22 Years Old, $70K Revenue: Knocking on Doors to Grow Lawn Business (Consulting Call)

All right, we're in business. Not much of that.

All right, we got the long haired God in the room.

I need some wisdom.

Cool, man. Tell me. Give me a little context. Kind of like what you've been up to and things like that. I know. I read your form and everything.

So I'm 22 years old. I went to college for like, I don't know, two weeks. And I was like, that's not for me. And then I worked at Verizon, got into sales, and then I never wanted to have a boss I didn't like. People tell me what to do. So I called my former boss. I used to cut grass in high school. I said, I just want to start a lawn care company up. He said, oh, I was like, I'm going to buy, you know, $1,000 truck and trailer. You know, go real low, low budget. He said, just finance everything for me. I said, say less. So we wrote up a contract. It was worth 25,000. Gave me a box truck stand on John Deere, lawnmower, the blower edger. We whip everything, all the essentials, right. And then I paid that off in a year. And the following year, which was last year, I did 70k in revenue. And now I wanted to contact you because you'll be able to tell me kind of the roadmap that I should be going on. What. What goal, revenue goal should I look forward to? Should I be. Should I, you know, hire two employees? An employee? Should I still solo and try to make as much cash that way?

Should I go for more landscaping? You know, that's basically what I'm here for.

Okay, cool. So do you pay off that debt to him, right?

Yeah, there's no debt. I run the business out of my house. So the overhead is. There's no overhead. I just have to pay the insurance on the truck, which is 280 bucks a month. And then. Oh, yeah, the Weekly revenue is $2052,050.

What else?

That's it. Oh, I have 7k in cash. I could get another 2k in cash.

I. Yeah. And then I have two mowers, stand down mowers, one push mower.

And then I'm thinking about buying another walk behind.

Okay.

The average cut price around my area is $25, and it'll probably take 20 minutes for one person to cut.

The houses in my area are really close together. It's like a metro Detroit. I'm not sure. I don't think it's like where you're at, because you said you start at 60 I do have an area where I cut, where the prices are higher. It's a wealthier area. I'm not sure if I should go for those types of customers because the average customer value would be higher due to the leaf cleanups. You can make your money on the leaf cleanups?

Yeah. What do you think?

Cool. So your thoughts on. On the walk behind?

Oh, yeah.

Were you gonna finance that? Are you going to?

Yeah. So my thoughts on the walk behind. Right. I was going to buy the walk behind. I was going to have one crew go out with two people, and I was going to use my. Another truck. I have two trucks right now. I just bought one yesterday. And I was going to put the ramps on the back and use the walk behind. And I'll go and cut 50 houses while they cut the 75. And then I was going to obviously try to get more accounts this year. Maybe they could have done. They could do 125 accounts, 100 accounts max. And then I would do 50, just so I can keep increasing the revenue. And then once I had more cash, I could buy a trailer. And then, you know, do you see what I'm envisioning?

Okay. Yep. Cool. So the question is, so not last year, the year before, what'd you do in revenue then?

I'm not sure. It probably was around the same because I did not grow at all.

Okay, so what are you going to do differently this year that's going to allow you to grow in terms of getting.

Door hangers?

And I was thinking about if I had to door to door, I'm not afraid to go door to door and try to get service that way. But I was honestly thinking, like, just to put out 20,000 door hangers, me and my girlfriend could do it all day. I could go out eight hours a day, nine hours, and just go door to door. I mean, the houses are so close. I could do a thousand a day.

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I was about, you know, alluding, you know, getting to. And that is the fact that, like, you have enough equipment right now to do well over 200,000 revenue. Two trucks, two stand ons. A push. More like, I would recommend not getting the walk behind.

Okay.

Any. Any dollar right now spent on equipment would better be spent on marketing, in my opinion, even if it is door hangers. And, you know, because you don't have, like, tons of cash, you know, if you're able to do the door hangers, that'd be great. But, like, if you're okay with talking to people.

Yeah.

We have, you know, Nick, the guy, he just started a franchise down in Marysville and worked for us for a couple years. He's 21, I think. And he actually, like, he was not afraid to knock on doors either and talk to them. Not just door hangers. And you can really use kind of your age and all of that to get good, you know, a lot of clients, you're not gonna do a thousand a day. You might only get a hundred done. But if you talk to 15 of them and five of them become customers, like, you know, that's worth it, right?

Yeah.

And so.

I would really say, like, if you are willing to talk to people and just like, not make it a sales pitch, but introduce yourself, hey, I'm in local area. If you ever need something, let me know. And then what you do, if you strike up a conversation or if you get the estimate, if you get them an estimate, this is something that he's been doing the past few days with a lot of success. And that is you give them a call next day, hey, Mr. Jones, I would love to earn your business. And if they've said, oh, it's too expensive, or whatever it is, what price does it need to be at for us to do business with you?

Right.

If you do that at your age, if you've created the connection in person with them already, you're going to close a massive amount of them and you'll be amazed at how little they'll come down on price. If price. You can use that close only if price is the issue. But at this point where you're at your overhead so low, you're at home and you know, all the rest of it, you need to get work. Right. And you get the momentum flowing so that you can go hire somebody.

All right, yeah, so I can do that. Should I do it right now? Even if there's snow on the ground?

No, no. Snow on the ground doesn't. It's tough because, like, ideally, when you're walking up to someone's house, you kind of see already the things that they need help on and you can kind of talk about those things. And yeah, people are not thinking about, like, even spring cleanups when there's snow on the ground. I would say as soon as there's not snow on the ground, I'd start doing door to door, you know, door hanger. If they're not home, knock. If they. If they open, just introduce yourself. If that leads to an estimate, or if you're able to mention the tree out front that's touching the house asking if you want what they. They want an estimate for trimming that off. That's when it becomes interesting to me in terms of once the snow is gone and then obviously going into mowing season, the same thing can be said.

Okay, all right, I'll definitely do that. And then what types of jobs do you think? Like, what is the majority of my revenue going to be if I'm getting more and more customers? Do you think it'll be the maintenance, lawn care? Or do you think I'll hit that 200 mark by doing a lot more landscaping, bush trimming, mulch?

It's really your decision. Right. Like, honestly, what I would do if I was you is focus on the recurring in terms of like your door hangers. I'd focus on spring cleanups for the, you know, as soon as the snow's gone, focus on spring cleanups like a month. And then as soon as mowing season starts, I'd be doing the same thing for mowing. Right.

And then what's going to happen is just natively people that you get mowing service for, they're going to ask for landscaping or you're going to show up and talk to someone about mowing, and they're like, hey, would you also install mulch over here? And so that conversation from mowing to landscape or maintenance to project based work is usually pretty smooth for existing customer. Right. You want to go after the kind of the gateway service, though, and that's going to be mowing property cleanups, what most people need. And then if they need other things, they'll usually come to you then.

Okay, and how should I sell that? Because I had the 75 customers, and last year I did, you know, maybe less than 5k in landscaping. You know, Covid was around, but I never tried to sell it. I had a couple customers, you know, 75. It's not too many. I'm not going to have 20 to 50 people asking me to do landscaping jobs, you know, maybe 10, 10 to 15.

So did you have. Did you say you had 75 million customers last year? Yep.

Yeah.

So. Okay, got it. So I really think that with, literally without changing hardly any in terms of number of customers, you could double your revenue just if you focused on upselling your existing customers. The reason I say that. Go ahead.

So. So no walk behind. Should I have a crew go out there? Should I have a crew and then pay them hourly or pay them P4P? Should I have one crew or one guy with that truck and trailer? How. What do you think? How should the setup be.

Well, like, what's going to happen first is your first employee is probably going to work with you mostly, right? The thing is, you already have the two trucks. Like you've already bought that one. So it almost makes sense to just use the asset. That being said, if you're sending out a solo guy, your first employee, he needs to be on P4P otherwise like, you don't know what he's doing. So.

Yeah, like I would say your first employee, you're not going to go hire two people. But what's nice with, with two trucks, you can technically get to three employees before you need another one. Right? You can get one employee, he goes out and goes solo. You know, you're doing some lawns and doing estimates and then he's doing lawns all day. Then you get a second employee, you throw them in with that other person, There's a two person crew. Then technically you could train your third person with you for half days before you actually need to go get a truck.

Okay.

And the reason I say is because like too many people buy the trucks too quickly. And like when really the hires is what actually brings you more revenue, right?

Yeah, well, I needed another truck because that, that, the truck that I have right now has 200,000 miles.

Man.

It's, it's, it's going, you know, I needed something, it was only 2800.

It was cheap. Yeah. So that's good. That's good. So like, you'll need it though. Like this year if you're going to grow substantially, you will need a second truck to get to 150. But the kind of, the point that I'm making there is.

To get your customers that are mowing to even know that you do landscaping. You've got to stay in touch with them. Right? Do you use a service, autopilot? What do you use? Like, what do you use?

Like I use yard books, but I know how to use a email marketing system. Like I could use Klaviyo or Klaviyo. I could definitely do that.

Yep. Mailchimp. There's a whole bunch out there. And the goal there is just to make sure they know about those other services. And that's what the monthly one click SMB or newsletter or whatever is trying to help them do. And just to know that you do those services because last year you had a thousand dollars per customer for the year, right? Yeah. The goal is to get that above 2000 and you can definitely do that through literally, hey, we're going to pitch spring cleanups to all 75 of these people. Like, as soon as the snow's gone, I'd be sending them all your 75 people in email. I guarantee you get 15 to 20 of them on spring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But what I did last year was when I sent them the customer agreement, they. They could check off if they wanted to spring, clean up a bush treatment of mulch, and then I would give them an estimate on it. So, I mean, you know, do you charge per cut?

Do you charge per cut right now?

Right, yeah, per cut.

So why don't you just have a start time where you. Do you send them a new agreement every year?

Yeah, that's. Yeah. Do you think I should do that still?

Well, the problem with that is you're basically sending them an agreement at the beginning of the year and asking what services they want for the whole year. The problem with that is there's no pain. Like, when you send them that agreement, there's no leaves in the ground for them to think about fall cleanups. Right. So the goal with the what with the emails every month is to pinpoint their pain. Got it. Based upon your climate. Right. And. And so I would say, hey, look, I'm charging per. Per cut, and you don't have to sign an agreement. You don't have to do anything like that. I'm just going to start you when we start our mowing season in April or whatever it is, and then you're going to, every single month, send them a different service based upon the time of year.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, absolutely. I can do that.

And you'll send those emails to your non clients as well, like people in your database that aren't mowing customers, because you probably have, I imagine, 100, 200 other, you know, contacts in your database. Maybe.

100. Yeah.

Yeah. So, like, if you. Yeah, so if you have those, those will eventually become. If you keep them warm, they'll eventually become a customer again. Like the other day at the Bellingham shop, they had someone from 2017 that we did work for last all of a sudden become a customer again. Right. We're literally talking about four years of just staying in touch with them, keeping them warm, and then they just click a button. Right. So the goal is to keep that alive, and that's how you're going to get more landscaping jobs, is just hitting their pain points. Like, if you do the agreement, they're not thinking about an outdoor, you know, landscaped area for their summer barbecue. Right. They just had snow on the ground. So the goal is to hit them during their pain point.

Okay, okay, I'll do that. So I should go out there by myself? Not by myself. Have an employee with me. You're saying, you know, once, once it starts, you know, it's 50 degrees out, once the snow is off the ground, go knock on doors, go drop off the door hangers once the grass starts growing. I, I've already contacted two people. Then they've cut grass before. I'm not sure if that's, you know, a good thing or bad because they're not going to do it. Like, you know, we do it.

But.

How should I go about it? So, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, so what I would do in terms of ramping up for that first employee is I would make sure you sell enough spring cleanups to book your schedule out for like a week or two and then you go hire someone because you're going to get momentum. Right. So right now if you went and hired someone, half their time would probably be spent just doing door hangers and things and you can't really afford that right now.

I wouldn't want them to do that. Yeah, I would hire them only when I have the work.

Yep. So like, you know, if you went out and you did the one click estimate email, or you didn't email to all your 75 people and got, you know, five, 10 cleanups on the schedule, you hire that person in. The reason I'd say that they should work with you is really for training aspects before they go solo. Right. Even if, even if they're a good worker and all the rest of it, like you want them to develop, you know, certain habits, certain skill set. Even if they're on P4P, you still will probably want to train them for a while and they're going to be kind of your cultural standard. And in terms of work ethic and speed and all the rest of it. So you know, the second employee will you default to what the first employee standards are. So you want that first person to be pretty solid. So like, especially when you have like a couple trucks, how I kind of like to do it, like they come work with you in the truck for like a week, for example, kind of get to know the hang of everything, how you roll, what your speed implications are. Then they go out in that second truck and then when you get your second hire, they're going to start with you in your truck. So again, you kind of set the standard and then you kick them off into the other person's truck and then that two man crew and then how.

Does the P4P work with two people?

You just split it in half. So there's definitely going to be a drop in kind of like their hourly rate. But usually there's a balance, right? Because, like, sometimes they like it for morale and all the rest of it, but you just split in half. So, for example, if they. If they earn $500 solo and they make a percentage of that, but then if they do two people together, they might make 900 and they're going to 450 each. Right. In terms of.

All right, yeah, that makes sense.

What types of things do you think I should be doing right now? Just creating the door hanger, Creating the. The email pieces that I should be sending out during the season.

Yeah, like, right now you have the time, right. So I definitely. If you can, and if, you know, you get crazy in the summer, I would, you know, like you said, create the emails now. Okay. So for example, like, when do you guys start mowing? Usually.

Early April.

Okay. So I'd imagine, like, March is kind of your time is assuming that there's no snow, you spring cleanups. Yeah, yeah. So like, I would do right now, like, next, while there's still snow on the ground, I'd be, you know, creating those emails for the whole year based on when, you know, certain services are needed. I would get the door hangers ready. I would really get everything ready to go for two. You kind of have two different phases. March, all of your door hangers and door knocking should be bush trimming and spring cleanups. Right. Like, you're literally as you're walking down the driveway, kind of like looking for what needs to be done so you can talk to them about it. And then you're going to pivot in April directly to mowing. Right. So I think in the, you know, you only have a couple more weeks till really it's going to be go time for spring cleanups. And so in that time, I would be focusing on, you know, if you just got a truck, like get all that dialed in, get all that stuff taken care of. So come March, you can really focus on spring cleanups. Because if you really start to sell, like two or three a day via door to door, you should be able to go out and hire someone, then get them up and trained before April when you actually start mowing.

Okay.

When they. When they could go in the second truck and not to start mowing separately from you.

Right. Okay. So, yeah, all right. Kind of makes sense.

So, yeah, just all work with them during the spring Cleanups and then they'll understand my standards and then. But they're going to cut with me. I'm going to cut the 75 accounts and then once we're done cutting the accounts, he's going to come with me to try to get more work or should I have work already? You know, like.

I'm just, I'm not going to, I don't think I'm going to be, get as much work like that. I've never actually tried to though, so I'm not sure how, how much work I'll actually receive off knocking on doors.

Well, if you're actually going to be, you know, doing it like a part time job, almost like three, four hours a day. Yeah, I mean the door hangers and the knocking on doors, right?

Yeah. What else do I have to do?

Because I'm just saying like if you're working, right, like, so if you're working, doing cleanup and then you're doing it a few hours after and all the rest of it, if you're doing that much door knocking, you should be able to get a couple leads a day. Right?

Right.

And if you're really diligent about closing every single one, using the closed technique of saying, hey, what price needs to work for you? I want to do business, what can I do to earn your business? I don't suggest that any other stage. But when you're solo and when you're just trying to get momentum at the very beginning, right. It's the only time you'd ever use that close. But if you're doing that, I really feel like you'll be able to fill your schedule pretty quickly. And then the goal then is, okay, the 75 million customers, that first employee, ideally they're mowing, you know, all day long and they get all the 75 done, you're still doing doors, you're getting more jobs from that, you're filling the schedule. And like really, you probably end up, especially the spring, your second truck for you end up being like the cleanups and project kind of truck. And the employee would be the mowing truck, right? Because going door to door, you're going to be able to fill your schedule much faster with cleanups. Because you go to a house and say, hey, yeah, you want something done? Okay, that's like two days worth of work. If you sell five mowing customers in the day, that's like literally a couple hours worth of work. Right. So in terms of booking your schedule out, you'll do that very quickly. If your door knocking, if you're talking to people, and then if you're really diligent about once you send the estimate, following up with them and using that close.

Okay. All right. Yeah, absolutely. All right. It all makes sense. And then. Yeah, I mean, that's it, really, you know. So what else do you know?

Yeah, no, I'm. I was just looking at your website, so. Looks good. Did you make this one?

Yeah.

Good work, man.

Thank you. I've tried a couple of drop shipping stores, Shopify, so I kind of understand how to make it user friendly and, you know, not put too many colors in and clear. Call to action.

When did you have this done?

I just did the website a couple days ago.

Cool. No, this alone will really help you this year. Right.

And then you can put the pixel on there once you know, there's some more revenue and you can create. Is it. I haven't watched your video on the Facebook ads, but are you just targeting like, landscape services, lawn care services? And then you have the pixel behind on the thank you page after the estimate, so you can see the people who actually purchased or, you know, went through and that created lookalikes from that.

Yeah, we. We target based on age in our target market. Right. In terms of Facebook ads. And then we will send them to a landing page so that we know whoever comes from that landing page was from that ad. Right. And so in my mind, it's even better than a pixel just because I know all I really care about is leads. I care about how many people actually submitted their information.

And so definitely you could set up a pixel, though, on Facebook ads. Honestly, though, in terms of looking at what you have in cash, I would be saying, like, the door knocking and the door hangers is probably where you want to start. Right. Okay. And the Facebook would be fine for some, like, brand awareness and things, but you don't have enough money to really move the needle a lot on Facebook. Right. Yeah. And so I would take the 500, get a ton of door hangers. I do lots of door knocking. I do two different types of door hangers. One for spring cleanups, one for mowing. And if you're okay with talking to people and knocking on their door, which most people aren't, you have a huge leg up in terms of your close percentage. Right. Like, if you do a thousand door hangers, you'd be lucky to get three or four calls, whereas if you do a hundred knocking on doors and talking to people, you probably will get one job from that. Right.

Okay. All right.

Yep.

Keep going.

Especially if you're creative with just like the way you're walking the door, looking what they need in terms of spring cleanup. And then when it comes to mowing season, you're literally just looking at. Okay, is the lawn overgrown? Okay, this is a great candidate, right?

Okay. Absolutely. So what's a successful season looking like for me this year?

Yeah, like giving your. Your cash on hand. You've already bought the truck. Is the truck paid off?

Of course, yes.

Okay, cool. So you have everything paid off. I wouldn't buy any more equipment. I hereby tell you to not buy equipment.

No more equipment. All right.

No walk behind.

I only have one blower, though.

Okay, well, you need a blower, but I'm talking like, I'm talking like trucks and mowers. Honestly, like, like a stand on, you don't need it. Right? You got two or. Sorry, a walk behind. You got two stand on. Are they pretty decent or they falling apart?

One has 300 hours. The other one has a replacement mower with 2,500 hours. Like, it's, it's. It's not. It doesn't cut the, you know, it's a backup.

Yep. The 300 hour one. Did you buy that one new?

I did. 3200. Well, no, not new. I bought it with like 250 hours.

Got it.

I just bought it last year.

Yeah. From a dealer?

No.

How much does that cost?

3,200.

Cool. What? What, what is it like a what, what brand?

It's a 40 A R John Deere stand on.

Oh, yeah. Cool. Yeah, I know, exactly.

Kawasaki. And then my. I have a 52R John Deere stand on both the same motor.

And the 52 is the one with a ton of hours, right?

Correct. And at the end of the season last year when I was doing the cleanups, it was leaking a little bit of oil through the oil filter. So I'm not sure if there's a larger problem or it was just the oil filter seal.

Well, this is, this is the thing. Do you go by Alex or Alexander?

I go by Alex. My dad calls me Alexander.

Okay.

The thing is this. With your average MO price being 25 bucks and you have.

I think I could get it to 27.

Really? Yeah. I could close my price, but based upon that, I would imagine that you have pretty small lot sizes, right? You said everyone's pretty close together.

Oh, yeah.

Like, I don't think you even need walk on, walk behinds and stand ons. I would. If I was, I'd be going the push mower route because, like, you Know our average in our markets around 45, $50 per cut and we still use push mowers only.

Okay. And then how do I tell the people who have worked at other places that, you know, I've been sitting all day on the zero turns to walk, to cut with the walk behind? Because I know if I went to a company and they said, well I did, I cut and then I went to this company and they were push mowing it and I'm like, are you serious?

But it wasn't P4P and I wasn't making 20, 22 bucks an hour. I was making like 14.

That's the difference right there. Right. Like, okay, I, that's going to be the difference is their ability to make more on P4P and that's why it's so important that they are making above base pay. Like you can't be, like they can't be working harder and making the same amount as if they would work somewhere else. Right. And so, but if they can make four, five dollars, six dollars more per hour.

It makes a lot of sense for them. Right. And so that's, that's the, that's the thing I'd be thinking about.

Okay. And then I said it was 25 bucks and it would take 20 minutes to cut those houses. That's with the commercial. That's maybe not, I think probably it could get done in 20 minutes with a pushmo.

It'd be a commercial push more obviously. Right.

But like I have, it's a residential, but it's kind of like it's the Time Master. But you have the Toronto. Right.

We have the, the Exmark 30s. But like honestly with the size of lots that you're talking about 21 inches, mowers would work fine. Okay. Like we, until last year we were using 21 inches. Right.

I won't have to use them. I won't have to use.

This is the thing, this is the thing. Like.

If you say say $1,200 for a Honda, you know, commercial push mower. Right. Versus say $6,000 for a stand on or a walk behind new, right?

Yeah.

That differential, the three or four grand, if you spent that in advertising, that's what's going to lead to the growth of the business. Getting the piece of equipment won't move the actual business forward. It will make things easier on the employees and you do have to compensate for that in the fact that P4P should be making them more money. Right, right. They are working harder, it's harder on their body. But if they want to make 5, 6, 7 dollars more per hour compared to everyone else. And you know, your local competitors, that becomes a real discussion for a younger person that's looking to make money.

Okay, all right.

So.

But so what, the guy use the, the John Deere this year when he's out there cutting? And then I'm continually. I'm doing landscaping jobs. He's out there cutting. I'm receiving this revenue. Right. How am I going to throw the money into marketing during the season?

Would I be working consistently after I am doing those? After I've done the door hangers and then after I've done the knocking on doors and I booked up my schedule for a couple of weeks? Well, the work life, I feel like it's going to run out.

Yeah, but the reason you feel that way is because you kind of had two years of plateaued growth. Right.

Like, I haven't tried to even grow it at all. I was just. The first year I had to pay it all back. That was, it was bad. I was completely broke last year. It was the first feel for actual money coming in. And the relief, like, yeah, okay, I, you know, it wasn't. It was actually worth it to do that and be broke for a year. And then this year. Well, and last year with the coronavirus, it wasn't cool to go and knock on doors. You know, people were scared. So this year, I actually want to put the. Put the foot on the gas 100%. My work ethic is, It's. I feel like it's above, stand above, you know, average. So you tell me what to do, and I'm going to do it 100%.

Like, I think. I think, honestly, if you did nothing besides.

Do door hangers only, you double this year. The reason that you got the. You have the website and now you're actually trying to grow.

But a couple things on your website, I'm gonna share my screen.

Yeah.

You want to make it clear in terms of what areas you service. So when I come to this page, everything looks good. Besides the fact that I don't know where you are, like the regions. Is that the actual place you're servicing? No.

Yeah, absolutely. I can put, I can put. If you scroll up, I can put it under the phone number down there, or I could probably put it in the header where we service. Yeah.

You either do like a badge or do something underneath your phone number. Exactly. Like serving X, Y, and Z locations. Right, Got it.

Yeah.

Just so there's some clarity there. But, like, this is great. You'll do good on this. But the reason that, like, in terms of, like I was saying, like, you plateaued the past two years. This year, what's going to happen if you actually commit to, hey, March, I'm doing, I'm selling spring cleanups. You're going to fill your schedule and someone else's very quickly. Then we switch to April. We really go all in on the mowing. And we're trying to go from 75 to 125 mowing customers. Right. So we need 50 mowing customers in the month of April. And so that means we need to get out about two per day.

Okay.

Okay. Which is not easy. That's a lot of door hangers, a lot of knocking. But that's your window of time. That's your one month. You've got to go all in on mowing and get the 50 people. And you're only gonna be able to do that if you have another person mowing the lawns all day long. Now, at the end of April, you should have a 50 person route. They should have a 75 person route. And now you're upselling every single month landscaping jobs.

Okay. And then one person, they should be doing the 75. And then I'll have the 50 in my mind.

Yes. Because if 75 divided by five, they're looking at maybe 10 to 12 lawns a day because some of them are probably BI weekly. So 10 to 12 a day, that's easy. Especially these smaller lots. Like, it's very, very possible to do 75 in a week, especially if your average is that low.

Absolutely. So when I have the 50 and then I'm upselling, I'm upselling, like bush trimming and, you know, mulch. Oh, yeah, mulch. I'm doing the mulch by myself.

Yep. So like, let's say, for example, right now we are in February. So as soon as the snow is gone, I'd be doing spring cleanups.

Okay.

And then we got March. I'd be doing a different spring cleanups one, but it'd be just a different pictures, a different call to action. So. So, for example, in February, it's going to be like Springer's around the corner, get ready kind of thing. March is going to be like, the snow's gone.

Clean up your leaves, pull the weeds out of your bed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And like, I started to cut you off. This is being recorded. Are you going to send this to me?

Yeah, I'll send it to you.

Okay, cool. All right.

I'm writing it down, too. April. April and May are going to be your mow. You're going to pitch mowing right. And you're not going to pitch on those months, you're not going to pitch mowing to your existing mowing customers. You're only going to pitch it to the people who don't have mowing. Right. So on those months for the people who do have mowing, you're going to pitch something like mulch. Installation of mulch.

Got it? Got it. What? So they're going to be doing the 75, and I'm going to just. I shouldn't have another employee.

You're going to end up needing one. You're going to end up needing one. I'm going to guess by May 1, you'd need end up need. Or throughout May, because now you've got all these new mowing customers in April. Now you're getting these leads coming in from landscaping because you're actually doing a good job of communicating with the customers. I really feel like middle of May, you'd need another employee.

Okay, let me send you my route sheet. And then I did. I kind of made budgeted hours. Let me see. And then just to make sure I'm doing the math the right way.

When they're cutting and I'm putting it in the P4P. Let me know when you get that.

Okay, I'm opening it up. Yep, I see your address and budgeted hours.

Okay, so say they cut. Say they cut 10 of those.

Right.

Do the first 10 until 11 West Windermere. All right.

Okay. So these. These ones here?

Yeah. All right, so how would we do the math?

Your budget. Your budget rate is $80 an hour.

That's what I put. And I think it's doable. So let's shoot for 80. And it's probably gonna end up being 65, 70.

So these first 10 is usually like a day's worth of work.

I mean, I feel like I could probably get down myself down to Royal. 1103 Royal. Those are all right next to each other. The royal. So down to 15.

Yep.

So say, say somebody say I cut that. It took me nine and a half hours.

How would we put that into the P4P system? So let's go on the P4P website.

Well, we honestly don't even have to. It's. This is really, really easy because there's no products or materials. Right. So, okay, for example, I can't. I can't edit this.

Yeah, let me, let me add it up real quick.

Just do like Equal sum.

Yep. It is 439.

Perfect. So 439 and then do you want to do a third of labor revenue on an employee?

You tell me. What do you think? Should I do a third or.

That's kind of. That's kind of the standard we start with.

Yeah, I know.

Per hour I think you need. Fine. Like what's your base pay around here?

You can get away with paying somebody 15 bucks an hour. Like a foreman. Right. The Foreman's would make 17 bucks an hour. That's 17 is like on the 18's on the high end. He has to be an ace.

Yeah. So if you did $15 as your base, I think you'll be safe because let's say, for example. Okay, so how much was this total again?

439. I think you have it up there too? Oh, yeah. You see it, right?

I can't see 439. Yeah, I see what you did. Oh, I see. Gotcha. Okay, so 439. Do we divide that by three? That's a hundred.

You did 439 divided by three. Where's the three at? What's the three coming from? A third.

Oh, a third. Yep. Okay, so if you do that, it's 140.

Can you do that for me? 439 divided by three.

One sec.

146 at 33 cents.

Okay. How long would that route take you?

I'll just say nine and a half hours.

Okay, so in that scenario, he's only gonna make 4, $146. And if he breaks down the math, he's really gonna make like $15.20 an hour. It's not very good.

All right, let's say if you hit the budgeted hours, though, because I think that the budget hours there, he would make a lot more. Let me. I have to add him up.

Well, because the budget hours, the budget hours really doesn't matter when it comes to people because they had a percentage of the labor revenue. Right? Now if the budget hours aren't accurate, that's what's going to lead to the issue. So, for example, when you add up all of these, he's only going to complete about six.

Six budgeted hours. So what that means is if he's taking 10 hours to do this, there's like 40% waste.

Right.

Or the job, they're taking longer than budgeted hours. Now if you're confident on these budget hours, like, you know, these are accurate.

I'm not. I think, I think somebody could hit them. But when I Just said that it would take me nine and a half hours. That might have been way overkill because when I did the math originally, I was like, they're going to make like 22 bucks an hour. So maybe they get down to Frazo down there on 28 or 26.

Right. If that's the case, that's when they're making really good money on PvP. Right. So the only way you know that is if these budget hours are actually accurate.

Okay, so what should I do? Start, obviously.

Timing each account and then adjusting the price after I've timed them over time.

Right. Like over time. If you consistently see that, okay, this one's not taking 0.5 hours, it's taking 0.8 hours. Regardless of how fast I'm running. That means that this price is too low, right?

Yeah.

And so.

It really comes down to tracking, like you said. And then, you know, what is actually possible to get done a day, because they can get all of these done in a day, that person's gonna probably be making like 22, $23 an hour. And so that's something you definitely want to. Again, what you should do is, unfortunately, you're gonna be hiring someone before mowing season. But what you really should do if you did, if that wasn't the case, is like, run P4P on yourself. Right? And if you can go back to last year, add up all the revenue made in like a specific day because you have yard book, you can do this. Go back to a day that, you know, it was like a full day, you did really well. Okay, Add up all the revenue, divide it by 3. What would you have been getting on P4P and then ask yourself, like, is that actually.

Possible?

See, well, last year I had an employee, he was my best friend. I just paid him 500 bucks salary a week, and we finished. No, not 500 bucks. Hour a week. That was the first season. Second season I paid him 15 bucks an hour and we finished the route like two and a half days, and he would get like 20, 20 hours a week.

So what you can do though is like say, for example, if you guys knocked out X amount of properties, you take that revenue, divide it by two, and then you'd have the amount per person. Then you'd be able to know. Okay, like, is this actually going to work when someone's solo?

Right. Okay. Yeah.

Because at $80 per hour for budgeted hours, for. For rate. Yeah. Like, there's no reason why someone shouldn't be able to make 20 plus dollars an hour on P4P.

If they can't, if, like a good day, they're still only making like 4, 14 or 15. Your. Your budget hours are off. Okay. And then huge amount of drive time.

There's a lot of drive time on that route, on the first couple houses on the route.

So I. I'll try to fill in that. I'll try to fill in the. The route where the drive times.

Large. Right.

And it's like economy economies of scale. Like, as you get more mowing customers, you not necessarily expanding how far out you're working. So what happens is, like, if you go from 75 mowing customers inside of the circle to now 150 mowing customers inside the circle, you immediately become half as much drive time. Right? Because, like, you might go from here and drive all the way around for a route, but now you only have to go here to get the same amount of mowing customers. Right?

Yeah.

You've kind of got your territory kind of like where you want to work. Everything that's inside of that now becomes much more efficient.

Right? Okay, definitely. All right.

What else? Yeah, so I'll just review this. But, yeah, you kind of gave me a game plan. You answered my question. I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much.

So for March sell, the cleanups, go all in, knock on doors, the door hangers, if they don't answer, and then I should have enough work.

For the cleanups, have my guy come in, bust my boat with him so he can see the standard that I have, so he can understand the culture of the company of, you know, the. The premium standard and working hard. He'll go out there.

We're not going to cut together ever.

I would say, like the first week or two, you might have to just to kind of train him up, depending on how much experience they have. But the goal is to get them out running in the mowing route themselves so that way you can focus on continually selling as well as you're going to still be working. It's just that when you're out doing your 50 lawns, you're also doing door hangers, talking to the neighbors, trying to upsell your current customers on mulch, all the rest of it.

Okay. And then I have the two guys. I talked to two guys from Facebook applications. I had people come in. One of the. One of the guys, he has cut before, he says he has some type of, like, mental health issues. So that could be a reason he doesn't. He wouldn't come in.

He says, like, he's a hard worker. You never know, and then. But there's another guy who has done landscaping, lots of landscaping for big companies.

But has never cut grass before. Do I have to just go with my gut on who I think I should have with me, or would you want. Would you pick the person who's cut grass before?

It really depends the way you want to take the company. Right. Like, if you want to focus on the simple services and things like that, especially like this coming year, most of the value in having an employee is going to be in mowing, honestly. And so to bring in a big landscaper type person, they're going to probably feel disenfranchised because, like, you're not going to be installing $50,000 paver patios. Right. So that might not be a good option in terms of the other person. The fact that they brought that part up is actually a good sign, usually because they're at least honest about it. But it's definitely something you would need to keep in check because, like, if in the middle of the busiest season they're like, I just can't get out of bed, then you're gonna have a problem. Right, Right. So it's something to keep in mind. But the fact that they brought it up is also a good thing. It's just that you'd probably need a backup, and that's tough when you have one employee because so much is relying on them showing up.

Yeah. So what's like, the worst case scenario that could happen this year? If I, you know, was pushing it, I they somebody like he. I lose my employee, and then I just have to go all out and try to find another guy to come and go with me as fast as possible.

It's a good problem to have, honestly. The reason is because at your size, you have. You're able to control that first employee. Like, it's easy to manage them.

Because they're usually. They're gonna see you every single day. You're gonna know where they're at all the time. They are. You've trained them personally, so it's easier to manage that first employee. Like, first employees are actually pretty easy to find. It's like fifth and sixth employees that are hard because they're not seeing you all the time, you're not on every one of their jobs, et cetera. And so I wouldn't worry about that too much because at the end of the day, if you were like, just dying because in the middle of the spring rush, two of your employees left and you're stuck, you could go out and you go hire someone for 20 bucks an hour. You get a ton of applications. You get good people. Right away. You get. You won't be able to afford that base pay, but you would just get the work done while you go out and try to find someone. I wouldn't overthink that part too much. At the very end of the day, if you're running a good business and you can afford to pay someone short term, a lot of money to kind of fill in the gaps, you're okay. But that being said, if you're hiring or interviewing people throughout the next two or three months, you should be able to find one or two good people.

Okay. And then for the landscaping job that I'm going to do, you said don't buy any more equipment. What about a trailer?

I would definitely buy a trailer before I would buy a walk behind.

Yeah.

Especially when it comes to cleanups and things like that. However, I would allow the demand of the work to warrant buying the trailer. I wouldn't go buy a trailer now in expectation of getting more landscaping jobs. I would wait until. Okay, I had multiple guys bring me two deliveries this week because I didn't have a trailer. I had to take four loads to the dump instead of one because I didn't have a trailer. Like, when that starts happening all the time, that's when you go buy the trailer, right? Until then, put one of those tarp things on the back of your bed of your truck that you can move debris out. That'll do 90% of cleanups. And then down the road, you can start thinking about, like, the trailer and investing in that.

Okay. And then during the year, the first revenue will be from the spring cleanups. But then after that should, like, it doesn't. It doesn't matter because it's all based on budgeted hours, right. The type of services, like, do you just kill it on bush trimming or do you kill it on mulch? Or is it just, you know, for your experience?

The goal is to build your recurring revenue with the mowing, right? And that's going to be a slow build. And then every single month, we're trying to sell a different service based upon what service is in season. Right? And so you're going to go from, like I said, in February and March, you're doing spring cleanups to April, May, you're doing mowing, and then slash bark mulch. Then we come into June. It's like, okay, time to do, like, let's do fertilization. Then July, it's like, okay, projects, because now it's dry like all that. It's just every single month trying to keep selling the person.

Got it. Thank you so much. I think that's it on the time. Anything else you think I should know?

No, I think that's really good. I'd just say your website alone is gonna help you a lot. That's gonna build you a lot of just value to the customer in terms of selling. If you can do the door to door thing, I'd really, really recommend it. No, don't come across salesy. When you come to the door, it's more or less introducing yourself. And then when you do the estimate, just keep in your mind like you wanna close every single one of those. Unless you're booked out a week or two. Right. Until you're booked out a week or two, you want to close every job. And if that means you got to give them 20% off because they said it was too expensive, do it right. So I would be doing those estimates the next day. I'd be calling them and saying, hey, just following up. Did you get my estimate? Yeah, it's a little too expensive. You know what, Mr. Jones, I'd love to earn your business. What can we do to make this work? What price does it need to be at? And if they met you, they senior young guy trying to get started, they're not going to go like 10%, right. They're going to, they're going to use you.

They're not going to try to cut me in half.

Right. So I just do. I'd get those jobs, get that momentum, get that first employee in and then that momentum will build. Right. Like buying a trailer is no problem. When you have two employees working full time, you're stretched into the max and you're like, okay, this is like an easy purchase. Like I know I have the work coming in, I'm booked two or three weeks out with projects like that's when you have the momentum to go buy the equipment. And I think you're going to get there 100%.

Okay. All right.

I think the goal for 20, 21 should really be at least 150. At least double 50.

Okay. All right, 150. And then I'll probably book another call mid season to check in and get some more advice.

That sounds good.

All right. And then I got one question for your landscaping course. Because I was in the drop shipping game for a while, there were a bunch of kids killing it from selling courses. How well do you do selling your courses, like with your YouTube videos? I think what you should do is focus on creating, like, making the people watch the whole thing. Right. There was this one video that I watched. I'll send it to you. He like this one. He grew his YouTube channel a million subscribers in a year. But it was all based on strategy with the videos, right? And he would hook them in the first couple seconds and then show a sneak peek of what they're going to see, right? And then they keep on watching more and more and more. And I think if you, if you do that, you're going to grow in the. The lawn care niche. You know, like Brian, like Brian's killing it because, you know. Right. But you have the value, right? You have the value and you just need a couple viral videos like that. And then I think your core sales will skyrocket. And that's where crazy money is, because it's. There's so much profit on, you know, having the. And then I think you could double the price. I'm not sure. But I bought a course for $2,000 for drop shipping. I'm not sure about the market where people are buying courses for the lawn care. I don't know if somebody would drop a thousand on it. But have you ever played with the price?

So two things. First of all, we're trying to do better at the video thing. I got a new video.

I know you are.

And it's lucky to start filling with a few things.

The other thing is, though, in terms of the course, I hate selling courses. Hate it. Passion.

Why? It's money. Don't. Don't people say that too? People who actually make money in drop shipping, they're like, I'm not going to sell a course. I say, yeah, I get it, but it's money. You're just being a capitalist.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. The thing, the problem with it is it's the perception that there's. There is so many. Like with drop shipping, especially social media.

You'Re thinking about that because you don't think, well, your course has the value. Your course, the $2,000 course that I bought, had a quarter of the information on dropshipping for lawn care. Like, it wasn't even compared to it. So don't feel bad selling the course. You need to embrace it like that. You can kill it by selling courses. Like, I don't know if you want to tell me, but, like, do you sell like a course a week or.

No, it's usually. It's usually one or so. It's accelerated the past like six months. Right? So, like, it used to Be like, I share my numbers every month. In terms of actual course numbers, it used to be like two or three a week or one or two a week, and now it's more like one day almost.

Right. So what a day. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. Part of it, though, is, like, I want to make it accessible for people just starting out, because, like, the course is really for newbies. Right. And. And I feel like if it was two grand, for example, I would tell someone, don't buy the course. Go do.

You're right. Yeah.

And so for me, it's like, I have to justify the value of it. And would I spend that much money? And to me, like, yes, I would. Especially for, like, the P4P software and things.

Yeah. But I have $500. Yeah, $500. I think it's definitely worth it because if you're going in there and you have no idea what you're doing, the $500, it's worth it. Just so you can see, there's kind of like a game plan. You know, there's a definite game plan where you can say, all right, I need to do this, this, and this and this. Because if I never had it and if I never watch any YouTube videos, I would have no idea what I'm doing.

You just kind of get. You kind of do that recently then, and kind of. That's the goal for kind of growth next year.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I did. And then. Have you ran ads for your course?

No. Why not? No, I'm not going to. I don't want to make money on the course. I don't like. My thing is, I don't want to make money from selling information I wanted to sell. I want to build businesses. Right. Like, I get it is. It is true. I get what you're saying.

It's too easy, though.

It's too easy.

That's what it is.

I just think there's a lot of predatory courses out there. There's a lot of people selling information that is just recycled, and I do not want to be lumped into that. Like, I. Like, if I ever had something public, like, I know it sounds really lame. I don't really care what people think, but the one thing I would probably like just shut the whole course down is someone, like, went and made some sort of post and said, like, the only reason I make money is because of my online. I just shut it down.

Yeah, see, you just don't watch the video. Just don't watch the video. If you ever see the title, just don't watch it. That's what you gotta do, man. Who cares, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. All right, man.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.