Building a Lawn Care Company to Create Generational Wealth for His Family

You know, we actually lost a couple guys to like Amazon because they, you know, I don't know what they're starting out at, but it must be pretty good.

Hey, what's Mike Andes, welcome to another episode of Roundup. Today we're going to be talking to Justin Harvey from EL Reno, Oklahoma and he's gonna be sharing how he started with just a $1,000 to go spend at Home Depot, got started with his business. But this business, we grew over time slowly. And a lot of times I talk about growing really fast and getting to a million dollars in a few years. And that's great and that's fine. But that does take a lot of money, takes a lot of effort and it takes, hey, figuring things out and potentially losing money or potentially not being able to draw as much profit out of the business. So this is a great episode because over the course of 10 years he built a business that probably this year will do about a million dollars in revenue. So it's a great steady pace, I think for a lot of people is not a bad idea. If you're a little bit more conservative, you want to figure things out a little bit slower. It's absolutely a method that is commendable. So without any further delay, let's bring Justin on the.

Let's go.

Give a snapshot first in terms of what the business is currently in terms of size and revenue, number of employees, things like that.

Gotcha. Well, Currently this year 2021, we finished the year out 793,000. We have six employees currently, two MO crews, one SOD installation crew, one weed control crew. And I have an office manager as well.

And so talk to me a little bit how you got started. Originally, I know you were in the oil and gas industry. And then 2008 came what was kind of the shift there. And then obviously from that time you transitioned to lawn care. But what was some of the changes you had to make just in terms of mindset and you becoming a business owner at that point?

Yeah, well, at the time I was actually living at my parents house at a really good job in the oil field and I was spending money like crazy. I had a, you know, brand new vehicle, you know, I could buy anything I wanted to, going out and partying all the time, that kind of thing. I was young and I got laid off from that job late 2008, 2000, early 2009. After that, I really wasn't sure what to do. All I've ever done in the past during high school is I mowed yards in in high school and previous, I think I started mowing yards when I was around nine years old, so I didn't have any other education to fall back on. So 2009, I started actually working for a local lawn care company in Oklahoma City, and I also was mowing yards on the side side hustle during the weekends. I worked there for about a year and a half, maybe two years. And then 2011, I broke out on my own, started. Started my own thing.

Looking back, kind of like 2008, you obviously kind of seen firsthand what happened with the recession and sort of that cutback. How. How do you think that's kind of affected your perspective as a business owner? And the reason I ask is because I feel like a lot of people have forgot what that was like 14 years ago since we've really had an extended downturn where the economy was hurting for multiple years. How has that kind of affected your business growth and sort of your mentality as you've grown the business, Even from a loan debt perspective, like, has that changed it at all? And what would you say to someone that's getting started that might not have lived to that?

Well, I would say that, you know, I'm 36 years old. Most of the people that I went to school with did not even experience the recession in 2008 because they were going to college. You know, my parents, they lost neighbors because they couldn't afford their home anymore. I understand. You know, the 2008 recession was very, very detrimental to a lot of people that, that I know personally. So. And I promised myself I would never, you know, let that happen to my family. So basically, I've built this business from bootstraps. Basically. I haven't, I don't have like, the huge success story.

You know, like, like, like you, for example, you. You can. You went from like one year to three years. You know, you're doing a million dollars or something like that. Me, that's not the case whatsoever. We've grown very slow and very steady the last three or four years. Yes, we've really ramped up revenue, but I've mainly tried to keep my business debt free. I think we have, I think, about $20,000 of debt on the books right now, which is not bad considering where we're at in business. Obviously, that's one of the reasons why we've grown so slow, is because I don't have, you know, the money to, to feed into this business or investors and things like that. But it's very, I've been very, very cautious about about debt and growing the business off of debt, for sure. Because I've seen what can happen to people that, you know, they, they don't.

Manage it properly as, as the business has grown now to the point where I imagine you're not really doing the work and you're mostly focusing on managing the business. What was that sort of transition like? I feel like a lot of times, you know, when someone's at 3, 400,000, they kind of got to accelerate to the point where they can afford an office person like you have, they can get out of the field. And all that extra overhead does cost substantial to where you need to grow the business. Were you kind of in that phase for a while and then you had to realize, hey, I've got to grow the past where I can afford an office manager. And when you say you kind of ramped up the past few years, why is that?

Well, mainly I didn't really know how to operate a business when I first started in 2012. So we were growing very, very slow. Payment was very slow. We were always in cash flow problems, things like that. I believe 2015 is when we started accepting credit cards and that I actually took that advice from Jonathan Pitoshnik. He told me that, you know, accept credit cards, have credit cards on file, and that'll fix your cash flow. Yes, you'll have to pay an additional 2 or 3% on, on top of the card, but in the long, in the long term, it's, it's so worth it as far as cash flow. That's the only reason why we were able to sustain in the, in the early years of the business, because I knew if I went out and, you know, we mowed, you know, 100 yards, then I was going to get payment on those that week. It really helped that aspect a lot. That was one. That was one of the best decisions that we've made in the business so far.

And so in the past few years, as you've grown more, what do those numbers look like and is something you're doing in marketing? Is it a matter of just like accepting more jobs? What has it been the past few years as you really have beginning to scale it? Or is it just a matter of, hey, I know my systems now I have things down, I can scale profitably and not just burn money by growth?

Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying this episode with Justin so far. And we're about to hear how Justin is scaling his business sustainably. But before that, if you guys are looking for a new way to find talented labor this year I would Suggest checking out p4psoftware.com. It's a pay structure based on paying your guys off of performance and not just on the hourly wage.

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Employees more and retain good workers. So check it out p4psoftware.com but make sure you stick around for the rest of the episode. And we are going to hear about the one thing Justin has done that might just push his business over a million dollars in annual revenue this year. Let's get back into it.

What has it been the past few years as you really have begin to scale it? Or is it just a matter of, hey, I know my systems now I have things down I can scale profitably and not just burn money by growth.

I got some numbers here. I think I'll start out 2015 we did. We finished the year off 116,000. 2016 we actually dropped $2,000 to 114. Then 2017 we went to 218. And then 2018 we did 450. 2019, 455, 2020 we did 561. And 2021, we finished the year off at 793.

That's awesome. So I kind of see two jumps there. One is that one from 2017 to 2018 where I feel like a lot of people struggle. And that is that the 218 to 450. What was that year? What was kind of the key part that allowed you to really almost no more than double the business that year?

Basically having somebody. We didn't have an office at that point, but I hired somebody to work from home, to answer phones and because at that point of the business, I was still in the field 100%.

And I was not able to take all the phone calls, write all the everybody's information down, get emails, things like that. That's one thing that really helped us in the beginning in 2017 was hiring our, you know, first office person. And that really, really took a lot of, you know, took one hat off of, off of my head and I was able to, you know, focus more on finishing, you know, projects and selling, which that's. That's all I do now is sell.

Was it a little bit hard financially because you had the extra overhead of that office person and it was. You were scaling, so you probably need more trucks, equipment, et cetera. Was that a pretty crunch kind of financial year or were you already grown at the point where you were. It was. You kind of had already planned for that growth in terms of Equipment and things.

Yeah, it's, it was very tough. I mean, it still is hard. We're, you know, we're, we're still trying to grow. I have not. I mean, I think I pay myself, like, not very much. I pay myself four, like 428 every two weeks. That's what I take home. I'm not taking anything out of the business, hardly at all. But being able to, you know, run these numbers like this and operate off the cash that we have in hand, it just makes me feel a little bit better and gives me a little bit more security. Some people aren't like that, but that's just my mindset on it, on things.

What have you done with that mindset over the past 10 years now that you've been growing to kind of put the brakes on the idea that you need to grow really fast or you need to go into debt or you need to go expand, expand, expand. Because you hear someone like me doing it or you hear other people doing it or advertising, you can market and scale and get 5,000 customers tomorrow. Did you ever try that? And then it messed up and you're like, hey, forget that. Or is it just a matter of like, hey, from the beginning, hey, I know I need to have a profitable business. I'm not going to go into debt and run this more conservatively. And look at this in more frame of 10 to 15 years instead of 10 to 15 months. Did you ever have to kind of put the brakes on yourself or was that kind of just an ingrained mindset already?

Yeah, I was, I would definitely say we were. That was the plan from day one, was to grow this business nice and steadily. You know, Ron wasn't built in a day. And we're also gives us time to figure out, you know, processes and procedures that were missing instead of, you know, jumping way ahead in revenue and not being able to handle the headaches of that. So that's that it's been purposely built to grow steadily.

I will say that we have to turn down tons of work all the time because, you know, we're, you know, right now we're only running six guys. Right now we're trying to hire some more people. Indeed, has been our best outlook on that. We've had the best luck. Facebook, not so much. But.

We'Re still trying to, we're still trying to grow and get, you know, to a bigger place in this business. But as of right now, we're, we're, we're happy where we're at. The steady growth is Good for us. And it gives us time to think about the business and what, what things we need to do next to move forward.

Awesome. And as you look forward now, obviously getting past half a million, having someone in the office has really helped that. As you look to a million now, I'm assuming next few years, what is going to be the thing that you are working on, are trying to change in the business? Whether it be your role, certain systems, what are you making changes to make that happen?

Well, right now I'm kind of playing two rules. I'm, I'm playing, you know, sale. I'm, I'm head of sales right now and we really need like operations manager because I'm, I'm playing that role too. So.

It kind of bogs me down sometimes because you know, the guys, they, they have questions on jobs and things like that and then I'm trying to go meet clients or potential clients and it's, it's, it's been a struggle the last, especially the last year because I'm 100, you know, I'm completely out of field now. We have some really good, really good guys on the cruise right now, so, and they pretty much take care of the, the day to day in the field. But one thing that, that I would like to change is, you know, maybe having an operations manager. I think that would really help, help us, help us scale because it would free me up to sell. I mean, if I don't sell, you know, we're, we're out of work. So. And it doesn't take very long for the guys to eat up all the work, you know.

So I think one advantage of growing so slowly or slower, I should say over the course of 10 years is partly usually due to the fact that when you're growing fast, you need, you need to buy exposure, you need to buy getting in the mind of the customer because they haven't seen you for year after year after year and therefore you spend money on marketing.

Have you used marketing to grow or like you said, you're already turning work down, away. So I'm assuming you don't really do much marketing. It's more a matter of how do we have the infrastructure, the back end, the people to actually perform all of this work that's coming in. What's kind of the bottleneck for you? Has it been getting awareness in the marketing side or just the back end infrastructure?

You know, in our market there's not, I mean there's not a whole lot of competition that, I mean, they're, I'm not. Let me rephrase that. There are some good, there are some good companies in, in this town and surrounding areas, but it's, it's, it's not to, to the point where, you know, it's, it's still a lot of mom and pops. They're still way behind on times as far as technology, things like that. They're not, they don't have a, you know, a website up and going. They don't accept credit cards. They're still, you know, wanting checks underneath the doormats, things like that.

So when it, we're, we are pretty, our exposure is very good on Facebook and just in our, we get, you know, hit all hit up all the time. You know, hey, come up, mow my yard, come do weed control, fertilization, those types of things.

But you know, we haven't ever really done a big marketing campaign. Our biggest, I mean we, we do a bunch of yard signs that, that's really been our number one as far as potential clients coming in is we yard signs. And, and our Facebook page is, you know, our number. And we don't ever boost our post or anything like that. I don't, I don't feel there's a need because we get overwhelmed Spring rush every year. So. And that's, you know, I think, I think everybody does, but I think it's, it's more us than a lot of, a lot of the other guys. So.

Very cool. Last question I have for you Justin, before I let you go. And that is as you've grown in terms of hiring this year specifically and last year, has it been more difficult and what are you doing from a hiring perspective to reach that million dollar marker and are you having to change wages or you have to change benefits, scheduling, anything like that that is allowing you to kind of, you know, take advantage of, of this opportunity when it's actually really difficult to hire people.

Yeah, well, one thing we've done is we've raised our prices significantly. A lot of our customers were, you know, back in 2000, we didn't raise prices for like five or six years on some of these customers. And so I think that alone is going to go into, bump our revenue up quite a bit. So we might be, you know, hitting up the million dollars this year just, just from price increases. Obviously it's more, it's going to take more to operate this year than it ever has and our prices are changing by the day right now. So it's, it's very frustrating. But you know, we, we just had to do what we had to do as far as prices go because obviously our labor is going up too. You know, I think our, the average guy makes around $20 an hour here at Harvey Lawn and Landscape. And in our market that's, that's, that's pretty good. But you know, you have, you know, we actually lost a couple guys to like Amazon because they, you know, I don't know what they're starting out at, but it must be pretty good. And you can work inside. You know, some people would rather work inside and you know, get a pretty decent paycheck from that. But it's been a, it's been a roller coaster this, that, you know, the first two or three months of the 20, 22 for sure. And I'm just, I'm glad that we initially raised our prices. You know, January 1st we started raising all the prices on everything because just our, our overhead's grown. We've, you know, moved, moved to a new shop where we can expand off that. We actually have about 5,000 square feet on two acres. So it's, it's going to be super nice for us to expand more office space as well. So.

We'Ll, we'll see what happens. But I think for the most part.

Everybody'S been accepting of the new prices. Yes, we have lost some customers but those, like I said those, most of those customers were you know, 30, $35 cuts whenever, you know they need to be 50 or 60. So I don't blame them shopping around to look, look for another provider. But I think, I think it's, it's going to be, it's going to be a good year for us this year. We're just gonna, we're gonna play it smart and try to, you know, work around this crazy inflation. But everybody else has got to deal with it too. So we should be good.

Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, Justin. If anyone wants to reach out to you is locally, you know, in, in around Oklahoma or they want to reach out to you, where can they find you? Online.

Www.Harvey lawn and landscape.com we're also on Facebook so come check us out.

I hope you found that roundup episode helpful. If you did, check out this video here where I talked to another landscape business owner that, that is stopping all residential mowing and is only focusing on project based work and commercial work. Check it out here and learn more.