Mike Andes says one-time mowing jobs rarely convert to recurring contracts, with about 50-60% staying one-time only. They're expensive to price, wear equipment fast, and cause collection problems. He recommends taking initial mows only if you plan to convert them to regular service.
About 50–60% are one-time mows.
Foreign.
I'm trying to model out what I'm just starting off and I'm trying to model out what a year of operations would look like. And you know, I'm trying to understand, let's say in a city when residential, you know, you start picking up residential customers, you know, how often do they end up being repeat customers. That sort of ticket service on a, you know, let's say monthly basis versus how many times do people usually just get service and then, you know, don't come back? I'm just kind of curious what you've seen based on your experience now when.
You say they have service and they don't come back. Are you talking about someone who just has a one time mow or are you talking about like a cleanup project?
One time mow. I'm really focused on mowing. So I'm kind of curious how many mowing customers tend to come back.
Yeah, it really depends on what you're trying to do with the business. Like, I'm a big believer if you're trying to grow really fast, that you're going to probably take on one time mows or sorry, not one time mows, but like overgrown mows because.
You'Re confident that you can convert a certain percentage of them into recurring. That being said, I know most landscapers and lawn cares and most of our franchisees will not take one time mows because one time mows just don't make sense from a financial standpoint. It's very hard to budget them correctly if you're going to do an estimate for them. Either A, you're doing it over the phone and showing up and then disappointing the customer with a really high ticket item. Or two, if it's a one time mo, like every one time mo is overgrown. Like there's no one like, oh, please mow my grass for this week because I'm gone. And it's like already perfectly manicured and edged. So you're dealing all the time with like really tall grass hard on your equipment. It's hard to schedule them because it can. There's such a wild card. It's like, well, take somewhere between two and five hours to mow. Your lawn gets three feet tall. Right? So there's just so many variables. Lots of, you know, very a lot of wear and tear on the equipment. The guys don't like to do it. A lot of times it sparks their allergies. So, you know, like, do you, when you look at your revenue, what percentage of it comes from one time modes? Do you think?
I'm just getting started. So I'm trying to model it out and I thought it would be something like 60% would be recurring revenue, 40% one time owns. But based on what you're saying, it sounds like it just doesn't even make sense to go into the one time mowing side at all.
Exactly. The only reason we would do an overgrown mow is because we know that person has the intention of going recurring service. And occasionally you'll strike out and someone will be like, hey, could you come mow my lawn? And then we give them a one time mow price, initial MO, we call it, which is going to, you know, get the edging dialed in, get them. We do not just give them a weekly or bi weekly. And each the first time we give them the initial price is much higher. And then there's gonna be that occasional time where they're like, oh, you know what, we'll just have the first mow only. But if they call and actually ask for just a one time mow, it's not worth our time. We just don't know, like if you're gonna send an estimator there. Just by the time they. You send someone there, you drive by and go there and back, like you've already wasted so much money. And then if you just do on the basis of, yeah, we'll show up, we'll mow it, and then we'll charge you, a lot of times you're not gonna get that money. Right. Because typically someone who's abandoned their house, it's overgrown, they're not taking care of their lawn, they don't value it. And you coming along and mowing their grass, they're just like, oh, thank you very much. And you don't hear from them. So I would say some of the biggest bounce rates and the biggest. When we look at collections across all of Augusta Nation, I would say about 50 to 60% at least are just one time most. So I would stay away from them. I just would say that I would not. When you're first starting out, say you won't do an overgrown mow. Just kind of feel out the customer in terms of are they actually looking for recurring service or are they looking for a one time mow? And you can literally just tell customers, hey, we don't mow only one time. We'll mow it the first time initial, get it up to snuff and. But we got to go recurring after that.
Sam.
