Best Type of Marketing and My Next Business Idea

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes with Landscape Business course. And today is another midweek motivation meeting. These meetings we have on Wednesday morning for our team, usually five or ten of them get together. They're optional meetings where we just talk about money, finances. You're gonna see a little bit of politics this morning. Just a little bit about everything that they want to talk about. And again, this is something we do every single week. It's optional and something I encourage you guys to do if you can for your team. And if you started doing this, don't expect for everyone to be like knocking on the door trying to get in these meetings and like wanting to talk about personal finances. This is just part of the cultural thing and it might seem at first like you're talking to a brick wall or seem a little bit awkward, but definitely something that as you invest in your team, just builds the culture so much better. So I really suggest that you do this. We're going to talk a lot more about this at the conference. So down in the link below, it's now open for registration. Go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. And that's going to be January. It's a three day program and we're really trying to work on making that really cool this year. Some really cool stuff we're trying to add with our team and what we're doing here locally. So really looking forward to that. Check out in the link below in the description and let's go ahead and roll this midweek motivation meeting. Here we go.

All right. Good morning everybody. So, yeah, if you have a question, let's go ahead and just jump right into those prepared them. Next, as I gave you a heads up, I wanted to go over one thing. Yeah. Could you go over the what it costs to start a franchise for a non employee and an employee one more time? Yeah. So for the first, the first 50 franchisees, it'll be 15 grand instead of the usual 25 because eventually we need to make money on the initial fee and that's what we'll use to scale. But like for now it's 15 grand for a non franchisee and then for an employee. Last year I had said 9,000, but now I've taken that down to zero as long as you've been here for a year and then you present a plan to me and I'm like, yeah, that's good to go. Okay. That's kind of how it is right now. Okay, cool. So yeah, I would just say whatever someone can save towards marketing that's most Important for that first year. So for that first, the first three months after training you don't have any fees for internal monthly and then the year after that tap off. So we really want you to be able to spend as much as possible in marketing to really scale it up quickly. So. Yeah.

Marcus here with the question. I do. It's kind of a. Do you notice Frank's not here because he retired. Oh, yes.

This morning was not a good day for Tesla. Yesterday was bad too. It was battery day. It was a disappointment. At least he got out. Yeah, that's good.

Okay, so I was thinking. You were thinking yesterday, your question in the parking lot. Yeah. And I tight.

So, you know, pretty much betting, you know, with gold is like betting against the economy. Right. So.

But people kind of, as the market goes down, usually kind of gold goes up. Yeah, that's kind of the trend. But you know, with the upcoming election coming up, I feel like there's going to be like so much turmoil that like people have so much fear. So do you think for short term, like just like buying gold like just for after the election or it's, you know, smaller terms is a good idea. This is my opinion. Like I just think precious metals don't have a. They're not a productive asset. They don't create anything. It's literally a rock. Like it's rock. Okay. Then we just put, you know, value on. Some people would say, well, you take a stock, you just put a random value on too. But that stock is an earning like a earnings per share, which means it's productive, it's generating revenue.

So yeah, it's definitely a hedge against someone who's really heavy in the stock market. Because traditionally the stock market's going down and there's a lot of fear, then yeah, the gold price goes up. But if you look at the price of gold over time, it's basically like this. Right.

So I don't know, like, do I think that one day we'll be on the gold standard? Yeah. You know, if the dollar crashes, I don't think we're going to go to bitcoin right away. I don't know. It's all just a bunch of speculation. I would rather, instead of waiting for that 24 year down the road when I do probably going to happen, I'd rather just invest in stuff that I know and I understand because like gold, like okay, Warren Buffett buys into a mining company, everyone's like, oh my word, everyone should buy gold. And it goes up. Like it's just a bunch of fear at the end of the day. Right. But the stock market in general is a bunch of just expectations and fear and you know, expectations like it's just, it's not, it's not, what's the word? Logical at all. So there's, everyone has their own opinion on that. I think it's a good thing to hedge. Like, like if you really heavy in stocks, probably a good idea to have something like that. But then just don't bet all your money. Like don't bet your last dollar in stocks, you'll be fine.

I have a question kind of stemming off of that.

Why has gold always been like a standard, like in all past civilizations? I know we put value on gold, but why don't we put value on wood or something? Yeah. Because before like 1970. What? Does anyone know the date? 72 3, I think so 1972. 73. Somewhere in there we went off the gold standard in the United States which basically meant in order to print money you need to have a reserve of gold to back it up. Right. Well then the federals are like, oh, by the way, we're going off the gold standard. Which means you can just print money. They just have.

Six months. Just like crazy. Right. You don't need a gold backup. So if we ever switch back to the gold standard, the price will go through the roof. Right?

That's the thing in theory. But why we went off of that, there's a lot of. It's political, it's lots of stuff like that.

I have another question off the bat then. How can they just print infinite money? You can't, you can't, you can't. There's a lot of factors that go into that we talked a little bit last time, like inflation. And then you have just so many different factors that go into. But you can't print infinite because if you print infinite, it makes the, the dollar worthless. Right. But how much have they printed in the last six months?

Well, how much have they gone into debt? Three trillion is the debt. So we can infinitely go into debt because that's never going to get paid off. Well, no, this is the thing. The reason that they're going to debt so much right now is that because if you reduce interest rates, because this is the funny thing, they owe money, but they also control their interest rate. So if you take the interest rate down low enough and you're basically paying no interest, why would you pay off the debt? This is the debate. It's like, oh, our future generations are going to have to pay off all this debt. But if the interest rate is zero. Yeah. We should be printing money as much as we possibly can right now. That's the theory. But then if interest rates go up now all of a sudden we have billions and billions of dollars in interest. Right. So it's a big game and they have to walk that fine line of not printing too much and then we're not printing enough in our economy going kaput. So just glad I don't have that job. Jerome Powell. And the short answer also a little bit. The government isn't always necessarily seen as a business, like in terms of, you know, a hurricane hits the southeast kind of a thing.

Yeah, Maybe more than a hurricane, but you know, it's like you can kind of decide to help that region if you will and print some money if you will, or you can kind of just like not print money and just kind of not let them squander per se. But like, you know, there's basically things that the government tries to do that to prevent total collapse of the system.

There's a voice.

Not saying it's right, but it's just like, that's the. Yeah, it's just interesting. It's like corrupt that it comes down to now. If the government wants. It's like, all right, well, somebody's got a kind of place full. That's your job, Mike. No, no, not a chance. You need every single. Every single Republican, Democr, Democrat and politician are thinking like a business owner. That's not happening. But if they did, like, you could run this country very efficiently. Like the amount of revenue they have, all the things that are going on, there's a lot of cost, expenses, but like you could run it like a fine oil machine, but there's just so much waste. You go to like you go to any government funded institution and they're looking for ways to spend money because they need to use their budget to then make sure they don't get a budget cut. Like, that's just not. That's like stupid. It's like, hey guys, make sure you spend all the gas in all the trucks this week. Because if we don't, we're gonna get less gas now. So just keep driving around the shop. So we use it all up. Like it just doesn't even make sense. Like if we put politicians on P4P, it'd be great.

Seriously, if you're in Congress, you get paid. If you go on recess, you don't get paid. Like it's anyways.

Not even like choosing sides of the aisle, but like career Politicians, right? Yeah. Like people that have been there 30 years and still promise to fix government. You're like, what? Like, what have you been doing? Ye.

But you know, hey, at the end of the day, the United States is a pretty good democracy compared to most countries. That's why so many. That's why this dollar is strong. That's why they can't keep printing money, is because overall, compared to, like, China or compared to other countries, we have a pretty decent democracy. Right. And it just stinks that it could be so much better, but it just won't be. It just won't. It gets so many people together, you're never gonna agree on stuff. And, you know, fortunately, last night we avoided government shutdown again. Fortunately. Supposed to happen in nine days. So what? Why? Because the budget was. They have to budget. There's a deficit. Right. So it seems like every year now there's a ceiling that they have to agree to open the ceiling. And they usually have some spending that they argue over every time they do it. Yeah. So, you know, last year it flew out to, like, three years of government closure, which is just ridiculous. Like, one guy agree on something, let's move forward. But it's political.

I don't want to get into audience. Switching gears, I have an obscure hypothetical. If you were to start. Oh, man, sick. I thought it was gonna be a question. If you were to start another franchise model, what industry would you go into that has low startup costs but higher profit margins than, like, landscaping or the food industry? Right. Because the profit margins in the food industry and landscaping are pretty, pretty slim compared to a lot of other. Well, first of all, restaurants are, like, way down here. I know Landscaping Street. That's true. I haven't thought about it. I know that the painting industry is just as fragmented as landscapering in terms of professionalism, speed. Roofing is getting better. H Vac is pretty good. There's some really good players in that market. But painting, we try to find a painter, it was, like, impossible. I was willing to take any bit if someone would get me a bit.

But the hard part is it's not a low barrier entry into the skill. It's hard to find a good blower. It's not like we can just be like, hey, go use a blower. It's like they had to have a skill. That's hard. I would never want to franchise that. Honestly, if I was starting another franchise. I don't know, I. I can't even think of anything because I wouldn't do a franchise. I would do Software. Yeah. Just more scale.

Yeah. You read on all those real estate books that, you know, they can never ever find, like a reliable contractor and that, you know. Yeah. Painters, H Vac, anybody? It's just like he was saying he got like, he called eight people. Like four people came to get estimate. Then like, nobody got back to him. Who said that? Brandon Turner. Oh, bigger pockets. Oh, okay. That's why you have a good property manager. Yes.

Any plugs? A good property, Good paper management. So, yeah, painting is one of that. I would say the good. But it's again, like, you get trained yourself, you're a good painter. But. And the problem is with painting, for example, is if you make an error, it's not like, oh, we made a gouge in your lawn. It's like, we got paint on your car. That's kind of problematic. Right. So that's why no one gets into it. It'll become more and more hard to find contractors because, like, it's one thing software can't eliminate. Like, you can't get a robot yet to paint your house or like, do your lawn yet or like edge. Right. So that's why those things will become harder and harder to find laborers, and it'll get more and more expensive. And then people will start getting rid of their lawn and start getting rid of certain things and stuff like that. I think eventually, like, siding will come pre painted.

You don't have to worry about it. Can you already get it? You can already get some pre paint. You don't have the color options. You can't go into, like, Lowe's, find a palette and be like, yeah, this. Yeah, we'll print those all off. But hey, if you have 3D printing or something like that, and you're printing off siding, that's all down the road, but that's. Eventually technology will catch it because the cost of labor will keep going up. Skilled labor, if you want. Okay, changing the question. If you want small scale brick and mortar, not franchise, not software. Right now, you could open in any market. What would you do?

Idea for an actual food concept. That's quick service. That would be higher profit margin. Yeah, yeah, but we've talked about it. Yeah. Called the fry shop. It's basically a place kind of like Chipotle, where you come and you choose your potato, you weigh it, you pay for it based on the weight, and then it goes through. You chew like crinkle, cut, curly, fried, like the different kind of fry, and then it's fried in whatever type of oil you want. So you can actually make it kind of healthy. And you have different type of potatoes, right? And it'd be like potatoes out of the wall. You chew it out of the bottom and it falls out.

You can fry whatever you want. But the sauce would be where everything's at. So we change the sauces up all the time. We have a digital app where you can vote on the sauces. Wow. Yeah. It's reappping. I already have the logo and the website, but we're not going there yet. Not even chance. I think all potatoes want to be part of that. I know, man.

Are you speaking as a potato?

We have bipartisan support.

That's.

But no retail space in that market is so expensive and the margins are thinner. And it's one of those things that's a complete retail. Like it's a real estate game at the end of the day. So in terms of services and stuff, man, there's nothing I can think of. I don't think it's a good game to get into at the end of the day. You just gotta solve a problem and you gotta, you know, provide a good offering to the customer. Right. So, like, for us, we're providing something that no one wants to do. As long as you are willing to do something that no one else is willing to do, you're always gonna have a job. If you're willing to get inside of a septic tank and clean out whatever, no one wants to do that, you'll always have a job. And as time goes on and less people want to work hard, that price will keep going up and up and they wouldn't even know how to work hard. So they would consider it a high skill. Yeah, I would do something. If I was getting into franchising, I would be trying something that's super low skill that no one wants to do, like cleaning out septic tanks.

That's literally what I would do, man. It's a horrible job. But the price for that is going to keep going up because no one wants to do it. And you can't get a robot to do that yet. Start a YouTube channel doing DIYs or like, literally I would get. I would try to create a soft or not software, a robot that could do that thing and then license that out. Right? Like they could go into a September, put the robot in, leave it for an hour, and it goes around like, sucks everything up. Like having a messy job, man. We don't have it so bad with grass. We actually use robots like that in the refinery to clean out tanks and stuff. It's really, really cool technology, but it was just you. And it's incredibly, like, way too expensive. Yeah. So the cost of that will raise. Come down with technology. Right. And then that's when it gives the lower markets. Yeah. Cool. Any more questions before we head out, Austin? Any questions? As you were under the bush yesterday.

You were amazing. It scared me. It just caught me on the throat. So in the zone.

Someone in on my face like that. I love how you, like, you stopped the camera on his face, like, as soon as he looked up.

Mitchell. It's like a Mitchell. Mitchell wanted no part of that. Cool. Anything else going? Woods? Going twice. All right, have a great day. Van has a question. Do you have something to say?

Yeah. What marketing strategies have you seen work better than others? For us here? Yeah, for us here or anything else, digital is better, in my opinion, just because you can track it a lot easier. So if I send 5,000 pieces out like mailers, they might do well or they might not do well. I just can't track how many people pick them up, how many people looked at them, how long they looked at them. Like, I can't track anything. I don't know how well they do unless they call. Right. And so with digital marketing, like Facebook, nextdoor, Google Ads, all those things are much more trackable. And so you're seeing marketing dollars just shift dramatically from like tv, print, radio. It's all coming over to digital now. So for here locally, it's been direct marketing. So it's different than like Coca Cola. Coca Cola is going to run an ad in your Facebook feed that's going to be like. Like just showing the lifestyle of Pepsi or would I say Coca Cola or even Apple? Like, they're not trying to sell you something in the moment. Whereas for small business, you need direct response. You don't have money to go spend. Like, let's just spend $20,000 on brand awareness and just talk about Augusta and our mission. Like, that's not gonna do well dollar for dollar. So for a small business like ours, it's like getting an offer, making a clear offer, and then having a. And use that call to action as like get quote or call now. And on digital, it's easy to do. Same thing with print, though. You're going to try to do, hey, here's our offer and call to action. Call now. Call to action is the most important. And so for us locally, it's always been digital. Like, we did a little bit of print when it first got started.

And I've tested it a little bit throughout just to see where it's at, but it's nowhere close to digital is just so much better. So do you think you're not going to do the door cards anymore that we did in the spring? Probably not. We didn't see much from it likes to do it. And you did. Now that I left. You're not going to do those anymore? Yeah, Josh would throw them away. So. Yeah, Josh, I came clean. I came clean. Just wanted to call out because he couldn't sleep.

And I was under the influence. I was under the influence of someone we won't name. That doesn't work anymore. A very strong influence. Not ownership. In Mount Vernon though, you did the door to door and you did. Yeah. You didn't find it very effective. Yeah, just not by the time you're paying someone by the hour and you look at the cost per click thing. When you're paying for a Facebook lead, you know when they click or like better yet like a Google Ad or Google Local services, you know you're getting like someone to come to your website. Whereas like when you're passing out like 95% of those, if you're lucky, are wasted more like 99%. Right. So just like by the time you have someone passing out door hangers and they're paid by the hour or something like that, it's just very expensive.

Cool. Awesome. Have a great day, guys. It.