Answering the HARDEST Questions About Running a Lawn Care Business

Thank you for hopping on here today. I know all of you have already joined Copilot and kind of gotten started in terms of getting onboarded, et cetera, but today is really mostly just answer questions for myself directly. It's really an open Q and A format, so feel free to turn your camera on if you have questions. Anything I can help with, please.

Feel free to just go ahead and unmute yourself. This is much more like business marketing hiring. Anything I can possibly help with? Obviously Tommy's here from the support team. If there's technical stuff, they'd probably be more.

Better to do a zoom call with you and kind of walk you through some stuff one on one. But if you have a question, feel free to unmute yourself or raise your hand. There's a little button there on Zoom and we'll just fire away. So go ahead. I think, Luke, you already unmute yourself. Go ahead.

Oh, I don't have any questions.

Oh, you didn't. Okay, no worries. No worries. Good stuff. All right, let's see here. Sweet. Yeah. So usually how this goes is no one has questions until the end and then we have to all stop. So if you have one, feel free to mute yourself. Don't worry. This isn't like being published on YouTube or anything crazy. So feel free to just ask away. Josie, looks like he's trying here. Oh, here, there now. Now you go. You should be able to click that button. There you go.

So there's my wife's name on here, so I'm Dennis.

Okay, good stuff. Maybe just start with where you're from and like kind of size of business and what you're doing.

Yeah. Up in Benzy, but no one knows that area in Michigan, so By Traverse City, Michigan.

Cool.

Our size is about on track to do about 250 to 300 this year. So my question would be, is going into. Because I'm starting to think about next year and I.

So.

And I watch. I should say I watch all your stuff. So I'm trying to put as much things in practice as possible from your videos and whatnot. So I'm trying to think of for next year looking to scale up. And I know, so I know we're doing the eddms, which works very well. We do the door hangers, we do Google Ads, and then we just recently.

Started that process again. Google guaranteed. So I'm wondering, is there anything else besides that to kind of really scale to, I don't know, double.

Yeah. You know, like ultimately when it comes to marketing, it's not a function of whether or not a marketing channel works. It's a matter of how much money do you have? Because you can get customers in any form of marketing. It's a matter of which one has the best customer acquisition cost and which one's going to bring the best customers. So I know, for example, that you get the best leads using the cost per lead. If you want Facebook lead forms, you can get, you can get leads for nine to twenty dollars. Now, the conversion rate is going to be low. The quality of that customer is going to be low compared to if you went and knocked on doors and talked to people. Right. Also, one's more scalable than the other. And so I think there's a lot more questions that have to be asked in terms of what channel you're going to use. I would say from a cost per lead perspective, it's not even just that because like for example, Google Local services is going to be unbeatable in quality and cost per lead. The challenging part is you can't pour gasoline on it because there's only so many leads that Google will give you. And so there's this balance of like what's the best cost per lead and highest quality. Probably Google Local services. What's the most scalable form? Probably a mix of something like door hangers. If you're going to go more boots on the ground versus something like Facebook ads, the question is, do you have the skill for Facebook ads or do you go in agency or something like door hangers? Something like in your ballpark you can get it done, It's a lower budget, et cetera. So I would really test things out. Depending on your budget, if you have less than $5,000 to spend on marketing, I would very much try to test one channel, figure out your customer acquisition cost, and then keep going from there. The only thing to think about is your customer acquisition cost and like nailing what that is for each channel and then you scale it.

Right.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And also the side note, there's. There's a video I made a couple of weeks ago at Facebook Ads specifically. Just don't run random Facebook ads without doing like tracking codes, actually having the codes on your thank you page. Like there's some. Some finer details there. And that's why I think a lot of times the lowest lift is something like a door hangers, yard signs, because like you can get it out there and you'll get customers. And if you spend a thousand dollars and doing like right now a lot of Augusta is doing for Augusta Lights or yard signs. It's just like a complete program. It's like, okay, If I get 500 signs and it cost me $4,000 and I put them all out, I will get this number of customers. Like it's just math. And so the closer you can get a marketing channel where you just know how many doors you have to knock, know how many yard signs you have to put out, know many ads you have to run, the better. But you can only do that through testing.

Um, what about Angie's leads? You never talk about that. But like we've been using Angie leads or Angie's List or previously. What was Home Advisor for since I started? So like probably 10 years. And you know, yeah, the customer acquisition cost is, I feel high. But you know, if you filter through them, we do land, you know, some pretty good jobs off of Angie's List. But what's your opinion? Because I've never in any of the videos or anything, I've never heard you say anything about Angie's List.

Yeah, totally. I kind of group them with like a whole bunch of other lead services just for, for my context sake. What, what's kind of the average cost per lead for you now from them?

It really just depends on what service.

So like, so give me like one high, one low.

Okay. Like if we were to do a lead, we were to get a lead for like say site prep land clearing, over a hundred dollars. I don't know the exact price off the top of my head, but like a mowing or maintenance lead is probably 30 to $20 roughly.

Yep. So like if you can get that kind of lead cost, I think I'm a fan. It simply comes down to like what the lifetime gross profit of that customer is. So in something like land clearing, if you're doing a $10,000 job and you get them for a, let's call it 150 bucks. Great. Fantastic. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense for one time jobs. I usually like to own my customer data and I don't like them being marketed to by someone else. And so because Angie owns the customer, they can go market them for five other services that you might offer. And I don't want to pay for a lead twice. More importantly, I want to control the entire relationship with the customer. So it's not a function of. I don't like the leads. In some of our markets, people do use them like, so I just got out of a training like the sixth out of list of like what I recommend for marketing is Angie's. It just I would exhaust other forms before going there.

Because if I can get instant quote with a price with a card on file, I would rather get that even if it was 40 or 50 customer acquisition costs, because that customer is not tied to Angie's. They're coming to me directly. I have their card on file. I own the customer. And more importantly, when I run money, when I, when I pay for Andy's or these other.

Lead services, it's kind of this weird, like you're kind of biting the hand that feeds you. What I mean with that is they take your money and they go run ads and they're simply driving traffic to your page, like inside of Angie's. And so what happens is a lot of times you are paying for them to outrank you on SEO. And so what starts happening is you start getting addicted to them because they're all the traffic is going through them instead of your website that would otherwise rank for your business name. And once they've done that, you're like, you're basically like, you're on the drip. Like you gotta have them because they're beating you out in SEO and you have all these reviews there. Like, is it a sunk cost of like why people never move away to like just focus on their own organic SEO, their own website? And I think of like renting versus owning, like your website, you own the domain, it's yours forever. I drive traffic there, I build brand reputation long term, like equity in a house. Whereas like I like Angie's, the renting it's cheaper quote unquote today. But I'm not building long term value in my domain. And when you think about like real estate, I think the same thing as online. Like online my domain, I'm trying to build authority, whether it be SEO, search engine optimization or aeo, answer engine optimization with AI. Like I want to build that asset. I do not want to be giving someone else $50 or $40. They spend $20 in the back end to go run an ad to your site to bring traffic to you. And then they make an arbitrage in the meantime. They get the click and they get the domain authority to be able to outrank you. So like it's, it's a very much of a longer term thing. I'm not saying like you should not use them. I just don't bring them up in my content because it's a short term win. And I, if I said it like, everyone would go get some more jobs. Long term. I see them doing nefarious things and hurting people's. SEO on their website. It's like, it's like a core fundamental part of going into profit mode is I need to be able to reduce marketing spend and still get enough leads from my website to be able to replace Churn. If I can't replace Churn with new customers that are coming from my site, I have to keep paying money for ads. And so I see a lot of people that get on those lead source lead companies never leave them and they get addicted.

That's my problem. That's my problem. I've been, I pay Angie, you know, probably average 3, 400 a week for 10 years.

Yeah.

And anything that you Google, any kind of service in my area, they're at the top.

And you got him there. It's one of those things. It's like you're basically paying for your competitor to beat you out.

Right.

So, but, but long story short, it's okay. Like I would probably if I was you. Like, okay, how do I take my marketing budget and I start taking 20, 30, 40 over the course of time more towards my own website and driving traffic there. Because here's the thing, the reason Angie's Crushes is because they have an optimized website. And so when, when they get traffic, they convert them into leads. That same traffic coming to your site, you might have to get twice as many clicks to get the same number of conversions. And this is why Angie's Crushes most home services because like the design of the site needs to be optimized for mobile load fast, be ranking well on SEO. And so I would first, if I was you, if you're spending three to four hundred dollars a week, I would first spend that per month on a great website and a great SEO and then I'd start there. And as the course of time goes on, I try to just move more and more of my budget as much as possible towards driving traffic to own domain.

Yeah. And, and really like with, I don't want this whole conversation be about Angie leads. But like, you know, with Angie, like, you know, whenever, like it's the middle of July and like we are just swamped, I turn it off and I don't pay Angie nothing. But like this time of the year, in the winter time, whenever it kind of slows down and we're only booked like maybe a month out, month and a half out, you know, it's, you know, that's what I'm paying Angie, you know, the three to four hundred dollars every week.

But you've answered the long term way around this Luke. No, you're fine. This is great, great topic. The long term solution to this is having a customer base inside copilot that you're texting an email on a consistent basis with seasonal offers that when it gets slow you send an email out or you send a text message and you get immediately your schedules booked out. And so like for example we, I sent a text out yesterday, 97% open rate and I think there was like 30 closed deals within 24 hours that just booked them out for three weeks. And so if you can that that's why like owning the data of the customer, I don't want anyone else marketing them because I see the value. That's why I'm willing to pay twice as much per customer if I own the data versus someone else. Because if I own the data I cannot just sell them today. I'll sell them five more times over the next couple years I'll give them a recurring service. I'll increase, increase the lifetime value by 5 or 10x compared to this other lead that someone else rent is renting to me. Yeah, and so it's very much, it's very much of a long term thing. Like it's difficult, I know to get off that, that kind of, that thing like that treadmill. I would just try to divert as much as you can towards that way because the thing is the amount of leads that you're getting right now from them you could eventually completely replace with organic leads coming from your website which are higher quality, you own all the data. It's just going to be a longer term play and it might take two or three years to fully get off of that. But when you get, when you start beating them out on SEO for the keywords because you've been focusing on that, that's when like it's like it's, it lights out.

I'll let somebody else go if they got any other questions?

Yeah, go ahead, you got man. Joel, go ahead man.

Yeah, can you hear me now?

You got you man.

So Mike, I have a question. Like you said that in Google we have to get at least 30 to 50 reviews. But while we get 30 to 50 reviews in Google, Yelp, how many clients the. And they will call me like every time in average, like how many free leads I will get after 30 to 50 reels. Once again you will get zero.

You will get leads based upon people coming to your website and submitting a form or calling you or emailing you. What you will get in having more reviews is more authority in the mind of Google to be able to rank higher on their platform. And so and thing is like everyone's like oh, reviews don't matter because of AI anymore. No, like AI scrapes reviews like nobody's business. Like search for local services in your area on Gemini, which is Google's and it is simply scraping reviews. So another side note to this is I would then respond to every customer review with a keyword rich response and you're like well how do I do that? I don't want to sound like I'm gimmicky. Put it into AI, put in chat to be like hey here's, here's a customer review came on Google. Please respond with a keyword rich answer that doesn't sound salesy. Boom, they take that and now it's saying certain keywords like your services, your area name inside of your response to customers. That is being scrubbed by AI tremendously. So getting more reviews will not get you more leads, it'll get more authority and that authority gets you to show up in the, on the algorithm more in terms of Google answer like any sort of answer engine and then that potentially leads to leads assuming once they get to your site it converts well.

Okay, sounds good enough. Thank you Michelle.

Aaron. Aaron from Michigan. Great beard. Great beard. One day. One day I'll get there. My goodness.

Hey, thanks. Hey. So kind of new to co pilot. Really new. I don't know if all these guys are new but I am anyway. But so we're southeast Michigan, not by Traverse City, probably about five hours away from you guys up there. But I wanted your what your thoughts were on basically lawn signs that don't have your business name or business logo on them. I've, I've heard this a couple of different spots where it's just like a Google number, just the service basically and.

Not you don't have your business, it's not branded because you don't want the Karens to call and all that. What are your thoughts on that? Do you like that? Have you seen that work? Well and what is your thoughts? I, I, I, I asked that because I did one month of this service where it was a cold SMS and I got horrible. I thank God I didn't you know, put any, there wasn't anything like with my business name on it because I just some of the, I had some guy send me like a gun wanting to like hunt me down. It was, it was ridiculous. So I'm just curious your thoughts on the, you know that, that type of marketing with the non branded lawn signs and the Google number.

Yeah, that guy has some seriously low tolerance for annoyance. My goodness. Okay, so for sure if you can be ticked off that much over text message goodness about lawn care, so I can only imagine what he has to go through during the political cycle.

So.

I would say first and foremost tracking is important. So I like the idea of having a different phone number just for the sake of tracking. I will then say the next part is very much similar to what we just talked about with Angie's versus your website. I like having my logo because yes, I will get some Karens. They're not my customer anyways. However, that logo is another imprint on people's like it's a branding play and I like that because then the down the road there's residuals to that yard sign. And typically that brand, if, if you have an elevated brand, demands a higher price and a more premium customer versus someone who said, oh, I need lawn care because my lawn is overgrown, so I'll call that number. So I would say if you're going after overgrown lawns because you want to save, you know, you go, then that probably works. But if you're trying to go after a premium customer, they're not likely to have an overgrown lawn or see a yard sign like, oh, I have that problem. They're more likely to see your yard sign five times and then next week their lawn guy doesn't show up and they remember your name. And so if you look at the challenging part with this is if you look at your cost per lead, it will be higher for the second one, the brand one, because the lowest cost per lead will be if you do a non branded sign. But it's not going to be the type of customer typically I want to associate long term. And if some, if there's a Karen quote unquote, they're not your customer anyways, they're not buying from you anyways. True.

Yeah. So I mean, so that brings me to a second, second question then. Because of Loca, you know, the locations of where you can put lawn signs, that's the main reason why you do the non branded and the, you know, the phone number because you throw them up everywhere. You don't get fined because nobody technically can kind of, you know, track you and so forth and so on. So where would you recommend or not or how would you go about doing that? Because that's the main thing for me. Yeah, I can put them in some of my customers. We do, currently we do more commercial than residential and some of the residential spots are, we're Only there because the commercial clients that we have kind of really close surrounding it. I don't necessarily want to build up residential clients over there. So where, where I want to build I have, you know, that municipality issue where they're like, hey, don't put them, you know you can't put lawn signs in breezeways. You can't put them on. Well, where do you put them if you can't. If they're branded and.

Right. Yeah, I would test them. I like have you already put out some Aaron that are.

Yeah, I have in the past I haven't, you know, I haven't done lawn signs like recent, real, real recently, like, like I had in the past. But I did do them a few years ago and I just blanketed like a ton of, you know, area and yeah, the city called me and was like, hey, you do it again, we're gonna, you know, don't do it again basically. And they threw all the lawn signs out. They took them all down and they were like, we're gonna find you next time.

Yeah, yeah, like, you know, it's just a matter of sometimes. Some people have said if they do like one a day and it's like slowly you boil the frog kind of thing, there's less inclined versus you putting on a hundred. And like they see it 10 times today. Right. And then also like you can look up these laws and like can they actually find you? What's the actual cost? I know some people have actually like paid the fine knowing it's there just because like it's a one time fine. So like they're like, Gary, I'll pay a 200 fine and I will go put out 5, 500 yard signs tonight. So I would just like look into your actual municipality, see what the restrictions are. Also if it's on private, private property, they're less inclined to do stuff usually. So I'm usually looking for more rural areas, like farmland areas where no one that owns that land actually cares if there's around other signs. Usually you will get called on but usually you have less penetration. So I'm like, if you're looking for lowest risk, I'd be looking for areas where there's already yard signs that are political usually or where you know, they go political because like people who have white space, they don't think about the yard sign when there. It's like we always see yard signs on that corner because it's during politics season. And then the other part is if you find spots that are rule, um, I would pro do the Stapling on the, on the power poles. So they're like 6ft off the ground, 10ft off the ground. Um, I would just make sure you don't do those in areas where if they tell you to come take them down, you're going to spend a gob amount of time doing it. Um, but if you do those in areas like that are more rural, typically you'll get away with it. Um, counties are usually less organized around this too. So, like, if you. On the edge of your surface areas, for example, um, but just tough. Every. Every market is so different with yard signs. We've seen sometimes they crush and then you. One city zip code over and they. Because they have certain codes or like laws, it's very difficult.

So I have, I do have. So there was an Augusta location, like literally around the corner from me. I think the guy shut it down last year.

So you went to seminary?

Yes, yes. You know the guy. So I almost actually bought. Yeah, Derek. So I almost actually bought his client list earlier this year. I had a conversation with him. But so you know the market. You've talked to Derek, I'm sure, a few times. What.

What have you seen work in that area? I mean, I know he was kind of. Because of where he went to, where he was kind of like, were probably. He was working in the market because of, I think, the seminary and that sort of thing. So he was away from my. Our current. Like where we both live. But that, this, I mean, it is that area. So if, if you can remember what worked well in this area, honestly, if.

I recall, he just. Because he was so busy with the church, he ended up just like, whatever. He just came on the website and I think that's, that's why he kind of like, he was around like 4 or 500,000 in revenue. He just let like organic leads keep his churn, like to where he was breaking, like, not growing.

That being said, the first few years, I know he was like first year or two, he was growing. So like, he was probably doing something. I don't remember though, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That's fair. Okay. And the second question, I did have another question. I don't want to take anybody else's spot if anybody.

No one else has their hand up. You're good.

Go ahead.

Okay. All right, cool. So I do have a question. I've, I've. I've debated. So I've been going through coaching for about a year and a half. Business coaching a little bit. I don't know. I have a My coach is in Texas, and he just actually sold his company. He had a fairly large company down in Texas.

Anyway, that being said, when I started coaching with him specifically, we've been coaching maybe about a year and a half, we raised prices dramatically. And I noticed, well, one, I lost about, I would say, 40% of my residential clients. Huge, huge swing. Probably if I were to do it again, I would not have jumped so high so fast, because we almost doubled. And so when I. When I talked to Derek, I felt because of what I had done, his prices were so low that I was like, man, I'm gonna have to jump in and raise your prices, like, 20% immediately. And so we had a discussion over that a little bit. But I'm. I'm curious on your thinking where that price should be for, you know, roughly. Well, the minimum. Basically. Your minimum. Stop. Currently, I'm at 58 bucks.

Yeah.

For mowing. For mowing, yeah.

Like.

In terms of price increases, as soon as you start raising above 20, that's usually when you start to see some serious churn. It's like we average. Our average increase around was around 22 this year at Augusta, and no one lost more than 10% of their customers. Not a single one. So it's more a matter of, like, when you go 40, it makes people really think it's a big jump. Or if you double, like, if you almost double, like, an 80% increase, like. But, hey, it still made more money if you doubled. Almost doubled the price and 40% of people, it's still a good thing. So.

Which I did. That was basically what I did. I went in. We went in and doubled the price.

Yeah. Usually when I'm doing acquisition, what's nice is I can take it based on, hey, this is what your current price is. This is currently making. But then I know if I can raise prices by 20% and only 5 or 6% of people leave, I can immediately basically recoup the cost of capital.

Yeah.

That's why. This is why when it comes to buying out other businesses, assuming they have a good product and you can retain all their customers and you have a better product, so usually, like, you can upgrade service somehow. That's when it makes a lot of sense. Because usual, like, what we'll do is we'll say, hey, we'll buy your client list. We know immediately, even if we finance that I just need to raise price by 15 or percent or so, and if I can just keep them for about two to three months at their current price and then raise them, they Won't leave because they've seen the increase in service. Like we answer the phone 24 7, all this other stuff. And so from an acquisition perspective, that's kind of how we, we look at it.

Sure. But where is your base? Where do you, where do you get your pricing? You know, as far as like, you know, some say I'm just starting out, which I'm not, but say I'm just starting out and somebody's like, you know, a lot of these guys, it's an easy point of entry, so they'll start the business and they, they have like super cheap pricing.

Yeah.

Where would, if somebody was just starting out, I mean, obviously your overhead is going to be, you know, a lot less than somebody that's been going for a while. If you wanted to be comparable, you know, where, where's that, where's that price at? If you, if you were to, you know, with all the locations that you have, all the markets that you have, where, where do you see the price being? I mean, I know what it should be, but I don't believe that customers are willing to pay where it should be.

So two things. Yeah, so two things. So first off, like in terms of our minimum, there's locations that are as low as 40, there's ones as, as high as 90 for their initial, like first time or not first time. Base price for mowing 100 comes down to close ratio. So like right now, what's your close ratio do you think, just on average?

Well, we've had a lot of issues with leads, so I mean you're probably looking at 20, 30%.

Yep. So assuming that we fix all holes in the sales process, including speed to lead, follow up, phone calls and everything else. Assume that for a moment and I'm like, it's because of price. Let's assume that, like that's a big assumption. Let's make that assumption then. It's a function of how price sensitive is someone. Because if I can reduce their price by 20% and let's just call it 15 or $20, keep them for several months, but then upsell them three other services and increase their lifetime value by three times. So instead of a dollars a year, I get them on $4,000 a year because I sell my upfront package, a cleanup and winter services, for example, I can make sense of the loss leader for the first three months. Right. So I would, I would really test what your price is. If you bring that number down, what your close ratio do. Because if, if you can bring that price down to say say 45 and all of a sudden you have this massive uptick to 60% close rate. I would do that deal. And in three months after serving them, getting them on three other services, making you very sticky also mowing is usually in that market. Not your, your winner in terms of profitability. You're going to get them on four other things though that are. And then down the road raise their price once they've. All the services are with you. They love your service, you're doing a great better job and now their expectations are higher. The reason that they're going to compare you to everyone else in terms of price is because their expectation for landscapers is so low. If you can beat that out to where you can actually beat your competition on service, whether it be admin, speed, whatever it might be, if you can be, then they can then when they go compare you against a cheaper person, they have actually something to compare to. They don't know what good looks like.

I gotcha. I got you. Yeah, that makes sense.

This is why you'll see stuff online about Augusta. But we have like the low price, we come in and we buy people out for cheap. The reason is because I know most people don't know what good looks like. They'll compare us on price, I'll get in the door, I'll prove that we do a really good job and then when I raise prices, no one leaves.

Yeah.

And it's not because they don't want.

To deal with the other company.

Yeah, they realize that at the last five companies that they did switch because of cheaper prices all had to leave every year or they couldn't get their phone calls answered. Now that doesn't happen. They don't even think about it because the cars on file, they have automations. These are the type of things like they start to actually realize the value of a premium service and if they don't, the 5, 6% that are going to leave. Great. I will then take all the extra profit put into marketing and recoup those customers in a matter of a few weeks.

Right. I got you. Okay. I mean that's fair. I like that thought because, you know, it's something that I've been like sticking on, you know, with our one, our close ratio and two, you know. Yeah. The lead problem that we're, we're working, you know, towards, I think it has something to do with, you know, SEO and, and just being. There's a, there's a lot of, few, a lot of issues that I'm working to fix but it Was, you know, it's something that I was, you know, trying to think of, you know. Yeah, you gotta work on. So.

Okay. Yeah, man, like, definitely I would test that out. And then next year when we go on our, on the momentum call, we'll be on this kind of similar style. You know, check back with me in terms of how those did what that close rate. It's gonna take quite a bit of tagging. Like, hey, this is, these are the, these are the entry level people and that we got. We gave them the lower offer. You're gonna have to do them in tandem too. You can't say like, hey, we're changing prices for this month. Well, the seasonality of this industry makes it impossible to compare against next month in terms of close rate. So you're going to have to do them in tandem. It's okay. We're going to do literally a split test every other time that phone call. If it's an odd number at the end, we're doing this price. If it's an even number, we're doing this price. So we can split test, close rate. So just, just as a side note, you're going to have to do the AB test in the same.

And copilot. And copilot. Does copilot have that ability?

Tag them? Yep, just tag them.

Oh, tag them. Tags. Okay.

Yeah. I would tell my ad person, admin person, like, hey, if it's an even number, this is the pricing sheet. If it's the odd number, we're doing this one. And then I do it for one month. And let's just say you have 30 leads in both. You should be able pretty quickly know, like, is price actually moving the needle?

Yeah, gotcha.

And, and then again, like, we are jumping a lot of conclusions. Like the sales process completely dialed in. We also have like a really good onboarding activation to be able to get them from one service into three. That would be the first place I'd be looking. Because if you can do that, I don't care about your 25% close rate. If you're able to make a customer so valuable that you take some of that money and you throw it back in the marketing machine and get another lead, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think there's, there's a lot of juice on both ends of it. But if you're just looking at the actual yes, no close rate, I do think that pricing is an easy lever to test.

I gotcha.

Okay, man. All right, last question of the day. Aaron, you got it.

Hey, can you hear me? Okay. My name is Aaron Blaska. I run Blaska Landscaping in Spokane, Washington. We've been in business for. For four years. We do a lot of projects, a little bit of maintenance, mostly for a property management company that we have a relationship with. Next year, want to do more maintenance outside of the property management company and drop them for multiple reasons? Yeah. I have two questions, one being fall cleanups and advertising. We've been lucky enough, and I hate to be that guy, but all word of mouth. We've never spent a dollar on advertising. I sold advertising for many, many years. So I understand it. I know the value, and we're going to get there next year. But the immediate need for fall cleanups now, for the next three, four weeks, depending on when snow falls in our area, I would like to do four or five fall cleanups per day as soon as next week. So we're going to throw some money on the fire. I'm probably Google LSA and Facebook ads, and my wife does all of the content. She was in marketing for years as well. So I'm curious, for that lead count, how much fuel should we put on the fire, so to speak, and should we do both? And if so, how much?

Cool. So that last. Your last sentence, you broke up when you said something. Something much. What did you say? Facebook ads.

Yeah, Facebook and Google lsa.

Cool. All right. And so you're wondering what your budget is to be able to get enough leads to basically fill the schedule.

Correct.

Cool. So you have. You basically are for four weeks, trying to do four a day. So we're looking at. Let's just call it 80 leads. You need.

Right?

80 jobs. 80 jobs. Okay. Let's assume a 33% close rate. So you need 240 leads. Okay. And then this simply comes down to, like, if someone has this, the chops on Facebook. Because if you're marketing for leaf cleanup, when there are leafs on the ground, you can get leads for under $10. Right. And so, like, it's like, I would personally do a three prong approach. I would do dms, I would do Facebook lead forms, and I would do conversion tracking on your website. Is your website great? Like, are you really good at that?

We're all right. I mean, there's some optimization that we need to do on the techie side. I mean, it looks good, right? It looks professional.

At the top.

Yep. Yep.

Cool.

Yep.

So I would do all three. I would do all three. Make sure there's tracking code on your thank you page for your. Your form, but like a send Message dm like DM us and we'll get you a quote we'll crush. You can then make a bot that when they DM you, it sends them a link for example, or tells them to do something. So if you make like an instant quote style, you can do that.

But in my opinion, if you're trying to get 240 leads, if you average that out, let's just call it $30 per, you're probably looking at 6 to $7,000 if you're trying to fill the schedule for an entire month. But if that generates, let's call it 70 grand and you have a 10x return on return on ad spend in terms of revenue. But then more importantly, you get those 60 or 70 customers to now 30 of them become mowing customers. That's where the real value is. So when you're doing this blitz like you're about to do, it's not, it's not the, the money you're going to make in the next six, six weeks. It's the fact that if I can convert half of them into a recurring service or something else next year, that's when I start to make money. And so I would grease the gears of your offer. I would use the pain point of leaves as a way to hook them in, but I would attach it to something else. So for example, in Spokane you have a very harsh winter and then spring kicks in. I would do something along the lines of if you get your fall cleanup, you get like a winterization for free or you get your spring cleanup for free or like you get a discount spring or you get like priority or like I would make sure you have a really good offer that will be the difference between a 30 and $40 cost per lead and 10 to 15 is your is.

How do you think the offer could be? Totally sorry to interrupt. Do you think the offer is good enough if, if we're trying to get recurring modes for next year through these one time clients. Right. Could it be as if you get a fall cleanup this year, you get the first mow for free next year because then that's already leading them into the pipeline for ongoing services, right?

Yeah. The challenging part is two things. One, it's so far away they don't even think about mowing great grass Right now you want to address the immediate pain. So the only thing that like right now we see this working well in terms of offer is like a free corporation or a free winterization of their lawn. You know, your cost of goods on that is so low it's actually cheaper than a free lawn mowing because the labor is so much less. While you're doing the fall cleanup, you get the stinking fall, the winterization spread on the line or the air or whatever. So, like, their cost of goods are really low on it, and you can beef up the value. So, hey, you're going to get $199 treatment for free if you just sign up for this service. And we have four spots remaining. Right.

Okay. So aerating would be the only thing that we could do because.

Most of. At least in Spokane, people get it done before November for winterization for the sprinklers.

Right.

So.

Yep.

Okay, so maybe it's aerating for free. Is. Is the move until the. The first hard freeze. And so 6000 to $7000 spend over the next four. Four weeks. So about 1500 bucks a month, if not a little north of that, right?

Yeah. It's mostly going to be the fact that, like, when the leaves on the ground, your cost per lead will be 20% compared to once the leads are gone. So, like, as much as we want to say yes, it's over the next three months, I would say you literally have two to three weeks of acute paying where your cost per lead is low because demand is inverse of customer acquisition cost. So when demand starts going down, their customer acquisition costs will go through the roof. So I. In my opinion, you actually need to, like, this is why most people can't spend this kind of money and do what you're trying to do is they don't know how to deploy 6 to $7,000 in the next few weeks.

Right, Right. So, yeah, that's a problem for us.

Okay, cool. That's why I kind of like, cross those bridges. I feel like you have the chops to know how to do the ad stuff.

Totally. So. So that's six to seven grand. So let's just say we beef it up, put the fuel on the fire. Leaves are falling right now. There's still some hanging, but people are thinking about it. So probably do like three grand the first two weeks and then the second two. The second two weeks, lessen it down to 1500 to two grand because the cost per lead is going to be higher, Right?

Yep. Do you guys do Christmas lights?

We don't. I don't want the liabilities, to be honest.

I'm just trying to figure out. I'm just trying to figure out if there was something else, like in terms of either winter services or Christmas lights, because, like, those work. Because there's it's top of mind. So one thing that you could do in the next two weeks is you could do the whole pumpkins on their, their, their front porch.

Right.

Things like that that you could package in with the fall cleanup. As just an idea, if you spend $20 on pumpkins and are able to get a few cool looking ones for them, say you get this for free. They put a wreath on their door. Something really simple. You know, a wreath might cost you 20 or 30 bucks, but that's going to be just the same cost if you give them a free treatment. Right. So like you just got to figure out what it makes sense to someone and what, what sounds best to them. The value prop of a treatment usually can be like 199. So usually you can. That's like a good offer.

Okay. Okay. Perfect. And then.

I'm sorry to go back to the 6,000 to $7,000 spend. Is that all on Facebook or is that spread between Google, LSA and Facebook?

LSA is not. You're not gonna be able to spend that much money. Even if you put $1,000 a week, it'll spend two to 300. Max. Max. So I don't think you're gonna spend that much money there. You could do some on Google Ads where it's keyword based. You could probably put some more money there. That would help with not having to over burden Facebook and, and within a matter of a couple of weeks. So I'd probably do Google and I do Facebook. I would do. In Facebook, I would do DM lead forms and then conversion tracking. And then after one week, I would take whichever of those three is working and put all my money towards that.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Because I know you're from Bellingham, so how, how often do you see people doing fall cleanups? Do they go like mid December? I mean, it really just kind of depends. Right. Like first snowfall, I'm. I'm presuming is. Is the need.

Yep. Yep. Up until then. Yep.

Okay. And second, go ahead. I'm sorry.

It drops off after Thanksgiving because people are trying to get their pro property looking good before that. So I think you have two weeks to three weeks of selling and then you can deliver on it later because like if it's two days before Thanksgiving, they know they're not getting their leaves done. But that's what they want.

Right. One other idea is for a hook is we.

We do landscape lighting, not Christmas lights. But now's the time of the year that's super easy to do it Laying low voltage lighting and installing those lights, and it's getting darker sooner. So. Have you ever seen any of your locations selling that during this time of the year as an alternative to the Christmas lights?

I really like the. If you can do that, yes, you're going up against the freeze. That's sometimes tough. People aren't thinking about landscape lighting as much, so your. Your demand is low. But what you might want to think about if you're doing already low voltage is this shining the light on their house. That's a. The new thing for Christmas lights. I would also say you could probably just go ahead and throw that in as a. As an incentive for a fall cleanup. Hey, get a full cleanup. We'll make your property look amazing, and then we'll light up your house for the entire next two months. We'll come pick it up in January.

Right? Okay. Yeah, that's a good offer. And then I don't want to take everybody's time. I want to be cognizant. Second. Second question. And my last comment is we use crew control right now. We don't use co pilot primarily for the reason it's super freaking cheap. It's $50 per crew, so we spend $100 a month. And. But there's not a lot of the tools that copilot, from what I've researched offers. Right. Like the drip campaigns and. But we don't really have a lot of recurring customers. But that will change next year. That's why we want to have P4P and co piloted within our business. We're starting to get those foundational items. So I'm just kind of dropping this is what's the best way for us to be able to see copilot. I've talked to Christian already and we have a call scheduled, but I haven't really seen a lot of the nuts and bolts within the program. I know that you guys are offering for P4P to try it for free for the next two, three months. So I'm curious if, like, getting inside of the system, being able to play around with it, see how it works, is an option.

Yeah, it's free. You can. You can put up to 50 people inside Copa and not paid anything.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I didn't know that.

Okay, well, perfect.

Yeah, I would Definitely just do the 50. You can integrate with P4P. See how the numbers come over. I would watch the videos, et cetera. The thing I will say is the reason you're spending money on ads right now is because of the lack of software. So, like, if. If I was you like the reason we don't spend this kind of blitz that you're doing right now is because we are simply going to have a a text blasts that incrementally over the next four weeks. And I get hit every single one of those four offers. We just talked about Christmas lights, snow, winter services, treatment. I'm going to hit them all and I don't pay anything extra. So what kind of like we talked about earlier in the call is like this is renting versus owning. And I would say the renting that you're paying to Facebook and Google right now over the next three weeks is the cost of not being able to text and email all these customers in one click and then track those campaigns. And so I know it's from a cost perspective, very different but one text message from from copilot right now is free. Eventually we'll have to charge for text credits but like one text blast to all of your customers right now would probably get you 20 or 30 customers and you're trying to only get 80 to 90. Like how many people in your contact database do you think you have right now, Aaron?

Since we don't do recurring and we mostly do projects, it's probably our Rolodex I would say is 2,340of those being just recurring with the.

Property management company. That their properties are just ghetto, I'll be frank. But they, they pay a ridiculous amount of money. Like I charge $75 to $115 for each service, 115 on the north side for bi weeklies because it's just not really a huge focus of our business next year. On the other hand, I'm glad the gentleman, I believe it was Aaron who mentioned how much to charge 40 to 45 for a mo. Like we're double that right now. But to make a splash in the market and actually get customers and actually have a full time crew or two, we're going to have to lower that cost. But a lot of the competition that we've been seeing in Spokane, some people are charging that 75 to $90 and I think you just have to have a good hook, line and sinker as to why you're different from the truck or what is it, what's the saying? Something in a truck. Joe in a truck or whatever. Chuck in the truck. Yeah. So we're just not there right now because we're mostly doing 30 to 50 thousand dollar projects and it's me and one other guy and we did $500,000 this year. Right. But next year I see it as a good training opportunity for the maintenance. Get two guys in one maintenance truck, see one of the two who is willing to make it a career go into the new construction side. So that's kind of the way we're, we're organizing.

How our growth is going to be. And anyways, I've taken way too much time. So you're good.

You're good. Good stuff. Well, thank you all for being here. Do make sure, especially Aaron, make sure you sign up for the Black Friday event. What you're talking about right now, like switching from that project based to the recurring side. Like I go in extreme detail on that event and then the book that's coming out. So definitely be on there. A lot of the tools inside of co pilot I talk about in the book so you can actually directly use them. Things like the texting blast, the email stuff, exactly how to format that stuff. So please be on that. It'll be useful. And then we also have a bunch of announcements around Copilot of new stuff that's coming out. So you will want to be on there. But thank you all for being here. Thank you for being part of Copilot. I will see you if you have any other questions on the masterminds every week. So at the top of the Facebook group there's a pinned a form. Fill that in and I'll answer those every single weekend live on Facebook. So love you all. Hope you have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk soon.