly rate per budget hour?

Per band, probably 70 to 80.

Okay. If it's 80, you pass what I call the 25% rule. And that is I want the hourly wage that I pay on base pay for P4P to be at or below 25% of what I'm charging the customer. So if you're $80 per hour to the customer, I want base pay to be max $20 on P4P. So you kind of pass financially as long as you're getting that $80 an hour. Assuming that's true, I think you should do PVP. Yes, I'm obviously biased. It changed my business and like allowed me to run the business much more smooth. It'd also be a huge gift to your operations person because now the crew that they're managing is directly linked to the revenue and making sure things are done. Now, if you do a half-baked PVP, as I talk about in the book and talk about in the course, it always messes up because if you don't share the numbers and if you don't— if you do it based on like number of yards, gets messy so fast because then you got projects that don't really fall into that. So that's why Budgeted hours have to be established. They have to be accurate. And if that's not the case, and this is what I would do, Daniel, maybe next year you do P4P. This year I'd focus on budgeted hours because if your budgeted hours are accurate on every mowing job, every project, and you're tracking that religiously, switching to P4P is easy because you could literally sync up with P4P software, run the numbers on the back end without even telling the crew because it just all syncs across from HomeWorks, and then be able to know already who your top performers are and how much they're about going to make on P4P. I believe based upon your numbers, assuming you're able to hit $80 an hour, your top performing crew can make $26 to $28 an hour on P4P. Your bottom performers are barely going to get above base pay, $19 to $20 an hour, and they're going to bounce.

Yeah. Yeah. It's going to expose the weak performers, right?

But then you give way more upside to the guys who kill it.

Yeah. And then crew leads and crew members, like, should I give like, like P4P, I know you do, like you don't want to exceed 33%, right, of the labor revenue, of the revenue.

We give it away. We go above that during like spring rush, for example, when we know it's crazy long, the grass and it's wet. Wet. But to your point, I would only change the percentage that I'm paying a crew lead versus a crew member if there are different responsibilities. So for example, excuse me, do you have like a driver and a non-driver?

Yeah. Crew leads driving and crew members not.

Yeah.

And they have more experience. Crew leads always. Yeah.

Yeah.

So you guys have a higher base pay on P4P or could I do it like— sorry, go ahead.

In the software, you just literally in their user account be like, hey, this person's $22 an hour, this one's $20 an hour. And then what all P4P is, it's tracking tracking the hourly rate that you guaranteed to them, if it's also tracking the percentage of revenue that they've earned, and then you just give them the higher of those two at the end of the pay period. The reason I think you're a candidate to be in good for P4P, Daniel, is your base pay on P4P will be what you're currently paying them on hourly. There will only be upside for these guys, so it'll be very easy to convince them. But you've gotta be confident in your budget hours. And that's why this year I would religiously be tracking budget hours at HomeWorks. That's like, I think the one thing that HomeWorks does really good is track budget hours and like track capacity. And if you do that for like this year, you'll get really good. Okay, which jobs are we losing on? Which ones are we crushing on? Is my estimates actually accurate? Am I hitting $80 an hour? Like, even when I said like, hey, what's your hourly rate? Like, $70 to $80. Like, that for an Augusta owner, I would be raking them over the coals. It's got— you got to know your number. Like, that— this is the number every single time for, for like, say, projects versus recurring maintenance. Get there that this year and then just connect it on the back end without even telling your crew. Sync all the data over to P4P and then kind of start figuring out what the numbers are already.

Okay, thank you. And about the, about the hourly rate, you said to make the base pay, uh, higher for the crew lead and base pay like $20 for the crew member. Would you say maybe even this too, if I do 35% for the crew, uh, lead and 30% for the crew member? Could I? You could.

Yeah, you can individualize it for every user, right? So how, how, how like the software on the backend works for P4P is it says, okay, there's $100 worth of, of labor revenue. It can individually break it apart based upon the crews finishing that job of like this person gets 32%, this person gets 33%, this person gets 30%. It can do that. I would keep it as simple as possible. Right. So I would probably just do an increase in base pay and then maybe a 3% higher percentage on P4P as well.

Okay. Okay, great. I've been watching for 5 years and this is— thank you so much, Mike Andes. Appreciate it.

Got it, man. It's time to lock in before the spring rush. And when it comes to locking in, you want to be able to rely on something to hold your business strong, just like this chain.

Chain.

That's why at HomeWorks we have the logo of the chain, because the 3 links in every home service business: sales, operations, and admin. So before the spring rush gets super hot and you have leads coming in like crazy, make sure you're set up inside of a software like HomeWorks that can take your business to the next level and allow you to scale this spring. Go check out today, go to home.works. Eddie, go ahead and unmute yourself and we'll rock and roll.

Hey Mike, I'm trying to fill my landscaping schedule for this year and I would like to open up a new line of service, and I was wondering whether you I think maybe I should move towards lawn spraying. I'm, I'm very uneducated in it. However, it seems lucrative cuz it's recurring, but I've also done like dethatching, aeration services. Yeah. And overseeding and leveling and stuff like that. So I was wondering if you had a favorite between the two.

What, what was your revenue last year, Eddie?

$300,000.

And was that all project-based, like landscape construction?

It was lawn service was probably two-thirds of it.

Okay. When you say lawn service, is that mowing?

Yes.

Okay. And the other third is project-based stuff?

Mostly mulch installation.

Okay. And so your question is what additional service should you be adding? Is that your question?

Right. Because I'm, we're adding another truck and I, I'm pushing towards more recurring work with grass cutting.

Mm-hmm.

But I will, and I'm sending one unit alone just for landscape projects. So the mulch recurring mulch that we've done will only get me so far, I feel like.

Yeah.

So I want to add something that I could sell to the like an upsell to the recurring people?

Yeah, I would really lean into bed maintenance and bush trimming, um, mostly because you can keep the same truck, the same crew, and train up your existing employees and keep them on the same route. By dividing your two trucks, for example, it creates another threshold of capacity you have to manage versus just looking at total budgeted hours and sending out two crews. They can both mow, they can both do bushes, they can both bed maintenance, and most of your mowing customers also need those services. It's a really easy upsell. It doesn't require any addition, like a lot of complicated training for your technicians. And the most important part in my mind is you can double the annual customer value of the customer.

Yeah.

If you're doing $800, $900 a month for mowing, you can easily get to $2,000 if you're able to sell weeding, bush trimming, a property cleanup, and most importantly, winter services during your off-season. Now that gets unlocked.

I never thought of training like the lawn techs to do the landscape work. They never, Honestly, they never even wanted a part of it. So yeah, yeah.

And it's maintenance, right? So like, it's not complicated stuff. Like, I would stay away from any sort of like installation. But like, if they can't trim a bush and they can't pull weeds, they're probably also not getting on a zero-turn and driving your trailer, right? So the skill level is usually a little more congruent.

So you would, you would have everybody do a little bit everything?

I would, mostly because it's still considered, in my opinion, a simple service. I can train someone up in a few days talking about out several different types of trees, how you're going to trim them, pulling weeds, how to do that. And I can immediately go sell probably 30 to 40% of your mowing customers that service and probably fill most of that second truck. But I'm not going to separate them because I want them to be able to go on the same visit doing all the services, because that's where you make your profit. If you have a second truck going around, you're also going to get a lot more admin calls because customers get confused why you didn't do something when you were just there. And it makes your crew way more efficient on pay for performance because they're able to knock out 3 services in one visit versus going back twice.

Right. Oh, interesting take. Okay. I like that a lot. Another question for you. Theoretically, we have an employee who was paid cash and he now wants to be on the books employee, you know, claiming—

Did you say theoretically?

Did you say theoretically? That employee wants to go on, but they, they're asking for equal pay back because now they're losing money on taxes. So what would you do in that situation? I feel like it's not fair for me to give them an extra like $5 an hour just so it equates or they make the same.. I feel like that wouldn't be fair for me.

Is the hourly wage that you're, that they're wanting on W-2 the same as the local market rate?

It, I think it'd be pretty high. So theoretically this employee got $24 an hour to mow grass. Yeah. But he, he ran the crew and like he would have to go up to like $29, $30 just for it to make him to make the $24.

Yeah. And his alternative is to go work out, is to go work under the table someplace else.

Probably.

But he's asking to be W-2, right?

Right. But I think that he would take the offer if I kept it the same. But I also want to make sure that he is like happy with what he's doing, you know?

Yeah. So this is a conversation, Eddie. So I guess it's a matter of like, hey, man, I know you want to go W-2. I want to go W-2 also because like it protects the business. I want to make sure I'm doing everything above board. Keep in mind, and you'd run these numbers, Eddie, you'd be like, hey, it's going to cost me about $3 to $4 more per hour. Do the math. Like, make sure you know what you're talking about. Per hour, if I do that. And so what are you willing to take per hour of wages if we switch to W-2? And if it's going to cost you $3, he might be, well, if you can give me a dollar more, it'll kind of break out the difference. Most solid employees eventually want to be W-2 if they want to get loans or get a lease or get like a car. So exactly, it's also the good thing to do for the business from a liability perspective. Not doing that, you're just opening yourself out as a target for all sorts of agencies to come after you. I think it's a good thing. It's a necessary thing. I would position yourself as, hey, this is going to cost me X amount more. What are you willing to be able to— I want to make— I want to— I want this to be good for you, and I want you to feel good about it. The good thing is, Eddie, he has asked for this to happen. It's a whole lot better than you or a government agency telling you have to do it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that's a conversation. You have a conversation, you know that math. I think he'll be very reasonable.

I think he will too. He's a good guy. Okay, um, last question, kind of personal. I want to— curious to you, because you're so busy, you do so many things, it's Amazing. How do you balance your work-life balance, like with your family? Do you, like, set aside, like, say every Sunday, like, I don't do anything business-related, this is— I just take straight time for my family? Like, how do you, how do you find peace and balance in your life?

Yeah, so I don't really try to achieve balance because, like, if you look at any sort of state, like if you look at a pendulum or whatever, balance is extremely difficult because there's only one degree of balance. It has to be perfect in order for balance to occur. It has to be exactly 50/50 on if you have a fulcrum in the middle, very hard to achieve. And so instead, like my philosophy is much more like go 100% towards one thing at one time. And so if I'm at work, I'm all in on work. If I'm going to be with my family for an hour or two, like that's all I'm doing. You're never going to see my phone around me and I just go extremes and that also will usually go wider. So for example, all my whole 20s was just dedicated to work and then I got married last year and it's like, okay, there's going to be a change in that calibration and it must be be much finer amounts of time where there's a couple hours like I'm not doing work, I'm with my spouse. Personally, it's served me well because that way I'm not always judging myself. Because when I'm at work, I'm not judging myself about whether or not I'm a good husband. When I'm trying to be a good husband, I'm not thinking about work. It has allowed me to be focused on and, you know, be where my shoes are at. And that served me well. It's not good for everyone necessarily, especially when you have kids, a little more difficult. But that's the way I've done it.

Change your structure and you live right in the moment, in the present, if possible.

Yes, sir. That's great.

All right.

Thanks, Mike.

You got it. Brad, you're up.

Quick question for you. We're a newer business. We don't have a ton of like catalog of emails and I guess things to market to. I've only been on HomeWorks for 5 days. How do I start my business basically and get— because all I care about now is getting more customers.

Yeah. So like when it comes to getting a database that you can eventually email and text and not have to pay for marketing, the thing that everyone falls into in their first getting started is like, oh, I only have 50 contacts, I only have 100 contacts, I only have 150 contacts. And if you don't stay in touch with them, they eventually become cold. And so now you wake up with 1,000 one day, but you haven't messaged them in years. And so even though at the beginning it seems like, why would I text my 50 people? I only get one estimate. It's not really a big deal. And because people don't, those leads go cold. And so when you do want to message them in a couple of years and you have hundreds of people, they don't even know, remember who you are. And so I would just encourage you as you build the business and you get more contacts in the database, still send an email and a text message every single month. I would do that usually in the middle of the month. If you're billing monthly, every single month you're sending a text, send an email, I'm going to set up my calendar for the entire year of what those monthly emails are going to pitch, right? So it should be a season-specific offer for a season-specific service. And I'm going to figure out what's the service I'm going to pitch. And I would also say that text and email does not need to be flashy, doesn't have images and video and GIFs. And I know there's all these fancy stickers you can put inside the email builder and stuff. Don't use them, in my opinion. I just want this to be a high response rate and get through any spam filters. And to do that, just use text. Hey, it's Brad. Hey Brad, over at Groot Lawn Care, just wondering if you'd like to get on the cleanup schedule. We're booking out several weeks. I want to make sure I put you— I give you priority as a loyal customer of ours. That one sentence will get way better returns than a big flashy email.

No, I definitely understand that. And I'm going to— obviously it's a way for me to build my knowledge base as well. Well, do it well from that point when I get to that many customers, but I'm simply asking the most basic of questions. As a new owner, I guess. How do I get more customers? I'm doing the flyers. My kids and I are pretty militant about it in our area. What else can I be doing at this point that isn't a bunch of high-budget value-packed flyers and mailers and stuff?

What's your budget right now, Brad? $5K. Yeah. So in that case, I would be doing local service ads in terms of paid. So Google Local Services, you're going to verify and do background check, the whole nine yards. That's probably the only paid I'd do. I would then be focusing on our Google Business Listing. I'm making sure we have a verified address, not a service area, but a verified address. I'd be making sure I put pictures on there at least 2 to 3 times a week. I'd make sure I'd be responding to reviews and getting a minimum of 30 reviews on Google as soon as possible. I would then respond to them by taking their review, putting it into ChatGPT or Gemini, and asking it to give you an SEO-friendly response. So instead of just like, thanks, Bob, for your review, it's going to say like, thank you, Bob. It was a pleasure working at your property in XYZ City, doing XYZ services. It's going to give you a nice response. Use it on every single review, but making sure you're putting pictures and video into your Google Business listing. That alone, along with the reviews, will get you to the top of Google Business listings if you get over 30 reviews. The next thing, Brad, in terms of paid that I want you to do down the road as the skills is your website, because there's no point in paying Facebook or Google or anyone else or even door hangers and flyers if when they come to the website they don't convert into a lead. And so everyone, everyone's worried about number of people getting to their website. I'm worried about how many leads you get. And what we see all the time is 1 out of 200, 1 out of 300 people getting to a website actually convert into a lead. If you can just get that to 1 to 50, you will 5x the amount of leads you get. And so before you spend a dollar dollar on any sort of paid traffic, I want to make sure— and even flyers are paid traffic. It is— people are going to look you up online. I would do first spend any dollar on the website first, then down the road think about paid ads.

Fantastic. And then just a simple other basic question. I have a friend down the road here who is an Augusta owner, and he has been talking to me heavily about it. The only hangup I can't get over, which I'm sure you've heard a thousand times, is me and my family have sat around and put this business, you know, name together. Yes, it's young. Yes, it's new. Will you— are you ever going to have an Augusta under your own name type of where you get all those services, all that everything, but we don't have to be Augusta?

No. Like we have other services we pieced out to basically build the team here. So for example, like lawn care web design and home service web design, they can do your site, home service CPA, they can do your taxes and bookkeeping, etc. But in terms of joining Augusta, it's very much like a brand, right? So everyone wears the same uniform, everyone changes their brand over. And I wouldn't recommend even joining Augusta because we get— you get so many leads, you'll need— you need more capital to even stay up with the growth. And so I would say like for now, doing the things that I just said will easily 5 to 10x your business. Like the Google stuff, getting a great website, that will by far and away be the highest leverage dollars you'll ever spend. And just time and getting those things. Doing flyers is fine, but you are losing 60 to 70% of your traffic that gets to your website and And it's like, oh, this is not a professional operation here. And so having a great Google, like getting 30— like, how many reviews do you have now, Brad, on Google? I've— yeah, get that above 30. So like, we would expect within 14 days of people leaving training, they have 30 reviews. Friends, family, I don't care. They don't need to lie and say they did service with you. Just ask them to review you, your family, the business, the brand, and then you respond back with an SEO-friendly reply. That will— that will be the best return on your investment in terms of like an Augusta without the name. It's like, well, then what is it?

It?

Well, it's Lawn Care Web Design, it's Homeworks, it's all the pieces that we kind of have made available to people that can't join.

I didn't know you guys had a Gusto Web Design, so— or, uh, Homeworks Web Design.

Sorry. No, it's not Homeworks. Sorry, it's, it's lawncareswebdesign.com. And if you just go to lawncareswebdesign.com/call, you can book a call with the team and they'll just like literally go over with you whether or not you're a good fit. And it might be, Brad, they might actually tell you do what I just mentioned on the Google stuff before you even come to us. They might tell you that. Yet, because most of the time when people come to us, we're like, hey, you're not ready for a 5x of leads yet. Go, go to Google, get Google reviews, etc. But you can book a call with them, they'll see what you got going on and see if you're a good fit.

Fantastic, thank you.

You got it. Hey everyone, so this is actually the front of our office, and you can see there's really nice signage. Why? So when people come in here, they want to work here, they want to be able to come inside and see what we got going on. And that's what your customers are thinking when it comes to your website. They see the sign out next to They drive into the parking lot and they look for your signage, and your signage is your website. And if it doesn't look professional, they don't even want to walk in the door. I don't care if you have the best prime rib steak in town. If it looks like everything's falling apart, I'm not going inside. And so you have a great service, you have a great business, you offer great services to your customers, but they'll never walk in that door if your signage doesn't look good. That's why at homeservicewebdesign.com and lawncurwebdesign.com The average customer in the first year increases the amount of leads they're getting by 80%. Go check it out today. Sign up for a subscription that you don't have to pay $5,000, $10,000 upfront. You just get leads starting right away. We'll see you there. All right. Gavin Michaels is up next. Hey, Mike, how are you?

Fantastic.

So I just had a few simple questions. I'm based out of Georgia. And so first of all, I'm 15 running a landscape business and I'm having a hard time selling landscaping and cleanup jobs because one, my age, and two, like people are kind of iffy about pricing. Like whenever they hear like a $120 to $200 price tag for a few hours of work, they kind of get like pushed away. So I'm having a hard time like getting them to accept those kind of jobs. What would you recommend for that?

So a couple things. First off, are you in the Team Give Back program, Gavin?

I'm not yet. I have not registered my LLC yet, but I talked to Christian yesterday and we're going to get that set up soon.

Perfect. Cool. That way you can get them for free. So I would say, first off, no one cares about your age. Now, they might care about the quality of the service and they might have question marks around that because of your age, but they don't actually care about your age. And so what you want to do is give them so much proof that your age is not going to deteriorate the service. So having a great website, having great pictures, having great reviews, they don't see how— what your age is. They don't even see you if you're doing instant quotes or like just filling out a form and you do a drive-by estimate. They don't even see your age. In terms of the price, the reason that you feel that way, Gavin, is because you can't fathom spending $200 on the services you're doing and you feel like you're expensive. But to them, they have a lot of money and very little time. You have a lot of time ahead of you and very little money. And so you're selling to a target customer that is not you. And so just keep that in mind because to you, this service seems expensive. To them, it doesn't. To them, they don't have a lot of time left, literally on this earth. If they have 5 or 10 years left, they're willing to part with money to get more time back. If you can separate the fact that you are not selling to yourself, you're selling to different target market. Also, you're not just selling even time savings, you're saving peace of mind, the insurance of the property not deteriorating. For many of these baby boomers that you're serving, their biggest asset in their net worth is their house. So maintaining it is actually a form of insurance, not saving them time even. And they're, they're spending $300, $400 a month for insurance on that house and never getting anything for it. So you getting $200 a month to maintain that property is nothing for to them. So I would do two things. One, separate the idea like that it's expensive because it is to you but not to them, and then just focus on creating value in the form of a great-looking website, a great-looking truck. Those are the things that override someone's age. And like, I started at 11. I know it's like 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and you literally are showing up and you look like a child. Like, I get it. No one cares if your site looks good, your trucks look good, and you do good service.

Another thing, I kind of talked to the, um, the AI robot on your website, and I was like asking it about like when it comes to pricing, but I still have more questions. For property cleanups, at least for me, I'm pricing $60 per budgeted hour. Does that seem like a pretty reasonable price to you?

Yeah, like you're going to be on the lower end of what I like to use. But you can do that now because you don't have any overhead, right? When you're living at home, when you don't have a lot of costs and expenses, like $60 an hour, great. Just know, when you think it's expensive, I know that's very cheap, right? So just like eliminate that every time you think I'm expensive, just know you are I can guarantee it. We don't allow people to go under $60 an hour at Augusta. It's not allowed because I'm looking at $80, $100+ at least. First off, you're, you're, you're very average or low, I would say. So get that part out of your mind. And then in terms of, you know, giving you the pass on a lower price, I'm okay with it because you have such low margins or sorry, low costs. As you get more employees and you add more infrastructure to the business and you get past 18, you have to start paying for homework, things like that. Those expenses have to be covered and you'll have to raise prices past $60.

All right.

Right.

When it comes to mowing, I have it priced at— these are like small residential lawns, so I have it priced at $35 weekly, $45 biweekly. Is that on the low side, do you think?

Or— it is, it's probably in line though with your $60 per hour budget, like per budgeted hour, right? So just the fact that you're tracking budget hours, you're leagues ahead of anyone, including myself when I was 15 years old, right? So huge props there. Just make sure you make at least $60 per budget hour, meaning on a $35 lawn, it should be taking you about 30 to 35 minutes to get that lawn cut. If it's taking you an hour, we got a I don't care about the absolute dollar amount, the $35. I care about are you hitting the $60 per hour on the budget hours? You'll know that by tracking your time in HomeWork.

All right.

And when it actually comes to budgeting hours, I have a hard time doing that. My mom always says like I price things way too low for how long it's going to take me. So like whenever it comes to budgeting hours, what are some like, some like key factors that you see on like a property that help when it comes to budgeting those hours?

Honestly, if you do this enough times, Gavin, this, this won't become a question because you'll just be able to look at a property and have know exactly how long it'll take. And so the best form of time tracking accuracy is doing more reps. So I don't care if you're cheap right now, get 20, 30, 40, 50 customers, do their lawn, and after doing 500 lawns, you will very quickly be able to know how many— how long a job is going to take and be accurate on it. But for now, at least tracking it will allow you to be able to look back at your day and say, okay, like on the dispatch board, it'll go green if you beat budget hours, red if you don't hit budget hours. So just look at that, and over the course of time, start realizing, oh, Mr. Jones, I'm literally always 30, 40% in the red, I need to raise this price next year to be able to get to $60 per budget hour.

Whenever it comes to raising prices, like, I feel like since I'm so small right now, I have like on average 12 to 15 mowing customers throughout the summer, I feel like if I raise prices, I'll lose that. That's like a big deal when it comes to my annual revenue. So like, what would you suggest when it comes to, uh, when it comes to raising prices to avoid them leaving?

I would not even worry about raising prices because you're not at capacity. To determine how many lawns you can mow without you having to like drop out of school and go crazy and work every single waking hour. Determine that might be 30, might be 40, and focus only on getting more customers to that limit. Because then once you hit that limit, you'll raise prices because you have to. So don't even worry about that right now. Just, just focus on getting the customer.

Okay. And upselling, whenever I try to upsell, they're always just like, no thank you. Like, how would you like suggest, like kind of like showing that this needs to be done? I can get, get you an estimate as soon as possible.

Yeah. Like making a video is helpful. It shows that you actually are looking at the property, not trying to sell them something. You show them the problem and then you say, hey, if you want the solution, it's in the link below. I got your quote. So I would lean heavily into video. You don't need to show your face. They don't need to see you. It's just a matter of like, hey, Mr. Jones, the crew is at your property today. Like, I would just always use your crew and it's you, but the crew's at your property. They took this quick video. You can take that right out of Field Force, drop it in an email and be like, hey, they saw this need for mold. And here's the price down below.

All right. I appreciate you, Tyler. Thank you so much.

That's very helpful. You got it, Gavin. Dalton, you're up. Go for it, brother.

Hey, Mike, I have two really quick questions, so I'll give you a little bit of background. I'm 17 years old. The business is me, and then I got two younger brothers that we all work out and knock out stuff. My main question is about leveraging and overleveraging. We leveraged a skid steer, about $50,000-ish, a mower. We have $10,000 left, and then an attachment equipment to the skid that can do snow for about $18,000. So all at about 90-ish, and we have a decent amount in the bank, so we could pay a lot of that off. But I'm just kind of wondering what— how you kind of like to deal with leverage. And our goal, my goal personally, is to build it and just not be in the day-to-day operations, but I also want to grow it and use leverage as well.

What was revenue last year, Dalton?

We hit just over a little over 6 figures.

I think you have— you're not using that equipment to its full extent, like you're not using the skid steer every day. And so there's one of two options. One, you sell the piece of equipment to get rid of the debt, and A, you only rent it when you actually need it, or B, you grow to the point where you're using that thing at least once a week. I would— if you're like, hey, I want to grow and get out of operations, means you're going to grow a bigger business, which means especially at your size, you're taking more risks on. I would probably take whatever cash you have, make sure your website's dialed in, make sure you have great, you know, figure out advertising really well because you spending $20,000 or $30,000 on a great website and starting to run a really good ad campaign will likely double, triple, quadruple the business pretty quickly and get you to $500,000+. And at $500,000+, I say you can afford said equipment. At your current size, you can't. So the only way to be able to do this is either grow or you sell the equipment and get rid of the debt. Because $100,000, $150,000 makes no sense whatsoever to have that much debt. But if you're going to then use that equipment to be able to 5x or 10x the business, then I give you the pass.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Yeah. Because I mean, like, we're in stone, we got insane profit margins because we have like zero in labor. We, we could almost practically pay off everything right now if we wanted to in just cash. But yeah, that would be my other question is what my dad works on a farm and I would really love to work with him. He does big machinery, you know, excavators, bulldozers. And if I could grow the lawn care company to where other people could manage it and then I could work with my dad and help him out on his business, that's kind of like the dream. So I was wondering what, what are some really good actionable steps you could take as a 17-year-old to get there?

Keep your simple— keep your services really simple, because if you're trying to be an autonomous owner that's not there, there's no way that you're going to find dependable labor. Right now, your margins are really good because you're not paying yourself like as an employee. Once you get employees, they're going to be less efficient. They're going to cost a lot of money. Your margins are going to get collapsed. That's what always happens. So $150,000, maybe you're 70% profitable. That's not going to happen when you're doing $1 million in revenue. So keeping your services simple so that labor churn doesn't hurt you, because if you are tied to 1 or 2 employees and either of them leave, guess what? You're no longer helping your dad. Add, you're back on the, on the skid. So I would keep your services as simple as possible, and I create systems for everything that's being done. That's the only way to be able to have a business running without you. Gotcha. Okay. All right. Perfect.

I really appreciate it.

You got it. Appreciate all tremendously. Have a great weekend, and let's crush the rush here as we head into 2026. Take care, guys.