75 Clients. No Systems. 1 Weekend to Fix It. (Mike Andes Q&A)

I'm transitioning from my father running the business and whatnot. And he was just running everything on the fly. So I'm trying to systematize, organize, trying to make everything fluid. This season. I know spring rush is literally on our doorstep.

And over the winter, just being burnt out from last season, I didn't get into this until about a week ago. I feel like I'm on a time crunch, under pressure and got bills to pay, so.

And how many recurring customers? How many recurring customers?

I have about 75 recurring right now.

Okay, and the transition over the past week, has that been because, like have health concerns with your dad or is there something other existential thing happening right now?

No, the transition was basically he does. Well, he's retired now. He's down in Mexico now. So he's just like, here. This is how I used to do it. You do it the same way, but it. But it's just not functional for me.

Yeah. So I would take this weekend. Like, I'm extreme person, so I'll give you the extreme version. If you want to water it down, go for it. Tomorrow I would watch Copilot University tomorrow night. I would take every recurring customer and put them on the schedule with an off season so I don't have to turn off their mowing at the end of the year and then turn it back on in the spring. By the way, if anyone out here has mowing services or any sort of recurring services and you're not using off seasons inside of Copilot, please, you know, save you from having to turn it off and turn it on every single season. You won't forget people during the off season, etc. All that to say, I would do that all in one night. So by Sunday morning, I would have watched Copilot University have all my recurring customers inside the system. I would then start going through all the other contacts that he probably has written down in an address book or something like that and just put them in as contacts and inside of co pilot. But that means that next week I'm set up to do all my jobs from the mobile app. It also means that any contact from a customer of any sort is going to be inside of Copilot. So I would rip the band aid off really fast by getting all your jobs that are recurring on and all your contacts in the system so that when they communicate with you, you're putting notes in on their account.

So I just got to basically get on Copilot University, learn how to navigate the system, because I did switch over all My clients already. So I think I'm set up there, but I just need to learn the.

The basics, learn how to set, learn how to set up recurring service. But make sure you use off seasons because it'll save you a ton of time come the end of fall. Do one or two if you need to. Even like hop on atc, send a screenshot like, hey, am I doing this right? Get one or two nailed and then just put music on and jam. 75.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Mike.

I'll take you four hours at least. So, you know, make sure it's good music, make sure you got a little supper dinner situation. Do something, you know.

One quick question. I recently just started, you know, trying to grow the lawn care up and whatever else not. But main way I've been getting my clients is through door knocking. But I've already kind of saved up enough money to kind of invest into bigger, more marketing methods. So I just wanted to ask, like, what would you recommend right now at this time? What should I do?

I personally don't think you spend a dollar on marketing until you have a great website. The reason is because all of your marketing is driving people to your website. And so if your conversion on that website's 1 out of 50 people because stinks, the best use of your money is to make sure that conversion goes from, from 1 to 50 to 1 to 10. Because now every dollar I spend on marketing after that, I'll have a five times return just by having a better website. So, you know, I would really look at your website first, and then from there it's like, okay, well, do I try some Facebook ads? Do I try Google Ads? There's a litany of other options out there. Door hangers. Do I hire someone to go do door hangers? Like, if knocking on doors is working, it's simply a math game of how many doors do I have to knock on to get more customers. And so maybe you eventually just scale that. Like, there's people inside of Augusta Nation that are doing like tens of thousands of door hangers. This, this, this spring rush, and they've simply ran the math and they, okay, I know if I do X amount of doors, I'll get X amount of customers. And so I'm just gonna go copy and paste this across the whole thing. Hold my whole, my whole town. So don't, don't think that spending more money means you have to do Facebook ads or Google Ads or YouTube or anything like that. I would. First off, nail your website. Spend every dollar you have on that first then figure out marketing and then realize that doing door hangers or knocking indoors is not necessarily a bad way to, to do marketing. It is not online. And so if it's working for you, just keep doing it, just scale it.

And one more question for you really quickly. How do I propose a contract to a client? Like you know, I'm young so it's a lot that I don't know. There's a lot of other guys in here. Anybody else or you, how do I propose a contract to somebody?

So when you say propose a contract, you say you're trying to get them on 12 month agreements instead of like a per cut price.

That's a sir.

And, and is that something that's become a big problem in terms of selling more jobs for you or not?

No sir, it's just I can, I've kind of already had a few clients in line and, and I've already cut them a few times and they keep looking forward to me cutting them and well, I don't want to just do every, every cut price. You know, I want to get a contract, put them on a contract. I just don't know how or how do I propose that to them.

Yeah. So like the question is do you even need a contract? Right. Because if you're trying to grow the business, adding in a contract on something like mowing services is going to add friction to the sales process. And so unless your market, everyone has contracts and like it's very, very normal. I would say if you're trying to grow and get more customers, don't require contract. And you say well what about like the, you know, the fact that like they might not be here next week? Well what do you think? If you have a contract, are you going to take them to court over $200 a month? Right. And so like I would really think through the process of what's the value of that contract actually doing. And what it usually does is scare away customers because they're like well I don't want to sign a 12 month agreement. I only here for eight months. Do you not want that customer? Right. So I, I, I would. Unless your market Elijah, everyone has 12 month agreements and that's all they're confused by per cut pricing. I would leave it as is scale it up. And then the only reason to switch over 12 month agreements is because you wouldn't have better cash flow. Now the thing is this is, right now we're not worried about cash flow in a small business. We want to grow the business and then down the Road, you can always switch 12 month contracts. Once you're not in growth mode and you're not trying to get more and more customers, you're like, hey, I'm okay with 300 customers, great. Now I'm going to require contracts and If I lose 20 or 30 because they don't like that, who cares? But if you, right now, as you're trying to grow institute, you must have a contract. It might take you three times as long to get to 300 customers because there's so many people that don't want to sign contracts. It also adds friction because you got to get a signature. You've got to walk, walk them through 12 pages of terms and conditions. Like, I'm just one of my grass cut dude. We just, I just want to give you money, all right? So don't make it hard for people to give you money. Make it easy. And I think that would serve you well.

Now that we're talking about contracts, I have, I guess, an organic fertilizer application company and I'm looking to put my clients on a subscription model where I come treat the yard about, you know, three times a year. How would I minimize, I guess, people asking for their money back? Like, how would I close that window where it's like, okay, I done the, I did the first service. You paid the $300, there's an, you know, another 150, like another two $150 payments left, or you decided to do the full payment of, let's say $500 for the full season. How would I, I guess, minimize them if they're like, oh, I need my money back after they've already paid and I did the first treatment.

Yeah. So two things.

Wait, let me clarify one thing. So you're saying the biggest problem right now is people either A, pay up front and then ask for a refund when they don't do all three services, or B, they do first service when you get to the second one, they're like, oh, no, no, I don't, I'm canceling.

Well, I'm asking in the sense of like a hypothetical situation because right now I'm in the position to fully go out and market the business, have all my paperwork done and together and this will be the first season that I can actually go outside, share what it is that I'm doing with my community, and then start pulling in clients. So I'm asking.

In a hypothetical world, how would you minimize that? And I guess we could lean to option B is the one that I feel like would be the most problematic one.

Yeah. So the reason I, I brought this up is because I, I, yeah, I, I don't see this happening a lot where people pay in full and they expect a refund if they cancel. Usually what happens is people pay in full and like, okay, I'm getting three services, it's locked and loaded. So I would do. If you're concerned about like people just canceling after one service, that's when you really make a great offer they can't refuse around.

Prepaying for all three. And just make it very clear if you prepay like this is a non refundable. Okay. But by doing that you're going to save like 25% something crazy. So that'd be the first one. And if people are paying for the full and expecting things in return, you just need to nail down your terms better in the invoice. It's like, hey, you get 25% off, but this is like non refundable and just making sure that's nailed down.

All right, cool.

Thank you. Yeah. And I would also say just be careful about trying to fight the ghost of the hypothetical. Like make get so many customers to where you actually have this problem. And you know what it is? I would just say in general.

Yeah, thanks Mike.

Yep. Because you can fight hypothetical ghosts all day long and then by doing that, it takes away the energy from actually creating the problem in the first place.

I'm getting into actually hiring some guys this year. I had some buddies working with me last year and this is going to be the first year I'm jumping into actually hiring strangers to work for me. I was wondering if you had any insight on maybe your preferred ways of doing it or maybe some pitfalls that I could look to avoid.

So are we talking about pitfalls of hiring strangers or we. Hi. Pitfalls is like hiring and growing in general.

Yeah, Just the process, just actually.

Finding people which would be maybe some sort of service or something or just putting flyers on telephone poles, whatever it is. So maybe a preferred method there and then maybe a few things to look out for during the hiring process.

Yeah. We still see indeed being the best. If you're paying for ads for marketing for applicants, one thing you could do is also just post on your personal Facebook and then drive them to your website where there's a form and they can submit a resume. Keep in mind a actual job post on Facebook will be removed. They don't allow it anymore. And so you don't want to be like job posting, here's your compensation. Like you Just make it more subtle. Like, hey, we're looking for people to join. If you'd like to go to this link, go to your website. I would then on that post do a ton of photos of like you working, et cetera. What you could do if you do this on your business account, you gotta be a little more subtle with it. You could, you could actually boost the post and then target people in your local area from like 20 to 40 years old males. If you're looking for that demographic and actually just get that posted for them to see it more. Just be very careful because job posts are not allowed. So you're gonna have to make it more subtle. Okay, join our team, go to our website and apply and then just have a ton of pictures or something. You could do that.

So we just got on copilot and we're getting set up and everything. We want to get everything set up, you know, so everything's on record and stuff. But we do have, you know, people wanting stuff done and you know, kind of starting to email us. We just got, you know, our new information out and stuff. But we're not totally set up with automations and just all the super detailed stuff and you know, setting up one thing we need, you know, to get a logo and stuff like that so it leads to other stuff. So what's like maybe some steps you would take because we got people wanting stuff done or not totally set up?

Yeah, I would. Well first off, setting up can be less than a week. Like if you actually just like, hey, I'm going to create an LLC online. I'm going to go take that, create an ein number with the irs. I'm going to go to the bank and create a bank account so I can collect money. Like that part can go pretty quickly. I wouldn't overthink it from like, do I get customers now? Like, yeah, just if it's the two of you and you're both owners, go for it. If you're hiring people, that becomes a little more hairy because there's liability. But the fact that you're both owners, I just go out and do the work, collect that money. And then even if you just kept it until you have the bank account to deposit checks, for example, like if you keep a check for a week, people aren't going to complain. But I would not overthink the setup process. You literally need a business name, you need an A, you know, an LLC set up, which you can do online. And you know, if you want ein number, cool, go get it on the irs, they'll give it to you within a matter of five minutes. And so don't overthink that. Then you'll take the information, take it to the bank, open up a bank account.

All right.

I appreciate that so much. Thank you.

You got it, brother. Use ChatGPT for your state and just be like, hey, I'm starting a lawn care business. What are the steps I need to do to get legal? And they'll. It'll just give it. Really spell it out and give you the links to where to go.

So we have like 50 clients that we just, we got them all transferred over and like all their contact information. So you think the most important part is kind of like scheduling the reoccurring stuff? And do you think it's like super necessary to like do the off season stuff now before we like schedule anything? Or is that like kind of a later down the road thing, what you.

Could do if you don't know your off season, for example, if like, I don't know really when we end mowing, I would still create an off season copilot, like winter off season. Cool. I would set up random dates. Don't really matter. The reason I would do that is because when you're setting up every recurring job, you just select winter off season as the off season. What it does during that period of time is remove any recurring jobs during that window of time. What's cool though is you can go like, as you get closer to the off season, you can adjust the off season in one place, the settings, and it'll adjust all of your recurring jobs. So if you're like, well, it's, it's warmer in the fall, like we're extending mowing season extra couple weeks. Great. Now what you'll have to do is just go into one place, the setting, and change the off season instead of going to every single job and extending two weeks out further on the recurring service. So I personally big fan of anytime I set up a recurring job, it's going infinite. So it's like basically forever. And then I'm going to set up, set up an off season to block off for three, four months or whatever where I'm not doing that service. But if I have to change it, it's fine because I can just change it in the settings and it'll add all those services in or take them all away as I get closer to the off season period. Does that make sense?

Yes, sir. I appreciate it.

You got it. All right, Anyone else? One more. Thank you everyone. I really appreciate you I hope you have a fantastic weekend. We'll stay in touch. Take care.