BUT The Neighbor Was NOT Happy! (they blamed Josh)

Good morning, everybody. We are headed over to South Haven, Mississippi, to meet up with Kevin Fairburn. He actually is kind of in a unique situation where he has ran a really successful landscaping business up in Tennessee and is now trying to move down to South Haven, Mississippi, start a new branch down there, and focusing more on the maintenance and their current services instead of landscaping the hardscaping side of things. So we're gonna go join him. He's an absolute riot. Best guy ever. So come along for the ride. Enjoy his not mustache. We have mustaches on the crew, too, I think, today. But also his beard. It's. It's iconic. Kevin Fairburn. So come along for the ride. We'll see you then.

The party has started.

Hey.

Hey.

How's it going?

Good. How you guys doing?

Pretty well. I know you guys from YouTube.

Good to see you, man.

Heck, yeah.

How's it going, everyone?

Pretty well. Trying to get some of this mulch in here and a little trimming on this house.

All right, so we mold some trim bushes on this one here.

Yeah, just, I guess the evergreens and that rose bush. Nothing too.

Okay.

Oh, is that electric? Yeah. Did better. Yeah.

Man, it's so much lighter. Yeah, way lighter.

I was looking at that.

I was like, that looks super heavy. That's what the battery took.

The battery.

I was like, super light. Yeah, it's a lot lighter than another one.

Kevin Fairburn from South Haven, Mississippi. One of the main struggles, I would say, is just being able to answer a phone and get to the estimates in time with the command center. That definitely alleviates a lot of that problem. I think the best part is just having almost what you say is a family, a destination family, to be able to bounce questions off of and talk to other people who are in the same situation as you. Not only that, having experience from Mike, building the business and having the systems in place and building a command center to be able to answer the calls and send out estimates for you, which takes a lot away from your time. And now you can spend more time on focus and building on the business instead of so much in the business.

Tomorrow. I will stay in touch, definitely.

All right, Kevin. Have a good one. Good to see you, brother.

Oh, wait, wait. I got one more thing for you.

I forgot for both of you guys.

That's perfect. Coming out of the, you know, the water. Yeah.

Pick out what color you guys want.

Oh, man. Are you, like, a distributor for these things?

Sort of.

Kick out with anyone you like.

Appreciate it.

Got to make sure it fits.

I like this crazy color. It's pretty nice.

There is a blue and a white green.

Picture this or this? Yeah, I like this.

Yeah.

Sweet.

We got to get a picture with them.

Oh, three of us. Yeah. We could do like a selfie. Cool. I got a phone. Okay.

All right. So we're just leaving South Haven, Mississippi, driving up to Tennessee now, and gonna be headed towards Kentucky. Madisonville, Kentucky. We had a great time with Kevin growing his company here down in Mississippi. Josh had a funny story he wanted to share that happened on one of the properties as he was filming Kevin's crew. Yeah.

So we ended up taking extreme ownership for Kevin's company here. The guy who was mowing blew some grass onto his driveway. So I was the closest guy, and I got called over by the angry neighbor with the classic finger wag. And he was like, you gonna keep blowing gas from my driveway? I was like, pardon me? He's like.

He's like, you're gonna blow all this grass up my driveway.

I was like, sir, it's my first day on the job, so, yeah, one day working for Kevin's company and I already got yelled at, so. But we got it all mended.

Yellow slip for Josh. So we're very behind schedule right now.

The Internet did not like Johnny's video. We ran out of toilet paper. We lost the hotel fee.

Don't worry, we're not the carrots, the hummus, salsa goods and barinac granola. And then head out to Kentucky. We will get through this.

All right, so we're just pulling up here on the crew here from Madisonville, and Anthony Brown is the franchisee, but his family gets involved quite a bit. Zach is his son who just graduated and kind of runs the business on a day to day level. Does all the mowing estimates, things like that. So take. I think it's kind of a whole family operation. So we'll pull up on here and see what we can do.

Hello, hello, hello.

How's it going? Is this a new one?

Yes.

Oh, very cool. Josh. This is the one. Remember Gie? It had, like, the things on the side, like the missile. That's awesome. Good to see you. Man up a little bit. How y' all doing?

Good. How are you?

Good, good, good. We got the whole crew out here. That's the whole cre.

Yeah, we're still waiting on dad, aren't we?

Is he just getting off work?

He's trying to get a tractor.

Oh, really? Out here?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

These six trees here have to come down.

Oh, wow. Oh, you're driving. Cool. Now, I don't know what it's called. Is this all your world trips? It's funny. We've been to three churches in the past week from everyone. Like, they just choose their church as a great place to do videoing. So we're like, oh, we've been to church already three times this year. Why did you do this?

Because they needed that. And then we have house, like, right across subdivision over there that needs to be mowed. But he tells us he's waiting on the concrete truck to come pour him a new concrete pad for his driveway. So now we don't even know if.

We'Re going to be able to go over there, man.

Cool, man. So this is the one we had talked about kind of like upgrading from the other ones, right? Very cool. So you guys have a Spartan dealer locally?

He's about 45 minutes away.

This thing is beast. How long have you had it now?

Three. Three weeks maybe.

Oh, dude, 52 or 48?

61.

Dude, this is like a Cadillac.

I don't have to hassle with the key. Just put in the code and start it.

Oh, my word. Josh, you gotta see this. There's no key. There's just a code. Dude, this is upscale, man. Telling you what you got. Like everything, man.

Oh, and it's a very comfortable ride.

Look at that. It's awesome, man.

Anthony Brown, and we are in Madisonville, Kentucky. Our biggest struggle was when we first started with Mike. And really our first and second month was right when the virus hit and everything started shutting down. So it was a challenge for us to market customers and pick up customers at that time when a lot of people are out of work and that kind of thing. We still did really well, but that was probably our most challenging thing, trying to get through that because we had to change our marketing strategy a little bit. The best part for us is having Mike help with so many things. I can't tell you how much he's helped us. Everything just from setup, especially marketing has been a big piece on marketing help. Everything from the websites, but even structure of the business. He's helped us with that a lot.

I'm Zachary Brown here in Massville, Kentucky. Biggest struggle was.

Getting the customers to actually come, but having that transition of where I have to be more personal with them and then transition into how to keep them as they're reoccurring. It's more like a family. Everybody sends suggestions and helps out, but also with Mike and them, they give all the information on the back end. So when you have a long day's Work outside doing your yard work and all that. You don't have to sit down and do a ton of work on the back end to run the business.

Sam.

Great job turning around the closing ratio.

It's awesome. Good work, man. So yeah, I'm looking forward to next spring because that way when the leads start coming back, we already have everything in place for closing at a higher rate. Right. Instead of like this spring, we were figuring things out, you were hurt the whole nine yards. So the close ratio is just, you know, way too low and now we can actually capitalize on it.

Right.

So I look forward to it. I think it'd be good in terms of like next spring. Do you think one of those guys that worked for you guys before would come back sometimes with you or not? They were kind of like college guys for the summer. Got it. Okay.

Until they have to go back to school.

Yeah. Cuz I think, I think if you're already almost full time mowing yourself, you're going to need someone's help, especially during the springtime because now you're going to have five estimates to go do at the end of the day. Right. And that's not something you can do at 7pm Right.

So it'll be the first time.

We'Ll see in January, then we'll be there. Sounds good.

Yeah.

Probably be colder here than it is there.

Hopefully won't get cancelled.

No, it's not getting canceled. It's just a matter of how many people we're allowed to have come. So we have reserved for the franchisees then we have about 80 other spots, I'd say. And then after that, let's hope this.

Is all how many franchises we have.

Too much? 26.

26, wow.

So we have.

That's good growth.

Probably 15 more this winter though.

Right.

So I want to get 50 as soon as possible. Some more discounts. Right.

What about that ramp rack? How's that?

Yeah, so we have the, the demo until the end of November and then that's when I'm gonna talk to them and like negotiate. I' be like a 15% off and they're going to give us a custom color. Right. But honestly in your market you kind of need the big like this in the back of the bed. Right. Anything you get a 52 in the back of the truck if you dent in the wheel wells. Right, Right. But I guess what Nick Dental Beck.

Does, I wouldn't mind going to a flatbed truck or something. I'd like to go to one vehicle on trailer.

Right, right. Well, even if you have the trailer for like, you know. Yeah, right. Yep. Yeah. Or even even just having the big one on that one. And you get, if you go down the road, if you have to get a 48 that could be on the back of the truck, because then when you start hiring people with trailers, man, people like Josh. Damn. Well, hey, it was good to see you all.

Yeah, thanks so much.

Appreciate. Got your work cut out. We will, we will. So. All right. All right. Just wrapping up here. We were with Zach and with Anthony and their family mowing here at their church. Actually pulled out some trees, trimmed some bushes up, so calling it a day for now. And what's really great about their location in my mind is they kind of had some tough times going in the spring because Zach actually broke his arm and he was the one that was doing all the actual mowing and all the actual labor. And so they really had to kind of scramble. Anthony was doing it after his 9 to 5 job and they were pulling in some friends and just trying to get things done. And so he got better, they started to recover. But the thing was that we really struggled here was the closing ratio. And so they were getting like 30, 40 estimates in the month. And we only closed like, I think it was about five. And so we went over some things with Zach because he does all the estimates and went over some just closing, but more importantly, just kind of follow up things. And last month they completely turned it around. I think they closed like 80 or 90% of their estimates. And so not as many estimates getting, you know, asking for estimates, but the close ratio is just so much higher. And so I really encourage you, if you're just starting out, if you're trying to grow your business, make sure your close ratio is high. If you need to lower your price, do it. Whatever you need to do to be able to close 50, 60, 70% of those jobs to fill the schedule, get the momentum going. That's what leads to allow you to grow, hire your first person, get another truck if that's what you're looking to do. So best of luck, everyone. Make sure you hit Share. Share this video with another landscaper. Do that and like the video. We'll see you tomorrow.