$1M Landscape Business is HURTING! Coaching Call with Mike Andes

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course. Today we are going to be doing a live zoom call with a landscaper that is struggling right now and he sent me an email, kind of in distress, low on cash, in debt, having some employee issues. We're gonna do a live call with him. It's pretty lengthy. We go in very much detail. And this is similar to kind of the coaching call that I would have with like a franchisee on a monthly basis. And it's something that I hope will bring you value, what I'm going to be doing. And if you look in the link below, in the description below, you're gonna see a link. If you want a call like this, a zoom call that I can record and send back to you or I can put on the podcast, I'm actually making that available for people outside the franchise. I haven't done this for a long time because a lot of my time has been spent working on the franchises. But right now we are trying to build a software, an upgrade software package system for the franchise. And I'm gonna use all the, any calls and any calls that I get, I'm going to put towards that software. So if you would like a one on one Zoom call recording with me directly, 45 minutes long, similar to like what we do today with Tyler, you can use in the description, it's $299, 45 minutes Zoom call. And I will focus on your business, your website, do a whole diagnostic, as much as I can. So this is not going to be for a very long time. We'll probably do it the rest of 20, 20, 20 maybe. As long as I can have time, I can do a couple of these a week. I'll do them. And all that money. The reason I'm doing this, because we need money right now for the franchise to build a software package. So we've been saving up money. We're doing version three now of P4P and we're trying to do some really cool stuff. So, yeah, that's why I'm doing that. So if you want a call like this, use the link below. If you want us to build a website, lawn care, web design, that's in the link below. I'm making out in the descriptions below those links where you can go direct to the course, the website building or book a call with me directly. So without any further delay, let's pull in Tyler out from Arkansas. He's been having some struggle with his landscaping business. He's doing a Million in revenue, growing very quickly, and his maintenance size is doing about 150,000. So we'll jump into the numbers. Go really deep on this one. There's a lot of information. I was gonna have Josh cut this up in pieces, but I figured, you know what? Let's just do the whole episode. And, you know, you might want to listen to this one twice, though, because we do talk about a lot of different subjects. Definitely something you can learn. Please share this with someone that would.

Enjoy a deep dive.

These do not get a lot of views. These do not get a lot of views because Google or YouTube likes the small videos about mowing and mowing tall grass and equipment. Those do really well. Or my reaction videos, but these type videos don't get much views. This is going to be for someone who's really serious about their business, wanting to grow, develop, and make their business more profitable. So hopefully you can share this with someone else, another landscaper that could benefit from it, and I look forward to sharing it with you without any further delay. Tyler from Peppinger Landscaping and Pools.

Here we go. There you go.

I think I can hear.

Yes, I can hear you. We're all.

Thanks.

Oh, man.

Cool.

Like an hour out of Jonesboro, then.

Well, so Jonesboro is an hour from Memphis. That's. I basically stay in Jonesboro. I've been staying up there with my girlfriend.

Yeah.

So. But, yeah, I live my. I don't know if you can see. Well, I don't know how good. You can see the background. Yeah, Like. So this is, like, where I'm at. This is like a deck that I built.

I don't know you can see much about it.

Cool. And is that that same, like, shop area, slash, where you live there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you can see in the background. Yeah, that's like the back of my shop. I don't know if you have. Well, you can see back there.

Very cool. That's awesome.

Yeah, I guess I built this when I was. I don't know. I built the shop. So I'm 33. I was 25, 26, something like that.

But, yeah, I don't. I. I built it because I was using. I never did. So in the area that we're in, it's kind of rural, Like, I. This here is, like 20 minutes from Jonesboro. Jonesboro's population of, like, I guess, 80,000, something like that. Like I said, I'm an hour from Memphis, but we really don't do a whole lot of work over there. I actually. I guess we advertise over there. I was trying to do bigger landscape jobs over there. We just honestly never have done like maybe one last year. You know, it's an hour. I'm used to driving, of course, you know, drive time kills you and everything. But I try to target our. Most of our projects are kind of bigger projects. I get what I call bigger. They're 20,000 plus.

Some people. That's not that large, but.

So I guess, you know, as you can tell a little bit of the background, I'm. I worked for myself my whole life, never worked for anybody else. I just. It seems like, you know, so like I pretty much work seven days a week. I don't do a whole lot in the field, only with pools. I used to do all of our lawn treatments. Hadn't done that two years. I had one. Like I said, I have one guy that did lawn treatments and when he wasn't doing that, he was filling in with mowing and then kind of just filling in with other as we needed help. My mowing guy was an older guy. He got hurt, had some health issues. So now we're trying to. It's the end of the year though, so we'll be all right. Just I don't have the right people I know in place on the lawn side. The guy that sprays been with me a couple years and we were working at a town like some of our pool stuff. We might work two hours away and I'm usually there some. And of course I got shop cameras and stuff and call them stealing fuel. Wine was gone, that kind of stuff. So.

But anyways, I'm sure you guys.

The one guy. One guy in the lawn care, the one guy that did the spraying and you got three guys doing pools with you, is that correct?

Yeah, the pools and the design build stuff. So that's the same crew doing that.

Got it. And so. Right, go ahead.

We just started the pools this year. We actually started last year, but I think we remodeled like two. The reason we got in the pools is because we were doing a lot.

Of.

Basically.

Project management. I was actually hiring the pool builders and stuff. And they were screwing stuff up and wouldn't come back to fix stuff. And we were fixing it on our dime. And because, I mean, I try to make my name. I don't ever want to. Your name's all you got. And you know, I don't want anything bad, you know, negatively. Of course, sometimes that impacts the bottom, bottom line. But any. Anywho. So we started last year and we became a dealer for a Fiberglass manufacturer. We actually represent three now.

And actually two of them are combining. But anyways, we. We know how to like my three. Got the three guys. And I, like I said in the email, I have. I don't know if I mentioned that one. One guy's been with me about nine years and he's pretty much been with me almost from the beginning, I guess you could say. But for several years, all I done was mow and spray. We done some landscape stuff just like.

Everyone else right away. And that is going to be with a banker being like, hey, what's my options? And right now is a great time for interest rates. And then try to lock those in. And then two, you have the 499. I think it's going to. The time part is going to be your biggest part. It's not the money side. The 499 is. You're going to. You spend quite a bit of time on making those, but I think it'll give you so much more time to, you know, fix a lot of the other issues. Feel like you can be more involved on the job sites and with the customers when you are selling them. So I think it'll be really good. But touch base with me, like, if you do those two things, send me an email in a month or two or whenever you're able to get those things done. Ideally you get it done before the end of the season because like, if you can get the last couple months of this season, because both those things you can do like tomorrow, right, you can go talk to a banker and within probably four months, have a home equity line of credit or four weeks. And then with the pricing thing, the 499 thing, that's a matter of creating an invoice as standardized inside of lmn, that you can send to people when they call you. You know.

That makes sense. You think I need to mention any of that to my website guy? As far as the.

What I would say is this, like, I'm just looking at it right now. Yeah, that's a huge.

I used to own a landscape company, the guy that actually.

Handles our website. And I personally, I could text him right now. I mean, we.

He does a great, like, it does a great job like the, the, the design and everything. But let me just show you just my two cents. I hate talking bad about SEO guys because everyone has their opinion. But like, this is just my 2 cents. But it's about what we see. Like, so here, I'm on your landscaping site here, right? So you got all your, the areas that you're servicing here. But see like in your text area, for example.

Here, your title. But see like when you go over, I'm scrolling over the. Here it says you're in. The title of the website says Peppinger Landscapes, Lawn Care and Landscaping Services. I would love for that to be like two or three areas that you're targeting. Like, like lawn care and landscape. Or like landscaping for Jonesboro, Harrisburg and Perrygold, for example. Right. Because when I go into Jones, oh, I have her here, Jonesboro Landscaping. You know, I'm on page two here and I still can't find you. And that's just a matter of Google not knowing that that's the area you're trying to service.

And so there you are, page four. Right. Like you've been there for a long time. And this is good, this is part here is getting in the description. That's really good. But I literally think by having Peppinger Landscapes then having this part up in the title that would help. Whoops. And then also really focusing on your Google reviews.

How many, what.

Do you know how many Google reviews you have right now?

Probably 10 to 15, something like that. Which my review, I had a review link and it screwed up. It's been screwed up all year.

And he just now got it fixed because I had, it was like reviews.pippenger landscapes.com and I would send it out. Hey, you know, we strive on getting, you know, five star reviews. I had a little automated, you know, a little thing I would send and. But like even the pool stuff, I can't get anybody. Like it's like I want you. I got one customer I think talked in and doing like a testimonial video.

But I haven't got any reviews.

So you know, it's kind of difficult when somebody goes on there and doesn't see a review. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And even, even if you make it part of kind of your sales process where the end, like the last day when you're taking before and after pictures, just make it a part like, hey, Mr. Jones, at that last day I'd like to just get a quick video with you on my phone of kind of your experience with our company. And then also you can literally put an iPad, ask them to sign into Google and leave a review. Right. Because like with those big projects you're much more involved. Right. So an email like, hey, can you leave an estimate? That's great. When you're doing like 50 lawns and you're just hoping that One person opens that up and these are of you. But when you have five jobs or six jobs in a matter of several months, you want to like, make sure you get a room from every single one and before and after pictures of every single one. And I really think too, like, even with that invoice that you send to people with the 499, there should be pictures of before and after with the project cost for each one.

Because you're going to get some people that say, yeah, yeah, send me the invoice over. And then you just never hear from them. Right. So really that first phone call that comes in, it should, you should be trying to sell the 499 invoice, like the value of that. Right. Because they're gonna be like, well, you mean you don't do free estimates? No, here's why not. We want to make sure we take the time to actually get you an accurate estimate with actually looking at your property, doing measurements. And we don't want there to be any surprises down the road. And we want to make sure we work with clients that are fully invested in making sure that the project goes seamlessly. And you know that those pictures are gonna be a big part of it. Like if you can in the invoice have an attachment with those before and after. This one was 34,000, this one was 84,000, this one was 63,000 and showing like before and after with the landscaping, the whole nine yards and making that part of the process where at the last day when you are literally like wrapping up the job, it's like, hey, I'm going to take before and after pictures. I'm going to do a quick video, two minute video with you on my phone and I'm going to ask for a review on Google and you're literally going to hand them an iPad that they type it in right there. Right. And just make it part of the process.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Yeah. Because all we always do a project walkthrough, you know, at the end. So.

Yeah, yeah. Like in here, for example. Like if, for example, if I looked at this website just without knowing you, I would not know where you're servicing. It doesn't say it anywhere.

Right. Like this is a, this is like right here. There it is. Arkansas and Tennessee. But like it's. Before I get to the bottom of your page, I don't really know where you're servicing. I would love to see up here or in the title of the, of the actual page, instead of saying peppinger pools being like in ground. Fiberglass pools serving Jonesboro, you know, Harrisburg, Arkansas. Right. And then right up here, same thing just being very evident. Like, oh, this is like this blue space up top here is perfect. Right there it should just say, you know, peppinger Pools serving and name those off. Right. That's gonna be in the subtitle of this of the page as well. I'll just show you real quick what I'm talking about. Just so if you talk to your guy, you can kind of share.

So for example, this is our local shops website. And when you scroll over the top here, it has the names of the cities that we're servicing. And then it doesn't even have our name because rarely are people searching your name. They're searching their city and their town and all the rest of it. So we don't even waste the title of the website on our name. We use the demographics. And then you can see like Whatcom County. You scroll down here, it's mentioning the city names, which is gonna get caught up in the SEO. And in here, so same thing here, it's like just. That's really important, you know, so just kind of my two cents. I don't like pointing out negative stuff because I don't want him to feel bad, but like, I do feel like those are positive things for you.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I know. So he. I guess he. This is the second or third year.

I had. So I had another company I had a website with. And like each page it said like Jonesboro, mowing, Perigord, mowing, Jonesboro, blah, blah, blah. You know, I guess they were trying to do that for SEO purposes, but I never did. Of course, I didn't have them, I think maybe a year and a half. And like that I was trying to make changes and they weren't ever. They were never making any changes. Like I could never get a. You know, so yeah, I was only paying like 2:50amonth. But you get what you pay for, right? So you know, with.

I just run that biome, right? Like you don't want it to be where it seems very much like you're trying to do it for SEO, but you can see, like you can integrate it into the design where it looks nice. It doesn't seem like you're just repeating city names, but like title of the page subtitle and the description for SEO, like that's, you know, that's money. And, and the fact that when you get to the page, you know, where they're servicing because that's the first thing people are asking themselves, like, do they serve my area? Right. Your site is. I love both of your sites. The thing is, it needs to be very clear to the customer before they even scroll down that this is for them, you know.

Just where they're located.

Okay.

Yep. Yep.

All right, cool.

I got to bounce on another call, but, like, maybe in, like, a month, if you want to just send me an email. We'll see how those couple things.

I said I'll touch base with you in about a month, and we'll go from there. And like I said, I'm willing to pay for your time, obviously.

Let's get things figured out. Let's make sure, you know, I really want to see where your time is not spent. 80% just running after the next job. But, like, 80% is focused on getting those jobs that you really want. And, like, just that will change everything. I think in the immediacy, though, like, the line of credit on the property will help with the. The. The debts that are outstanding and give me some peace of mind there. And then raising those prices on the mowing will afford a better employee. Right. And so that'd be kind of my immediate things. But let's get that stuff figured out. Don't worry about money. My goodness. Like, let's. I really want to see you be able to. I know it's stressful. Like, when you have that big of a business, a million in revenue, and then you compare that with, like, cash on hand, like, that's stressful. Like, I know what. What it's like to be there. So. No, I want to see that turned around for sure.

Okay. All right, man.

All right, Tyler.

Hey, have a great rest of your Labor Day.

All right, man.

Thank you. Take care. Bye.