$5M Snow Removal Business — Coaching @stefano_narducci

Everything needs to become dummy proof. Everything that you know in your head, everything you've learned has to have a system.

This is where it is much different than your business is. Like, everybody's under a lot of pressure and so nobody could handle this business.

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Candies. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 200 locations around the world. I'm also the founder of Homeworks, where we process over a million dollars of revenue every day for home service business owners. Today's a different episode for my channel. I'm actually going to be doing coaching one on one in this studio for a large operator that is over $5 million in annual revenue doing snowplowing. Now he's at a crossroad because he's trying to take the business to the next level. He wants to get to 100 million. We're going to talk about what are the stages from 5 million to 100 million. We're thinking about national expansion, a lot of franchising and licensing and a whole lot of other things. That's the first half. The second half though is going to be relevant to everyone. We're going to talk about price increases, increasing the average customer value, improving the upselling process for his current operations and reducing his sales cycle. These are things that every single home service business owner can learn from. So without any further delay, let me introduce you Stefano Narducci from Ontario, Canada.

From your experience, how should I decide between franchising a private corporate owned chain, M and A buying existing companies, licensing my brand and systems and what signals tell you which road is right for a founder and what must be true before committing?

Yeah, like I would just work backwards from your goal. So like, ultimately your goal can kind of stem also around how long you want to do it. Right. So if you're like, hey, I want to be doing this for 10 years and sell it, well, that's very different than how I would recommend based upon that goal. And so, like, for example, franchising like I've done, I would not recommend to anyone that's like, yeah, I want to scale this for five years and I want to exit for as high a multiple as possible. I would not recommend franchising if someone's like, I want to do this for the next 40 years. Very different route we pick, right? And so it really comes down to the goal. Like if the goal is maximization of money too, like, it's also a thing to figure out, is like, are we trying to maximize money? Are we trying to maximize impact on the industry, are we trying to maximize number of people we hire? Are we trying to maximize control? Like the thing that we're trying to maximize is we need to know what we're trying to solve for first impact in the industry. Okay. So impact is important. How long do you think you're going to be doing it?

I want to say that I think I'd be very interested and I could feel in my heart that I could see myself doing this at least till I'm 50. I'm 25 now, so it's a long term.

It's not like you're like, hey, I want to scale this thing and sell this private.

No, I'm here for a long time. I mean, we opened a software company, Tractor Boys. We started around being in the, in the business model. You know, we've substantially grown in Northern. And of course I want to take it as far as I can for as long as possible. Like, I, I don't really see an end road. Like I would just keep going until maybe it makes sense to bring on like a whole team of different people that I could work alongside with and maybe go more to a, you know, back end decision maker. But for the content that I make and for how much I'm really passionate about the business, I could see myself doing it for.

Okay, cool. So we basically have a few different options. One is going to be we scale by corporate expansion. Expansion. Then we have franchising. Should be able to see that up there. Cool. Franchising. Then we have something like a licensing. I'm going to put like licensing slash community on this because I think you could kind of make it more of a community too. So when you look at this, which one kind of pulls you in a certain direction? Like for example, I know like a year ago you were thinking more corporate expansion plus MA which is doing a bunch of mergers and acquisitions, creating the biggest snow company in the world, pretty much. Cool. Has your thought process changed over the past little bit? Are you still thinking that way? Because like, it's also a matter of like you might not 100% know. And that's fine. I can kind of give you the pros and cons of what I think for all three of these. But like, as you look at it now, knowing what you know, which way you kind of pulling yourself towards, you.

Think, knowing what I've, you know, heard and learned from others, I really am leaning towards the corporate expansion. M and A, however, like, I just don't know the differences between everything enough and I don't Know, based on where I'm currently at with the media and, and how I've built Northern, I almost want somebody that's in way further and higher position than I am and that has kind of been through this process to be like, this is what I think makes sense for you. Okay. So I'm telling you right now, I'm committed. I'm in it for the next however long. Like, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 years, however long it takes. And what does it take? I mean, for me the first goal is just getting to 100 million. I really want to get to 100 million. Once we get to a hundred million, I'm sure we'll just move the goalpost to 1 billion because that's what everybody does. But, but I wanna make an impact. I want to make an impact in particularly the residential space because that's where all my knowledge is. But I wanna focus on a subscription model. I wanna be known as the home service based business that you could go to to take care of your snow and lawn care, but without diversifying too much. Like, I don't wanna go to a point where we're doing all these different things. I just wanna cut grass and blow snow. And I've done it really well in Sault Ste. Marie and I know that there's specific markets that we could go and do that. Now I know if we go to the wrong market, we'll have a harder time. We'll need more upsells in the summer. We'll need to provide, you know, more different things. I just want to get good at those two things. I know that the summer side might call for some more attention. Maybe we might have to get into, you know, doing some weed spraying and fertilizing, reoccurring services like that, which I'm okay with. If the market calls for it, we'll do it. Well, base, where I grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, you need your, your snow blown and your grass cut. Nobody cares about anything else.

What percentage of your current year? 5,000 snow do you do lawn care.

On like mowing 700 last year. This, this year we're, we're planning to go to a thousand. That's my goal for the company.

Got it.

So I want to take it to a thousand. And it's not new customers, it's the same customers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool.

Which just goes to show you the difference. Crazy.

Yeah. What's the, when you're doing the M and A stuff, have you looked into multiples and like what those look like when you if you were to buy out other companies?

Not really, no. I mean, my, my plan was to just kind of go after these smaller companies that are just copy and pasting mine right now, going to see them and saying, hey, I want to have a majority stake. We're going to do all the back end, pretty much via command center or headquarters. We're gonna do all the finances, the marketing, the sales, the software. And all you guys got to do is operate the company. So hire the guys out in the field, make sure it's running operationally, make sure the mechanics and everything are all up to pace. And when we gotta go for snow events or you gotta go and cut grass, just make sure the operation component of the business is getting taken care of. We'll do all the back end. And looking at it like a 60, 40 split, 70, 30 split, where we own a majority to make the decisions, but they still own the company as well, and it's our brand. I feel like ownership drives a lot of value and a lot of motivation for the business owner. Yeah.

Okay, so I will give you my opinion because you'll get other people give you a different opinion if that's your goals. I would strongly recommend not going that path where you get either minority, even majority stake ownership in a business and then they still own the business. That would just be straight franchising, because you need them all skin in the game if they're gonna operate to your level. Like, there's no way they're gonna get through last winter if they own 40% of business.

They went on the whole thing. So franchising's a rope if that's what.

You'Re wanting to do. Where you're like, hey, I want my brand, I want my system, my softwares, I want everything done my way and you're gonna wear my brand. As soon as you say you wear my brand, you're basically a franchise in most states. And I'm assuming you eventually go to the US so it's kind of like W2 in the US versus 1099. Like contractors, like as soon as you tell them, like, wear our uniform and show up at this time and use our tools, you're basically, this is an employee, this is not a contractor. The same thing is true when it comes to franchise law. It's like as soon as you say wear this uniform and you must use these requirements, that's where it essentially becomes a franchise. And if you start saying you're a licensor, which is like, hey, you can use our brand and you pay Us a certain royalty. Fine. But as soon as you start saying you must wear these uniforms, you must use this software, you've got to do this. When you start making requirements, you become a franchise very quickly. And right now they're making a huge push legally to get licensors to become franchisees or franchisors. Because it's kind of like the whole employee versus subcontractor thing. It's way easier. Like there's way less legal tape with their own licensing. It's basically like, hey, Northern Snow, here's all the things that you get. You get our ads, you get our software, you get plugged in our backend. You can scale that so fast. And then they can just use their own brand name. Right. So Billy Bob Snow, like, okay, great, Yes. I want to pay you $2,000 a month and I'm going to be plugged into your backend software, all of your systems, all of your training, all your ads, all you do with your operations. You're going to take a lot of the phone calls off my plate, charge me a per minute rate. Cool. That'd be the easiest and fastest route to make money. I bet you could get 20 to 40 people to do that in a year. And that is, don't change your brand. We take over a lot of the back end stuff for you. We get a cut of it or a flat monthly fee and you can keep your own name. That's a licensing model. That's Jim Launch. That's what Jim Launch did.

Jim Launch. Yep.

Right. And so I think that's the fastest route to make money. If you want control though, and you're like, I want our brand on the truck, on tractors. I want to be able to consolidate a lot of buying power. I want to be able to have uniforms on the guys and like the brand of Nord and Stowe becomes big. Kind of like a one that's franchising. Yeah, well, a one, A one. You talking Tommy.

Yeah.

Tommy, like from a regional perspective is relatively small because he's gone corporate expansion. He owns 100% of it. He owns every dollar of revenue. I think he has private equity involved, but like they own that, that revenue. But the expansion rate is so much faster. If you say, hey, can I get 20 people to start their own location tomorrow? Because if you go one by one by one, you will be in 20 years, let's just say 20 to 30 locations, and you'll be doing fantastic. You'll probably hit a million to a hundred million doing that strategy.

But that's the Hardest, longest road.

I don't know if it's the hardest. I think that it is not taking advantage of your biggest asset, which is your media.

And so that's what we want to tap into. Because if I could tell you one thing that I could see myself doing forever is that I found a really good stride in that. It's like I just love it. Like I have a really good time doing it. It's so effortless to me and I could see myself just pushing that agenda. So I want to scale the business around that. That was the whole point of making the media company, you know, it wasn't about, well, it was about sharing the journey as an entrepreneur. It definitely was about that. And just hey, showing off some of the things that I know and look at me scale my business and these are the things I know and take them, take them away. And I always did a mix of entertainment in there too, so that's why it always kind of stuck. And yeah, then once I started gaining traction, I really seen the opportunity of being like, wow, this is how I'm going to scale the business. Because I'm going to get attention through this. I'm going to find other companies that I could, could acquire and or merge with, partner with, franchise, whatever. I didn't know which route to take to scale, but I knew that this tool was going to help me get there way quicker.

Yeah, I think the thing that when I look at corporate expansion that it doesn't do is it's, it's not tapping. So no tap into moat. So I think that the moat and the thing that is the most your unique selling proposition is the have you have media and if you went corporate expansion and you went mergers and acquisitions, you would drive deal flow from the content.

Yes.

But again, maybe 1% of your audience is in the markets that you would actually want to first target. So it's such a delayed gratification. Like it'd be like probably 15 years before you're targeting all the north of the US and all of Canada to where you could actually fully utilize the impact on the media. Whereas tomorrow if you said, hey, if you have $50,000 and you're able to have, be able to get two tractors, you can get started the franchise. You could potentially have 20 locations next year. And so the franchising I think might be, and I don't know if I've ever said this to someone might be the move for you.

Why do you say it like that though?

Because it's the hardest.

It's so hard Because I heard you on Tommy Melo's podcast. It was a good podcast. And this was one of the questions I did have for you, was like, if you were to rebuild the Gusta, how would you do it based on what you know now, if you were to rebuild it, because if you were to tell me that, that that's gonna help me more than anything. Because if you're telling me to take the franchise route, I know there's some points along the journey where you're like, I wish I would have built this differently. And I could say the same about my business for other things that I wish I would have done.

I would have established the moat sooner. So the moat now is things that are hard to replicate. And that's where you always struggle when you're first getting franchising is because why should they join?

Northern Snow Culture is disgustingly hard to replicate.

Right. Also culture replicating in their business when they're the leader.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's the most difficult thing. I was told that by Dan when I explained to him. Because last year when I went to go see him in the summer, it was the same thing as, like, Dan, I want to scale outside of Sault ste.Marie and acquisition.com same thing. I want to scale outside of Sault Ste. Marie. The advice from acquisition.com versus the advice I got from Dan was completely different. Dan explained to me that you, as a leader and as a culture driver need to go to each of these locations if you plan on doing them, whether it's franchising or owning the whole thing. And you gotta instill your culture and all your procedures manually in person. Because it's different than just doing it over a camera, over a phone, or et cetera. Like, you need to actually go and do it boots on the ground. That was his advice. Which was. I was shocked to hear that. But it makes sense from a cultural perspective, you know. And then the advice I got from acquisition.com was nail it before you scale it. And if you want to go the old school Panda Express route, I mean, like, go for it. You could do it, but it will take an extremely long time.

Yeah. And I think the thing that I'm focused on there. Cause I would agree for 99% of people that say, I want a franchise, I say, don't do it. I say, go the Panda Express route. The reason that 99% of them, I say that to those, they don't have an audience. And right now, you have nothing to give your audience unless they don't come work for you.

I have so many people who want to come work for us. So many people who want to start a business. I've actually had people asking me, like, hey, like, pretty much in so many words, can I just work with you guys and, like, copy and paste in my hometown? Like, it would work.

Right. And so that's where it, like, I think the franchising model could work. The downside that no one sees is they just think they're going to, like, put up this franchise disclosure document, pay 100 grand for legal fees, and start selling licenses, and that's somehow done. Once you enter franchising, it's a different business altogether. It has nothing to do with snow, is nothing to do with tractors, has nothing to do with maintenance, has nothing to do with repairs, is everything to do with owner psychology and training them as leaders. And that's the part you actually. You switch businesses. Like here, you don't see any lawn care stuff. No, there's no grass. Right. We don't even. We're in the business of grass.

My life changes too. From a media standpoint, everything changes.

And everything you say now on the media will be picked apart. Because inevitably, when you have a franchisee, they're not gonna do it as good as you. They're just not. No matter how many systems you give them, no matter how many things that you give them in place that you know you needed and didn't have, and therefore you failed, and they will take the exact same system that you know works and mess it up, because they're not you.

Yeah.

And then guess who they will blame? You.

Yeah.

And so the reason that most franchisors get into a whole bunch of legal disputes is because every single time a franchisee fails, they are always going to point at the franchisor 100% of the time. If anyone fails inside your system, they will blame you.

So you're saying it's the row, but it will change my life, the way I go about business and the content. Seriously.

And the way you build your current one location, because you are no longer in that game.

Yeah.

And so, like, when I went to franchising, I was like, oh, like this location is going to cut out a ton of services. We're gonna simplify this like crazy. I'm gonna have cut revenue by 30 to 40% so that I can step out of this and never come back in this door. And so it changes the whole way you think about the business. And furthermore, when you start franchising or even licensing you have to ask yourself, okay, you're a 10 out of 10 entrepreneur in the snow. Snow space. Most people that are gonna franchise are not going to be you. They're gonna be a 7 or an 8. Awesome. Nothing bad against that, but you've gotta make them operate at 10. Cause that's what they expect. And so the challenging part becomes, how do you make it dummy proof?

I feel like, the stress too, and like, just how difficult the winter is, like, I'm gonna be really to blame, you know what I mean? Because when their customers are coming down, the equipment's not working, and they're experiencing those difficult times in a time crunch too. This is where it is much different than your business is. Like, everybody's under a lot of pressure and nobody has patience and nobody could handle this business. Hence why nobody's really scaled it to minute. Too big. Right?

Invert that. Because I think the biggest weakness of the industry is actually the biggest strength as to why franchising is important. Because the biggest reason people fail in snow is because lack of community. And the biggest advantage of a franchise is the community. Because there's one thing to be part of a Facebook group or a course or a mastermind, but the moment that you all wear the same brand, the level of camaraderie and culture goes through the roof.

Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying.

And so now when they're in a Facebook group with someone that says, hey, you should do this, or hey, keep your head up. Like, keep going. I'm struggling too. The level of, like, togetherness and family is so different than even just like a mastermind or a course or a Facebook group. Even if they're competing with each other, like, they're right next to each other, but, like, they wear the same uniform. It's like, we are on the same team. And so that level of camaraderie is what is usually the lack of thereof is why people quit in the snow season. Like, they're alone, they're wasted. They're just like, this is. I'm done in. That moment is when you actually need a community to pick you back up. Like, hey, no, keep your head in the game. You got this, right? This happens. Augusta is like, hey, we'll send you a truck. We got you. So now all of a sudden, maybe someone only has three tractors. They have four tractors worth of work. Someone helps them out. That is the stickiness of the community. And like, it's like the buffalo, like, they figured out, like, we've got to stay in packs and when there's like enemy, we all put our butts together and we face out. And that's what happens in a franchise, I think is the actual reason people should join.

Oh, then I'll. I know I could be extremely successful because that's the one thing I have on lock. Is that right there.

Yeah, I agree.

I have that on lock. The culture, the camaraderie, the way the business runs and just being able to get in that many guys at that. I don't want to say it's not that low of a pay, but it is not much money if you don't have any other income. If you're doing snow removal and you have another income, then you can make good money working with us. But if that's your only income, it's not anything crazy. And to be able to have these guys show up at those times and go for days on end, you need a very sticky and toxic culture. You'd have great leaders around. The energy has got to be there and you'd be able to support your men. And doing that on a franchise level, I could see myself doing very successfully. I'm just very worried about changing my path of content.

A lot of people ask me how we scale Augusta Lawn care to over 200 locations around the world. And one of the bigger reasons was our website. Now if you don't have a website, you'll never be able to have premium pricing or have a premium service in your market. If you want to go to homeservicewebdesign.com call. My team will spend 15 minutes with you making sure your website is dialed in so you can get more customers. Let's assume for a second we're going to franchising route because we can deviate in a second here.

But that's what you're stuck on. That's what you want.

I don't think it's what I want. I think that it checks the boxes that you're wanting. Cause you like the. I think that your strongest point is your ability to have build community. And I actually don't think most people have that.

That's the easiest thing for me. Being a leader and building a community is just like second nature.

Yeah. And like realizing when people need pushed, when people need a little bit of love, when people need to be ignored, when people need to be propped up. That's actually I think that the skill that you have and I recognize that in very few people and they don't know what they're getting the franchising because they think they're gonna get a legal piece of document. The person now gets access to the brand. They come for training for one week and I'm good to go. And that franchise will never win. Most franchises never get to 100 locations and therefore 90% plus of them go out of business. Franchisors. And the problem is this is the huge liability you have in franchising if you do that. And then you don't win. Your content's huge risk. Cause now you have a whole bunch of people that are gonna come after you. And so this is where you burn the boats. Like, this is where franchising is like, you go all in. It's not like, let's start a school community. Like, sure. This is like, I am going 110% into this. That's why I went and slept in the closet. It's like everything gets burned because every penny goes right back into infrastructure to. To build the moat. Which the moat is like, yeah, it's the community. But no one puts value on the community when they join a franchise. Once they're in, they realize that. And like, I know that's the reason that will keep them from quitting, but the moat for them, their perspective is gonna be like, better financing from Kubota. Like if you can get in, like when we have preferred vendors, I know I can save them 25% and save more than what they pay them franchise fees. Just in preferred vendors you can do that. Cause now you have buying power.

Yeah. With Kubota, I'm the only brand partner in Canada. The only brand partner.

And so if you say, hey, if you do it yourself, it's gonna cost you this month. If you get five tractors or more, you're paying for the fees. Like, why would you not do this? Oh, and we build your website and we do all of your ads and this becomes just again, you are trying to build a business in a box and you're trying to take every single point of failure and solve the problem for them. So it becomes dummy proof. Because you have figured out a lot of things that you don't even know need to be solved yet in the business. Cause you're an entrepreneur and like a 10 out of 10. And so you've just glazed over. Like my website stuff or the software stuff, you just glazed over it because you're so good. What happens is you get seven or eight in there. You've got to make them successful. And so you'll see where all the bottlenecks that they hit up against. So for example, for us, it's like, there are people that will be great leaders in managing team, but they can't get 100 customers. The first hundred, they stink at it. So we're rolling this thing out. It's like, hey, you pay $20,000 and we guarantee you 100 recurring customers. We will run all of your ads, we will do all of the sales. We do instant quotes and sales over the phone. Why? Because. Cause I know that a lot of landscapers are not gonna be great presenters and salespeople in person. So we take all these constraints and bottlenecks out, and then you build a moat that no one else can replicate. That's the part that in the long term, you build huge scale with. And those are things like a call center software, repeatable processes that no one else can tap into. I think the thing that is unique about your media, I feel like I.

Have so much of those on a small scale already.

Right. And I think the thing with your media compounds it. So, for example, if you're able to say, hey, when you join the franchise, you get access to this roster of people that are signing up every single day from my content that want to be operators. So, like, I just solve the biggest constraint for you, which is finding great operators.

That's the hardest part of this business. And you want to know why we have the easiest part. I mean, you want to know why it's the easiest for us, the content?

Right.

Like, we get, man, I get people who come from eight hours south of Toronto just to drive up to be like, I just want to work with this company. You guys gave me the opportunity to work as an operator. I just moved here.

Yeah.

Or I brought in, you know, example Geo, he worked with Amazon and Ajax. And he came in and he's been absolutely exceptional. And he's seen the content. My GM and partner that I brought in, he wouldn't have came in if it wasn't for the media. Yeah, the media was what got him sparked. He's like, oh, that is gonna take this way further than where we are.

And so by having the content that it stays even more entertainment, for example, you have a huge audience that you might get thousands of operators now sign up. Cause now you have the distribution. Let's say you have 10 or 15, 20 locations to get started. Now you have this network of you can serve way more area, way more operators can be involved. And if you're able to solve that constraint of finding good operators, and then it's not like, hey, people applied. It's like, we actually have a system for making sure they're good.

Yeah, we could put a funnel, we could put a funnel in place. Just because I do have so many people ask all the time to operate, comment and DM us and hey, like, can I, can I come work for you from all over the world? Which is just crazy to think about. Empower Media is insane. We could capture all those people in a form, get them in our, you know, ecosystem and then be able to be like, hey, you're in Colorado, you're a franchisor, okay, boom. Hey. We got a list of four guys who came across the videos. They want to work and we vetted them.

We got videos like, this is what we do for general managers. We're just rolling this out now and it's like we can run national ads, thousands of applications, run them to a video where they have to answer certain questions and then we rank them and we have hundreds of, a roster of hundreds of people that want to work as general managers. Because the hardest thing about copy and paste is finding great general managers. So solve the constraint. And so the thing that you have done, you just have to ask yourself, if I was to give this to an 18 year old version of myself that didn't have all the skills, what would I have to tell them? Because it can't take them six years to figure out what you have. They need to figure that in 12 months. And so you do as much of it as possible for them. Ads, you have to have it nailed because they don't know how to run ads. You gotta have the website nailed, like dialed in. It's already done from day one. Like, here's how you do your Google Ads, here's how you do your Facebook ads. Click this button. It's done for you.

I wanted to do all the backend for them and all I wanted them to focus on was the people aspect. And even that we could help with by giving them talent, which was hiring the operators. The training, which I've done a really good job with our training, we have a, a three part process where we have somebody who's interested in working with us. They fill out our form, they do online training, kind of like, you know, like a Best Buy or something like that. They do their virtual training. Once they pass the virtual training, they come in for an in person, they redo a small subsect of that virtual training in person. There's a classroom setting and then they get their hands on feel in the tractor. Tons of procedure videos we've taken to be able to help them more with Understanding the equipment. We have a small training facility in our yard. They go out there, they get experience with no snow, unfortunately. But that's the only way of having them practice. And that's it. They're vetted just like that. Now we put that process in place, and it's really good. And it's. We could definitely copy and paste it. And after they do the virtual training, if they don't get a certain score, we don't even call them to do the in person. So that kind of defeats all the lazy operators who just won't take 30 minutes to do an online course.

Yeah, and I think too, it's kind of like opposite of us. Like, during the our winter, we train all of our owners. So, like, what you could do to slow roll in, this is during your six months off. That's when you have people coming out for training.

Right.

You have groups of five or ten owners. You have. You already have the shop space for it. So it's like, day one, we're going over sales. Day two, we're going over hiring. Day three, we're going up operations. Day four, we're going over systems. Then the software. Like, and you just create a training. Like, everything needs to become dummy proof. Everything that you know in your head, everything you've learned has to have a system for it. And it's like, not like conceptually. For example, like, people got to like, multiple locations. Great. We just sat down the other day, Nick and I, for hours, and like, created like, no, no. Like, this is your budget. Here's exactly what you're gonna spend. Here's day one, day two, day three, day all you did to day 90. Here's a 30, 69 day for your general manager and for you, here's the comparative notes you're gonna have together. Like, every single single thing has to be dummy proof. And so it's just a different business.

Yeah, I strive on processes. We have some strong processes in place. That's why we've kind of put ourselves in a category of one with our business. Like, there's other businesses that have done what we've done, but they just spin their head 360 degrees being like, what? Where the hell did you young kids come from? We've been doing this for 20 years. We scaled the 5,000 driveways. You guys did this in six years, and your business looks way better. Yeah, well, media has something to do with that. But, like, we actually shrive on processes and culture and making sure that we're thinking in a human first aspect and how could we. How could we decrease the deficiencies and improve optimization? How can we get really, really, really quick out there?

And your business like that location will get better by franchising in a way because you'll be forced to simplify things for your current operators. When you get operators who are no longer being taught by you, you have to make the training better.

I did one thing right, Mike, is I knew that I wanted to to scale this past usain re right around 500. So every single thing I've done for the company, I've always thought in a mindset, first of, is this scalable? If it's not scalable, then I don't give a to waste any time on it or I don't care to pursue it or I'm gonna just think in a way different frame. So I have built a business around that. Hence why you've never seen probably a company that has scaled the 5 million from the home service space that just does snow blowing. We don't even do walkways, sanding, salting, nothing, just snow blowing. Because I, you know, seen that making sure that we really simplify the original location will make it a lot easier to scale. Or am I missing something there?

No, no, you're right. I think too, like, we cut grass.

Too, but that's it. We cut grass and snow blow. Like, it's simple.

If you get to 10 locations in your first year, be super valuable because you'd be able also generate revenue during your off season. So if you think about your current operation doing 5 million, it's gonna take you a while to get there from a franchising perspective. But if you think it was like, hey, during those six months, I'm really focused on growing my team. I got my own stuff. It's a big business. But for six months of the year, I train people, I get them set up, I give them all the steps for setting up their bank account. It's all the little things that you don't even think about now that you have to now think about in franchising. How do they set up their business license, how do they set up their taxes, how do they set up employee, like running payroll, all these little things. You just create the system for it and then you plug people into it. I think if you'd sell 10 in the first year, you would be able to scale pretty good. I don't. I think you're the first one.

I've told the franchise dude everything I've heard. You've told everybody not to. Yeah, I was coming here And I was like, I was expecting you to say the first thing is, yeah, you're not going to franchise.

Yeah, no, because I think that you have the skill of community building. And then secondly, I think you have the unique selling proposition of a community and an audience to sell to. Because the alternative is you have to go sell your sole to private equity to be able to get the money required to go to brokers. And you don't need to because you have the content. Now the thing that's challenging about the first 10 is you can't say you're going to franchise without like you can't advertise as a franchise until you have your franchise docs in place. What stinks is technically you kind of have to put in like 50 to 100 grand before you can ever actually say we're franchising. Now what you could do is sample your audience and say, hey guys, if I ever allowed you all to start your own Northern Snow, how many would you be interested? Get them on a call and just talk to them. Don't ever say the word franchise. But if you got 50 people and 20 show up and 10 of them, you know, actually have the money and they have existing business, they're ready to convert over, you have a business. So that's what I do with Augusta is I put, just put a post up like, hey, if you want to join Augusta, if you want to be part of Augusta, and what I'm doing, like where my brand let me know I could, I guesstimated that I think I could get 10. So I got nine. The very first training with nine people. And now I look back at that training like, oh my word, I don't know how they stuck around. Like, it's crazy. And that's how it would be like, but if you can get 10, then you can actually dedicate time, resources. Because let's say they all give you 30 grand. Again, 300 grand during your off season is enough for you. But okay, I'm going to hire one person to really think about franchise operations like a nick franchise owner success all the time. That's all they're going to do. They're in the community, they're reaching out to owners, they're doing check in, they're doing monthly coaching calls, they're running the metrics, they're doing everything franchise. You can hire that one person with just initial fees and then you have the bandwidth during that quote off season to now focus on that. Also, you don't make a lot of money on mowing. Just Let that do passive focus on the snow. But then during the six months during your summer, you're training people, they're coming out for Discovery days, they're seeing the operations. Just think of you said, hey, if you're interested in joining the franchise, cool. Come out for a Discovery day. See our whole operation during August, during July. And in that you just have a built in sales process for getting to become a franchisee.

Simple.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to get to my next question and I need to make sure that I'm on the right path with this. I feel like doing a subscription route too would make a lot of sense and I'll tell you why. So I've really, and this is just my, you know, procedure mindset going forward and me just having such a heart for the human aspect is right now we're a contract based business and if I want to scale my model, I want to scale it the way that I know and that's via contract base. Okay. So with the contract based model, you have a six month contract for lawn cutting. You have a six month contract with snow.

Yep.

That six month contract with snow only gets you up to a certain amount of centimeters blown from your driveway per year and then you get into surcharge. Your contract for the summer is on a bi weekly or weekly schedule, depending on what you pick. And that'll only get you a certain amount of cuts in that six months outside that cuts will be charged additionally. And yeah, that's just pretty much it. Super simple. I spend as of right now close to almost a whole year. I want to say three quarters of the year, nine months. I have two or three sales agents renewing customers for the next winter. That's a bottleneck. It costs me a lot of money. We're not focusing on customer support and nourishment enough. There's not enough income even with the price increase to be able to get more people to bring on for support and customer success and nourishment. They're just not. And we're lacking really, really hard because all of our internal team is going towards renewing these customers. And it's simple. It's simple things like hey, I just want to call to renew. And yes, we could capture a lot of that through the software. But a lot of these people are old school. They want to come in, they want to renew for the winter, they want to come in person and pay. We probably get a thousand 1500 of our own customers come and walk in and pay. Maybe because we're from a baby Boomer town. And we have a lot of old retirees. I don't know, but we have a lot of in person, we have a lot of phone calls, majority of visit phone call and in person. And then yeah, that's, that's pretty much a big bottleneck I've seen.

Okay, so I want to go to.

Subscription routes because to solve that problem, the we will. Once we have them on a subscription, that's it. No repetitive, no repetitive sales cycle. Okay, zero, None. All we could focus and double down on is customer success, which is like you're, you're hitting, you're kind of killing two birds with one stone because you're making the experience not only better for the customer, but you're also solving for the customer too. So I don't know, it's just like, it just makes so much more sense. I watch my sales team go for three months straight. One or two agents will work minimum 50, 60 hour weeks. And I watch us start at zero every April. And by the time we're in December, we have all of our customers. And it's this long slow burn going from zero to a thousand, two to three to four. And it's like so much effort from the team for no reason, when we could just have them on a subscription and the payments come out every month just like Spotify or Apple Music. And they don't have to blink an eye. Or they want. They could pay in full and they get a good discount if they want to pay in full. But even with paying full, it's still a subscription, just like an annual payment for Spotify or Apple Music. Once that one year comes around, you will be charged again. That is the model I want to run and how I want to plug it is you have your option to do just snow or you have your option to do snow and lawns. My main focus is I want to get as many people as possible on snow and lawns. Why? Because then this goes to the other part, which is me having a heart for the guys, which when I go and hire 60 guys for the winter and I got like 40 guns, like, like guns out of the 60. The other 20 are all right. And I'm looking at them and this is going through my head this winter and I'm like, my heart's broken. All you guys are getting laid off in the spring. All you guys, like, we're only keeping 15 out of 60. How do I keep them? I got to get as many of my winter customers as possible to convert to being interested and being with us. All year round. So then my head goes to a whole different thing. A whole different thing. And I don't even know if we'll be successful doing this. And I kind of wanted to have a second location started from scratch to see if this is possible. I'm gonna go with a subscription model this spring. In my current business, first time I ever did it, where I'm gonna try and get all my 5,000 customers subscribed for their snow removal. Now, out of those 5,000 customers, we are gonna work our off as a team to get them on a subscription all year round for snow and lawn. Okay, we're gonna try and do both. Now. This will be the first time doing this. And if it's a success, it's definitely the way I want to scale the business moving forward. Because you're decreasing the sales cycle for our internal staff, which is decreasing expenses of paying a sales team, which pays sales team pretty well. Right. And then on top of that, we could double down on customer support and nourishment. Then on the backside, operationally, we keep guys and assets really good employees all year round. My biggest downfall has always been the operator churn. I get all these highly skilled operators and I build a team of brutes. And then by the end of the winter, they're all gone. I only keep 15, 20, 30% of them. Next winter comes around, you lose them along the way. They have full time jobs, they go other places and it's like we're restarting every single year. So to me, how I would rebuild this business if I had to do it again, if I had to rebuild it, Just like I wanted to ask you how you'd rebuild yours. And if I were to rebuild my business right now, I would focus on more average revenue per customer, more money per household. And how would I accomplish that? I would look for high premium quality paying customers where I could provide snow services to them and lawn services to them. Even if we have to open up shoveling as an extra extent, even if we have to open up some weed spraying and mulching in the beds, whatever it takes. My goal and my focus would be to get 1000 max, 1000 quality paying customers that spend $5000 of average revenue per customer per year to get us to 5 million rather than 5,000 customers that we have right now, that gets us to 5 millions for only six months of the year. That is how I would rebuild this business. And that's what I think would stick from a franchising model. So that's something I wanted to kind of pour my heart out about because I built such a great business because there was such a big market. But I know now, looking at it, I'm like, I got 5,000 customers on the snow side. I could. I know to these 5,000 customers, there is 1,000 customers in there that would pay 50% to 100% more than they're paying right now. I know that we could upsell with doing shoveling because doing a thousand homes with shoveling and snowblowing is not that hard. Doing 5,000 homes with shoveling and snowblowing is impossible, But I know I could do it with a thousand. Then on top of that, you provide lawn care for them and maybe some other upsells that you could do that are reoccurring services. You could almost get an average revenue per customer to like 6, 7, 8, 9, $10,000 per household. Times that over a thousand customers. You're in the five to $10 million bracket for one location.

Yeah.

Now, I went on a tear just because I'm like, there's no other guy that would understand this better than you. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think your lawn crew becomes your snow shoveling crew.

Yes, Yes.

A lawn care guy is usually not going to be as qualified to be an operator.

All our lawn care guys are operators right now.

I'm just trying to scale it. You can get a lawn care operator for a lot cheaper a lawn care, like mowing. A mowing crew than a guy can drive a tractor. He does a great job of. Yeah, yeah, right. And so I think that, like, your snow shoveling would probably. Let's just say there's a thousand snow shoveling clients. That's your thousand mowing customers.

Yeah.

So like your snow. Your mowing crew becomes your snow shoveling crew. And I do think you can get the thousand. You can get an extra 20, 30% revenue just by doing snow shoveling.

Now, how do you feel about just going after, like, now I've changed the customer avatar. At this point, our new avatar becomes somebody who's looking to not touch anything outside of their home anymore.

I think you use pricing. I think even with the whole like, subscription thing, I don't think you need to push in that direction. I think instead we think of it, we have six months of snow. We have six months of lawn. When we hit the end of our snow season, we tell you, hey, do you want to see us again Next when you start October 1st, December 1st?

Is that your November 1st?

Okay. Hey, do you want to see us November 1st? Or we can continue at your current rate and we come mow your lawn. Click one of these two buttons. I don't think there needs to be a big sales process there because if they opt out of mowing, what I want them to do in opting out of mowing is to opt in to starting next winter. We have their car in Vile, right?

Do we require cards? Yeah, all cards are awesome.

So it's like, hey, look, do you want to see us next November 1st or do you want us to continue mowing at your current rate? Your current rates for snow is about what you would be charging for.

Lawn's a bit more.

A little bit more.

Yeah. Quite a bit more.

I would say. I would say almost double. Is it double?

Almost double?

If they're weekly, yes. What if they're bi weekly?

Bi weekly. Let me give you an example. Because we're only 24 cuts as a season on weekly. And. And 12 cuts biweekly.

Yes, that's the thing. So, so like no, for 12 months they're paying $1,000.

So by BI weekly model.

So if I have a total, that's 80, $85 a cut. If you're doing biweekly, it's $60. If you're doing weekly.

Let me see how we did it. We do the first 12 weeks and then we do six. Okay, sorry. Bi weekly is 18 cuts. Okay. Bi weekly is 18 cuts and then weekly is 24 cuts.

Okay?

So I'll tell you what we did and what we solved for bi weekly sucks. It looks horrible on your business, but for us, we figured out a way of tapping into it in our hometown because we have a lot of people that don't care about their lawns. We don't have nice lawns in Ontario and Canada, period. Because all the pesticides and bs and then on top of that, being in Northern Ontario, where we're primarily a snow season, out there, everybody's lawns is just weeds. Like it's not. There's no lawn.

So the thing you can make sense of 40, $50 cut.

Yeah, we can. But what we've done is when we used to do bi weekly, it would kill us because when the vegetation's high, we couldn't keep up and it would murder us. So what we do is the six month contract. The first three months we front load with weekly. The back three months we do bi weekly. That is what we do. And that is your bi weekly package. It is weekly service for the first three months. When vegetation is high around mid summer, our vegetation dies. If you don't have an irrigation system. Your lawn ain't growing. Barely growing. Yeah, it's only growing a little bit, maybe an inch every two weeks.

So in the perfect world, assume weekly during the first three months, bi weekly in the second three months of the growing season.

That's our standard package.

How many cuts?

18 cuts. 18 cuts for the standard package.

18 cuts if we take. Let's just call it right now you're. You're $150 per month for snow.

Roughly. Yeah.

Okay, so it's $1,000.

Our, our contract average over six months is 850.

Okay.

If that gives you.

Yep. So if we take.

So we're like 141. Yeah.

So before tax, this is still $50 a cut. 18 cuts times 50, that's $900 over the course of.

If you check, if you, if you did standard route.

Standard route. And you just say that's how everyone is. Right. So you just, you just hit the end of snow season and say, hey, you've been paying us 150 bucks a month making it up. Do you want to a continue at that rate or you just do this six month thing all the time, every six months. The whole renewal contract. Don't do it. That's killing you. The fact that you start from zero. You should be starting at your current number and working down as churn happens.

Exactly.

And that's why I'm very afraid of the subscription model. This is why I see snow guys wanting to do. Because it helps from cash flow, especially cause you got fixed expenses during the summer. But for six months, if you're charging someone you are high on their priority list to get rid of. Now hopefully they remember how painful it was last year to find you and get a good service. But when you're charging, like when you. Acquisition.com, they talk about increasing the number of payments increases churn 100% of the time. That's why annual subscriptions are paying full. We give a discount.

Yeah, we do.

10% churn.

Yeah.

Right. And so like I personally feel like you have a week of sales in spring and a weekend of sales in fall. And that is when I switch from snow into mowing. I'm telling every one of my customers.

Hey, we can't like for 5,000 customers to automate through an email of having them choose is like you're only gonna get a couple thousand.

Well, so like responses, you mean?

Yeah, because everybody's like old school and they want to use the phone or they want to come in person.

Cool. That's fine. You can say come on this day if you want to come in person. So like, for example, if you said, hey, it's end of the snowing season, you've been paying us 150. Does everyone pay up front or as some people, monthly. What's the split?

90%. Painful.

Oh, wow. Okay, cool. That's cool.

90%.

All right.

Why? Because we drew a massive incentive around it.

Cool.

10% off. Or if you pay monthly, there's nothing cool.

You paid US$900 for the past six months snow. We were great. We were awesome. Let's go. Here's some of our happy customers. If you pay us another $900, you get priority for next year snow. You get locked in and we take care of your lawn 18 times over the off season. Now if you don't want that, that's totally fine. You can go ahead and prepay for next snow season. Now to get locked in your 10% discount. Okay, like, I'm either selling them next year's snow or I'm selling them this year's mowing.

Yeah, that's what. Yeah, not quite what we did, but basically at the end of the sale season, we would then call all of our customers, send marketing to our current customers and say, hey, would you like to sign up for standard or premium?

Yeah, I never, I never want to leave the, the sale in their court. No, I'm assuming they're going to start with you next year. And I want to just like, but.

Explain like, we have like over 50% of our customers pay in the dead middle of summer in full for winter.

Yeah. So I'm going to get it like in April if they're, if they're not doing snow. If they're not doing like it's two options. It's like end of snow season. Great. You pay for the six months. Either a, do you want to pay for the next six months of lawn care or do you want to pay for the next year's Snow and get 10% off? I think that you're going to get. Because right now only about 15% of your snow customers are doing lawn. I think you'll get 25% easily. Like just a double. You get to about 1200 recurring customers. If you just make it really simple by saying same price, as soon as you say same price for a recurring service, you can double your conversion rate. So when we went from hey, we're mowing your lawn to now during the winter, we say we're winter services as soon as we said it's the same price as mowing. And we come the same frequency, immediately doubled conversion from 20 to 40% immediately. Because it's like, oh, I'm already budgeting. In their mind, they've already budgeted for this. So it's like, hey, do you just want us to continue coming to keep seeing our trucks? Northern snows, northern landscaping. You pay the exact same amount. You know, that's in their budget. Their paycheck doesn't change. Their budget doesn't change from winter to summer. So you can tap directly into it by saying it's the same price. And at that $50 per cut rate, especially knowing that it's not like premium lawns. It's like, you gotta cut the weeds down pretty much. You can make that work.

Okay, that's brought me a whole different perspective then.

Cause then what I wanna kill. And this is what people do all the time when it comes to even mowing. They'll be like, I'm going to charge a subscription. And charge them throughout the winter. And then four months of not showing up, the person's house kills, like, churn, just decimates them. And so, like, if you don't show up at their house for six months, you're going to have huge.

The only reason why I thought I would have success with it was just because of the reason that there's customers out there that pay basically in full in the summer, all summer long. Good.

So get them up front. Yeah, we're done. The snow season, either A, you lock in next year's snow 10% off or pay what you paid for the past six months of snow. Now it's for mowing.

Okay, I see you're on something there that makes way more sense. Now. What if it was some? Like, what if I wanted to rebuild the business and, like, you had to get snow and lawns with me and we did a subscription model, then it would work, love.

Then you make a loom. So this is what we do for winter services. So, like, we're trying to solve the inverse here, which is we have four months of. Of no mowing. We do a loom video with a price comparison of the two. So if you did a loom video for all your customers, like, right now, you could send them an email. But to your point, 30% of them are going to open it up. Right. And a bunch of them are going to see the email and not even click a button. Right. So you're going to have to, like, the higher level of education you give them, the higher level of conversion so we know the same exact location. Can convert on winter services between 20 and 70% depending on four different ways of reaching out to the customer. The lowest level is sending an email and you're hitting around that right now 15%. Like that's the lowest. Like send an email. Hey, if you want to do this other for off season winter services for you for mowing, you're getting about 15 to 20% of people that convert. You go one level up with that is you send them a loom video. The price comparison. Hey, if you sign up now for snow, we get this. Oh, by the way, you also get this extra thing. If you also get our mowing services, like you throw something else in there for example, you can sweeten the deal a lot. But in my opinion, no one goes through the summer without converting to next year's snow. Like that slow build will crush your margins from admin perspective. And it's very hard to plan for next snow season when it's building, building, building all off season versus just being like, I had 5,000, 4,800 of them already are ready for next year. Great. I know I have capacity for so many trucks, tractors, like, let's go. It just, it's going to be a very pointed one to two weeks of conversion versus allowing people to like, hey, we're done snow, thank you for the great year. And then two, three, four months later, they're coming in asking for snow again. I'm just going to assume they're going to be back on. Like you had their car information on file, right? Everything, dude, I would just say, look, next week you're getting charged for next year just like last year. Unless you tell us otherwise. Opt out. If you made this an opt out strategy, this is like the third level for us for wind services. Hey, you're on mowing. How we do this to make sure everyone's bills stay consistent. Your budget doesn't have to change. You don't get a really expensive spring cleanup and fall cleanup. Hey, we just have this new budget friendly option. Stays the same price throughout the off season. If you want to opt out of it, let us know. That's when you make the big jump. That's when you cross the chasm to where the majority will stay. If you just say you have to.

Opt out now, contacting all those customers is just SMS and email.

Sms, email and I would make a video. So the video is the thing that allows you to be able to.

I still only think we'll probably do half of our customer base.

Maybe other Half you're calling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2500 calls. So 2500 calls across five agents. You'd hire few people for part time basis for two weeks. You can get through all those people in a week or two.

Mm, okay. That's a way different approach and strategy. I think that would, you know, that would be exceptional.

I'm just afraid of your churn during the winter or the summer.

If you had people all year round for both services, it's fine, I think. But yes, 100% the way I'm doing it. No, you're gonna have people that are paying in the summer for snow and they're gonna be like this.

Yeah. And right now if you said, hey, 50% of my people are doing lawn.

There'S not gonna any value for six months.

Correct.

And that will kill, that will kill one customer.

Kill customer. So you can just have like three different tiers. You have, you have snow monthly, you have snow annually. And you have snow and lawn. These are three packages. And inside of the snow you have premium, mint and standard.

Okay, that would work really well.

And then when it comes to the end of snow season, you're not. You don't accept people in the middle of August unless they're new customers. And you can just pitch it as like, hey, if you sign up now, you get the 10% off, but that ends May 1st. You just pull all that demand forward.

Okay. Okay. I have a strong idea to go about this that brought me a whole different perspective.

And while you're pitching them that you pitching them the other six months.

Yeah, yeah. Especially like people paying for lawns in the summer too, they'd be so pissed.

I guarantee you half of your snow customers don't even know you do mowing.

Yeah, no, yeah, they don't all know for sure.

And it is a matter of like, do you like, we have the four different levels. If you actually, we like our most intense operators will go knock on people's door and show them the price comparison. You will convert 95% of people like, hey, look at the price. Since you're doing snow with us, we give this discount. This is what you do. You say, hey, look, usually it's $80 per cut for mowing because you're part of our snow service and you signed up for next year and you prepaid for that. We're actually just gonna honor that same monthly rate. That's cutting it down to 50 bucks. So you're getting like 40% off. You wanna go sign up for the next six months, it'll be the same exact cost as what you've been paying us over the past six months.

Yeah, that'll work.

You just doubled the lifetime value. You became a $10 million company.

Yeah, just like that. Boom.

Hmm.

I feel like we'd probably convert like 70% of our people if we did that route. It's just the manual input and effort is gonna be crazy.

Same way to ramp up for operators.

Yeah. I got to do it on the other end.

You do on the admin side.

Ooh, that's interesting.

You're gonna get to five to 10 people on the phone, just pounding.

Yeah.

Like for the book launch, we had 5,000 people. I'm like, oh, we're just gonna call every single person, make sure they show up. So like 5,000, you can do that. You can get five to 10 people in your office. You train them for two weeks, you pay them a gobs amount of money and you pay them based upon their conversion. You pay them based upon how many people to upsell into the mowing service.

Yeah. We'll expand rapidly.

Hmm.

That brought a whole different approach. My God. Okay, now when you think about scaling it to the next location though, and maybe just focusing on premium customers that have both services. Do you like that or you don't like that?

I like a two tiered approach. I like.

Because people want options.

Yeah. I think to say that right now 15% of our customer base is going to somehow become 100% next year.

Not happening.

If we.

I couldn't even get enough trucks and equipment to do that.

If we get that 60, 70% though, like over the course of time. But increasing that conversion, I think though, you can double the business by doing two things. One, in spring, having a better conversion from snow into to mowing. And then when you hit snow season, you already know how many customers you have because we pre sold them early in the year. But now you're going to go to them with the upsell for the shoveling. And that's how you're going to keep your mowing crew busy during this. During the winter.

Yeah.

You go after those thousand shoveling customers. That is low hanging fruit.

Low hanging fruit. Lots of money.

There's no ads. None of this is ads.

Yeah.

Like your, your, your customer acquisition cost is people in that calling for two weeks.

Calling. It's just letting them know about the thing you have to offer.

Yep. And then making a really good video explaining it all simple inside the text.

That's simple. Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Hey, hey, Mr. Jones. Inside of your email, go check it because These are the three options we have. It's 60 seconds tops. These are the three things that we're doing. We're now offering this new service. We're reducing it by 40% for our existing customers as our way of saying thank you. To be a loyal Snow customer, get.

40% off, match your price of what you're currently paying, and that'll just give them the standard service.

Yeah. And you're like, well, what about the different sizes of lawns? On average, a larger driveway is going.

To mean a larger lawn more than likely. Always. Yeah. Yeah, always. I just didn't want to, like, the first thing I go to in my. In my head about thinking about that is, you know, there might be a smaller driveway than a really big lawn.

Yeah.

What happens then?

If we can take this business for 5 million to 8 million by just adding lawns and not adding a single more track, one more tractor doesn't matter. Because that's the hard part about this business is you have to keep adding tractors.

Now, what I do, you say I focus on this for the next year or I focus on franchising. I focus on this.

I think you focus on this. This is like the lowest hanging fruit. The lowest hanging fruit is that you don't buy a single more another tractor next year, but you double the business and you do that.

We also acquired a business in our hometown. I don't know if I saw that.

I saw that. I heard that a few months ago.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, if you did nothing, you would double this business. If you just focus in spring for two weeks. Just a. You really nailed. I would do a test group with 100 people.

Spring cleanups, too, or just cutting grass.

Just cutting grass. You know you want that recurring bitch, man. Yeah. It's again, another spike.

And it's just. There's not much there. Yeah, it's like leaves, too. Like, it's a cool little quick upsell, quick little bit of money.

We're also trying to match the price of snow. Right. So I just wanted to be like, we cut your grass. We cut an edge. Is really basic. We do what we.

Now, what if I want to go for a price increase in the spring for your snow?

That's when you bake into your spring sales pitch. Hey, we're doing a price increase next year. You can lock in next season for snow now by paying in full. Also, because you've been a loyal customer, we'll honor your price for all the mowing as well. So you very well could double your revenue in that.

Right?

There.

Okay. Okay. So we want to honor your price that you currently paid for this past winter.

Yep.

If not, the prices will be going up after this month. And at the same token, we want to let you know that we could cut your grass for the whole season, the next six months. You don't have to worry. We can match it the same as what you pay for your snow. Oh, my God. And you're doubling the revenue.

Yeah. And usually at $80. Usually that's $80 per cut. We do 18 cuts. That would usually put you at around $1,700 for the year. We're gonna honor your price of mowing that you've been paying for snow so you can budget this in every twice a year. We're gonna say it's $918 cuts. Make the payment today, and then I'll also lock you in for next.

That's brilliant, Mike. That'll take it for sure to. I don't know. I feel like we could probably go from five to at least like, seven or eight.

And then in the fall, now you have all these people locked in. You go to all of them and you say, we are now offering this new service for shoveling, and you upsell the people who just gave you money.

Now, shoveling I can't do as a contract. I have to do it as a per time. How could we bake that up? Just card on file, hammering it once a month.

Okay, why can't you?

Because it is so much money that I found that with the customer's brain, the way they work, when they see $30 per time rather than. Because it's like double the price of what the driveway costs, and people can't justify that. When they see that upfront cost, when they see it baked into a monthly, you'll be okay with the driveway. But when they see that full cost for the six months of the year for their, you know, place to be covered for shoveling, they get really turned off. Plus, for us, if it's a heavy snow year and we do it on a contract, we could be screwed. We won't make any money at all if it. We could just put in a contract in place. So if we go over a certain amount of shoveling times and we could just charge you additionally. But what we found works because we tested it. Right now we have a small shoveling crew out, just so, you know, 200 with two crews. And this gets our lawn trucks moving, too, which I love. The lawn structures sit all winter, and the ramp rocks are perfect for doing.

Need to use them during the winter now because if you scale up and now instead of 15%, 30 or 40% do snow or lawns this coming spring, you're going to need to get those trucks activated during the winter, which would become the shoveling crew. And you're okay with a lower rate. This is my opinion. If you pull the sail for snow back to April the way that we're talking about come October, there's new money in their pocket. And how you pitch this is. We were the biggest request at Northern Snow has always been can you please shovel my driveway?

Yep.

We're offering for a limited number of customers this service at a one time cost and it's the same as your usual rate for your driveway. But we also do your. And then you have the other limits. That's where you get a thousand people.

Yeah, if we did a thousand people here, I'll just give you an example. So a small residential walkway to be shoveled and we have to shovel in front of the garage door and push it into the driveway because the tractor can't get close enough.

You look at. That's probably your biggest complaint.

It is our biggest complaint. Yeah. We don't get close enough. We can't. Yeah, no, I damage everything.

I mean like for most people, their biggest complaint is their actual, their lowest hanging up sell. So our biggest complaint, like I had.

To shovel my entrance and in front of my garage door for the last several years because the tractor wouldn't get close enough. I hated it.

And you would pay whatever.

I was like, man, I'll pay you.

Twice as much if you just move this.

Yes, yes, yes.

That's what other people are thinking. So you just, you pull the money though they're currently already like that thousand dollars is already going to. You get it in the spring so that when the fall comes. Hey, we've heard you. We've surveyed our customers. The number one request is xyz, their lowest, their biggest pain point. The same way it was for you. And say we are now offering this to only our existing customers.

Would you recommend I put a survey out saying, hey, if you paid the same price for your grass. Sorry, if you pay the same price right now that you're paying for your snow, would you pay for your grass? Should I do a survey doing that?

You could do a survey on like 100. I wouldn't do it on everyone because I want. When someone has a problem and they see a solution, I want the first thing to be transaction. I don't want to be like, oh, do you want this? Okay, great. Let me go get it. I want to be. Do you want this? Yes. Cool. Here it is. So I would test it. Yes. I would probably send it to like, let's say 100 customers. Like, hey, if we were offer this, would you do that again? Someone saying they're going to buy something versus click this button.

So when it's not. Because we have a dead time in our sales cycle right now. When it's not snowing. Right now. My guys should be working those phones, signing people up for lawns right now.

When is that?

Right now. So when it's not, oh, this is dead time. When it's not snowing.

Oh, yeah.

When it's not snowing. Our sales guys are doing nothing right now.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I should start now. We end the snow season. You've already paid all the way up to April 1st. For only. This is how you like, you can totally sell us, dude. For only our existing customers that are loyal to us. We are offering mowing. We're doing this because we don't want. You have to keep the mowers and all the rest of it. So you sell them now and then the same way you have dead space in the middle of summer and you're usually doing renewals on snow no longer. We pulled that forward in the spring. Now you start focusing on shoveling.

Oh, man. Dude. Yeah, I could take this. If I did all that with the 5,000 customer base we could take it.

To, you could double the business.

You could take it to 10 million for sure.

Absolutely, take it.

10 million, which is exceptional.

All you have to do is take a $900 customer, make them 1,800. You just doubled the business. And you can easily get there by getting 50 to 60% on snow. And 50 to 60, let's just call it 20% even, 30% on shoveling.

Okay, so let me walk back now because now I got a different agenda. So my agenda was to bring this new subscription model forward, plug it into the business, see how it does, and make it part of the copy and paste model for the future scaling outside of Suse Amory. Now I'm gonna double down on my current location. I'm gonna try and double the revenue, let's say, or you know, maybe 50% increase on the revenue. And I'm going to try to get way more lawns customers so I could keep way more operators around all year round. And I can make a better sales cycle, increase LTV and just make more money ultimately, just grow a better Bigger business and keep our customers more nourished all year round. Now, what does it look like after that? Once I got that nailed down, say this takes me a whole year, and I'm like, I come back to you like later on around this time or closer to fall, and I say, hey, Mike, listen. Look at what we did, man. Took your advice. We got 2,000 lawn customers, let's say, which I don't even know how we'd be able to get enough trucks to do that. But I'd figure it out, I'm sure. Hey, Mike, we got 2,000 lawn customers. We converted, which would probably bring up our revenue by. Let me just do some basic math. If we only convert. Let's say we converted 2,500. I was just say half. Let's be fair with half. We do 2500 lawns times 850 or 2.1 on top of the 5 million we already did.

And then you add another million for shoveling.

Shoveling.

That's how you get to eight next year without buying.

You scared me. You just freaked me out.

And that is all. Without any more fixed costs besides the trucks.

Yeah, we knew trucks. But I. I've taken a lot of advice from you over the years. You'd actually be very proud of us. We make our own custom ramp rack. We just figured out how to do it because we're in Canada. We get shafted bringing the ramp racks over.

Oh, yeah. That's brutal.

We pay 14 grand CAD for one. You guys probably pay 3 grand for them here. So we get killed over there. So my shop manager and our team got together and we're like, we got to figure out how to. How to build these our own way. So we fabricated our own. We call it the northern ramp and does a great job.

So the question is, okay, we do that this year. What's next? That kind of what you're asking?

Yeah, I just want to figure out that if I could lock that down, say, come back to you if you like me enough, say I come back to you a year from now. And I'm like, mike, here's where I'm at. We're 2000 or 2500 of our customers went ahead with the lawns. It ended up working. We kept more operators all year round, and we just built this better business with way more top line revenue. We go into the shoveling. What's it look like next? Then maybe next 20, 27. I'm looking for my franchisees.

Yeah. And make the model work at 300 customers.

That's the objective like nail it at 300.

Yeah. Cuz you need.

Should I work in private with a small company like just for free to.

Help just focus on this. This is so much higher leverage.

Like cuz I've done that.

Yeah.

I, I've successfully scaled like, like just by doing a little bit of coaching calls and just helping them for free from the goodwill of my heart. I've scaled like a handful of companies in Ontario that have went from zero in like 800 driveways.

Yeah. This model where you actually focus on the lawns, you have recurring revenue throughout the year. You don't have this huge sales cycle throughout the summer. And if you're able to nail that, that's a franchisable model. What's not franchisable is huge sales cycles, complex services and huge off seasons. And so if you can take those three things away and say hey, if you have 100 grand and you can go, you can go finance two to three tractors, you can join Northern Snow and I'll give you the roadmap to get 300 customers. It's going to have you at, let's just call it $800,000 in annual revenue.

Good revenue too if we're doing both. Now you still recommend I go for those higher snow markets that have a true six, six, six months snow, six months lawns. I target those markets and always down.

The road branch down. So keep going more south. As he's like, well there's only four months, then five months, you can always come down.

Okay.

But your objective is nailing the part that most people don't know which is the snow. But you've gotta fill that other gap in and then make sure they don't need two salespeople to make that happen.

Yeah, no, I feel like the lawn side is like, it's just so much easier, you know, like it has its problems for sure but like I mean if you could do the snow side, the lawn side, it just, it's, it's.

A walk in the park. Yeah. And you just tell people like oh you want to join for all throughout the summer when people calling in for lawns, hey, no worries. Just know you have to also sign up for our snow. We only do our snow customers during the summer.

Now you are not concerned at all that some of these prices that these customers pay for their driveways might be too cheap compared to their lawn. You're just like hey Steph, other other properties will make up for it.

If you made $2 million in revenue next year by adding lawns to your Existing customers and buying a few more trucks.

Yeah, all we'll need is trucks, some more zero turners and then that's it. The fabrication for all the ramp racks. I go the route of buying old like city trucks for five grand, clean them up, throw a wrap, and with.

The trucks, those trucks you'll also use for the shoveling. Those assets that you purchase, we fully utilize year round versus the tractors that sit there for six months at the end year. I have seen some people, by the way, do lawns with the tractor thing can get really expensive from a maintenance perspective because there's so much more cost per mile, especially if you're doing $5,000 trucks. I'd stick with that. But like, I think that you adding 3 million of revenue between snow shoveling and lawn is the highest leverage thing, the lowest hanging fruit.

I'm going to do it by far. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do it because you.

Will figure out all these other things that I haven't talked about. Like the incentive plan for the people on the phone needs to be nailed down. It's like your manager gets incentivized based on the aggregate number that's committed to next snow season. By April 1, they get an incentive on it, like a big sliding scale. The person at the top, then the people that they're managing, they get based upon their conversion rate of selling that, as well as how many people they get to upsell into mowing for the rest of the season. And will there be 5 to 10% of the customers who their lawn is way bigger than what their price? Yes. And at the end of the season, you're going to note that in their account. And next season you'll tell them.

So. Spring and fall cleanup. Do I still take that on or I wouldn't get rid of it.

I would just get rid of it for real. Mostly because you want price.

I only have 5,000 customers. We only do 100 leafs and 100 springs. That's it?

Yeah.

Out of 5,000.

Yeah.

Junk.

You just want to convert the same pricing. Like, I just know when you say same price as mowing or same price as snow is going to be mowing, you immediately double your conversion.

Our only upsell then is shoveling in the fall. That's it. Yep. In summer, it's just. We cut grass.

Yep.

Now what if we get to a point where there's some people are like, oh, cool, you'll match my price or snow. I want the. I want the premium. The weekly. I want weekly. All Year, I don't want your standard package. Because our standard pack, our standard package would essentially be the 18 cuts that would then match their price they paid for snow.

Oh, I see. You're saying, do they want.

Do we use it as an upsell?

So I would use. In the fall, I would upsell premium to people who have not already purchased it. And snow. Snow shoveling.

Okay.

There's a K. You already paid for your. Your mowing. You've paid for this whole year of standard. If you want to upgrade to premium or if you want to add snow shoveling, here's your two options.

Okay. Yeah, no, because all I'm thinking through my head is we have. We have some customers right now from the snow side who have paid standard prices, and we have customers who've paid premium. The customers have paid premium. We could just match that and say, hey, we're going to give you our standard service for lawns by matching that. But that standard service for lawns is not premium. And then for the customers that on their winter side who paid a standard price, I can't give them mowing. Standard mowing at that.

Here's the asterisks. I think that if you did the first, what we've talked about so far down the road, you'd have a standard and a premium for mowing to the premium would include the cleanups. So the same way that someone's willing to pay twice as much for the premium, they would say, hey, you also for the same price you pay for premium. Because if they're a premium customer for snow, they're gonna become a premium customer for mowing, and they're gonna want their property cleanups done.

Yeah.

That's how you 4x revenue on someone now you go from standard to premium, and you go from premium snow only to premium lawn. That includes the cleanups.

Okay. So right at the end of that cycle, we asked them if they want to pay in full or they could just continue with the monthly payments and then we could add to those monthly payments by adding on. Okay. Yeah, I just. The only thing where it gets cloudy for me is any of the standard snow customers we have right now, I would then go, hey, are you interested in getting grass cutting? It would be higher than what they're.

Currently paying if they are going to premium lawn care. Is that what you're saying?

No. Standard because higher. So, okay, so this is what I'm trying to think through. Right. The average number I gave you of 850 per driveway.

Yeah.

Is an average between standard and premium oh, okay. So here's something to know. 30% of our customer base. Yep. Is standard. 70% is premium for. For law. First, no. First, no. First, NO. First, NO. So out of the 30% that is standard, they paid, they pay on average about 15% less than a premium.

Oh, that's not bad.

That's not bad.

That's not a lot.

No, it's not a lot. But when I go and do the upsell to keep them there for lawns.

I would just do the standard package for mowing. Don't even get involved with spring cleanups. I was thought, I was thinking, but here's like double.

No, no, no, no. But the difference between standard and premium for mowing is. Premium mowing is an extra six cuts. Standard mowing is six less cuts. It's 18 verse 24. So for my premium snow customers, do I just say, hey, I'm going to match your price and give you premium mowing? They might not need weekly mowing. A lot of them don't sue. Saint Marie doesn't need weekly mowing. There's only one sprinkler in each residential lawn per like 500 homes.

Yeah.

So the problem for me becomes is that if I have a customer who paid standard and they paid a cheap standard price and I say, hey, I'm going to give you standard mowing, with that, I might really shoot myself in the foot.

Yeah. So then again, your biggest complaint will become your upsell. Like, oh, you want your lawn cut more often, is growing really fast. Okay, so there's a premium version of mowing.

That's when we do that.

Yes. So you have your snow.

So mowing, that is the upsell then.

Yep.

Okay, so we lock them in. Hey, the first three months we're going to come weekly. After the first three months, when vegetation goes down a little bit, we're going to move to bi weekly. At that point in time, if you wish to upgrade, you could call in and we'll upgrade the rest of the three months for you.

Yep, they're right here. They're on standard snow and they moved over to here. And like, I don't like that. It's like, hey, great, we can upgrade you and we'll do you more often and move you down here.

Now, standard snow customers, like, I have to charge a little bit more than what they're paying for snow. I can't match it because we'd be losing hard.

You mean if they, if they could.

Like that convert to lawns? Yeah, if they convert to lawn. So for example, just for some basic numbers, I have a premium customer. Okay.

For.

For lawns. I mean, for snow, I have a premium Snow customer. They're 850 for the whole season for six months. I want to times that by two. And I'm going to give them their 18 cuts for the summer when I upgrade them or not upgrade them when I sell them after the winter is over. So that's pretty much what we'll collect from a customer.

Yep.

$40. Okay. Now, when I think about the standard customers, the standard customers for snow right now pay around 700. So they're $150 less.

Yep.

Let's just say I'm just making simple numbers. When I go and I go in times that same homeowner buy two, I'm missing out on a lot of extra revenue. $300 of revenue per house. If I have enough standard customers say, hey, I'd like to get the mowing too. They're ultimately paying a cheaper price.

They are. But what you could do is just have the two different. Like the 18 versus the 24 cuts. So the. The standard mowing would just get the 18 cuts. You could do the 24 cuts for premium.

Okay. Okay, I could do that.

That's what I'm saying. You'd have, like, a premium.

What I wanted to do where. Where it got confused, probably for you. I want to do it the other.

Way around, where everyone goes to 18, and then they have. They give a lower even.

No. Everybody who is a premium customer.

Yeah.

Would get the option to have their price matched for standard mowing. Only 18 cuts.

You could do that, but then the trouble is your chart. You're penalizing your premium snow customers the same number of cuts as if they were standard snow customer.

That's what I'm saying. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I already know it's kind of cheap. That's the problem. Because right now, on average, just to be simple, my driveway is like my driveway right now. We'd pay, you know, It'd be like 900 bucks for my company here.

Yeah.

If we went with premium mowing, I think right now I'm just gonna do it per cut. This is standard mowing. Sorry. Let's just say we're. I think we're 55 at my house, so we're $100 more revenue for just a standard mowing.

Yeah.

Now when I go to 24 times the 55, that's a lot of extra revenue I'm missing out on. If I end up doing. If I match my premium driveway prices for all my premium snow customers for lawns, and I give them premium service. I'm losing out on a lot of revenue.

Now.

If I do okay, I'm a premium customer. I pay 900, and I decided to go with the standard mowing. That's my upsell in the spring. As I say, hey, we'll match your price. If I go 18 times 55, I'm only missing on the 90 bucks, but I doubled the revenue for that customer.

You see where I was getting hairy?

If I do premium, that's an extra six cuts I gotta go out for. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm losing money. I don't know. Losing. But it's going to cost. You know it's going to cost, right?

Yeah, but they're premium customer. I, I agree with you. I think you'd probably just say we don't. We just do 18 cuts for mowing divided by whatever, regardless. If you're. If you're going to do that, basically what you're doing is wiping out this. It's like everyone just converts to this standard 18 mowing cuts, regardless of where you're at.

Okay, and then what about for the customers who are like, well, I can't do bi weekly for the back half of the season for three months. I just upsell them then to premium or I don't offer it.

I don't think there's any premium like in. In what you're saying. You're saying if I offer a 24, that's where I keep it the same prices. I want to keep it the same.

I know, I know. That's where it gets confusing. Eh? I know. I hear you.

I think I would just have a per cut rate if they wanted to add stuff on.

Okay. So if they wanted an additional cut.

Yeah, you have a certain dollar amount, 50 bucks, 60 bucks, whatever. You make it up. Like, it'd just be a function of. I am trying to go get 1,000 new customers. I'm not concerned about the 20 or 30 that are giving me a $50 cut. That's $1,000.

Okay.

Right.

I think numbers, too, was like. I think we were the other way around. I think like 60% of our customers were standard lawn, and then 40% were premium.

Like the 18 and the 24. Is that what you're saying?

Yes. 18.