Coaching a $1M Landscaping Business: Profit, Leadership, and Systems

Today I'm going to do coaching with a million dollar landscaping business owner that's struggling to make any profit in his business. And he's running ragged trying to do every single aspect of the company.

And then this is me getting worried about stuff that doesn't matter. But if Mike screwed up the job, in my mind, Mike should be the one fixing it.

My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 150 locations around the world, and I travel the country turning around small businesses that are struggling. Now, today's coaching is actually from behind the scenes of an episode we did last year. And this is the uncut, extended version of the coaching I did with the owner. Our goal is to be able to determine why the business is struggling and what we can do to fix it.

I don't want to have guys come up to me and go over Will, because that happens a lot too. They'll be like, hey, let me. I need to get out early and I'm already overloaded. So, like, they'll try to get answers out of me. But I've got to really have like that type of chain of command. And Will is a great leader. He really is.

Are they clear in terms of who to go to for what? The guys? Maybe not. Okay, no. So, for example, in the perfect world, do they go to Will for everything operational, like, hey, I'm gonna be. I'm calling out, or like, I'm sick today. For example, do they know to contact you or him? Or is it a matter of like, mom and dad situation?

I would say him, okay, if I'm down there, people will cut out. They'll go around him and if they see me, so. But are you.

Are you usually the nice guy, though, is like the one that's like, yeah, you can do X, Y and Z. And then Will's the one that kind of holds people accountable.

I feel like it's almost like kind of like shell shock type of thing because you're like, I'm working on 10 different things in the morning, and then somebody comes up and says, hey, I need to get at 2 o' clock today. I'm just gonna be like, yeah, like. And then I just keep going, going along with it where I haven't had much time, or, oh, did you know that I was leaving at 2 or things like that? Or. So I guess the system is pretty much like, Will, Monday, we had to call out because of rain. He's like, hey, it's gonna rain.

You know, one of the guys, he didn't have their number, but he's handling all that communication and.

Contact with those guys.

So. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. In general, like, now you've been in business for 18 years. Obviously right now there's still struggles and things. Is there what from your point of view, like, just your relationship with the business. Is it. I'm stressed out. Is it? I'm excited. All this and I want to keep growing. Like, where is it? Cause, like, that's a long time to be doing this. Like, it's longer than I have been doing lawn care and landscaping. And the same way you've talked about your guys, you know, not doing it for 10 years, you've known it at 18. It's like, what's your relationship with the business right now?

Depending on the season, it's like, I mean, we've had sales goals. Like, when we're trying to grow a certain division or service, like aeration, it gets like, it feels like we're in Wolf of Wall street trying to get. There's nothing tied to it, but we're all excited about what going to sell, sell, sell for a short time. And we're like on the phones hammering them. But I don't ever say that I hate the business, but I guess that the frustrations are with me struggling with ADD in. Like, I don't ever want to go. I took medications as a kid and now I found, like over the past two years through one of my mastermind groups on, like doing this meditation, writing and reading. I do this oak journal from somebody that I found out about. It's been great for me. So, like, that helps me with my add. But like, I still have trouble organizing all this stuff. So I guess that that's the frustrating and it's easy for me to go back to the mower. So I have friends that like Jake, stay out of the field, stay out of the field. But I'm comfortable with it. So I think it's. That's what I'll do and I'll let all this important stuff build up and.

Then it just becomes too overwhelming. And I love the winters when it's not snowing because then I'm like sometimes pulling all nighters, working on my business, working on the numbers, working on the stuff I should be working on 12 months out of the year. But it's the only time that I guess I can block all the distractions. I use a content blocker on my phone, so I'm not on Facebook or Instagram. Like, I really try to do that. And when I start to get off track. I know it because I start reacting the wrong way to people or I'm not.

Friendly to be around type of thing. But if I can stay focused on tasks, I guess that personally that's my biggest thing is not to just the shiny dress thing that you gave, whatever that talk to, not just be going to the next shiny object to just deal with it, build the system and really dive into it and then make sure that system's being done right.

Okay. Okay. And like right now, when I look at the P and L, the balance sheet, et cetera, I'll be honest, I'm pretty scared. Right. Just from seeing the numbers because you got quite a bit of debt. Cash is relatively low. Is that normal for this time of year? Is that a stress or has that been consistent for quite a long time and it's not as much you're kind of numb to it.

I would say that getting the money fast enough is.

I guess that was my question too was is it that the debt is too high or is it that I'm like doing 20 hours overtime, 10 hours overtime for each crew. And I talked to other guys in my area and they're like, we haven't done overtime since like Father's Day. And I've got guys that I'm giving out a lot of not giving out. They're earning the money, right. They're here, they're working, but they're going in November, I'm going, does that make right business sense to mow a sixty dollar lawn when I got a crew lead at 25, another crew member at 20 plus. And if they're on overtime, like unless they're mowing ten lawns or five lawns in an hour, I maybe should be having them stay home or looking at a different option or raising my prices like on the residential end, but.

That.

It'S less tight in the wintertime because there's no overtime. Right. The labor seems to be down less. You're not even though you're paying more. Right. For snow plowing, more for shoveling. It seems like it the cash crunch is less then. And.

This spring it usually like around mulch season with the overtime and the mulch. But we didn't really have that cash crunch this season. So I would say recently, yeah, it's been but, but it's not, it's not a way that I want to be. But it is something that we have been doing. We're like, oh, we need to make sure that this money's coming in. We need to make sure that we're getting it built out. But as for building up a huge reserve or three months of expenses, that's where I would like to be and that's what I'd like to.

Like. I've looked into the Mike McCalla as the profit first. I haven't done that.

I don't.

And same thing with P4P. It's like you have to be really dialed in all your stuff before you can do this. Because I don't ever want to take from my guys. I don't want to steal from them. And the. The old way of doing it per hour is just seems. I know it's easier, but if I can figure out this stuff, it would make it easier to. To at least offer it to the guys. I know that the residential crew would be open to it. Right, guys? You can make this much money and finish whatever time you want. Yep. But it's making sure that we're priced right on these residentials square foot. It's getting our man hour rate. Right. Our man hour rate, by the time that I figure out that they're at the right price, really needs to be up $20. We're trying to get 69aman hour. We really need to be at 8.

Right.

For in this economy. That's pre. Covid.

Is that. Is that residential when you say 69 or is that commercial?

Kind of across the board.

Across the board. 69. Okay.

That's the cold.

Okay. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah, that needs to help. You haven't raised prices since before COVID.

Not on like the rate matrix.

Okay.

And.

I'm not. I don't spend enough time in the background of the rate matrix to play around with it without being afraid that I'm going to screw something up. So it's like those are the things I should be doing before stepping onto a mower or a backpack blower or. Or even listening to another audiobook. It's like I need to be like focusing on this type of stuff. But it's almost like you have to. It's very difficult for me to just focus on that one task for an extended amount of time.

What's your close ratio in general? I know that's commercial and there's residential. What percentage are you usually getting accepted of your estimates that you get sent out?

I don't know.

Okay, is it like the majority of them, like almost everything you close, or is it like it's just a matter of following up and it's 20, 30%?

Well, if you're talking commercial or residential, residential I get that same thing. Some people say, oh, you're too high. But.

We'Re still closing a lot of work. So that's not really. Those numbers aren't scaring me. But the commercial getting so tough because you're dealing with something that could be over $100,000 for 12 months out of the year. And if I come in at 120 and they say they went with somebody else for 140, so where did I lose them on the sales? I was so confident that I could have, like, took out a loan on another truck because I thought I was their guy. And then at the 11th hour, if they said, hey, this other company from two towns over came in, and they're a lot bigger, so they felt safer. I always had said, like, we're a small company or a small family company. And they said that scared the hell out of them with having 100 units. Like, we don't want a small company. We want somebody that's gonna take care of us. So I guess it's getting on track on the mission and that. And that's what Will had shared with me, too, is that something missed most about the military is said like, the mission was clear, and I'm not super clear. Okay, I'm not clear at all.

Admission is the first step of fixing that. So that's great. That's great. And. And the reason I asked about the close ratio is that is the determining factor of whether prices are too high or not. Whether people say it's too high, I could care less. They'll vote with their wallet. And if they accept after saying it's too high, they just basically said, I'm willing to pay it. And so knowing that is really important because I think, like, at 69, if you haven't raised since before COVID like, guarantee you since COVID like, your wages have gone up, cost of fuel's gone up, equipment's gone, everything's gone up. So all your margins been given away. Even if you became 15%, 20% more efficient in the past three, four years because you've improved certain things, that's all got wiped out. There's no margin because now all of your expenses have just gone up. And so the scary part, though, is if your close ratio is so low that you're not confident you can replace any customers that leave because of price increases. Right. And so it really just comes down to, well, if you're closing 70% of your estimates, we should have no fear whatsoever raising prices. Now, if that close ratio is 10 or 15%. That's a different conversation. Right. What percentage of the estimates we send are being accepted is like a very, very important number. And you can just run it in service output really quickly. Like filter out by sent versus accepted. Right.

And how often do you look at that number?

Every single day you look at the only number. It's the only number I expect my GMs to know like cold.

One of the fastest ways to grow revenue in your business is simply add more services. However, by adding all these other services in your business, you can create a lot of complexity and, and therefore problems in the business. Sometimes those ancillary services, the extra 10, 15, 20% of services you're adding are creating 80% of the problems, mistakes, callbacks, and customer issues that you're experiencing every single day. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That's how you build a successful business.

There's five services that we have to be able to perform in order to get these contracts. You know, pruning, mowing, plowing, fertilization, irrigation. Right. The things that are outside of that is where like we get drawn in. The things that we likely. Are they likely bottleneck to you? Everything. She just mentioned hydro seating. He mentioned brush cutting, cutting up trees, etc. Which in my opinion is probably 15%, maybe 20% of the revenue, but creating like 80% of the headache. And 80% of the things that she can't handle are those services. That's where like when someone's been here for a year and they can't answer service questions from a customer service, those services should not be offered in your total.

Right. Without knowing her, because without ever sitting on a ride on mower, she's talking the, the lingo. Oh, we got 60 inch mowers, we're doing that. She knows enough that you could, she could pull somebody that she works in the field.

But if you're like, I'm gonna go sub out some massive tree project she's lost. And guess what? Everything has to go through you.

And then by the time they get through me, the details to pass them on to the subcontractor who's already overloaded with work because I'm giving them stuff. I said, Steve Job, do you want me to even hand you this job? Because I'm like, I love you. You do everything that we need you to do. But I'm like, you seem as bad as me with all this stuff. You seem busy enough. Oh, well, he always wants to take the oh, well, you know, why don't you just pass me the lead so I Think it's gotta be like, so that we're not even tied to it to even make anything. Don't even make anything off. Just be like, hey, we have three different hardscape guys. Call all of them, see who can give you the best price.

And this is the thing I understand from your perspective, you want to please people, the customer, especially if they ask for a certain and you just want to do it for them. You're like, even if I don't make money, I just want to keep them as a customer. I want to make them happy. I understand that. That the problem is going to be you will never either A, grow B, not fight fires. And more importantly, you're going to frustrate your best people because they can't do their job. And instead if even becoming an issue for you, it should be at communication level. It's like, these are the services we offer. Outside of that, no bueno, not happening. And then it never even becomes a problem for you because it's cut off at that level. They just know these are the service we offer. These are what we don't. Because I guarantee happens right now is so and so called. They want this thing. Could you go meet them for an estimate? And you're like, sure, I'll go meet them. I'll get a sub or I'll get a piece of equipment. I'll make it work.

Something I have no business to go in and look at. Why am I pricing out work for a. I'm not a salesman for.

You're the only one that can either do it or is the only person that can handle that customer now because they can't handle it. Like for us, it's like I look at it as like you're either going to be a five star Michelin restaurant and you're going to take years and years to train people and people are going to travel from far and wide and think you're the best thing since sliced bread. And some people like that. They want to be the custom guy. And then the other extreme is taking 15 year olds at McDonald's and within a day they're profitable for the business and you can train them up and immediately they know exactly how to make that burger and the fries and everything. And you got to figure out where you want to be in that continuum. And I think a lot of us as landscapes, we tilt this way too much. I want to offer this service and this and we're going to be the best at this. Being the best is completely subjective. The best burger, well, McDonald's sells the most burgers. And it's because they've taken something that is hard and difficult making food and simplified it, systematized it and said, these are the only things we do. We make that burger that fry and that milkshake, and that's basically it, right? And. And typically you look at the rest, like restaurants, for example, that have the least amount of items on the menu. Like, if you have a really fancy restaurant, it's like three or four entrees. It's not like Denny's where you go, there's like 300 options, right? And I think a lot of times we get into this game of being the Denny's of lawn care and landscaping. Like, oh, yeah, we'll offer you this and we'll offer you that and we'll do this. And your margins just get crushed, right?

And I think that in my opinion, what I would look at in your buyers that you're fighting, I would guarantee 80% of them are caused by things that you, your top people cannot handle for you. And they are becoming your problem because they don't have the information or quote, unquote, experience. If after a year, someone have the experience to handle a problem that needs to be cut, whether it be a process of irrigation or whatever it is, whatever that problem is, it needs to get cut. Because it'll just always be your problem forever and ever. Because at a year long, like, that's. That's a. In this market, in this labor market, that someone has been here like that, that's abnormally long, right? Usually someone's lasting three to six months. So the goal is like, either A, how do we keep people longer, or B, how do we make people profitable faster for the business to where they can be here for a week or two weeks or three weeks or whatever it is, be trained up and be profitable for the business. When you add more services, it takes them way too long to get trained up, right? Or you're going to silo them all, right? You're going to have one guy that just does the taco. That scares me like crazy, because if.

He goes away, then there's.

He has all the information of those contracts in his head. If he leaves. You are.

Not good words.

The unfortunate thing is the person that I've done this business with, the reason why I'm replacing him is that I had a guy that had a long history. Actually, we worked at the same golf course together, struggled with drugs and alcohol, and he passed away last year. So it was like he was kind of like My guy, he knew all the knowledge, he knew all that. And that was the same position I was in. This spring, Justin passed away and I'm like mourning him in February. And then when spring rolled around, I was in the truck trying to train it. I was like, I'm going to be here. Like my business is here in Hudson and I'm driving around all over the place and I can't keep an eye on anything. I'm like, I don't know what's getting done. If anybody needs me for anything, I'm in. Everybody knows your ELSP place and your focus is on that client. So they're like, well, does he care about us? Do we have the tools we need? Do we have is our schedule right? All those things. So you're right, it is very risky to be able to do that. And a lot of people have tried to tell me or over the years that I maybe should get out of that agreement. But it has been a really good opportunity from a previous franchise that the opportunity came about and we are in my mind making good margins on it. So I would just hate to get. I wish all of my.

Totally. I'm not against the work. I think that's a good contract. And especially if you think that, that it's a profitable contract. I'm not against it. What I think is that I'm against is having people so siloed that if they leave, you are handicapped. And guess who's going to pick up the slack? You.

Or if for some reason he had to go do something else, like I couldn't throw him on condos today or I couldn't throw him on residential because he's only trained on that.

And I'm not saying that everyone has to be cross trained, but there should be enough overlap so that if someone is gone for a day, gone for a week, it's not all falling back on you to jump back out in the truck and help. And the easiest way to make sure that that happens is simplifying the services. And I don't mean making them like, oh, we only do mowing. I mean, like what are the 20% that is causing 80% of the problems that is causing you to jump in? Like when you jump in, I'm guessing it's not mowing condos.

Not since I've had will, no.

And so it's a matter of like, the things that you're jumping in on should probably be cut because if you do that, you're going to be able to focus on actually moving the business forward. Instead of fighting fires all day long, Fighting fires is like the worst way to grow a business. Like emotionally, psychologically and financially. Right. You're just constantly running for this, this and you're reactive the entire day versus being like, we're gonna cut all of that out. And if Mikayla or Rachel is Rebecca can't answer the phone and give customer service on this service, we're not doing it. And they know, okay, when they open up, you know, you can do in the wiki and service autopilot services offered. Here's what we say yes to. Here's what we say no to. We have this list, like 60 services.

How do they pull that up? Only by the wiki.

You can do wiki some stuff in that. You could do a Google Drive doc so they can search it. Like stump grinding. No, we don't do that. Right. Because right now I'm going to guess and say that they don't know. If they do it, they're going to come ask you.

And I love it because that's a perfect. That's one to add to the list of stump grinding. Is a retired guy that stump grinds it. He leaves the stump chunks there in the ground. And then usually we would like to pick up the stump chunks, do the loan. But like, that's.

You should have nothing to do with that job.

Give it to Mike. Say, hey. The guy's name is Mike. Say, hey, you want stump grinding? This is the stump grinding number. This is a referral. But we. We shouldn't get involved.

So what we have is we have all our services. Everything that says no next to it has a referral next to it. We don't do stump grinding. But here's a guy who does. Mike's his name. Here's his number. Guess what? You never got pulled into that fire. You're never going to have to deal with the customer who. Because now Mike didn't show up and now you're on the hook for it because you subbed it out to him. And now you are the bottleneck for everything with that customer. Right. And so I really think empowering a Mikayla, like, in my opinion, just based upon an hour I've been here, Mikayla's rock star Will is a rock star. Right. I would really build around them. And I know Michaela's going back to school, but, like, look at, like, positions and whether I keep calling her Rachel. What's her name? Rebecca. Rachel. Rebecca. Mercy goodness Rebecca. When she got like, whoever that role is, I personally believe they care a lot about the business. And they do so because you care a lot about the business.

As you begin to grow a business, the reason that you hire employees is to buy back your time. At first, you might hire an employee to do the work.

Why?

So you can buy back your time and focus on sales. As you begin to continue growing multiple employees out in the field, you might hire an admin person so you can buy back your time. Instead of doing office work, you can focus on getting more customers. At the end of the day, as you grow an organization, you're constantly hiring to buy back your time, delegate, and continue to grow the business. You want to ask yourself, what are you best at or what do you least like doing? Those are the things I want to delegate first when it comes to hiring employees.

My bigger concern with that is not so much the fact that you are flexible with the system, because obviously you realize that's not the right move, is that you threw the people that you have put in the position to make those calls under the bus.

What do you mean by that?

You have made the system that you must have a card on file. These are the systems we have in the business. And if someone's calling and asking for an estimate, they're accepting an asset. These are what required. And then the customer comes around that person that you put in place to protect you. They come around them and come to you directly. And you're like, oh yeah, totally, do whatever you want. Yeah, sure thing. You just threw this person under the bus. I'm still learning this too, because now I have multiple layers of management and if someone comes to me from the bottom, I can't respond to them. I'm throwing their middle level manager under the bus. And so for example, if a guy comes to you and asks for at 2pm off, that is like, you do not touch that. You gotta go talk to Will. Cause otherwise you're disabling him from making calls within the business. He knows the jobs the most, he knows where the crews are at the most. The same thing is true for the office. Like you're asking to have high accounts receivable and them having to deal with collections by allowing that out of the system. The thing is, they should never have that contact with you. The customer should never be contacting you and saying, oh, I don't want to do credit card. They should be empowered to be like, we know what to say when we call them back. Here's why we do credit card. We don't charge until the job is done. We're gonna do a walkthrough you will be happy with this job. Before we ever charge your. Charge your card.

So that email should have been followed up with a phone call by the.

Because they know what to say they've seen a thousand times, right? And what you're doing is you're taking away all the power from people who can do the job for you and you're trying to do it yourself.

Not sharing the guarantee, not showing that we have workers comp. Not showing that we have all the insurance. Like I wasn't sharing all this stuff that they could have probably had the idea to talk about.

And they, you know, you give them the power, they'll come up with creative ideas. For example, like Mr. Jones, what's your name? Customer? The lady's name. Great. You know, a lot of our customers, when they first come, sometimes the credit card is somewhat of a shocker. And we understand that. But this is the thing we are. We guarantee our work and you will not see a charge on this card until we are completed the job. Why we do this credit card, even though we take a hit, actually we actually pay about 3% in processing fees. We do that. So you don't have to worry about a check. You have to worry about getting the invoice in the mail. We take care of all of that. But you're not going to get charged until you are happy with this job. And we will do a walkthrough with you. Right? Because now will knows walkthroughs happen at the end of every single project.

The office knows that if a job is marked complete and a walkthrough has been completed, the customer's happy. There is no like, I sure hope.

They pay or we're getting a call back because we know that so and so just walked around the house with him. He's marking it off as completed. On an enhancement job, that means the sidewalk's been blown, blah, blah, blah. Everything.

All the checks have been two massive things to get you completely out of having to ever be involved in enhancements. Number one, project videos. And you already kind of know what that is. And that is when you're at the estimate, you wrap up that job. Mr. Jones, I'm going to go and take a video. So the office has it and the crew that shows up and does your work has that. And they're going to send the estimate to you within 24 hours, whatever it is. And we can't wait to do work with you. Right. You have now disassociated yourself from the job. I am taking this Video for the office and for the crew that's going to come do the job, I. E. You will never see me again. I am the estimator and I would recommend introducing yourself as the estimator so that you are not the bottleneck for everything. Because otherwise they will always ask for the owner. And right now we don't have the systems in place when they ask to talk to the owner, to push them away. We don't have those systems in place because if someone asks for the owner, they don't get the owner ever. Right? I get every single day, probably 10 to 12 times at command center people asking for the founder of Augusta Lawn Care.

And you gotta train that it's not like to tell what you're actually doing. Like, oh, he's out on. No, he's just not available. They don't need to know that you're on vacation or that you're across.

They don't know you're the owner though, you're the estimator.

So you just don't.

He's not on my business card. I say estimator.

Okay.

Hey, no, I'm Jake, I'm the estimator. If you have any questions, contact the office. If they come back to you about the credit card thing, contact the office. I got the estimate to you. I go to the office, has the video, contact them. I know that's hard. I know it's very difficult.

Easy. When you're saying it right now, it's like, why haven't I been doing it the whole time?

But it's very, it's very difficult because you're, you're giving away control. But that's the only way that you retain. And great people, like great people are frustrated more by you getting involved on their job and getting in the way and taking all the power away from them by going around them. They are more frustrated by that than you. What you are doing was just trying to solve their problems. It is extremely frustrating to a high performer when you do that. They just want to do their job right. And number one, project videos. Number two is walkthroughs. Because there should never be a complaint after a job is done. When it comes to enhancements or one.

Time jobs, it's tempting as you grow your business to constantly micromanage the people that you've hired and then delegated things to. But if you really wanna see them succeed, if you want them to take ownership of their position and of their role, you gotta trust them. And micromanagement will handicap your top performers.

We had Somebody that I should have known that we needed to replace. Like, the guy went away and he's like, I think we can get by with this many people. And then we start getting the quality problems. Like, we definitely need somebody else here. And it turned out we really need like two more guys to get it where we needed it. So I guess figure, how do you figure out those problems? Or if just like the simple task, how are you making sure they're getting done? Because, like, if she's overloaded with stuff, I'm not gonna.

So you and I have the same problem. All right? So I'm working on this same exact thing actively. And that is.

Why would Will tell you the problems that are coming up because you feel like, hey, you're not communicating with me. Why would he do that if when he does that, you jump in immediately and try to solve it?

Same point, Michaela's like, hey, we need bug spray in the truck. And I'm like, why are you guys telling me this? Chad has the card true values right next door. Why is like, why is it like, why is this conversation happening? But at the same point, I don't, like, how do you read my mind on what I want to know and what I don't want to know? So it should be, I don't need to know.

You don't need to know. Right. You trust the people. Right? The people run the business. You create the systems so they can follow it without your intervention. But what I can guarantee is that there's negative reinforcement if Will tells you something that's going wrong in the business. Because what happens is he immediately gets chopped off and you jump in. So guess what? He's not going to do it. He's not going to come to you with these problems. Whereas if you set up a system as like, hey, look, let's just both get on the same page. I need to know what's going on in the business. I want to know. I still want to know what's going negatively. But when that happens and you tell me, instead of me jumping in, I am simply going to ask you, do you want a solution or are you just telling communicating information? Because right now, every time you hear something going on, you're jumping in. Customer complains about credit card you jumped on. You contact them like it's you getting involved. Right. Like if the emails are coming to your phone from the office, I would cut that off right away. Are the emails coming to your phone? Yeah, don't do that. Because then they are constantly second guessing themselves whether or not you are going to handle that or if they are going to handle that.

She called me the last time we were somewhere with Mike Callahan's group and she's like, stop opening emails. Because like, you opened an email.

Can we get a hallelujah over there?

Because when you open the email, like I look like that you may have done something with it. And we're sharing this email so that.

You know how frustrating that is as a team member. They're trying to do their job and they don't. They're second guessing themselves as to whether or not you've already done it. Like, why did you hire them in the first place if you're going to take all them emails? You know why? Why hire Will if you're going to solve all his problems? That's their job. And great people want to do their job.

And if there's negative reinforcement every time they share things with you that are negative in the business, I'm learning this right now, like the hard way at like a higher level. It's not good. I jump in. And when I do that, I'm doing exactly what you. And that is like you want to help them the same way you said, hey, she has all these things on her plate. I'm going to try to help her potentially by getting this email. I'm going to take this off of her plate. That is like the worst thing you can do to a high performer. But yeah, you're trying to help them, they're trying to help you. And you guys are literally tripping over each other.

Trying to help each other. Like, you both love each other, you both care a lot about each other and you care about the business, but you're tripping over each other because they're trying to help you and you're trying to help them. And in doing so, just like colliding instead of. I am not checking the email. That is your responsibility. If you think you need help, you come to me. I guarantee if you did that, 78% of the emails you currently answer, they'd be able to handle.

And if I got it on my phone, that means it would have to be when I'm signed into the laptop, when I'm focused on doing that. And I think I've got a lot of other distractions on my.

So don't even talk.

The email, just. Email is not yours.

You're a million dollar business. You should not be checking your email. It's the hardest thing. I remember the weekend that I took it off my phone. The most freeing thing you'll ever do.

Because before you had, when you were building your business, like your whole thing was your word. If you told them you're showing up, you didn't have anything else.

A negative review is like, answer the phone.

It's like everything was on that communication. So to let that go. My wife said on our first date that I answered the phone and she almost was like, out. Then she was like. Because it was like, it's always the importance of that. So that's psychologically something definitely to work well.

And you're gonna be drawn to fires because you're aware of them on the weekend. You should let them come in on Monday and have a lot on their plate versus you having four dialogues open with customers about complaints over the weekend. And guess what? They're gonna come in, they're gonna be, oh, this is halfway through a conversation with Jake. I can't even answer this. Cause they've been back and forth and they've said certain things. Right. And so you're just handicapping them. Right. I would take the email off your phone, I'd take it off your computer now. Guess what? If you want communication, you're going through the office as any good estimator should. And that's your role is you're. You're here to sell.

I need to sell. And I need to be doing the property inspections and walk through like the fine. A monthly inspection. I don't need to walk through on every service monthly. I need to go through and just be like, hey, I'm Jake.

Anything besides that. You have an awesome people to do that for you. And you're just going to frustrate them to all end if you keep stepping on their toes.

No email on your phone, no voicemails on the weekend, all that's the office's job. So when they come in on Monday morning, they're starting at the top and they get a deal with every problem. Instead of, okay, this is like an email. It says he left a voicemail on his cell phone. Like, should I get involved? Okay, now they have to bring it to you. Even if they literally know the answer and you're doing it with the expectation of, I don't want them to come on Monday and have this problem. I don't want them to come Monday and have a big inbox or a bunch of voicemails. I'm going to do it for them.

You're just frustrating everybody in the estimator. Something I would want to know is, hey, we got a hot lead for a snow plowing Contract here in town. Like I want to know about that as soon as it comes in. That's something that somehow they get to me. Hey, we printed it out and it's here because those are time sensitive and those are the things that I can be all over.

You don't even hear about it until they've addressed it and they're like, this is Jake worthy. All right. When you think about a million dollar business, you will not be able to grow any further. Like top line revenue for a second. Like not think about profitability but just top line. You will not be able to grow. Keep doing what you're doing. You are, you have a foot in sales, you have a foot in operations and you have a foot in admin. Like the only reason you're still surviving after 18 years is you have ADD and you're able to like just juggle, right? That is not sustainable. It's bad for the business. It's really, really demoralizing for the top performers. Like low performers want you to step in because they don't know how to do their job. The top performers though, they're just annoyed because you pay them to do their job and they are second guessing themselves on what actions they should be taking because they don't know whether or not you're going to step in. Just let them do their thing. No emails. Someone contacts you about getting off at 2 o', clock, you know the answer. Talk to Will. Everything operationally goes through him. I have someone right now in the middle of my organization trying to give me ideas. I know every single idea. Even though I like them or I don't like them or I want to give feedback, I will not give feedback. I will say, you must go talk to so and so. That's your manager. As much as I know I could give them the answer and make this quote unquote faster because if I don't do that and I don't tell them to go to their manager, I've just handicapped their manager. Why do they need a job? Their thought is like, why do I need to be here? They're just going to all go straight to Jake, who cares? Like, I don't need to be here, I don't need to do the scheduling. Like if he's just going to get in here on the weekend and change everything or he's going to tell the guys that they can be off early. Like why am I here?

Right?

And then if you do that, allow admin to do their job, allow operation do their job, you're gonna crush Sales.

Right?

Like, you shouldn't even be thinking about belts that are broken. You should be thinking about who's off at 2:00'.

Clock.

That's all operations, right? You shouldn't be worrying about emails coming in and complaints or someone worrying about credit cards on file. That's administrative. You just focus on selling.

In building this stuff up that we don't do lawn. Unless the credit cards on file, they're making sure that gets done and then we're not. And then how do you audit your system with not like being. I'm happy to give this stuff over. I really hate the admin side. It slows me down, takes me 10 times longer. But how do I do a checklist on something that I fully don't like? I'm just like, if I haven't looked at the calls in three weeks or a month now I'm trying to catch up on a bunch of stuff. Or do I not even audit them? Like, do you like.

Yeah. So what does the system mean to you when you say system, I heard checklist. Like, what does it, a system mean to you? Because you say that a lot.

Like, how would I know if we missed a payment? Or how would I know if somebody owes us a lot of money and it may be in Michaela's head or something like, how do I know when it's time for me to get involved? Or that's for them to tell me.

That's for them to tell you because they have rules of engagement that are clear and defined, right? They know when to go to Jake. Because either A, they don't know or B, this is a Jake problem. You know, payroll balancing is a Jake problem. I'll go to Jake for that. But someone complaining about credit card file is not a Jake problem. And I will handle it. So they get rules of engagement as to when they come to you. The second thing is, is a system. There's two, there's. There's two ways in my mind to make a system, right? Either system, like standardize it, which is we do the same thing the same way every time. Which means you give them a standardized way of which I think you've already done this part estimates, etc. But there should be standard. How do we respond to someone about credit card. The standard way of responding to someone who asked for hydro seating.

No, we don't offer that service. Here's who we refer that to. It never even becomes your problem. You don't have to be sitting in bed and worrying about not servicing that customer because it never Even got to you because the rules of engagement say, and the system quote, unquote, the standard way of replying to that person is no. And here's a referral that's typically going back to a Google Doc or some sort of standardized way. So the system is standardization and simplification. The simplification part is also important. Like standardized, great. It's really, really hard to standardize building a house. Very complicated, really simple to standardize or to standardize and make a system around building a tent. That's simple. So the next thing is like strip all the complexity away. The 20% of services that create 80% of the problems, 80% of the cash flow issues and 80% of your headaches should be stripped away. Like everyone's like, system, system. System is a buzzword. It's simplification and standardization.

But it's, it's making issues into tickets, it's taking callbacks and making them into job notes and making sure that if Jake's out of the situation, it's oh, we heard a complaint. Or maybe they're not even doing that for me. But like if they hear a complaint, it's making sure that that complaint is going to be on that job forever. That we make sure the gate shut, make sure to blow off the patio. That's the type of thing.

Those are the X and O's and details of simply just letting someone do their job well because they're going to start to realize that's a really good idea if they are going to do their job well, is to put notes on jobs.

And if they're not doing a million.

Things like, but if you're doing sales and quality control, for example, which will help a lot of the trickle down to the whole business in terms of getting better contracts and managing complaints. If you just focus on that.

There's going to be so much less.

That needs to come to you. Right. Because you just let them do their job. And sometimes that means they're going to ask you a question and you say, go talk to Will. Because if someone has an issue with a job or it's a quality issue, they should be going to Will. He's operations. He's responsible for training the guys. Oh, they keep messing this up. He's responsible, he's operations. You're not in that role. And there'll be times you will know the answer and you'll say, you need to go talk to someone else.

So the key is to try to get Will off the mower because he drives production.

Nope. No, no, that's fine. He can be in operations and be on the field still.

He also. He needs to be doing the final touch though, training.

Will, that's operations, right? Callbacks. Will, he's in operations.

Every callback goes to him and then he delegates it.

How do you know you weren't on the job? You aren't with the guys every single day. You aren't making sure the blades are sharp, making sure the equipment's on the trucks and all the rest. That's operations.

But the, the SOP is that it goes to Will, but then it goes. But who deals with it? And then this is me getting worried about stuff that doesn't matter. But if Mike screwed up the job, in my mind, Mike should be the one fixing it. So if it goes to Will, Will's telling Mike to go fix his screw up. And as long as that's happening. Because I had felt like that in times in my company. There's been times where when I just try to trust the process and just let things go. That's one thing that happened. Like, okay, Mike screwed it up, but Joe's fixing it. And like, where's the how's even?

Don't get too worried in the process, okay? Just the people rock. They'll figure out the best process time and time again. Because the reason you don't trust the process, quote unquote right now, is because you're like, oh, it's always different. Like, the situation's always different. That's why you have great people. Will will figure out who needs to go back to the job site based upon who's closest the next day on the route, who has the skill set, who is the most reliable et ceter. He'll figure that out. It does not need to go through you. And so I would just constantly ask yourself, when it comes down to like the blocking and tackling of like, what comes to me, what doesn't is like, is this sales and quality control? If. No, if it's operations, it goes to Will. If it's admin, they can handle it. They're awesome.

Once you've streamlined operations and you have really simplified the services that you're offering, the goal is how do I build a self sufficient team that can also operate the business even if I'm not there every single day. And in order for that to happen, I've gotta have clear roles, clear responsibilities, and then fully trust my team to take ownership of that job.

They wanna help you. And the reason they wanna help you is cause you wanna help them. And that's Very, very clear and evident to me. And that's why great people stick around is cause you care. Right. But that can't come at the expense of you getting involved in all of their work. Cause it's more frustrating if she hops in at lunchtime and checks and she's confused on 50% of the communication. Cause she doesn't know if you're involved or not. That's extremely frustrating. That's more frustrating than having to do it at lunch. It's just like I just want to be getting into my email and I want to be able to do my job Instead of worrying about whether or not Jake contacted the customers or I contacted a customer. They oh, I talked to Jake about this.

You just took all the power out of their hands.

And then they got to try to figure out, to try to track me down, whatever I said to them. So.

Yeah, yeah. Because you're probably not putting office notes in right now now. So guess where all the information is. Your head. And that's in. In general, the admin side of the weak part of the business is admin's information is all in everyone's head. It needs to get into something. Right. And right now you have two ways of doing that. One, stop jumping between these three verticals we've talked about. Because that every time that happens, you're going to mess something up. And secondly is inside of those verticals. So Operation Opera. Operationalize and systematize everything. Like it should be documented how we price, what size of mowers we use, what service we do and do not do, who we refer. If that happens, she knows who to refer. Now grinding Mike. But that, that needs to be communicated so that when someone picks up the phone and say, do you do sump grinding? It's like, let me get back to you. Let me talk to Jake, see if that's something we can do. Let's set up an estimate. Oh, then you got to cancel the estimate because now Mike. Mike told me not to do that. So it should just be a system, some grinding. No, we do not offer that service. Mike is the guy you should be calling. Here's his number. You never hear about it. They do their job and there's no miscommunication with the customer. Right. So but like this is a classic case of just caring for people. Right? She cares about the business, she cares about you. You care about her and her future, which is like why she still is here. And I'm the same way. And it starts to trip people up though. The best people because the best people, they just want to do their job, and they want to do it because they want to see you succeed. That's all they want to see. And that's like a very humbling thing. And I get that. And so in return, what you do is you care for them and you try to block for them, but in doing so, you guys are doing that.

Just good people is really like, I just knew right off being here you're a great person.

And I think that's why I do this stuff, because I want the business to do well. Because I know you having money instead of scraping by leads to that.

You having $100,000 in the bank instead of 10 or 11 allows you to do more of that. It allows you to give opportunity to people like her.

I don't think you making more money leads to lavish lifestyle and crazy, stupid stuff.

Because you care about people. And so, like, that's what I want to see. The business is like, we're not scraping by. There is money in the bank account. You're not fighting fires. You are enabling the people who are amazing at their job to do their job. And then you have the money to be able to go do the stuff that you're really passionate about. Because in my opinion, that's what you're passionate about. And you're being handicapped because the business is not functionally, financially to be able to afford that.

So how do I stay in sales but.

Be doing that other stuff? Right. So I guess just focus on sales. Don't worry about anything else, because I kind of have the other stuff figured out. So just stay in sales.

It sounds like sales and quality control is the two things you'd be focused on. Right. Because that'll help all aspects of the business. Because if you can do quality control while you're out doing sales, for example, you're going to help the operations indirectly. Because now if there's a problem, you're not going to fix it. You're not contacting the customer. You're going to contact operations, who is will. You're going to contact Michaela or Rebecca. They're going to be contacting the customer, not you.

You're going to put the damn job note on and flip open your laptop and say, oh, because you're not overloaded. Because you're only focusing on this one thing. Hey, this shrub needs to be pruned or this whatever needs to be done the next time you're on site. Yep. It doesn't need to be like happening.

Your voicemail on your phone. These Are the basics. Little stuff. But it's matched. Your voicemail says, hey, this is Jake, the estimator at St. Laurent Property Maintenance. If you'd like to get a hold of the office, here's their number. So when the customers call you that have known you're new for a long time, they know now to contact the office. If a customer comes up to you and says something about their bill, you do not give them the answer. You know it. You know their bill for the past 10 years, but you don't answer them because it's handicapping them from doing their job. And that will take you probably a year and a half to two years just to flush out all of the communication that currently customers have directly with you. And I'm guessing that people have your personal cell phone number.

We block that kind of.

I saw a nod.

Since we were using lawn phone. Like, I can call from the company phone. Cool. But sometimes I'll make a mistake and call for, like. Because I'm so, like buyers. I'm like, oh, I gotta call this person right now. But I try not to.

Just don't do it. I would take lawn phone off your phone.

How come the lawn phone makes it so that we can call from the 391?

Yeah. But why do you need to contact the customer? You're the estimator. I'm the CEO. I don't think you should be doing that on the weekends. I don't think you should be in the evenings. I think you should focus on your personal life. I think you should focus on the sales and the quality control so you can do a good job at that and that. When they walk in the morning and there's voicemails, they call from lawn phone. They answer the email. That's their job. You'll double the business if you do this.

Okay.

Because you'll focus on sales and quality control. The quality control aspect will help admin. They won't have as many complaints. It'll help operations because they won't have to be doing callbacks all the time. But you'll be able to focus on selling, which is the thing that right now you're not doing because you're chasing all these fires like broken belts. And, like, I got to pay this and I got so and so complained. That is not your job.

And if I was the CEO and you're the estimator, I'd say you're out of your role. You're stepping out of your role.

And the only reason you've built the business to this size is because you care about the customer and you're willing to do anything and everything inside the business. But at this size, you can't do everything. You can't. You're going to burn yourself out. And financially the business is already burnt out.

And so there has to be change. And whether that be like we haven't even talked about the fact, like raising prices is probably a really good idea. But the reason you aren't doing that is because you're not confident that if 20% of your customers left or didn't renew that you'd be able to fill those contracts up. That's why you're not doing it. Because if you were confident that you'd be able to go sell enough contracts, you'd go raise your prices 25% right now and become profitable immediately.

Like I really believe all your contracts, all your pricing should go up at least 20%. At least even contracted monthly 100%. Every single thing should go up 20%. But the reason you're not doing that right now is you're afraid of losing 20, 30% of your customers.

And you're afraid too, because there's financial obligations in terms of loans that you are required to make X amount of revenue. I guarantee you, like right now, the business overall blended 1 to 2% profit margins, right? If you, if you just raise your prices by 10%, you would effectively 5x your profit.

Because that 10% goes directly to the bottom line.

I would highly recommend 20% increase on all your prices. You're going to lose some customers. You are all the ones that you don't like right now that cause the most headache, they'll leave. You're going to raise your prices by 20%. But the only way you'll do that, because I can say this until I'm blue in the face and you won't do it. The reason is because you're afraid that you won't be able to fill the contracts with new customers at the higher prices. But I can guarantee you will if your time is now spent on selling because you won't be pressured to leave the job site after an hour. You'll spend two hours with the customer and go over everything and they won't go with someone else. That's more expensive because you spend the extra hour with them going over everything and doing what an estimator does, which is sell. You're not worried about getting belts and responding to voicemails and emails. That's not your job.

And you catch up with these people on a weekly basis. You pull Mikayla, you pull Will aside, Will's on the job, and you say, hey, man, how's stuff going? Or mikayla, how's stuff going? Like, you still have to connect with.

Me, but you do that. You do that to listen and not to be wanting to know everything in the business. You do not need to know when customers complain. You don't need to know that. The reason Will's not telling you right now when things go wrong in the field is because he knows you're going to jump in. So they will not tell you things because they're trying to. They like you. They don't want you stressed, and they don't want you running around like a chicken without a head. So they will not tell you things. But if you allow them to say, tell me what's going on. Tell me the complaints. Tell me what's going wrong with the crew. Tell me who isn't doing a good job in the field. Go for it. I'm not going to react. I'm just going to listen. If you need my help, ask me, but I am not going to jump in and try to fix it for you.

And that's hard, dude. Very hard, because you just want to fix it. You know everything in this business. You know how to fix it. But that's not the right solution.

Right? But if you like, you'll just have to say, like, hey, tell me everything. And then tell me if you want help. Or if you're just communicating with me now, guess what? They'll be able to tell you. And you'll actually get all the information you want to know.

But you'll have to bite your tongue.

You have to let them know that you're not gonna get involved.

I'm not gonna jump in. I'm not gonna fix your problems, okay? Cause I understand you're an amazing talent and you're an incredible person, but I am not gonna fix your problems. Cause you're great at your job. You're better at it than me. Why? Cause you get all the voicemail, you get all the email. I don't. I don't have all the information about your department, but if you need to communicate with me, just tell me. If you need help or if you're just communicating, Those are the rules of engagement, okay?

Having these clear rules of engagement that make it very clear who does what inside the organization will allow the company to continue growing without people stepping on each other's toes or feeling disrespected. This will allow Jake, the owner, to focus on being a Great leader and doing strategic things like raising prices in the business. And trust me, raising prices is extremely important.

I don't. I don't want to say that I'm afraid to raise prices. I guess it. It feels like it's more of like the time. No matter how much time I could work on the business, I never feel like that. That is weird as that is. It doesn't seem like that it's an important thing. It's like, oh, I need to go get something else. But I never take the time.

We are in this business to do one thing. You know what it is? Make a bunch of money. You know why? Because I think if you make more money, you'll serve your customers better, you serve your employees better, and you'll serve the community better. Not having money in a business is like running out of oxygen. You can't operate. And I personally believe someone like yourself, who has great intentions, a great person having more money, all three of those parties do better. Customers do better. Why? Because you're focusing on sales. You're focusing on quality control. They're going to be happier. You're going to take care of potential customers more, have more time, and it'll take care of people who are complaining way better. Because you have the time to do quality control. There won't even be complaints because you're able to do quality control. Right. But if price is not. If you're not concerned about raising price, you should do it immediately because it is the fix for the financial problems of the business. Like, if you take 20% of your current revenue, you would go from $11,000 in profit this year to 115, 120 with.

I guess it scares. The only part that scares me is the commercial end, but the residential doesn't scare me at all. And it's way overdue, I feel like.

But so do that immediately because you're gonna get.

And then work on building up the.

Curve and then as the contracts renew, just up them all at least 20%. Like, your admin needs to hear this and they need to hold you accountable to the prices will increase by 20% or more because I guarantee your price of your costs have gone up more than 20% in the past four years. Guarantee it without a shadow of a doubt. Like, what was your base pay for guys out in the field in 2018?

I mean, it's hard to even think that far back.

Probably 14 was good.

Yeah, 15 was like a guy that's.

Now you got 20 and 25 and you haven't raised your prices that's where all the money is going.

And there should be standard increases to contracts every year. They just know they're getting a standard increase of 5%.

The same way that rent's gone up every year. Landlord, hey, you can renew, but it's gonna be $50 more a month. I mean, $20 more a month. That's how you raise prices over time. Not right now, where we're pulling this band aid off after years of pain financially.

Right.

But if I was you, I would raise all your prices on your residential clusters immediately because they're easier to do that. And then as your contracts renew for commercial, like a minimum of 20% increase. Now you have more confidence in doing that because now if we do what we've talked about, you won't have to be focused on operations and you won't have to be focused on admin. So you will be able to sell more customers and you'll actually get to the point where you're like, I need to get rid of some customers, otherwise I gotta go buy a bunch more equipment. So you're not gonna do that. You're gonna raise prices.

And that's kind of where we're at right now with having to the Saturdays, like we're having to find stuff or we don't have enough to bring on another crew, but we have too much mowing on the residential side. So if I could lose a few.

Of the ones that. And this is, this is what's cool. This is what's cool. You're not going to do the price increases. Guess who that's responsible for Michaela. Admin. Yep.

Invoicing, billing, that's all admin.

So then it's a conversation on coming up with how we're going to do or how she's going to do it, or she just, just tell her, just do it.

Just do it. She's smart. She'll figure it out. Like, hey, I want 20% price increase across the board. Now is it the perfect way to do it? No, it's probably the best way to do like a time report based upon who were over budgeted hours out. That's probably the right way to do it. But guess what? I just want it done. And I take all my customers. I just want 20% increase. And if you told someone like Mikayla to do that, it'd be done in a week. And you should not think about it. And you furthermore shouldn't get the emails or voicemails of the five people that are gonna complain. Cause it's gonna seem so Loud in your head, you'll stop from. The other 300 customers are just happy and fine. Raising the price and that email isn't complicated. It's like due to increasing costs, we have not raised our prices in X amount of years. We need to do this to be able to pay our employees and have run a sustainable business. Your prices going forward will be X. If you have any questions, let us know. Guarantee you 95% of the people you will not hear from, they'll be just fine with it. And another 5% you will stop raising prices. If you hear them, so don't hear them. Let them handle it.

Okay, so voicemail and email off my.

Phone, never, never see that again. If they think you need to hear about it, they'll let you know. Otherwise, they'll take care of it and you won't hear about it. And that'll be fine because they'll put notes in the, in the account and.

Just worry about being the best salesman.

The best salesman, the best quality control person. And furthermore, what you already kick butt at is a great leader.

I think that's. I write down every morning in that journal, like, be a better leader. I feel like I'm a terrible leader. I feel like I don't. I feel like that's like I need the most help.

What's the definition of a leader to you?

I don't know.

Somebody that's just.

That now the way I'm describing my head is almost a babysitter. And that's not what I'm doing, but somebody you could call on somebody.

That a leader is simply someone who others are willing to follow.

If I walk out that door and you follow me, I'm the leader. If people are willing to follow you, you are the leader. I think you do a phenomenal job at that. And I can tell that because you attract people that are outsized in their skill and care for the business. And that comes in the form of currently the two people I've met, and it's your operations and your admin, and you should lean on them 100%. Let them do their job.

Because they want you to succeed. They want the business to do more money, have more money. They believe that if you make more money, they'll be better off, the customers will be better off and the community better off. And I believe if you had 100 grand in your pocket instead of 11,000, a lot more of that would happen, like 10x. And I also believe that's where your heart is. Lawn care is a vehicle for making that happen. Lawn care is a vehicle for someone like Mikayla to get experience on the tax side and number side. So when she goes to school she kicks butt.

Right.

You care so much about that you don't even want her to think about work.

That's what makes a great leader. You are in a phenomenal leader and it's proven by the people that follow you.

Thank you.

So I really believe.

It'S easier said than done. But it is right now. Raise prices on all residential customers immediately, 20%. You do not touch it. You don't deal with the complaints that come from that. And that email is exactly what I said. Which is super straightforward to the point. If you have questions, let us know. Don't go into a dietary about inflation and taxes and the cost of. Don't need to do that. Make it simple. Step two, figure out the operations, sales and admin side and stop getting involved. Like delineate yourself. If something comes to you, ask yourself, is this a sales or quality control issue? If no, it's going to someone else.

Okay.

That's the step two. Step three is raise prices on commercial contracts as they renew. And you'll only have the confidence to do that because now you're focused on sales and you're going to have a higher close ratio which is something that we do need to measure on at least a weekly or monthly basis. What percentage of estimates? It's simply estimates. One divided by estimate sent that percentage.

And you should be looking at that.

Number how often, even if you do it monthly. For now, I'm fine to start.

Okay.

It's a five second report inside of service. Number of cent date range, number one date range. There's your percentage.

Okay. Right.

If you track that, that's going to tell you whether or not you raise prices again, which you will need to do in the future because if you're 70, 80% close ratio, you raise your prices no matter what. I don't care if you're like, well I just raised them last week, raise them again.

How often should you be raising in a residential. If I was just doing residential, like if it doesn't matter, just get this done and then you can figure that out. But right now I need to raise it this much.

But right now I think you need to raise 20%. I think you'll lose less than 10% of your customers.

Okay.

And you've already stated to me that you are kind of maxed out in that area anyways. So losing 10, 10% of your customers would be a good thing because we will guess what, we have to go get more debt. So you need to do it anyways. And that's ultimately when you raise prices, when you hit capacity. And that's what I want to see. Right? Right now we're hitting capacity of residential mowing. So what we're going to do, we're going to raise all our mowing customers, because hopefully, which this might not happen, is you lose customers. I actually believe you're going to lose like 5% or less of your customers, but let's just say 10%, because that's what we need. We need to lose 10%. Well, guess what? Now you're focused on sales, and you're going to go sell more jobs, and you're going to fill that 10% immediately. Guess what you do then. You either grow or you raise prices. It's very, very simple. You hit capacity, you raise prices. You hit capacity. You raise prices, or you hit capacity. Like, man, I got $100,000 in the bank now. Let's go get a couple more trucks. Boom. And you grow. That's how you go from a million to 2 million. But it's after raising your prices, hitting capacity, raising your prices, hitting capacity. Now I'm really profitable. I got a tax situation in my hands. I gotta go spend this money so I can grow my business. And then you get to have more impact.

Right?

But that is the steps. One, raise price in residential. Two, figure out those three areas of the business and then lean on them 100%. Stop stepping into everyone's role. And three is raise price prices on commercial. The middle one's the hardest.

Okay. It's a lot. I know, and I can't thank you enough for coming here. I just appreciate it.

It's my pleasure.

If you want to see the full video of exactly what happened at St. Laurent Landscaping, check the video right here.