50% of Your Business Could Disappear Overnight!
This is a transcript of a June 3, 2025 YouTube conversation (hosted by Mike Andes) with Brady Schiller and a co-owner about operating and scaling a luxury lawn-care business. Key themes: customer retention after an acquisition, pricing strategy (recent across-the-board increases), lead generation and marketing (mailers ready), operational constraints (routing, crew efficiency, Jobber usage), financial visibility (limited bookkeeping, considering QuickBooks delegation), capital structure and liabilities, and partnership governance (50/50 LLC; need for buy-sell/addendum). Concrete status noted: ~140–145 mowing customers (recently gained ~25), estimated capacity to ~200 customers before needing more equipment/staff, roughly $40,000 total debt, about $14,000 cash in the bank, average yard priced ~55 (units implied dollars), crew productivity target ~150 per crew per hour (two-person crew → $75 per person), lost about 10–12 customers after price increases, using Jobber (Grow plan) and a bookkeeper handling payroll/taxes, routing problems in Jobber causing possible manual routing.
Questions this video answers
About 140–145 customers (they also said they had gained ~25 recently).
Roughly 50–60 more (capacity ~200 mowing customers).
About $40,000 (mostly truck and mower debt).
Approximately $14,000.
$150 per crew per hour (two-person crew → $75 per person).
Chapters
The difference between marriage and this is like you do not do till death do a spark. Eventually you will want to split. Because someone gets divorced, 50% of their shares is going to the other person's walking out the door and wants to spit all over them. You just don't want to ruin three, five years of your life that you've invested in this because of someone else's bad decision. When you lost those customers in the first few months, four months, do you not have to pay for them?
No.
Nope. If you lose them, if we lost them due to like, if we, if, if our guys go there and tear property up and we lose them, that's on us.
Yeah, yeah.
But if they dropped us because we weren't him.
Okay, cool.
It was a back end thing. So it was like, it was payments of 4,000. It was like a 4,000 at the first, like when we met him and signed the contract. And then it was like 8,000, 8,000, 8,000 or something like that. So it was. Anything that got totaled off came off of the later payments. Got it. So that's why I ended up being, I think we did like 4000, 4200 or something like that.
Okay, cool.
So.
All right, so current state of affairs. How many mowing customers we have now going into this spring?
Right around 140, 145 somewhere around there. We're, we still have outstanding contracts with a few places. So there, it could be more. And then there's, I mean still people are still getting back to me on like making sure that I've reached out and kind of up prices this year because like you said with the clients that were cheaper, I mean we have the name luxury for a reason. We try like our product is better than everybody else's in the area just from a confidence standpoint. And I mean our reviews on our website is like pretty much blows everybody else out of the water. So. And that's what we focus on as we try to get the higher end clients. But we also, you know, if you are, you know, an average house in the area, that we also, that it doesn't change product wise. Like we offer what we offer and we charge for that. So it's kind of, I mean, we, I mean, I think on my spreadsheet just from the clients that we had already had from the last year, it upped by $800 a week roughly from. And that was from 120 clients. We've gained about 25 already.
Okay.
So because we, we did raise our prices and it has been great Like, I think we'll make more with the clients we have now than we did last year with the mess of. Yeah. Because we had a lot of low, low clients. So yeah, we did raise our number. We did raise our pricing last year. We didn't know our numbers too. We, you are big about that. So we, I know his dad came in and his dad's a big number guy. My dad's big number guy. We sat down and we did numbers and we kind of figured out what we need, man. Hour away.
The problem is now is it's not really a problem, but our prices are higher. Yeah, we're profiting good. And because like we know a guy that we just did a project against. We didn't know he was doing it, but we came in at our number and he saw us there, he came in at his number, he's like, what did you guys get it for? Well, it was like 300 more and they're going with us. So like our reputation's getting out there and people are starting to go with us because who we are, which is great. But I don't know how much higher we can get, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah. Like ultimately, when it comes to price increases, if you have enough leads coming in, it gives you the confidence to raise prices.
Yeah, right.
If Tomorrow you had 50 leads coming, you're like, okay, well we're raising prices across the board so we can absorb some of these new customers.
Yes, right.
So ultimately, you know, in the land of leads pouring in, everything kind of gets better because you have more confidence to go raise the prices. So. Okay, cool. So from, from your perspective, where's the current constraint in the business? What can I help with?
From your perspective, you can go first.
What's our strength?
Yeah, constraint.
Constraint. Yeah. Where's the current constraint? The business like and like what's the goal? Are we trying to build like a million dollar business? Are we trying to become profitable this year? What's the current goal?
This year is profit. Yeah, I think we're pretty good at where we're at. Like, I mean obviously the high end clients will still pick those up. But, but so like we don't need to get everything anymore. Like before you're growing, you're taking everything you can get. So I mean there, I think with our prices being higher when we're getting leads and I mean it's steady coming in. So I would say just become more profit profitable is our biggest thing that we discussed about. And because like we don't really need anything else. Right. Now we need to max out what we have. And that's what you're big on. No wasted things in the parking lot. So, like, that's what we kind of did. Like, our three trucks, they pretty much run every day. We stay lean with the two mowing crews and the one property maintenance crew, landscape crew. So last year we kind of ran every, you know, guys and guys and guys. And you look back on the labor of payroll, it's like, holy cow.
Yeah.
So like, I think right now, like learning we have like the right amount of people, the right amount of trucks, the right amount of equipment, and going out and buying all that stuff in cash. Last year, kind of like we bought trucks, we bought mowers. We don't have to do that no more. So like, if you look at our total debt, it's not terrible. Yeah. Because we rent the shop. Technically. Yeah, we owe on the Zuzu. We got that. But I mean, you can't go out and find a truck and trailer for the same price. We got that.
Yeah, yeah.
Or mowing. We do a lot of work with Bertles out in Dorsey and they had it and they're like, hey, I'm selling this if you guys want to. We do all of our business through them. So we got it for like 20 grand.
Oh, wow.
And I went to the bank. I was like, that was the first loan we, we got. I was like, I want this truck and I don't have the cash to do it. And it was like four hours. So like, oh, yeah, you do it. I was like, that's fine. They're like, yeah, the truck's like $30,000. Yeah, like, we'll get our money out of it. So that's the first thing we got. The Dodge is paid off, the Ford's paid off. We all own one mower. So, like, the struggles to get to the spot, like, hurt. But now we're. This year we can actually become profitable because our debt is very, very low. Actually. Yeah, I think, yeah, I did the numbers last night. It's roughly. Debt wise, it's roughly around 40,000.
Cool. And that's mostly Isuzu, the mower. And then is Takuchi on, on that?
No, that's a buddy of ours.
He.
He moved our pile. I wish we had that thing, but huge.
Yeah.
No, but no, he moves the pile in the back for us sometimes and he's going to help us with a project on Monday next week. So.
And what percentage of the current breakdown is like mowing versus landscape projects? Approximately.
It's tough I'd say mowing last year, we did a lot of big landscapes, but I'd say mowing's probably about 70. Probably 60%, because. Probably 60%.
Yeah.
We have a lot of fertilizer. Like, we. We focus on. I. Obviously a few year videos. You're like, just make. Try to get that customer to pay more throughout the year instead of getting more clients, try to make their annual cost that they're paying you more. So we focused this year on upselling, like bush trimming. Like, we don't even. We'll send out a quote, and they won't ask for it, but we'll say, hey, here's your butchering price. Here's what it would be for fertilizer, spring cleanup, fall cleanup. That way they have everything. And even if they have another guy for. They're like, oh, why would I pay three different people for the services when I could just pay one and just say, hey, you know, you can take it over. So that's what we focused a lot on this year. And the end of last year was like, the bush trimming and the fertilizer and trying to get those up more.
So that's another thing. Last year, we were so tight on the mowing, we didn't have time to upsell.
Right.
And it's so, like, the clients that we took over from that guy, I mean, we couldn't offer. We couldn't do anything else for them because we were so swamped with trying to just catch up all the time. After that first week Landon left, it was catch up all year. We were never ahead. We were never, hey, everything. I mean, there's not many weeks where, like, hey, everything got moat. Yeah, we're always trying to catch up. Right? And you got six guys on payroll, plus us and catching up, catching up on Saturdays. But I get it, because we're maxing them out. I mean, it's. It sucked, but we're like, hey, we need to work. We need to work. And Saturdays come around, they're like, hey, I. I want to huff like, a day. And we understand because. But it was always catch up last year.
Okay.
So we never got ahead. Cool.
In terms of, like, just knowing the numbers. Are you Starting to use QuickBooks now?
We. So we run jobber and we have the grow plan. We. That is where we. Our biggest headache as, like, our business IQ is so bad.
Yeah.
Like, that's where I would say our biggest constraint is. Is, like, we're starting to get better on. Because we were like. He said we were both pretty Much out in the field, quite a bit. So it was. I'm the type of person, which is unfortunate sometimes, but if I'm working, I just want to get the work done and I'll kind of leave my phones in the truck. But I had the business phone and like, I'd get calls and calls and calls, and I'd be like, okay, I got 10 missed calls because I was on landscapes last year. So I'd be there for like six hours and I'd take a break and it'd be like, I got 10 missed calls. I'm like, oh, my God, now I gotta take, you know, an hour to make these phone calls back. Or I can just wait till the end of the day and do that. So it was kind of a back and forth on that. But now it's like I have taken a backseat, I would say, and more focused on this because if the office doesn't run, then it's just like, bad reputation. Like, that's my biggest thing is I will not have a bad reputation on my name. And luxury lawn care is my name and is his name. So people are like, oh, Brady Schiller with luxury lawn care, like, he's a joke. It's like, that's not going to happen. So that's why I focus more on, you know, the phone. But no finances wise. We have somebody who does our payroll and our taxes for payroll and everything like that. And she's also a bookkeeper. But I've been going back and forth on whether or not I think I can handle the QuickBooks or if I should just, you know, let her do that. And I think personally I would rather let her do that because I don't think to do everything the way I want to do it. I would rather delegate that to her and pay somebody to do that who is, like, licensed and everything. Who can run QuickBooks yourself versus me, trying to figure it out. Because we still have so much to figure out too. Like Jobber. We've gone through probably three different product specialists at Jobber. And I'm not trying to talk bad about them, but like, they sound like robots. Yeah, they, like. I asked him a question. Like, we'll have to talk to our supervisors. Like routing. I can't like routing on Jobber. He does a lot of the. He knows the city a lot better than I do. So he knows, you know, the ins and the outs and like, what would be better routing. But, like, say there's. It's called Dunlap Lake, but there's one here on Dunlap Lake. And then there's one here and you can take a road to it, but then there's the lake right in the middle. Well, this one might be closer as the crow flies. So it's going to take us there. But then you got to go up and around all the way up here when you could just go here. And you know, there might be a alley that you can shoot through across the lake and get that way. But this is like, it'll have us literally in the same neighborhood in Ebbets Field in Edwardsville, and there will be one that might be in the next neighborhood over. And there just so happens two cul de sacs back up to each other. So if we route it through automated version, it'll have us go from one cul de sac, get out of that neighborhood, go to the other neighborhood, go in the. So it's just. It's like, literally, it might be better for us to do pen and paper for routes, which is terrible.
Like right now, do we give the guys paper routes out in the field?
Old. They have laptops.
They do. Okay. Okay. So they're still on the app notes in there, Stuff like that. From the QuickBooks perspective, like, I would probably delegate it to her because, like, if it's new to you and you're going in the spring rush, it's just not going to happen.
Yeah.
Like, if you're a week behind on, say, just even processing transactions, you now have 50 of them that you just forget. Like, oh, man, why do we stop at Home Depot for this? I don't remember.
Right.
So I would probably delegate it to her, you know, depending on her cost. Because right now, like, the challenging part is, like, I don't even have numbers to look at. Like, I don't know what percentage is going to labor. I don't know what percentage is going to fuel. I don't know what percentage you go into your shop space. Like you're flying blind because you don't have no metrics. And so especially when you're thinking about profitability, like, if I adjust the expenses and revenue, like I am flying blind. Even the fact that he did the acquisition last year and that came out of cash, if that was marked as an expense, like that probably messes up your taxes. It also is going to mess up the P and L. It looks like he has didn't make money. Right. It was like 390,000 revenue. $279 in profit, according to what I saw. So I didn't see any breakdown.
Exactly. And I have. I don't know if you want to look at it, but I do have bank statements, but that's like a lot. So that's. And that's pretty much how I did that because that's the only. Like I said, I have no financial background. So I literally took those statements, tallied up like deposits, and then, you know, did expenses. And that's how I got that business budget thing, which is like, not how.
It'S supposed to be. The thing with bank statements is like, it's like every time you go in your car, if you have to like check the oil, check the air pressure, you don't do that. You just hop in the car and you hook up the dashboard and at glance, you know what's going on. And that's why the P and L is important. Because even if, like for me coming in, I can't really do much. Right. Because I don't know, like, what is your labor efficiency? You know, how much are you spending on admin versus out in the field labor? Like, there's no numbers and so you don't even know where to attack.
Yeah.
And so I would definitely try to get some numbers on it. Like, do you think there's going to be like 600,000 this year?
Is that what you're shooting for our. Yeah, that's what we're trying to figure out. Like, what profit do we want, like percentage wise, and how much do we want in the account and what number, revenue wise, would we have to do to make that possible without, you know, going out and spending more money on trucks or whatever?
So right now, how much is in the bank?
14,000.
14,000.
Okay, so it's not like crazy bad, but squeaky go going into like probably a fifty, sixty thousand dollar month, Right? Like, April is probably.
Yeah, April. April will be. Yeah. This month I think we're gonna do like 30.
Just gonna ramp it up.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. So still a little bit squeaky on the cash, but. But like, you can cover payroll.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cool. But there's still that pressure, I'm assuming.
Yeah.
You kind of want to make more money in the bank.
Yeah.
Anything less than 50 grand is gonna feel a little bit sweet right now.
Yeah. Our guys have never missed a paycheck ever. We're the ones who miss the paychecks. That's why we want the profit because, like, we have bills too. He has a house, I have a. I have a truck payment. I'm getting ready to get married in December. So it's like.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So it's just a matter of, like, do we want to scale fast or do we want to make this thing more profitable? And I think, like, getting clarity on that is important before we go into it. Because, for example, if you had $100,000 in the bank, okay, great. You're going to be full time administration, you're going to be full time sales, you're going to be an operations person. We're going to scale to a million in a year and a half. Right, right. That's one route very risky when you only have $15,000 in the bank. Like, not. Don't recommend. And so then just a function of. Okay, what. What's the alternative look like? The alternative looks like, let's juice every single lead. So as the leads get in, we fill all the current trucks up. Like right now, if you have 180, 150 customers going, how many do you think you could get before you like, hey, we have to buy another truck for Moen.
Well, so this is another, like for a full time crew. We try to get 75 people per crew. But our idea into this was, is if we have me on, you know, the landscaping side, any other leads that come in, you know, we can throw them on one of those crews. But once it gets to a full day, then I could do a day of mowing, and then the other four days in the week, I can do, you know, the enhancements and the bush trimmings and everything like that. So that way, because we have the trucks for that, we have the trailer and we.
That's what. Yeah, that's what we discussed. It's like, instead of going out and trying to find, like, spend more money, let's maximize what we have because we have another trailer over there and we have enough mowers to do it. Okay.
So if we assume we use those trailers, the trucks we have and the mowers, how many mowing customers can we get before you're like, okay, we have to like, we have to stop taking new customers.
Probably about 200. So probably, well, more clients. Probably about 50 or 60. Yeah.
Okay, so but you basically, 50, 60 more customers, you're at 150. If we hit 200, we're basically like worth using the extra trailer, extra mower to pay. So like my, my then philosophy is we can grow and kind of pro be profit at the same time. That is one, we grow as fast as possible to 200, and then we raise prices, like across the board by at least 20%. Okay. And so if we do that. That will give you the cash flow required. And then you kind of get to scratch ditch of growing and scratch ditch and making more money. And so, like, it's very rare that I actually tell someone, hey, go sprint to this. And you're going to run it pretty hot. But I think you can do it in six to eight weeks.
Yeah.
Right. Get 50 new customers if you juice the leads correctly. And I have a couple ideas around that. Like, juice it, hit that marker. And then as soon as you raise. If you raise 200 customers by 20%, you're. You're going to literally bring six to eight grand.
Yeah.
To a profit. To the bottom line.
Yeah.
And so it just becomes a matter of, like, well, then how do we get leads? Right. It's like, right now, what are we doing for advertising, marketing? Like, I don't see a break.
That's what I was going to ask you because we have mailers made right now. We haven't sent out these.
These bad boys.
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
I was looking at them.
Let's go.
Okay.
So, like, that's what we've been scared of. I mean, we've had those since last year.
Okay.
But we.
What are you scared of?
We. We were so sketching up last year, we just, like, didn't want to offer.
Is it this year you feel like there's.
Now we're on top of it a.
Little bit more, or all the crew members have been here since last fall.
No. So there's two that are new.
Two newbies, Four that have been here.
For a while and two that's been.
Here for a while.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Two that's been here for a while.
And two new ones.
Two new ones, yeah.
So right now there's four guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is that enough to get to 200 customers?
Yes. With what we thought with us.
So you really become more efficient because last year you had six guys on the field plus us.
Plus. Yes. And that's what we kind of dropped down on. It's because, like, we were.
That's really good. Because my biggest fear is that you had six guys in the field. The two of you ended 490. I immediately know, like, either pricing way off or efficiency is way off.
Yeah.
So I'm assuming because of all the moving parts last year. Underpriced, you have to cut people out.
So we raise prices, then we hop straight. Because I'm on a mowing crew now and I'm operating the mowing crew. He's going to do the landscape side of things just so you can keep an eye on those, make sure they're done right. So I mean the mowing, we're going to be already profitable. We raised prices this winter.
Yeah.
Got more high end properties.
Have you already raised those?
And what percentage stay we only lost?
We lost out of 100 and I think 40 people. We, we kept 126 or 128. So we lost like 12.
Okay.
So maybe 10. Yeah.
The good thing is they're all 30 yards.
Yeah.
We lost nothing that's gonna affect us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it.
Okay, cool.
Our average yard right now is about 55.
Okay. And so we have about. We still have 150 currently on the books.
Coin.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
All race, so.
Okay, good, good. So like I think you guys did a lot of the painful part last year. Yes, we did get the prices up. You were super inefficient because you had low price jobs. We got rid of those. Okay, that's good because really good.
We got to a point and after watching your videos and everything, we got to a point where it's like we can't be mad at our guys for making money because we're sending them out to do 20 properties a day. Yeah, that's our problem. They're not making money.
Yeah.
At the end of the day, you know, they go out and do 20 properties a day and bring home 800 bucks. Yeah, that's our problem.
Would you send out.
Like per day, what's your target hourly rate for mowing?
150 an hour per crew.
And how many people are on that crew?
Two.
Okay. Okay, cool. So 75. Okay.
And that's kind of what we base prices off to raise prices. So like some people that we raised prices were more than that. 20%. They were way high. So we kind of took a route to where we're at. What they can get done in a day. Say we need 150 in it per crew an hour.
Yeah.
And that's what we got. So.
So did you raise everyone across the board a certain rate or did you do it like based on every customer?
It was. So we broke it down to like time.
We never did it by time.
It's $2.50aminute.
Yeah.
And like we have some properties that like there's this one property where we're. It's budgeted out price wise. What it's currently at for I think an hour and 12 minutes and we get it done in like 38 minutes.
So you basically went back to the halo. Let's look at the. Clocked in on each job and you kind of adjusted. Do you think that was Approximately like a 15 to 20 price?
I would say, because some people got raised like 15 bucks and some people got raised five. There was only maybe 10, 10 or so clients that stayed at the price they were at because we weren't losing any money, which we. And also there are customers that we've. Towards the end while.
Yeah, well, towards the end, like last fall, like, we were still picking up clients in fall, and we're like, hey, let's try this method, see if it works. And I mean, we were getting them. Yeah. So we're like, okay, now we feel a little safer knowing we can go into the spring raising our prices. And we did. And like I said, we didn't lose anything that really affect us. I mean, we lost a couple small yards, but we gained like, we just got all the McDonald's around this area. So. And that's. Those are full property maintenance. So, like, our bigger kind of grew into a couple commercial properties. So it's like down inside, we didn't lose. It doesn't affect us. Yeah, it sucks. Losing clients always, but. Because you want to make everyone happy. But I realized you get these cheaper clients, and those are the most headache.
Yeah.
Because they always have something to complain about. It's like, find someone else. I mean, we can't make everyone happy anymore. But two years ago, we would have loved a $30 yard because we were going home. But now our guys, we just don't have the time for them.
Okay. Right now, last thing. So from an equity perspective, in the two of you, have we solidified that, made sure it's really solid. Everything's in place there. Because, like, what we don't want to happen is anything with their relationship and their partnership. Then do a repeat of 2024.
Right.
So right now, as far as where the. The contract with the new LLC is, that it's just pretty much a 50, 50. So equity split. Yeah.
Okay. And then who is 50, 50 split of power, too?
Yeah, pretty much. So. I mean, it's. There's not really many things that we necessarily disagree on, but I get where that could be a little bit funky. But as of right now, and I. Obviously it's, you know, a year and we've known each other for a while, but it's something to where I. I don't really think it's an issue like, as far as, like somebody being 5149 or whatever like that. But I mean, it's one thing you.
Might want to do. And it's basically like a prenup for your. For the business partnership. Because the difference between marriage and this is like, you do not do till death do us part. Eventually you will want to split. Yeah, right. You'll get married, you have kids, you want to move, whatever. So instead of thinking about it's a negative thing, like, hey, let's figure out how this is going to end. Like, I would write that story out now.
Okay.
It's like, okay, so we're 50. 50, great. What does that mean? If I want to step out within the business and only work two days a week, do I give up a portion of equity? How do we do distributions?
Yeah.
Right now we don't have a lot of money in the bank, but if we start becoming profitable, how do the distributions work? Does it happen quarterly? Do we split 50? 50? Is it based on how many hours we worked? Like, what are the responsibilities? What happens if I get divorced? It's a real big problem. I see all the time. Because someone gets divorced, 50% of their shares is going to the other person's walking out the door and wants to spit all over them.
Right.
And that can get torn up. And now the business gets sold because someone else got divorced.
It's weird. Yeah.
So I would really, really think about, okay, can we add an addendum? It can be a three or four page document. And just think about every bad thing that can happen and then what's supposed to happen, therefore.
Okay.
Right. If you like. Even with the gentleman last year, like Landon, it's like he wanted out. Great. Fortunately, we weren't making money because we were making money. And he's like, oh, the business worth $500,000? You'd have to buy him out.
Yeah.
Or he'd have to come to some agreement. So you can even determine in the part partnership agreement, like, what? How do we value the business?
Right.
So is it like you can just always have an arbitrary valuation so that if someone wants to out, it's like, we already know what it is to buy them out. And then there's always the agreement of like, okay, we know what the value of the business is. And if I ever want to buy them out or I need to leave, I know what I'm going to be getting out of this. Right. Instead of it becoming. Down the road, you're kind of thinking about for.
