50% of Your Business Could Disappear Overnight!

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, no.

If you lose them, if we lost them due to like, if we, 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. So that's why I ended up being, I think we did like 4000, 4000, 2000 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 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 is 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 is 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 is 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. Ultimately, when it comes to price increases, if you have enough leads coming in, it gives you the confidence to raise prices more. 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. So ultimately, in the land of leads pouring in, everything kind of gets better because you have more confidence to go raise the prices. Okay, cool. So 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 of the business? Like, and, and like what's the goal? Like, are we trying to build like a million dollar business? Are we trying to become profitable this year? Like, what's the current goal too?

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 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 in, 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 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, we owe on the Isuzu. 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 Bertl's out in Dorsey, and they had it and they're like, hey, I'm selling this if you guys want it. We do all of our business through them. So we got it for like 20 grand.

Oh, wow.

And I went to the bank and 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. They're like, oh, yeah, you can do it. I was like, that's fine. They're like, yeah, trucks, 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, is roughly around 40,000.

Cool. And that's mostly Isuzu, the mower. And then is the Takuchi 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 he's just leaving it here.

And then 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 is 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 focus 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 bush trimming 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 just 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 mowed.

Yeah.

We're always trying to catch up. And you got six guys on payroll plus us and catching up. Catching up and 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, and they're like, hey, I. I want off 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 cookbooks now?

We. So we run jobber and we have the grow plan.

We.

That is where we are.

Headache as a horrible.

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 you 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 then I'd be like, okay, I got 10 missed calls. Cause I was on landscapes last year. So I'd be there for like six hours, and I'd take a break. And then it'd be like, I got 10 missed calls. And 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 back seat, 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 gonna happen. So that's why I focus more on, you know, the phone. But no finances wise. I. 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 herself versus me, trying to figure it out. Because we still have so much to figure out, too. Like, Jobber. I. 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 ask them 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 gonna 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 that 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?

They have laptops, iPads.

They do. Okay.

Okay.

So they're still on the app. They can put 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 gonna happen.

Yeah.

Like, if you're a week behind and, say, just even processing transactions, you now have 50 of them, you just forget. Oh, man, why do we stop at Home Depot for this? I don't remember.

Right.

So I would probably delegate it to her, depending on her cost. Because right now 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 just see 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 you guys didn't make money. Right. It was like 390,000 revenue, $279 in profit, according to what I saw. Yeah, 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 go.

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 hope that 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 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 van?

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's 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 squeaky 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, I'm like, oh, 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 it's 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.

Yeah.

How many do you get before you like, hey, we have to buy another truck from nine.

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 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 assuming we use those trailers, the trucks that we have and the mowers, how many mowing customers can we get before, like, okay, we have to, like, we have to stop taking new customers.

Probably about 200. So probably well more cost. Probably about 50 or 60. Yeah.

Okay, so basically 50, 60 more customers, you're at 150. If we hit 200, we're basically like, we're using the extra trailer, extra motor. So like my, my then philosophy is we can grow and kind of be profitable at the same time. That is one. We grow as fast as possible to 200 and then we raise prices.

Yeah.

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 the itch of growing and. And scratch, ditch, and make more money. And so, like, it's very rare. That actually tells me, 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.

Of profit to the bottom line.

Yeah.

And so it just becomes a matter of, like, oh, then how do we get the 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 bad boys. Oh, yeah.

I was looking at.

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 catching up last year. We just, like, didn't want to offer this year.

You feel like there's.

Now we're on top of it a little bit more.

Or all the crew members 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. So right now there's four guys. Is that enough to get to 200 customers?

Yes. With what we.

With us.

Okay.

So you really become more efficient because last year you had six guys out in the field plus us.

Plus. 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's way off or efficiency is way off.

Yeah. 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 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 book.

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.

How many people are on that crew?

Two.

Okay. Okay, cool, 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 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 for 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. 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 5. 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 had for a 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. 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.

Yeah.

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 and. But now our guys, we just don't have the time for them. So.

Okay, right now, last thing. So from an equity perspective, and the two of you have 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 the 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 put of power to?

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. 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 51, 49 or whatever like that. But. 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 a spark. 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, like, as 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 away from the business and only work two days a week, do I give up portion of equity? How do we do distributions?

Yeah.

Now, we don't have a lot of money in the bank, but if we start becoming profitable, how does distributions work? Does it happen quarterly? Do we split it 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, that Landon, it's like he wanted out. Great. Fortunately, we weren't making money because we were making money. And he's like, oh, I think 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 partnership agreement, like, what, how do we value the business? Right. So is it like you can just already set 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. Instead of it becoming. Down the road, you're kind of thinking about for six months and then you're like really getting pulled and you're kind of checking out and another person starts to resent you. And then, then becomes messy.

Yeah.

Versus just like, here's what happens when this Business relationship ends. It's like you will not be for 80 years. Want to be working together and that's fine. Like in 10 years, 15 years, you're going to want to sell. You want to grow it more. One one of you will want to grow. One of you want like cash out.

Yeah.

And, and I, I would just like put it all in writing.

Okay.

It's like super healthy.

Yeah.

It's smart now while we're good.

Yeah.

Cuz our pretty much. I mean this is like future.

Yeah.

But our goal is, is to have like a supply yard pretty much. And so, and it's, I mean, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if.

Yeah, I want to, I want to open up a retail store. I want to make this profitable first to kind of feed into that. But I watched one of your videos and someone else was doing material on site and you're like, no, but we're really good with also really good in Eversville and you know, cut costs low. We're going to have materials on site anyways for the landscape crew, like the mulch and everything. So why not offer it to the public, you know. And I don't want to get like too carried away with it, but I, I want our shop behind it. So like when Susie comes in once a yard of mulch. Well, we do that.

Yeah.

Then we got big into the Christmas lights and we can't display them out here, no one can see them. So like if we're there, it's just, I think it will kind of scale up the business but at the same time put a lot of debt on the business. Right. So I don't know, depending on that or.

And this is the thing too, like in a partnership agreement you can set out like what we think the goals of the business are going to be in 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and 10 year. That way, hey, we have directional alignment where we're going. But then doing that is important. So that way in five years you're like, hey, like I didn't, I didn't really want that. Like I don't want to do a supplier. Like do we have agreement on that? If so, let's put it in writing. And then like this is the direction the business is going and then here are all the things that could go wrong and if they happen, here's exactly how we're going to handle it. It'll prevent 6 to 12 months of resentment when you want to leave because it will happen. Like it's okay to realize like Business partnerships don't last forever. Everyone looks like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. Like, that hardly ever happens.

Yeah.

And so I would just put it all in writing so that we both know what's supposed to happen. You might want to have the retail yard now, but if he does it in three to four years and now this is really profitable, he's like, hey, I want a larger portion of the landscaping thing, and then you can have 100% of the retail. How is that going to work? Right. And having the conversation now when things are good and it's not a bunch of money on the line is really healthy. So I would really recommend that to avoid what happened last year. And yes, you saw last year, it. It can really put you behind.

Yeah. It really hit hard.

Is that something that, like, we do, like, on our own, or is that something like we have to go to the lawyer and, like, get it?

Like, I would literally ask ChatGPT, Hey, I'm in a partnership. This is what we're doing in revenue. We're thinking about the future. This is, I think we want to do. What are the questions we should be ironing out right now in our partnership agreement to ensure that down the road when we split ways, everything goes smooth. And it's going to give you, like, 20 questions. Can you just answer every single one? You. You put those in a document, you take them to a lawyer. Like, we want this in our articles of incorporation.

Okay. Okay.

And then it's just all super straightforward. You just don't want to be investing in your time, energy, money into, like, this thing. And then it just takes one weird thing. And as you said, like last year, great guy, working hard, but it's an exterior thing that pulls him away from the business. And then 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. Right, Right. And when you, like, you both love each other, want each other to be on the same page, that's when you make the quote, unquote, prenup.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think we. No one wants to talk about it because, like, well, we were on the same page. And if we do, that means, like, we're end. It's going to end.

Right.

It could be in five years to be 10 years, could be 30 years. Like, figure out what it's going to look like now. And what's cool is you can always edit that.

Yeah.

So in 10 years, you guys are still on the same page. You're doing, like, multiple locations and retail yard. Now we readdress it, right? Like, you almost look at, like, an amendment. You can just keep adding to it in your LLC as the business changes.

Yeah, right.

So it's one person like, hey, I want to step back a little bit more. I want to take a couple days off a week. I'm willing to give a little more of the equity or distributions to you. So, for example, you got 50, 50 equity, but then change your distribution schedule.

Yeah, Right.

So if one person want to take a more time off, it's great. Let's figure out what's the. The equitable split of distributions. So if there's $50,000 of distributable cash in the quarter, okay, that 50, 50 beginning, great. But as time goes on, you might want to move that around right. From the landscape business. They have different divisions, etc. So I would really encourage that.

Yeah.

Especially right now when there's, like, the stakes are relatively low, and we just don't want to repeat 2024 again, ever.

Yeah.

So that would be kind of, like, from a leadership perspective, I'd really recommend that.

Okay, cool.

All right. So from my perspective, if this year we can get to 200 mowing customers, we can raise prices. That's going to really help with cash flow. So my main focus is like, how can we get there as fast as possible? These are the things that have come up right now. So is this what you're doing for marketing?

Yeah, that's our plan. We have, obviously, a website, and we used to have a marketing guy who was supposed to make, you know, tiktoks Facebook posts. He was supposed to edit our website, but like you said already, Landon's still on the website.

So that was kind of the breaking point. That's kind of why. Yeah, we had, like, two months to fix that. We had him in here to have a meeting with them.

The website was broken.

No, Two months. We had them in here to like, hey, we want these changed. Landon's not here. You know, he knows land's not here.

Yeah.

Can we have this about us changed a little bit?

Yeah.

Or it never isn't even the right address.

I was going to say, dude. Okay.

Okay. So.

So have you guys locked out your site?

He has pretty much all access, as far as I know.

Landon or the SEO?

No, the website guy.

And so why isn't he giving it to you?

I. He literally would. I asked him because I was trying to. You know, obviously, spring's coming in. I. I texted him. I was like, hey, you want to, like, come in and.

Like, take a look, see, make a plan for what we want, how many Facebook posts, you know, change a little bit of stuff on the website? And he was like, yeah, I'll come in. And then I text him like, hey, are you coming in this weekend?

He's like, no.

He's like. He didn't even answer.

Are you gum?

No, not right now.

But he basically controls the site.

Yes. Yeah.

And you have no access to that?

I.

Not right now. Like, if we wanted to get in and change a photo. No, no.

So he.

We pay him.

You own the domain.

Yes, yes.

So that's the thing.

What?

Sorry, we pay him like a. Like a.

50 bucks.

50 bucks a month or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. So.

So that's all that it is.

WordPress is that we built it.

I had no idea.

Okay, okay.

So that part is like, I would like to find somebody who can do our website because he's really good at, like, the editing and making posts and stuff like that. But we don't know really much about. I don't know if you have to code the website to change it or what you have to do as far as the website goes.

Pull it up real quick. There's a few things. Like, the challenging part is I'm gonna give you these ideas and then like, you can't really execute them right now.

Yeah.

Do you actually have access to the domain though? Like if you. If you built another site, you can rip it out from underneath him?

I think so, yeah.

Okay, good.

But he's the one that got it for us.

Oh, snap. He has access.

But if I called him right now.

He like, is it Godaddy? Do you know where you bought it through?

I have no idea.

Because it turned out to be a pretty decent website.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, so there's a few things, like, on here. I think we could really improve the conversion.

So I know you're big about getting rid of stock images.

Yeah.

Maybe getting a video of our guys in the background. Yeah.

Or even. Even like your trucks. Like, this is really nice if it was you and like your crew just standing up against that in front of the shop space. I think it'd be great. Like, that picture here would do a lot better than just random, you know, stuff in the background. Also with this, this, like, the text is hard to read because there's so much busyness happening. So a couple of things you could do almost like, you almost immediately double the conversion on this site. So how I think about, like, these will Drive traffic to the website. Running Facebook ads will drive traffic to the website. Getting better SEO, drive traffic website. But if the website doesn't convert them into leads, I could care less.

Right.

And so it's like, what's the lever of the businesses? If I can figure out how to take this website and instead of 1 out of 50 people, if the site ask for an estimate and we get a 1 out of 25, we double the business. Yeah. So actually look at here first, because if we. How do we get 50 new customers is the problem to solve in the next six weeks? How do we get 50 more mowing customers? Because I know if we do that and then we raise prices, we are going to draw five to $8,000 straight to the bottom line. That will solve a lot of the pressure financially.

Yeah.

So when I look at this, there's a few things I would do and this is challenging because like right now we can't make these changes. But like the financing tab. How many people actually use Wisetac on your project?

We'd had.

Yeah, one person. It was like a $30,000.

So we're wasting our highest converting CTA call to action spot for finding that one customer used.

Yeah.

And basically for another service, Wisetap. I don't care about Wisetax. I want you guys to make money.

Yeah.

Like this, this is where I would say request an estimate. So this button goes up here.

Okay.

Like we want it to be wherever they are. On this page, it doesn't say financing, it says get it, get an estimate. Like he has the CTA throughout here. That's fine. But this floats up top. I would, I would change it to get it. Get it. The whole point of getting the website is that they ask for an estimate.

Right.

And then the Next thing is 90% of people that will see this page right here will not go to a different page or scroll down. They're just going to stay here.

Yeah.

And so I want them to be able to submit their information without scrolling down, without clicking here. So the contact us page now. So in order to give you guys information, I have to leave the homepage and then I have to scroll down. Yeah, I want to be where as soon as I get here. If I'm. If I'm going down the road, I see luxury Lanka and I type in luxury laundry Google and I click on your site right from here, I want to have a fillable form.

Okay.

And so even if you move this over, you had one third of this just being. I want your name, your contact Information and what service you want, just get their information so then you can capture the lead, because that will take you from a 1 out of 50 conversions. Right now, we have no math on this because you will be able to see eventually, like, okay, here's how many people come to our site. And I can guarantee right now you're probably getting 3, 400 people to this site every month. And a small fraction of them are actually converting because they have to click on other things. And you'll be able to see down the road, like, page views. And you'll see, like, less than 10% of people are going to other pages. They're just staying right here. And if they can't get their information to you, you don't get a lead. And so we can pay for this. We can pay for Facebook ads, we can do Google Ads, we can do SEO, and we will get to the site. But if they're not converting to a lead, it's useless. So I would really encourage, like, for my. This is tough. We can't do anything but, like, change the CTA to get it. Get. Request an estimate. Change the photo to mean you. You, your guys in your uniforms out here with the truck. This usually looks great. Make that the main image.

Okay.

And then up here in the top, like above the fold, so you don't have to scroll. There's your request form. And I don't care if it's tied into Java or not. I just want the higher conversion of people getting here and immediately submitting information.

Okay.

Because that alone will increase, like, I would say at least double your conversion. You have really good reviews. You also have this address verified, right?

This one? No, our. The shop that we rented. That's where our. Technically our address is. Yeah, I. I know the guy that owns it, and we talked about moving it, but it's such. It's like in our service area.

Right.

So I was like, let's keep it there until, like, we're here. I mean, people know we're here. Some. The people that need to know we're here. We're here. Yeah, but I don't want to have this service address pop up when people are looking, searching us out here. Because we don't service out here.

That's what we don't want to go.

We don't go.

Yeah. So keep that verified address. That's good. You guys have 75. Very good. But right now, the site's not ranking, like, on native. Right. Decent on Google listing. But like, to get. Right now, if you guys. You guys service There is what?

Edwardsville. Pretty much Edwardsville, but also Edwardsville.

Yeah.

So we basically got luxury again. You're ranking really. Oh, not 41. Sorry, 41 Google reviews. You're ranking one first on there. When I sw. Yours are first there too. From a ranking perspective. Not horrible.

Really good. See, this is a conversion issue. Like, the fact is the fact that you're ranking first on Google and you're ranking first on Google listing and we're not getting like, how many leads are we getting right now?

We got one this morning or last night. See, you get more calls than like, lead forms.

Yeah, okay, I'm. I'm saying just like leads in general. Like, so whether, like how many estimates sent? So can you look in job or see how many estimates you use? Yeah, here, go ahead.

I don't know if it's.

Oh, yeah, it's right here.

I will say the most. It's the most we've sent off in.

Yeah, we've approved since December or since January 1st. We've approved a hundred thousand dollars so far this year.

Okay.

That's included.

Like, that's property maintenance and everything like that.

So I just basically 14 cent in the past 30 days. Let's apply this to like the past year. Not this year. I want to do last 12 months.

Oh, sorry, this one here. Whoa, where are we going, folks?

See, he. He's done more on Jobber so far than I know how to do.

There you go. Okay, so converted draft.

Let's filter this out.

Here we go.

No, I want last year.

Okay, let's see how many we got. So about 49% are converting.

And you sent out.

Oh, 95. Yeah. So like right now we sent out 95 estimates in the past year. That sound right to you?

No, I mean through Jobber. Yeah. But as far as like, we do. The problem was, is last year with, we would just be like, hey, you know, your price is 50 bucks or whatever. They wouldn't even get put into here. So like, me and him would know. But write it down on a piece of paper. Be like, hey, you know, this has to be added to the route. And it wouldn't even get into here because the routing is so bad that we were like, we're not even going to waste our time. And then they'd be like, well, I'm paying by check anyway. So we're like, okay, we'll just pick up a check. It was just kind of. We were just going with the flow, like whatever we could get. And however we get it, we were just kind of like doing that. But now obviously this year we're trying to get card on file no matter what. And then I. We have some people who are older that we've had that, you know, we understand that it's check, but it has to be. We're trying out seeing if we could do like a month in advance for check that way. Because we pay our guys weekly, we don't do bi weekly. So it's like the cash flow perspective is where we struggle a little bit, especially last year. Yeah, but it's like cash flow. I mean our bills are roughly like.

4,500 bucks a month.

Yeah, like 4,500amonth just like fixed. So like the shop, the payments on trucks, like. Yeah, insurance, everything like that. So but like payroll for six guys.

Is if they work eight hours a week, I mean 40 hours a week at roughly around 20 grand a month.

Yeah. So that's when it gets, that's five grand, that's including a week. So it's like, well we have to at least do you know, roughly 15 to $20,000, you know, at a 20% margin to have that covered and everything like that. So no, I. And like I said jobber, like most of these numbers are, are cuz you.

Haven'T been putting everything in here.

Yeah, that's the problem.

Are we trying to do that this year?

Yeah, yeah. This year like literally every single person that has called, I, you know, I'm like, hey, you know, what's your name obviously best phone number, email address and then you know, what is your actual property address and I type it in automatically.

So like the other thing choose about the website is like right now people are calling because it's the easiest way to like just tap this up here, right? Yeah. I want to make the Esther request form just, just as easier. It's just as easy if not easier.

Okay.

Because like if they send an S request form, it means you don't have to respond when you're out in the field and you're not getting all these missed calls. Yeah, I want like where you can you come back to the office and there's 10s request forms. Instead of 10 people calling you, you then call them back, you get their voicemail, it's back and forth. I want their information here as fast as possible. Because a lot of times if they're on their mobile device and they click on the estimate request form, it pre populates everything. As long as they have to type it all in, it pre populates their name and their phone number and Their address, it knows that stuff. And so they can do it relatively quickly and not bother you and then you can stay out doing your thing on the field.

Yeah. And it's a bad look, obviously. Like if somebody's trying to call a business and they don't answer and they go to voicemail and it's like, I mean, sometimes, you know, like spring last year, I had like 30 calls within two or three days. And then, you know, they all leave a voicemail and then, you know, voicemail box gets full pretty quick.

And then you get back to them, they hit voicemail, it's too late.

Yeah.

I think, like, just from a website perspective, if we can just increase the conversion there, I think, yes, we could double our leads by doing this. We can also double our leads by simply making sure when people get to the site, more of them convert to a lead. So I don't know how you're going to rip this out of this guy's hands and get access or be able to edit it or if you can pay him to do it. But there's just a few little things that have changed. Could really, really improve it. Yeah.

So even this part, this confuses people with the whole like or thing. I just make it very clear. Like, people come to your website to ask for an estimate, period. They know that. They call you. They. Okay. And ask for an estimate. I want to make it where it's really clear. It's like when you get here, if you request an estimate, it's free. Boom. I'm putting my information in. If I scroll, I'm losing people. If I have to go to a different page, I'm losing people. And so we're already. I think you can literally increase the conversionist site by double. By simply just doing that. Put the essay request form right there. Change the image to be about you and your brand and the truck. This thing looks great. So put all six of you in front of that in your uniforms. They separate yourself a lot. So.

I almost don't even think you need to put luxury here because it's in the brand name. Just use like long Term Landscape serving Edwardsville, Illinois. That's beautiful. Beautiful. You can even take this part out. Just make it super. Take out established 2020. No one cares. Do the estimate request form right there.

It'll convert twice as much.

Okay.

And what's nice is right now I have no numbers to work with, but, like, I'm just going based on, like us seeing all the sites. You'll double your.

Yeah. So would you recommend us you know, obviously trying to get control of this, because I'd like to see, you know, how many clicks we're getting.

How many?

Yeah, because that's like, you talk about KPIs all the time. And we're like our close ratio right now. If we had to guess, we have no numbers to base off of. But if, like an educated guess, like, it was probably around 70%, 70, 80%.

That tells me just if you were trying to optimize for profit, you could raise your prices by 30% and probably still be fine. Because if you're above 70% close ratio, you'll. The customers are screaming at you to raise prices. Now, if we're trying to grow and expand right now, my thing is let's get to 50 more customers as fast as possible. We then are at capacity for the trucks and the equipment, and then we raise price.

Right.

20%. I don't think people are gonna leave.

And that's gaining those 50 or 60 clients at the numbers we're already at.

Correct.

Okay.

Yeah. Like right now, it's like what we're comfortable with. We know those numbers, we know what the pricing is. So I just say let's get to 200 customers. And we just all agree when we hit 200, we're immediately raising prices by 20%.

Okay.

And I don't care if we raised prices on them two or three months ago. It's a matter of now. We cannot take more customers on. Like, we have to either turn leads off or we have to get rid of customers.

Yeah, that's what I was telling him is I never want to turn the leads off because people are going to sell their houses, they're going to like, leave for, you know, hey, I lost my job, or however it goes. Like, people are going to leave. So I want leads constantly. Even if we necessarily can't take them on to a certain extent. It's like, I still want to know that our business is funneling in clients the way we want it to.

And the fact that you do more the big project stuff is like, as you're super busy with milling, don't take on big projects. Schedule those off into the off season, whether that be July, August, when it slows down a little bit because of the sun, or just even as you go into fall cleanups. Focus all of the time and energy on getting the recurring customers and push the project off in December and January.

Okay.

In I guess, what a.

Big projects. What would you consider that as far as, like, how many hours a week that would be for Those projects. Because right now we have some projects. We have three bigger projects that would take about two days apiece at most. But that would also. They're skilled applications. So it's like I would need somebody who knows what they're doing out there. The problem is every time we've like, we literally just did an indeed job, like a job listing and we had 45 people apply and that's the best applications I've seen because we've just been like Facebook like now hiring, blah, blah, blah, and like you know, people who are reaching out. But we have gotten burnt so many times on trashy, like they're just. Yeah, it's just not good.

Tracked out here too. Yeah. So that's what I was going to ask you too with being out here. Like our target area is utterfield. It's like 25 minutes away. It's hard to get guys that want to drive here to work here. I mean we're not in the best area. I mean we're not a bad area. But we've had no good luck out here with guys.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

So like the lower cost of living out here compared in there right away.

Probably by about 60 or 70%.

Like because if you offer the same wage in there versus here, very different type of candidate as well. Because I'm assuming 20 bucks an hour is almost what you have to pay.

That's roughly where we're at. Yeah.

Yeah. So like I, I assume $20 an hour there. It's very competitive. $20 an hour here is pretty good.

Really good.

Really good.

Right.

So it's a double sort like. Yes. You have a large, a smaller pool of pool from out here, but if you can be the highest paying landscaping company, you can kind of control the market.

Yeah. The other thing is, is I know a 25 minute drive is, you know, not terrible, terrible. But if we were in closer to our service area, we're. I mean this might, this wouldn't be this year thing. But right now Our rent is 1500amonth here and we have a great spot obviously. But roughly we waste in labor and fuel like for. What was it, $4,300 a month.

Do the drive back and forth.

Yeah, because it's, I mean because they're In Maryville, they're 45 was like 40 minutes away.

Are all of your current crew driving the 25 minutes? Like no one's from out here.

No one. Our closest, Our closest ones what? 15 miles.

Talking about employees or customers?

Employees.

Oh, employees.

Yeah.

We have one that drives about 45 minutes. One, my cousin, he works here, he lives with me. We're basically 10 minutes down the road. He's almost 40 minutes. They're all pretty much 30, 40 minutes out towards the.

Where all your customers.

To where we're at. Yeah, got it.

So because once in Granite City, he could literally hit the highway and be in Bethal probably 20 minutes faster than here. And then I mean your drive would get maybe your drive would probably be.

50 around the same and then just that way.

Yeah, pretty much. Because every like we're so north that we're far away from everything that's west as well. So if we move a little bit more south to where the Balto is, it would make that. Yeah.

Way less drive time.

Yeah, I mean you hit the highway.

Cuz go to the routes on Jer major highways.

Thing is you kind of have like a perfect spot here in terms of just like layout location.

Yeah, that's the problem.

That's where the issue is. But cuz if we waste, you know, $4,000 and we're already paying 1,500, we could spend 3,500 in on a shop that's roughly.

We won't find nothing this nice. Yeah. And that's why he wasn't here at the time when we got this. But I'm sure you passed through Bunker Hill on the way through here. That's where I live. I live in Bunker Hill. I just moved out there like a couple years ago with my girlfriend and this place was available. So we're like, holy cow. It's five minutes from my house.

Yeah.

So for me it's great.

Right.

But it's from like a business side of things. Like if you just look up here, we're basically.

I hate how they do this. This is all the jobs. But we're basically here in Royal Legs.

Okay.

All of our businesses down there. Down there. Yeah.

And that's where a lot of your employees are coming from too. But yeah, it's a way more expensive area.

Our employees are like right here. There's two from right there and then there's one way right here.

So.

And I'm over here.

As you scale, what happens is that number becomes more and more blatantly obvious. If you have 10 guys driving on this far now all of a sudden it's costing you a lot more. So I would just keep growing here. It's a great spot. You're also renting it, so you're not tied down to it. But if you start getting 10, 15, 20 employees. And every day they're driving 25 minutes in and 25 minutes out. That's a real hard cost.

Yeah.

Right. Unless you do pay for performance, which I'm a fan.

That's what we were going to ask you about.

Yeah. Cuz we. I want to know what it. Yeah, I listen to the videos, but.

I just want with paper performers, you're only paying them a percentage of the leave revenue. So drive time doesn't really actually play into it at all. And they're just incentivized to get here as fast as possible and get out of here as fast as possible.

Okay.

I don't think we're set up yet from a numbers perspective and actually like having all the data to actually do P4P. Okay. Where you guys could confidently tell your crew this is how much we're making. And like, is it the budgeted hours? It's also a little difficult to do budget hours in Jobber, so you really have to like, really govern it a little bit more. So I would probably wait on that. I think there's a lot of lower hanging fruit, like fixing the website, like a lot of other aspects of the business to get to profitability by raising prices at 200 customers. I think there's a lot of lower hanging fruit. But then I would say next spring, really think I'll pay for performance. Because if you do that, you literally don't care about drive time.

Yeah.

You say, hey, you're getting a percentage of labor revenue. We've raised the prices. Now that everyone's really profitable, you can make good money. And like, they're just like, great, I'm going to get in here in five minutes. I'm out. Because like, I'm not getting paid when I'm here.

Yeah.

But it is definitely like, I think we have a layer of like knowing our numbers, having metrics and data before we commit to that. Because if you mess that up with the crew, you lose like confidence.

I was going to ask you one more another question. So we strongly dislike Jobber. That's a fact. Like we, we had nothing but problems with it saying switch over. Like, because everyone's already like, so, like skeptical about putting credit cards on file.

Yeah.

Yeah. So say we switch over to another.

Trying to get those people to do it again.

Yeah.

Because a lot of people are like, oh, like the older community, they're like, oh no, no, no.

Yeah, I just put my card on file. Now you want it again for a different thing.

So yeah, I wouldn't worry about switching software now.

Okay.

Again, I really think of this next year. What's the major big domino effects? The whole business is raising prices. So yes, we could optimize this better and yes we can make things a little bit better on the bookkeeping. Like the ultimate thing that changes this business is getting 200 customers, raising prices by 20% immediately, drawing 6, 7 grand to the bottom line. If you do that, we can now figure out a lot of other little stuff.

Yeah.

And so I'm mostly focused on that. However.

I think like right now I just want you getting habit of like every estimate goes in here, every call note goes into here. And if you don't like it, that's fine. But like we need a central source of truth. And then when it comes to getting card information, like when you move to a different CRM is just send them the. Send them the first invoice and say action required and then they have to put a card on pile. Then if you ask for card information with a random email, you'll get like 5% the of people.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and they hate it. They think it's scammy. If you say, hey, here's your invoice for the year. It's coming from your email address. It looks the same as everything else. And you say, hey, action required. First invoice of the year. You got to put your card on pile. Like you'll get 89% compliance and then you just have an automation that cleans up after you. So if no card on file, you know they're going to be getting repeated, repeated text emails to get set up. So it's not a big deal. Like I would not switch to something else now be like, oh man, we're have to switch down the road. We won't have their car information. Just focus on anything. I don't care what you use right now. Get all the estimates in here. Every job note on here getting used of just like the crew putting information the job do one year of that and then think about if you have to switch. Okay, but the only reason I would say is like you like the, the budget hours part. Having that for P4P is like crucial. And that's the biggest beef I have with job project. Our users that want to do P4P have to manually create custom fields for budgeted hours and so a lot more difficult. But I would, I would not worry about that right now. Right now just get used to putting numbers in here. Have a bookkeeper to give you a clean set of metrics so you can actually run the business Based upon the metrics. Yeah, because, like, I. We want to know, like, what percentage of revenue is going to wages right now? We have no idea.

That's our problem. Money comes, it disappears.

Like, it's like, oh, we had, you know, 15. Like, we got up to $24,000 last year. And then, like, well, then we bought the truck for cash, which was like six grand. And then it was like, okay, we're still at 18. We're fine. Like, we're set. And then probably within two weeks, we were like, oh, my God, we're at eight.

Yeah. Like, the goal. The goal is like, how. How can we keep one month of revenue in the bank?

Yeah.

So if you're doing on average of the past three months, like, 40, 50 grand. We said 40. 50 grand in the bank because that can go one payroll, one truck going down, and one job going wrong. That's 40 grand.

That's what happened. When he was Talking about those $70,000 worth of jobs, I had a guy come in that was a landscaper, and he, like, cost me probably five or six thousand.

It drained us the job that we were supposed to be profitable on and kind of pushed us over the edge is what drained us.

Yeah.

So even, like in your articles, incorporation, or your partnership agreement, you want to distinguish. Okay, what. What dollar amount do we need to get over before we actually take. Take all your distributions? And what I like to think of is, okay, I take the average of the past three months of revenue. So it's. It's 40 grand, 50 grand, and 60 grand. Okay. The average of that 50 grand. Anything over 50 grand in the bank, we get a split as distributions. And you can always play with those numbers down the road. Like, if it's 50, 50 now, great. But then what happens is, like, anything less than that, we need to get money in the bank account. Because, like, that is what is healthy for the business, in my opinion. If you're less than two weeks, it's like 911 status. And so if this month we're saying gonna be 40 grand. If we don't have 20 grand in the bank, this is like nine. One. One says we need money in the bank right now because 14 grand is one payroll and one truck going down, and we're down to zero.

Yeah.

And I think a really scary spot. And so there's two ways to fix that. One, we immediately raise prices, and we just stay at, like, 550,000 this year. Maybe 500? No, no, like, 450 this year. I think the approach that you both want Is like, let's just gas it for the next six weeks. Weeks, get to 200 customers, raise prices. Then I think we get to 600,000 this year. But do it profitably. But it's going to be skinny for the next eight weeks. Until you collect on that first price increase, you're still going to be really skinny on cash.

And so I think there's just so much we can do in the next six weeks, though, to get to that stage. Organize the business is one phone call away and probably a week of back and forth with an account accountant to actually know your numbers, have a solid p. L know what your balance sheet is. It's going to take one evening for you guys to go over, like, what is the prenup of this business? How does that work? So we both can, like, pour 100 into it, knowing that if and when things happen, like, I'm not going to get screwed again. Because that's in the back of both of your heads, right?

Yeah.

After last year, there's no. Like, I've been. I've had partnerships before. They go bad, and then you just. You eventually suck it up and you pay out. Right. And it's a horrible feeling to have when you are pouring in and someone else isn't. And then what happens is you don't pour in because you're like, well, they're not. And then we're 50.

50.

So, like, so have it all spelled out now. That's one evening in six weeks, a lot of this stuff can be cleaned up so that this year can be super profitable. You're both on the same page. And then you know your numbers. Like, to be able to know your close ratio is so important.

Yeah.

Because that's the distinguishing factor, whether or not we raise prices down the road. Like, if it's at 70 to 80%, you can raise prices tomorrow and you'll be just fine. But if it's at 30% and we raise prices, we could be not having to work for the crew. Right. And then knowing, like, what's the close rate for landscaping versus mowing? Because one of these might be way overpriced. The other one, we're not priced enough. Averaging out is 50%, but one 70%, one's 30%. Close ratio.

Right.

One's just funding the other.

Exactly. And that's why you'll hear people like, yeah, we make all the money on the landscaping side. What they're really saying is that's the one that's priced appropriately. The other part of our business, we haven't raised prices. Right. And so knowing that sort of stuff is what next year you'll be able to look at. Like, okay, do we want to spend more of our marketing now on lawn care? Do you want to spend more on landscaping? What timing of the year? Oh, okay, Last year we had a dip in revenue here. Let's focus on landscaping then let's, that's push all of any projects that come in during April, May and June. We're gonna put em in July and August. And so for example, like you can say, hey, a two or three day job is a little bit of a larger project. Like hey, here's your prices. This would be the pricing for doing your project in August. It's time insensitive. It's a paver patio, It's a retaining wall, something like that. And I go, I need it done in like next week or two. Great. That's gonna go into our surge for our spring rush. So there's an extra cost for that. Or you can be out here or you give pricing and then someone's like, I want cheaper. Great, we can do that. We're going to book for you three months from now in December because you know, you get slower and you give them a discount 10% off. So you can like, I'm willing to lower my price as long as you're willing to meet my terms, which is like it might be five months from now that I'll get that project done.

Yeah.

So it'll help with your offseason cash flow too.

Yeah.

Because Christmas lights is like a huge investment for the the guy or like actually getting the materials for the people. And we did really well on Christmas lights. But the problem is like it was kind of break even on the Christmas lights.

Was it your first year?

Yeah, it was. I started last year. Yeah. First year going all out like on commercial style landscape.

Did you have to buy all of the lights last year?

Yeah.

So then it's like that's when you start making money year two.

Yeah.

Right. So that's a good thing.

We did roughly around 30 jobs.

Okay. Yeah.

And we store the lights up on our.

And I'm assuming you lease them when you get them out next year.

Yeah.

So it'll be really much better cash flow next year.

Yes.

30, like, you know. No, they're up there.

That's what I'm saying. It's like last year was extremely tough, but we learned so many lessons and.

It was our first year coming together.

Together. We got thrown in. I was like, okay, we're going to have, you know, I'm going to have him and Landon, and then, like, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna put everything I can into the office site. And then that ended, and it was like, okay, well, I guess it's just me and you now. So let's figure this out.

I was supposed to run the mowing. He was landscaping, and he was supposed to just.

So I was. We. I was still gonna mow. Run the mowing. He was gonna landscape. Run the landscape. And he takes care of this because that's what me and Lana struggled on the year before, is this. Yeah.

Yeah.

So we just. Backbone of the business is what we struggled on.

Right.

Going out doing the work. It's amazing.

Yeah.

But if we can't, like, we just learned how to send emails that.

Oh, the campaigns. Yeah.

Like, we just ran our first one in the fall last year, and it did well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's just stuff like that. I mean, the upselling is there, the more money's there. It's just like we just learning curve to get there.

Yeah. Cool. Do you have a pen, by chance? Yeah. Just to kind of like, put everything together. I was here. I just kind of. Of give it a little more granularity. So you guys know what the 4L framework is?

I've heard of it. Like, yeah.

So basically, it's like, hey, we have liquidity at the top. And the goal, like, that's just money, Right. So we have cash in the bank. We turn that cash usually into leads. We go out in Facebook ads, you know, postcards, etc. So that's leads. Then we usually get enough leads. You get a bunch of customers. What do you need? You need laborers, right? So that's labor. And then if you had a bunch of laborers, eventually you need leadership. And fortunately, both of you are the leaders, so leadership.

So that's like the 40 framework. So what I like to do is over the next six weeks, before we touch base with you, kind of give you assignments for, hey, these are the things we're doing, each of these areas. So from like a liquidity perspective, we've really got to get above two weeks worth of revenue in the bank. And that's like 25, $30,000. So I'm going to put, like a target on it. A 30k, 30 cat. 30k. Cash in the bank. The other thing is, from a liquidity perspective, we've got to get to be able to raise prices. Like, in six weeks, I think we can get 50 more customers. That's about one customer. A day. Now that's going to hinge a lot on the leads part, which we'll get to, but we got to do a price increase. So if we need a price increase in six weeks on 200 customers, that's the goal, then we will literally solve our liquidity crunch problem. And like the difference between being like 1 or 2% profitable versus 10 or 15% profitable this year actually like that you guys get distributions is whether or not you raise prices during spring rush, you know, because like you have the truck, you have the equipment, it's sitting here. Like get to capacity and then just raise prices on those.

Okay.

So liquid from a liquidity perspective, success weeks, I think we get 30k cash trying to get a price increase on existing mowing customers. From a leads perspective, we've got to get control of the site. We've got to be able to make those changes. So it's like changes to site, that includes the estimate request form, that includes the homepage having the, the picture of the crew and the brand. Much more in that regard, I think we'll increase conversion a lot. Now, whether or not we spend money on ads. Like did you, did we spend money on ads last year?

Not really.

We were just always catching up.

Yeah, our agreement with the marketing guy was like 500amonth, but that happened maybe three times last year.

He wasn't even producing. So like really from a leads perspective, we just need control of the site.

Yeah.

Like whether you pay him or you ask him, hey, can we get the domain? Or if he has an access to like a website builder, it looks like he's using WordPress and then you go get someone else to do it. Like we just need control of it. Cause it is literally the reason that you're getting leads. Like if you're not advertising, the reason you're getting those leads is cause you're ranking well on Google listing and you're ranking well on Google. So like not having control of that lead source is like very like, it is a tomorrow. You could pull that card and you guys don't have a business because I.

Mean the, the big thing that he was nice to have was that he had the drone and he had the nice cameras, so he, it was good for the shots. But when he doesn't make a post, it doesn't matter.

Well, like the posts are fine. Like social media. I also think you guys could do a decent job of that. Like once a week post something. I'm mostly worried about the website.

Okay.

Because this is where all of your leads are. Coming. Oh, they're calling me. They're coming from the website.

Yeah.

Like, if we had metrics, I could show you. So like, oh, they click on the call button like 20 times. Right. So all your leads are coming for that. And the reason I know is because if we're not doing door hangers, we're not doing yard signs, we're not doing Facebook ads, we're not doing any of that stuff. It is simply people are calling us, people are showing up to our website. It's because you're ranking well on Google and that's like your biggest asset, I say of the whole business is the fact that you're ranking really high. You're getting leads coming in probably 30, 40 of them a month for doing no advertising.

That's what we were talking about.

It's just word of mouth.

Two or three a day.

Yeah. And so if we can get from two to three a day, just to five or six a day, we immediately double the business. And so if we can get control in the next six weeks and then make those changes, that SM request form. And if you need help from my team, feel free to reach out. They can help you even if you have a WordPress thing and they can hop on there for 30 minutes and like walk you through some stuff. But get the S request form above the fold on the homepage. You don't have to go somewhere else. And who cares about sneak and wisetag? Get that, that button, that tab change out as your highest converters call the action tab. You want them to get a quote. Okay, so that'll help with leads. I think like, yes, we could go do pump money into it. I don't think we need to. We're close to capacity. Let's get the last 50 be. Let's take something that's free, which is just changing our website out to convert higher.

Okay.

So do you think he's gonna have a problem with you guys?

No, no. He's a friend.

I know where he lives.

Knocking on his door.

Okay, cool. If we just get control and even if you give him some money, like, hey, can you just help us make these changes? Ideal. But I really want you to have control of it.

Yeah.

And especially because, like a friend relationship kind of what happened last year, like, he could just go out of business, not like disappear. All of a sudden. He doesn't pay for the domain and your site is blank. If that happens, your leads stop. And that's like an existential crisis for the business. There's a huge threat, in my opinion. This is why like eventually I always try to move something like third party. I have the keys to it. I have the keys to the domain. Even the people that build my sites, like employees, they do not have access to the domain because someone could pull that domain out from and you were toast. Like you are ransom at Ransom. And so I'm always very careful with the keys to that because it is literally where all your leads are coming from. I think it's the biggest value of this business. You're ranking well on Google. You have all the reviews, you have a listing that's really, really good. And so if we can just increase the conversion and have control of that, I'd feel better. Especially after what happened last year. You're just always looking for like, okay, what could potentially put me out of business tomorrow.

Yeah.

And he is one click away on Hostgator or GoDaddy from like, okay, their site's off. I need five grand from you. And you would pay it because leads would grind to a hole. Right. So I would definitely figure out on the lead side, from a labor perspective.

You obviously have a couple good guys from last year still.

Yeah.

You got a couple new guys getting trained. Finding them seems to be easier this year.

Way easier way. Yeah, way easier.

And so from a training perspective, like as we get the new customers has like, it sounds like I haven't even heard of like a lot of complaints callbacks.

The biggest complaints we had was not answering the phone. Communication was terrible last year. That was our biggest complaint by far.

Okay, so then we could technically say if you were freed up to be able to handle that communication. Okay, so then what can our team do to keep you from having to be on job site?

Do we need to have a better trained like project manager?

I'm extremely picky.

Okay.

Like on the project base.

So can we take the 20 jobs that we currently do on project side and cut out the top five or six that you know, you only can be there?

Probably.

Yeah, I, yeah, I, my.

I micromanage big time on the, on, on the like quality side of things. So that's a, like a personal issue.

That I like projects. That's why we do so well together. Because project based work, we don't work together.

Yeah, he's so fast at mowing and his quality is good on mowing. But like I have to make sure grade is like perfect. I have to make sure that everything is like code, which obviously you should. But like there's so many people around here that don't do it that way.

Right.

But that's also why we're higher price. Because I do it like step by step. No steps get missed. And I've never had a complaint on any project based work in my life.

Work wise, we really don't get complaints.

No.

So what I would say then is like if the constraint in the business is you being able to communicate better with customers, we need to free you up. So then this question is like why are you not freeing up? Well, I have to be on the jobs that they have to be perfect. Okay, great. What are the things that if you're not there fault of the crack tracks and then eliminate those services. There's also a reason why having a good P and L and even you could use Java for this. Figure out which services you're making revenue from because I happen to believe you could cut out 20% of your project revenue, but cut out 60, 70, 80% of the amount of time you must be on the job site. So for example, a mulch install, they can do it probably without you.

Right.

Simple installation of plants, they can do that. Grading and creating and doing a grade and doing a ditch and excavation. I'm assuming you're having to be there.

Yeah.

And so it's a matter like how much of the project revenue is that actually.

Landscape? Not. Not.

Yeah, I'd say hardscapes and like act probably maybe 10, 15% of like total annual revenue.

Yeah. So it's a matter of okay, we count 10 or 15% of revenue but by doing that increase our communication and double the other parts of the business because we just have better close ratio based communication collections.

Yeah. Because we really don't want to do any hardscapes anymore.

We got burnt last year.

Yeah. Because we got burnt on employees. I don't want to have to be out there. I don't. I want this to be my like, I want the communication. I want everything like that. The maintenance side. Because plus if we get burnt and we lose a lot of money. It's easy to lose money on hardscapes if something goes wrong.

Yeah.

So maintenance side like oh, and it.

Doesn'T pay you once.

Exactly. So it's like, oh, we messed up by four or five yards of mulch.

Okay.

That's a 150 bucks.

Who cares?

But it's like, oh, I missed like seven tons of you know, grade base. So okay, that's 500. Yeah. Then you have to rip everything out and do it again.

So.

Yeah. Hardscapes are not.

We made something that I want to cut them, cut them Out.

Yeah. So that, that's healthy. I just keep doing that because if the constraint of a business exists, all resources you put into to it. And if the constraint is we don't communicate fast enough, we have a whole bunch of missed calls, a bunch of leads we don't get back to, that should be the thing we sell for. And if that means coming out 10 to 15% of revenue so we can attach. Attack the other 80% of revenue. Good idea.

Yeah.

Because I think, I think we cut out. Cut out. We made an agreement to cut out the hardscapes last year.

Yeah.

More difficult services because it was hard for us to find guys last year. Our goal is to basically just build up the maintenance side.

Right.

You know, instead of selling these bigger projects, I mean just focus on upselling what we have and we'll make the same amount of money, if not more. And I think that's, that's the, like the route we're going to focus on this year.

And you can always just have it where it's okay. We're okay with a 50% close ratio on our maintenance, but we only want a close ratio of like 25 to 30% on projects because we're going to price it so high.

Yeah.

And so that if we do get a project and you have to be there, you know, you're making such a killing. You would care less.

Yeah.

Right. So that's what I would probably do. Right. Right away is just raise your prices dramatically on land, on projects.

Yeah.

Because we literally have those three jobs left over from last year that are like that we're gonna do that, we're gonna finish and they're like I said, two day jobs max. They're really not like hardscape hardscapes. It's not that difficult.

So the challenge for us to be saying no to those jobs because you can kind of do them the hardest part when you cut services out. And this is why like having control of the site's important. Cause if you're saying that you're doing that type of stuff and even the picture on the front is very landscape driven and it has walls and patios and the whole nine, it, it confuses customers and you're gonna have to say no more and more on the phone. Right. So like getting that top of the fun on the website to be like, hey, we're maintenance, we do mowing, we do mulls install, we do push trimming, we do the basic stuff. And then if they ask for a landscape job, you're, it's a premium Price.

Right.

But saying no is tough.

Yeah. Especially knowing how much money there is available in the hardscapes when you do them. Right. But it's like the stress versus the money. I'd rather maintenance.

Well, it's also a matter just like, leverage of your time, like your time out doing projects. You're probably making 100 bucks an hour for the business.

Yeah.

But if you're able to get five new jobs and communicate with customers and have a better retention of your maintenance, and then one time you raise a price. Price increase and make eight grand a month, that's what you can't do with landscaping.

Yeah.

You can't go back in time. Like, all right, all these customers, I now make money on you with Pro. With the maintenance, we can get 200. Use all these trucks and equipment. I happen to believe that you could also, down the road, if you really wanted to go for it, that other trucks start to do some projects, but then also more maintenance. During the spring rush, you might get 250 customers. And all of a sudden, the raising prices. We just left our location. Like, he's going to raise prices and. And $10,000 extra profit. But it's like pushing a button. And that's like, where the money is good. Right. And more importantly, it's not dependent on you being there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. So, okay, leadership side. I think we want to do an amendment and figure out, like, what is the partnership agreement? And just really nail down, like, rules, responsibilities, what is the future going to look like? And more importantly, how does distributable cash work? Like, when do we take money out of the business? When does our salary go up? Like, a lot of times, what I like to do, you know, Sometimes equity is 50. 50 is like salaries dependent on how much you. How much you work here, your roles and responsibilities, ownership different than that, because you can be 50, 50, and always split owner, like equity or distributable cash by 50%. But if one person's working 80 hours a week and the other one's now wanting to get some time off, they don't get a salary, for example. So figuring all that out now, we would be really important. I think there are two major threats to the business right now. One, your lead flow website. You don't have control of it. It could be shut down tomorrow. The second is, like the partnership agreement. So what happened last year never happens again. And if it does happen, it's very clear. It's like, okay, so we don't agree on stuff. Great. Let's go. What's supposed to happen now. Okay. You're getting divorced. Like we never want that. We don't want to think about it. Like you're doing that now. 25% of the business is in jeopardy. What's supposed to happen? Oh, we're supposed to liquidate. I have to be bought out. And here's the valuation. Okay. We're gonna get three independent valuators and the average of those we use. Some people use profit and like we add the assets. Well, it requires having a good balance sheet. Right. So I think even from a leadership perspective, like having numbers of the business, I. E. An account like the bookkeeper would be super positive.

Yeah.

Because like if I come back here in a year and we have a solid P And l from 2025, we have a really good discussion. Okay. Do you pay for performance? Do we open up the books? Do we do profit sharing? What does distributable cash look like? What are the roles and responsibilities? And what percentage of revenue is going to the landscape versus the moeing? But we don't have that now. I think numbers like having the bookkeeper, they'll be happy to take your money. So that should be an easy one. I'd say within a week or two they clean things up for you. Right. And then you have a really good P and L. You, you actually, as you make a price increase, you see the effect of it. You start to see what the close ratio is for landscape versus mowing. And then you really start to govern the business as the owner. Right?

Yeah. Cause that's what we feel like now is we're just kind of like. Or more last year, but this year we're trying to be like, hey, we are the leaders, like the managers. We need to be owners, not just people who are, you know, working out in the field, kind of taking a beating from technically our employees obviously, but like thinking of us as coworkers, so.

Yeah, but so.

Well, any other questions that I can help with?

I don't have any.

I know we kind of did the full circle there. There's a lot of little changes. And, and what's funny is like most time people think I'm going to come in here, like, ah, change the software and like we don't have any numbers to do us right now.

Right.

And so I have to go up to the low hanging fruit, which is like we need more money in the bank. And to do that we need to hit capacity and raise prices and I think we can grow into that. And then a lot of this other stuff Falls into place. Like if you get, if you're a conversion of your leads, all of a sudden you're getting six, eight leads a day. It'll force you even more so you need the bottom left becomes you can't communicate. So it'll force you to simplify services. It'll force you to say no to complex ones and then matter. Like, you'll need to know your numbers because eventually you get to the point where like, oh wait, this is so frustrating. Money comes in, money somehow disappears. We have no idea where it's going. And you just like, you gotta have a piano. Right.

So talk to Emily right away, the bookkeeper. Get that square away for.

Yeah, I think within a week or two, she'll clean it up. Okay. She'll probably go back in time, ask for your bank statements, all your credit card statements, and like kind of go from there.

Okay. So.

But anything else, like random, I can help with anything whatsoever, I don't think.

So you went deeper than what I was even thinking. So I think you covered everything.

Okay. So that, that's kind of like the bullet points. I can share this with you guys. You can keep it. But if we can follow up in the next six weeks. I think that a lot of these little things, the biggest thing is if we get access to the site like this week and then immediately increase our conversion as spring rush comes on. I think that's the thing that unlocks us getting 50 new customers and raising the price.

Okay.

If we can do the, like, the difference between this year being profitable and not is going to be if we get that price increase in six to eight weeks versus like in August, we kind of hit capacity. Yeah, right. And then you're like, I don't really want to raise prices because we're kind of on the downswing anyways. Like the next two months of sprinting to that is the difference of profitability. So.

Okay.

And you said I'd lied. I did have a question for these. You said you wouldn't send these out. You would just focus on the website.

Right.

I, I like last year, for example, we didn't have a constraint of not having enough leads. Like if you look at in the 404, it's like where last year did we have the constraint. It was the fact that we had can find any laborers and we had no money in the bank.

Right.

So if labor now seems like it's the fix where we got a lot of people coming in, we simplified services. We're making that easier. It just becomes we need more Money in the bank. And so I'm not gonna even worry about more leads unless you get so many labors you have a bunch of money in the bank. Well, now it's pretty easy. We go out and do Facebook ads. You're driving to a site that converts well. So like, yes, you could go do these, but let's just say you have 70, $80 cost per lead. That goes down to 40 or 50 by just converting them better once they get to your site.

Gotcha.

So I want to fix the thing. I own the website before I go rent space from Facebook and rent space from Google. Like fix the thing you own the house you own.

Yeah.

Okay, Right. So if you can do that this week, like get that control, make those changes, increase the conversion as we go into spring rush, because it gets hot and heavy in a week or two.

Yeah.

So we're going right into the teeth of it. And so the difference between getting 20 to 30 new customers and that hitting that 50 and being raised prices, it all kind of hinges on that site, I'd say. Okay, so good stuff.

Yeah, I'll get a hold. Yeah, I'll do. Get a hold of everybody.

Okay, cool. Anything else whatsoever, just let me. I know they'll interview you. They want to go get job site video and stuff like that, but anything for me I can help with.

I think I'm, I'm pretty good.

Okay, good stuff. So I know it was a lot. A bunch of random stuff. Yeah, I can give this to you too. Here.

Yeah, but change the picture. We need your face.

Yeah.

On the website.

I was so confused.

That's literally what we talked to him about. We brought him, we took him out to lunch.

Oh, yeah.

And was like, hey, you know, let's. We'll pay for your lunch. Like, let's just get this back rolling. Because he took a break. He went out to Georgia after. Or no, somewhere. I don't know, somewhere like Florida for that big hurricane.

Yeah, yeah.

And he works with a tree service in Godfrey. And so they took him out so that he could do like drone footage and blah, blah, blah and stuff like that. And he was getting paid like a thousand dollars a day. Day. And I was like, I, like, I go do it like a thousand dollar days. I wouldn't pass that up either. Go do what you got to do. Then he came back.

Yeah.

It was like a month after that. We're like, hey, like you said you were gonna do this. So then he came here, we talked about it, and then it was like, we've gotten him so much work. And I think that's where he messed up is like, kind of like us is he got overbeared. And then he was like, I'm just gonna lack.

And if he's not able to do it, just be. He's a friend. Like, just, hey, can we take it on? Or can we get someone else to take access to it? Right, because if he has a WordPress login, you can get access to that. Get a freelancer to work on it with you. Like, literally hop on a call with my team for 30 minutes. They'll walk you through how to do it all. Okay. And so, like Tori at Long Hair Web Design, just talk to him. You can book a free call@thelonghairweb design.com call. And you can even just say, like, hey, we were on the turnaround show. I just want to talk for 15, 20 minutes and get some. Like, how do I do this? He'll walk you through the whole thing. Okay. And then.

Just as long as you can get access. Sound like he's a good friend. He's not going to screw you guys over. Right. That's a good thing.

Yeah. Like you said, he knows where he lives.

Well, thanks for letting me come out.

I appreciate it. Thanks for coming out.

Yeah, absolutely, man.