7 New Customers Today | $300k Business in 30 Days (14)

I'm traveling 3,000 miles across the country to build a $300,000 lawn care business in just 30 days. This Augusta lawn care location needs to be making $1,500 per day before I can hand it off to a general manager and go back home. I'm starting with no employees, no equipment, and no customers to prove that systems build great businesses.

All right, it is day 14, and the game plan is this. I'm headed to a job right now to get Terrence started on a project that is a mulch install and a property cleanup. Trimming bushes, trimming a hedge, the whole nine yards. Perfect. Yeah, I think that's just about it. Good stuff. And a different question. You may or may not know plants. Yep. Then I've got to go find myself a new corner to hold my sign, because the place that we've been at in the plaza has been working great, but I got kicked out the other day, so I've got to go find a new spot. No slip. Oh, okay. Yeah. You have to go, man. Okay. All right. Thank you. Also, we're getting leads coming in from the door hangers that I put out yesterday, so I've got to go get those done as well.

I'm just covering up the contact information for the customer. But this is basically what happens. They send a picture, they fill out their contact information on the bottom part of the door hanger, and we got ourselves a job. This specific person wants the property cleanup.

Terrence is rocking and rolling.

You probably noticed Terrence didn't have any eye protection or ear protection. It's because he just flew in, and so he still doesn't have all his gear. So I'm headed to Home Depot right now. I told him just to wait. We need to make sure we get that locked and loaded. And I'm also going to pick up some more pens for the door hangers, because in the rain, they all got messed up.

Okay. So I've been kind of eyeing this intersection. It's nice and busy. But the problem is I was here yesterday, and there's quite a few people begging, and they were literally in a fight yesterday over one of these corners. However, I need a spot to be able to park and people to pull over to get an estimate. This might work. And that is where people could pull in here and then ask me for a quote.

When they can pull over. So. All right, well, we're on the hunt.

All right, so the half marathon is starting to pay off. Went from 90 to degrees to 90 inches of rain per minute.

Actually, Pretty refreshing. We've already got two property cleanups, one mulch install and three mowing jobs on the schedule today from the door hangers. Let's go.

We are going to a door hanger now. They got an estimate for 39 weekly, 59 BI weekly. However, their brother in law. This is the notes from command center. Brother in law mows the right now, but is getting older. Needs a price for hedge trimming in addition to the mowing offered mowing tomorrow if she would like to move forward. So those are the notes from command center. We're headed there right now. So see if we can't get them not only on the hedge trimming but also on the mowing because we don't want their older. What is it? Brother in law mowing the grass anymore? Augusta Lawn care can do that. Very good. I'm Mike from Augusta Lawn Care. We had an appointment just to look at the hedges and things. Oh, yeah, that's right. Awesome.

Perfect. Do you mind understanding the yard? Yup. You seen the backyard? Have not seen it yet. Okay. All right, I'll go take a look at it. We're at Patricia's house here and we're gonna be mowing here starting tomorrow. But for the trimming and the mu. I just want to go over that. So we're going to be trimming these bushes out front of the house. And then we're going to install one and a half yards of mulch underneath the flower beds over there. And underneath here, including that bush trimming is going to be this area in the back.

See, there's a chain link fence, but there's a bunch of brush essentially coming up against over the chain link fence. So right there you can see the chain link fence. Boom. All along there. We're just going to trim all the way back just so you can see the fence. So this is just with the weed whacker and the hedge trimmer. So all those branches coming over, we'll trim all those up. And then a couple of these limbs that are hanging down, we'll just trim them up with the loppers as high as we possibly can go all along that back chain link fence. So that'll be included in the bush trimming and then the mulch in the front yard.

So she already got the prices from the door hanger. But as you probably seen already half the time when it comes to door hangers, they're going to want you to come back out to the property anyway. They have other work for you to do. What's interesting about this one is actually the price that we put on the, the door hangers. Actually it's going to be lower when we actually came here to do the work because she only needs like a yard and a half of mulch. And we typically include like a 4 to 5 yard mulch installation when we're doing those door hangers. So that price is actually coming down. You notice at the beginning she was a little bit more apprehensive. She has her brother in law mowing the grass. You gotta be careful with like family and things. However, by the end of it, you know, you just gotta warm up to them, answer their questions, be a human being. And by the end she's like, you know, I want you to do it and everything. And then at the end there I said, I will make sure that the edging is done because you could tell that was a stickler point for her. What it needs is what's called a straight edge or a metal edger. And we actually create a trench in there along, right along that concrete. Yeah, I know concrete about. But I just didn't get it from the other person. Oh really? Because her previous person, I. E. Her family had said that they were going to do the straight edge against the concrete and they haven't been doing it. So I said, hey, tomorrow I'll make sure that we actually go over this with you in person.

Now the strategy is we've got to find a place to hold the sign. Yes, it's upside down, but if I flip it around now I do have another one on order that is going to be for project based work because this one's really pitching mowing and we've got to focus on property cleanups and multiple installs. However, I want to test and see if being in a more residential, slower moving traffic area is actually the better move. Could it be wrong? Probably, but I've got to test it. So this, this street here, not a lot happening on the street right now, but people are moving about 30 miles an hour. I'm going to try this one out for one hour and see if I get any customers. And if I don't, it doesn't work. I'm going find another spot at a different kind of commercial area that hopefully I won't get kicked out on. But let's give this place a shot. First.

A little heart to heart with Mike, because a lot of people are saying that the prices that we are giving are really, really low. And you're 100% right. When I first started my first location several years back I charge.

No respect. I charged less than half of what I charged today. When you're getting a location off the ground, you need a high close ratio. And to do that, you typically lower prices. Not to say that within six to 12 months, we are going to raise prices and increase profit margins. Now, let me tell you a little story. We had a franchisee at Augusta long here that for the life of him, could not get his close ratio above 20%. And every single month that he had a coaching call, every single time, bar none, we told him.

Increase your close ratio, cut your prices, do whatever it takes to get more jobs in the schedule and get momentum going, and book your schedule out. Now, he did not believe that one day he could just magically wake up and raise his prices on customers and that they would stay. He thought they were very price sensitive. If he was going to relinquish on price on the upfront, that he would never be able to make the services profitable. So for a year, he got up to like, 30 or 40 mowing customers, and then he got Covid, and in one week, he doubled the prices on all of his customers. And guess what? Out of those 30 or 40 customers, only four left. And he literally doubled the total price to those customers. So the moral of the story is this. Get jobs, do a great service to our customers, don't want to leave, and then you're able to charge a higher price. But at the very beginning, customers don't know how awesome you are. They don't know how much good customer service you have, and they don't know how much better you are than the competition. So get them in the door, prove how amazing you are, and then they won't leave you even when you do raise prices. Great. We got some rain clouds coming in the past 30 seconds. Great. Just great.

Charlotte, North Carolina, is under attack. Why is it that every single action afternoon, I get crazy weather of some kind? Absolutely nuts.

Great. Just great. I am striking out on the weather. What in the world?

I feel like this is an episode of Storm Chasers. I'm gonna go literally drive towards better weather so I can hold this sign. We'll see if this works out.

Okay, so the bad news, that's pouring down rain, and I've already held the sign in the rain before, and that was not fun.

But I do think the good news is I found a good spot. We got the old Harris Teeter.

Grocery store with an entrance here that gets quite a bit of traffic. Not right now, but usually quite a few people come in here. But it's pouring.

Really bad.

Mercy goodness.

Would you look at that. We got Sunshine. I took 20 minutes, got myself a smoothie and worked on some co pilot issues. This morning we pushed out a new release for QuickBooks online sync for tips. And when you add in so on copilot, you're able to basically charge the credit card processing fees to the customer. However, with the QuickBooks sync, we need to make sure that comes across into QuickBooks correctly on the profit and loss statement. So we made that fix, but for some stupidly crazy weird reason, it made it where the add customer button didn't work. So we finally fixed it. It was the stupidest little tiny thing, but that was frustrating. Got fixed and got a smoothie, so. And the sun came out. What a win. Shout out to Igor, who is one of our developers on the co pilot team and actually lives in Ukraine. And so literally there'll be a couple days where he won't have Internet or power and will not be able to work because of all the craziness that's going on with the war. And yeah, shout out to Igor. He fixed the bug. He found the bug and fixed the bug. I appreciate it.

Good, good. I'm actually gonna be over in your area in about 20 minutes. I was wondering if I could just stop by and give you your estimate now instead of tomorrow morning.

All right, we are headed to do an estimate. I was supposed to do it tomorrow morning, but I want to go mowing with parents tomorrow morning and so gonna knock this estimate out. Now, that was Otherwise scheduled for 9:00am tomorrow. All right, we're out at James here and we're going to be doing a lot of tree trimming. We have two different line item options for him. The first one is going to include around the parking area along the front of the house and then along this front gate, front fence, that'll be the first option. The backyard will be a separate option and the side house will be the third option. So we're not removing any trees, but we're removing all the brush. So between a weed whacker and a hedge trimmer, honestly, we'll be able to get all of this out. Just clearing all of this back. Same thing along this fence, like weed whacking this bad boy, just completely overgrown. Get everything off the fence. We're not going to remove the entire thing, but like the main part of the tree, but all this underbrush and the stuff that's growing around it, tear all that out.

We'll take the pole saw and cut as many of These branches we can possibly reach.

As well as all this game trimmed up and all these trees away from the parking area. So we can actually get back that gate. So we might want to bring the ladder just so we can get back in behind here and get as many of these branches as possible. We are able to just load all of the branches next to the curb and they'll be hauled off by the city. Oh, yeah. It helps a lot with price, too. We don't have to haul it to the dump. Yeah. And just trim. Okay. Wow, it really has overgrown a lot. Yeah. It's almost four or five feet back to the. I can't even hardly see my buildings. Right. So in here, it's like maybe two, three feet back of just a whole bunch of ivy and new saplings and new growth that just needs to be trimmed way back. Same thing as all of this stuff here. We won't be taking the trees, but all the underbrush and everything underneath it. Limbing it up a whole bunch with hedge trimmers. Like, just a hedge trimmer alone will, like, knock a lot of this stuff out. So that's number two. The third option.

Is going to be to this side of the house. So this would be the third option off to this side of the house, around this tree. Again, same thing, just hedge trimmer. Honestly, get the reciprocating one, put it against the ground. Get a lot of these things out. Use the loppers for some of these larger saplings. Clear this brush out all the way back to the house with that tree in mind. So those are the three line items. You might have to break it up a little bit just for the sake of his budget, but we'll make sure we break down the items for him. I just gave the office a call. I figured I'd just give you the numbers right away since you don't have the email. Just to make it easier for you. Okay. You can if you would like. Basically, they broke it into three different items for you. The first one being along the fence, this front area, and then around the parking. The second being all that back area back to the shed. The second one and then the third optional item just off the side of the house. So the front one is going to be just 280, and then that back $280.

The backyard, same thing. 280 as a secondary option. And then the side would just be 140. So all together, if you wanted open to all done, it'd be 700. That's like everything done completely. All right. I'll tell you what I'll do. If you. You'll throw in all the way around this tree. Okay. I'll do it for the same price for 700. I'll take a picture. I'll send it to them. I. I think I can get it for you. I'll do it all. All right, let's do it next week. We do have some time on this, on the schedule. All right, now let me check my schedule. Cause I'm. I gotta go to Duke July 11th for ICER. If I give you cash. No, unfortunately not. Okay. All right. Uncle Sam wants a piece of it no matter what. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.

Well, look at you, buddy guy. Look at you. So went ahead and closed that deal on the spot simply because he did not have an email, but he was ready to pay. And it was only a $700 cleanup. But like, back home in Washington state, we don't have this service where the city comes and picks up all the debris from the curb. Like, that is unheard of from where we're at. And so where we're at, that would cost twice as much because we have to haul it all off to the dump, which means packing it all inside of a dump trailer or chipping it up and, you know, hauling it to the debris or, you know, getting rid of the waste. So here, the fact that we can haul stuff to the curb and it's just gone is incredibly awesome. You know, this specific neighborhood, it's not like super fancy or like, you know, million dollar houses. These are really relatively cheap. But it just goes to show, like, sometimes your best customers are not necessarily the ones that have all the money, want everything just perfect. They're willing to work with you, they understand hard labor, and they're not going to be super picky. They just need the job done. And sometimes those are the best customers. And I used to really fall in the camp of pulling up at a house like that one that we were just at and, you know, judging it, like, oh, man, they're not going to have the money for this or whatever. It's like, instead of trying to figure out all the ways your customer could say no, try to figure out why they could potentially say yes.

Wow, what a day. We got seven new leads today. I think it's in part due to all the door hangers from yesterday, but also there's some of them that are, like, from four or five days ago. And I think it's in part because on our door hangers, we do put that there's a seven day expiration on the estimate. I finally get to use the dispatch board and the routing features of copilot because we finally have a whole bunch of jobs and they get done on the same day.

All right, so it's the evening I'm back at Home Depot, a little frustrated, honestly.

I gotta get some bags, I gotta get a leaf rake. But I'm a little frustrated because at command center, the door hangers that we started to put out, they have the three options. The mowing, the property cleanup and the mulch. It has typically been assumed that if someone sends a picture of an instant quote door hanger, you just, that is the estimate, it's accepted, put on the schedule. And I'm a little frustrated because with these new ones, somehow something did not connect and they sent them the estimate. Like just wanted to confirm that you want all these line items. Of course we want those line items on the schedule. They just, they sent us the picture and that is the acceptance process. So put it on the schedule. So a little bit frustrated there. We'll work it out. We'll make sure the entire team is on the same page in terms of system for these. And that is, we assume that they want everything on that, on that door hanger and they'll tell us otherwise. And if they think they need a work change order or want a further estimate, they'll ask for that. Otherwise we assume the sale, we put it on the schedule and we roll.

And look, I'm not, I'm not frustrated at command center, I'm frustrated myself that I would let something go for a few weeks and slip through the cracks of the system without plugging the hole. So we've always done door hangers, we've always done installation quotes. But this whole like having multiple line items on the instant quote door hangers is new, but I should have plugged this weeks ago and so I don't think it cost me a job. He still accepted, but like it's frustrating. That's a 605, $500 job. It should be on the schedule right now, but instead we sent him an estimate. All in all though, today was a massive win. The first time we've had more than five leads in one day come in. And I think we got like three or four new mowing customers just today, so. So momentum's definitely picking up. I'm a little bit frustrated. That's partly because of like issue with co pilot this morning, the fact that it started raining today and I can do my sign and test that as well. As the fact that I got so many accepted estimates, I've got to like get those all on the schedule. And tomorrow I have a whole bunch of polls and a podcast interview on my schedule, and that's like a smack dab in the middle of the day. That's going to mess up the mulling route or little bit frustrated. So I'm going to go work out, then jump back into it later this evening.

Ra.