A short instructional video by Mike Andes arguing that a solo lawn-care owner can reach $100,000+ annual revenue without hiring employees by filling their work capacity and raising hourly rates. Andes demonstrates the arithmetic (2,000 hours × target hourly rate) and recommends prioritizing booking jobs (fill capacity), then incrementally increasing prices—potentially to $80+/hour—to achieve six-figure revenue while avoiding employee-related overhead.
Chapters
Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today I'm going to be talking about how you can get over six figures in annual revenue in your lawn care business without hiring anybody. And so a lot of you have heard me talk about starting a lawn care business and scaling up really big. But if your goal is to make over $100,000, one of the myths that I see out there is that you need to go hire people. I'm going to do the math today and show that you can make 100,000 plus dollars without needing to hire a bunch of employees, or even one employee for that matter. In my opinion, if you are hiring somebody and you're hiring a full time person, you're going to have no money left over if you're only doing 100,000 in revenue. The reason I say that is if I am doing 100,000 in revenue and I have a full time employee, so full time employee going to cost me, let's just say $40,000 a year. So $20 per hour, multiply that by 2,000 hours in the year. And again, when I say $20 per hour, that's going to include taxes and everything else. And so it's probably actually more than that by the time you include all the different things that go into paying an employee. But let's just say it's $40,000 off the top. And then you got things like overhead. So you're going to have fuel, insurance, now you're going to have to pay payroll tax and a whole bunch of those things because you have a full time employee. You're probably going to need a shop space. You're literally going to have another $40,000 in just overhead. And, and guess what? Now I only have $20,000 in profit. That's not even enough. Like, why would I have a business, why would I have a lawn care business? If I'm going to make $20,000, I might as well go become an employee somewhere else and make 40 or $50,000 a year as a frontline employee. So in my opinion, you cannot hire a full time employee at 100,000 in revenue. Now, if you're trying to grow really big, you might hire someone before that with the expectation you're going to be like 150 or 200 or, or more. But I consistently see where one employee, even in a bigger business, can do $100,000 per year in revenue per employee. So what that means if you're solo and you're just getting started and you're trying to get to 100,000, you don't need an employee to do that. I'm going to show you the math behind my logic. So we're trying to get up to $100,000 in revenue, and someone will start getting 5, $6,000 a month in monthly revenue. And they're like, oh, I need an employee. And my first thing is, no, you don't. Now, if you're trying to double and triple each month and trying to get up to 50, 60,000amonth in revenue very, very quickly within the next six months, then obviously you will need employees. But if Your goal is 100,000, you do not need employees. Let's run the math. Let's assume that you work 2,000 hours per year. And again, for most small business owners and in this industry, we're gonna work a lot more than 2,000 hours. But let's just assume 2,000 hours because maybe another 500 of those 500 of those hours are gonna be like admin, sending out estimates, doing invoicing, answering phone calls, doing things on the weekend, maintenance on your equipment, et cetera. But 2000 hours are actually out in the field working. In order to make $100,000, all I need to earn is $50 per hour. If I make $50 per hour, I multiply that by 2,000, I just earn myself $100,000 in annual revenue without needing an employee. So the bottom line is, are you charging what you're worth? Because most solo operators will sell themselves short and not charge $50 or more per hour. I really believe a lot of times people think, well, I'm solo, I'm small, I shouldn't charge 50, 60, 70, 80 plus plus dollars per hour. When in reality, you've got to realize that you as a solo operator, you as someone that just the owner is actually on the property doing the work, you care more for the customer than any employee ever will, and you should charge a premium price for that. Think of yourself as like the best gardener, the best landscaper. And if you're not going to go employees and keep scaling up the business, you should absolutely be raising your price. Fill to capacity and then raise price. So what I'm gonna be trying to do, if I'm a solo operator or I'm trying to get to 100,000 revenue, is I'm gonna make sure that out of my 40 hours that I have.
Every single week, so, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I'm gonna make sure that I fill up every single hour with work. Okay? That's my goal. So Maybe I get 50, 60, 70, 80, mowing customers and then spend some time where like one day a week I do projects or cleanups or something like that, I fill my capacity again. Maybe your capacity is 40 hours fill capacity. So number one fill capacity. And that's basically get as many jobs as possible. And I've talked about this before, when you're first getting started, All I care about is getting more jobs. All I care about is close ratio, get the jobs. I don't care how profitable it is. I don't care what your hourly rate is at the very beginning. I need number one is fill capacity. Once you fill capacity, then you just keep raising your prices. And this is not a one time deal. You keep raising your prices. If you don't want to grow and get a bunch of employees, you should just constantly be raising your price. Maybe you start out your business, you, $40 an hour, like, man, it's really low. You're right. But fill capacity, fill up your full week where you don't have any more time in your schedule and then just constantly raise price. Okay, I'm going to go from 40 to 50. Oh, a couple months later I'm going to go 50 to 60. Oh, you know what, you'd be surprised. People all of a sudden, they don't accept your estimates less. They still accept you at a higher price because you care more. You are going to be the person working on their property, the owner working on their property. That's of massive value to a potential customer. So if you're trying to shoot for $100,000, you do not need employees. If you're trying to go past 100, like 200, 300, obviously you're going to need employees. But I've seen solo operators doing lawn care and mow doing 130, 140, $150,000 in annual revenue. Because they did this first, they filled their capacity and they just kept raising prices. Every single spring they would raise the prices on existing customers. Maybe one or two might leave, but most of them would stay because no other competition can prove, can guarantee that the owner's gonna be on the property. And then they're also gonna raise the hourly rate that they're expecting to charge the customer. Cause guess what, If I do the math and I say, you know what, I get to the point maybe after a year or two where I'm charging $80 per hour. Do the math. If I can as a solo operator do 2,000 hours out in the field, then I literally did 160,000. Now let's assume, you know what I'M going to actually start in year two, start taking some breaks. I'm only going to do 1500 hours in the year, so I'm not going to work full time. I'm going to do 1500 hours out in the field. And then those 500 hours of maintenance and estimates and invoicing, et cetera, I'll do at home. But I want to take it easier. But now I've raised my price to the point $80 per hour. Do the math. Math on that, and that is you're gonna make $120,000 in annual revenue. So one of the biggest misconceptions in this industry is that to get to 100,000, you need to go hire people. You do not. You need to fill capacity and then consistently and religiously raise your prices to the point where you are 80 or more per hour. And if you think that's crazy in the comment section, those of you who are at 80 or above, let us know, because I promise you, it's more than you think. And if you are the solo operator, you the owner, you're gonna care about the employee, the customer, more than any employee ever will. And you should absolutely be charging a premium for that. I'm Mike Andes. Hope that was helpful, and we'll see you tomorrow.
