A Sleeping Billion Dollar Industry - Q&A w/ Mike Andes

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. We are doing the call in show. I haven't done one of these for several weeks, if not a couple months now. And I wanted to hop back on today, slot this real quick. I've been pretty busy. But if you have a question, make sure you call the number below 361-733-3333. That is the number to call. And today I'll be answering any questions you might have about business, any industry, any sides of business that you want to talk about, we can do that. I only have about 30 and then I have to run. So if you have a question, hop on the phone line and you'll be given priority. Today I'm focusing on service based businesses. I don't care if you are doing fencing, roofing, construction, cleaning, lawn care, landscaping, whatever type of home service business you are in. For decades, decades, we have been looked at as quote unquote, only laborers, only landscapers, only will do lawn care. The sweat, the people who sweat and do labor. And what's really interesting is over the past six to 12 months, the first time literally since 2005, 2006, 2000, even 2000, 2001, when we had the, the tech bubble pop for the first time, these type of industries are getting a lot of attention because they actually make money. For the past 20 to 30 years, everyone has been focused on the big tech companies and the flashy new technologies. When in reality, these industries that are quote unquote boring, that don't have a lot of pizzazz, they can't scale infinitely, they can't put one piece of code and sell it a million times. It takes sweat equity, it takes human capital and it takes a lot of work. Now all of a sudden these are gonna become the highlights over the next 12 to 24 months when you go into recession and everyone now is cash strapped, guess who's laying off right now? Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix. All these companies that have been admired for the past 15 or 20 years are now laying people off. Guess who's not laying off? People. Home industries. People that are actually getting work done around these properties and around people's residential and commercial properties. We're the ones still hiring, we're the ones still looking to expand and grow our businesses. Despite big tech falling off and beginning to really falter like they haven't done for the past 20 years. They've somehow been able to have 60, 70 multiples on revenue and 60, 70%. 60 times 60, 60 and 70 times earnings when it comes to their stock price and yet we somehow can't get three or four in our industry and yet we make all the profit and they still, some of them can't figure out how to make a profit. And so I think it's gonna be really interesting over the next couple years as we head into recession, the industries that are gonna get the most attention will be the ones that are the most profitable. We have our first caller coming in from Anderson, South Carolina. For those of you who are calling in, please just be respectful of everyone else's time and keep your questions nice and short. Anderson, South Carolina, I think that's who is calling in. Go ahead and. Whoa, what's this up? Cannot change. Oh, here we go. It terminated the call. Sorry, I apologize. I might have clicked the wrong button because they've changed the formatting on my call in show. So I think your name is Peter from South Carolina. Feel free to give us a call back. Actually, I think I can call you back. Let's see if this works. I've never done this before.

See if this works. Sorry, I think I hung up on this person.

Peter, can you hear me calling? I don't think it's going to work. I apologize to whoever called in. If you'd like to give us a call, 361-733-3333 and we can answer the question. I'll drop that one.

Hey, how's it going?

My phone right now.

Oh, no.

Sorry, drop. Nicole, I apologize. That was my bad. Okay. I think. Yeah. Okay. The lines are back open. I had to reset it. Feel free to give us call in 363-617-33-3333. A question that came in from Brent. Why do you have prefer having multiple locations comparing compared to doing one mu? I don't know what MU means but the reason for that is because it's a lot easier to find an operator for a location that has 500 to 800,000 in revenue compared to a location that has 2 million in revenue. So it's a lot easier to scale across the entire country. So for example, like in North Carolina, I personally am opening up four locations next spring and I'm not having anything to do with that. It's a lot easier to find four operators for locations that will do 500 to 800,000 compared to finding one or two that are going to be doing 2 million plus in revenue. It's just a different level of expertise, experience and compensation that you have to find for that type of individual. Next caller is on the show. I appreciate calling in from Stoneham what's up?

Hey, Mike, this is Junior. Very big fan of you. Been following you since like the first few videos and Big, big fan.

So we just, just get it into the gist of it really quick. This year we're, we're just around530,000 between two crews. One is the mowing and the other one is the maintenance, like the trimming, the frogs and all that stuff. And now next season, I'm getting out of the field. I usually do the, the trimmings and all of that other stuff, the landscape part. But what I'm scared of is that once I get out of the field and just go do the selling and all of that stuff.

The quality is not going to be there anymore. And like, I don't know what to do to like, fill in the.

The schedule for the, for the other crew. You know what I mean? Any suggestions or anything that you can think of?

So what, what data do you have to believe that you getting out of the field is going to lead to lower quality? Because at 500,000 in revenue over that, you're already having unmanaged labor. Like your employees are already doing the work.

No, I, I am doing. So I have the mowing crew, which is three guys, and they do the mowing.

Trimming side. You're more concerned about the trimming side?

Yeah, I'm doing the maintenance. Yeah. I'm doing like the landscaping, the plantings, and everything else that goes with it.

If it's a big concern to you that that quality is going to fail when you get off the trimming side, have someone start with you in the truck and you train them on trimming. It might be three months. If you're that perfectionist that you really focus on training them up to do it the way you want. That being said, it might be a time when, okay, if you have three crews doing mowing and you're the only one doing trimming, the question has to be asked what percentage of your revenue is coming from trimming? Because if it's only 15 or 20% of your revenue, it might be something you let go. If it's such a big deal to you that you think quality is going to fail when you leave. I think you'll be surprised in that mowing is actually, in a way, sometimes harder to create systems around than trimming bushes because it is something that has bigger pieces of equipment. And it's also something that is way more subjective. Go ahead.

Yeah, correct. Like, I feel like so, like it's not only trimming that we Do. If we do irrigation, we do all of the other stuff, you know what I mean?

So you basically do everything besides.

I'm the guy that does.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. The mowing crew will just do the mowing, then my crew will just do everything else.

What percentage of your revenue comes from things besides mowing?

So the, the mowing, you're looking at.

About.

I would say 50, 50, maybe 55 is moment. And then everything else, let's say 45% is everything else. The other jobs and, and like just running the business, you know?

And is your goal to scale up massively, like a million plus or are you thinking like 7, 800,000, but you out of the field?

I. Mike, if I'm gonna go do it, I want. I want to do it massively.

You know what I mean?

I'm not here to play around. I like, if I'm gonna do it, I want to make sure that I'm doing it and it's worth my time, you know, and it's worth my guys' time because it's not. It doesn't make sense just to do it half ass.

Pardon me?

Half. Half, like halfway, you know. Well, then either you do it or you do it.

Then you have to ask yourself with the end in mind, are you ever going to get to a million plus without. With you still in the truck doing all the, all the work besides mowing? No. So like just, just have the mind and make it pull the trigger. And in terms of. Yes, there will be like, just settle with it yourself that there's going to be less quality, there's going to be more complaints, you're gonna have some callbacks, you're gonna have to work more on training. You might have to cut a couple of those ancillary services like irrigation or something if it's becoming a massive issue with training or finding employees for that. But that is just part of the game if you want to try to grow to a million plus. So don't let it discourage you. Start at the end in mind.

Okay. Okay. I feel like I am the biggest bottleneck when it comes to my business because I don't take. I don't let things go very easy and. And just like looking. Yeah.

That'S going to be the hard part, I believe next season.

Yeah, I would cut out the most complicated of the services that you feel you can't train other people on or they lead to the most callbacks. Cut those out first and then scale up the other ones and make sure it's simple service that you can Train other people. And then you can always add those other services in later on if you get a crew of guys that are hungry to keep learning and they're not making those callbacks and those mistakes. But don't let the issue of quality, because quality is subjective. And keep in mind that what is better quality for the. What's better for the customer is that because you've scaled up and you have systems in place and you have a lot more people than just you, now you can offer those services in a much more scheduled manner because now not all depending on you. Like, if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, guess what? All those customers gonna be very unhappy. If you create systems, other employees can do that job. You're creating not only a more.

Balanced business, but the. It's better for the customer because if anything happens to you, they'll still be happy.

Yeah.

Cool. All right, brother, go get it. Take care.

I appreciate, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Bye. All right, next caller is coming from Grand Prairie, Texas. At least so says my software. Welcome to the show.

Oh, you might be on mute. It says the caller's name is Melissa. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Hey, how's it going? Yeah, you're on.

What's up, man? Hey, Stephen here with Ecomo Salon and Landscape down here in Dallas. Good to see you out of the quit, by the way.

Yes, sir. Let's go.

Got a quick question for you.

We're all kind of wondering, you know, we're all looking for a new CRM out there. Are you guys going to be rolling one out?

You'll have to come to conference to find out.

Well, we're excited. I think we were all, you know, we're all on different software systems right now, and we're obviously looking for that perfect Solution. We're about 50% maintenance and 50% landscaping, and we struck out with everybody that we visited with and kind of hoping that you guys are going to be bringing something out.

I hope so, too.

Yeah, that's all I can give you. Yep. We'll be having a. We'll have an announcement in. In pertaining to this at conference, but Yep, I am 100 on board. I agree with everything you said.

Super.

All right, brother, I appreciate it. Bye. All right, next caller says it's coming from Kentucky. You're up.

Said it's from Lacey. I don't know if that's true. Oh, drop the call. Next call.

860-You'Re on.

Hey, Mike.

Hey, how's it going?

Good.

My name is Nick. I, I'm from Lyon, Connecticut. Here I've technically two businesses. So I started a property maintenance business probably about two years back, but, you know, looking to get out of that because at that time I also started like a mobile detailing thing. More of like a side hustle.

Okay.

And that really took off, and that's really more where my heart is. So currently getting out of the property maintenance stuff. But a lot of the stuff that, you know, I've watched from you and learned has kind of transitioned over. One of my big things for me that I think kind of hurts my business, I would say would be keeping on top of communication with customers, you know, letting people know, hey, you know, this is, you know, what's going on, just kind of following up and all that. My biggest issue is, is, you know, after I'm done working in the field all day, you know, I have a CRM, I'm using jobber, so I have those lead forms. My biggest thing is, you know, I get home maybe six.