Debate on Charging By-the-Job VS By-The-Hour - Ep.48

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Landscape business course podcast. I know it's been a long time since I posted. I'm sorry. But today I did want to upload this show. It was one of the phone calls I've had. I usually have at least one or two phone calls a day with landscapers, whether it be from the course or just from listening to the podcast. This one's from Mike, and Mike has a landscaping business, and you'll hear all about it today. It's a little bit of a longer episode than I'd usually put up, and it kind of seems like we go a little bit in circles, but that's okay. We're gonna be talking about the debate between charging by the hour on jobs versus by the job, and you'll kind of get the pros, the cons, the good, the bad, the ugly of both sides. And so I think it'll be pretty good for everyone. Thank you to everyone joining the course. It's just been ongoing. Really excited to see that. November, the first week of November, I'm gonna be going to a conference down in Texas. It's actually put on by service autopilot, and it's a really big event. It's like $700 to go. So, you know, if you want to come see me in Texas, Dallas, that'd be fun. I think it's about four days. I'm gonna record all of the sessions that I'm in, the audio, and then put it on the course for all the course members. So definitely be looking for that. That'll be kind of like the first thing I put up to start kick off the winter of when I start adding more content. So this winter, I'll be adding. Adding a much better employee training guide for your guys for the video part, the training for different types of positions, especially just your service guys, getting them basics of mowing and things like that. Also, I'll be uploading quite a bit, a lot more videos and content on the fourth year of business.

The course really goes over the first three years, getting from 0 to 100,000. And now that we've surpassed that, I want to share what we've been doing to get that growth and sustain that as we get in our second location. So I'll be adding a lot of content this winter. Hope you all can join the course. And obviously you don't pay anymore. Once you're a course member, it's lifetime. And obviously you get lawn pro software to get started. A lot of people have been Asking me why I have Lawn Pro software as part of the course. And it's because it's really the best software, I think for starting out, it's not the best software. A lot of people have asked me this. I don't think it's the best software out there. I absolutely don't. However, for the cost, $247 one time, it's just great. You pay a little bit a few dollars extra if you have some other features like route optimization, a couple other things like nine bucks a month or something. But it's just fantastic. The best bang for your buck. Absolutely, yes. There's little glitches. Yes. They don't have like a couple percent of the features of these other big software packages, but when you're starting out making under four or five hundred thousand dollars a year, it's just great. And so that's part of the course. It's all included. You get in lifetime access to that as well. So that's what the 247 goes towards for your course membership. So landscapebusinesscourse.com if you haven't checked that out. And like I said, I'll be adding a lot more content to it. One more thing. I wanted to kind of make an announcement before we jump right into today's episode. I'm going to be looking forward to writing a book this winter and I'll be doing it just on landscaping. So I did a book last year and Millennial the Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Breaking out of the Middle Class. It was much more of a general book about business for young people, especially, you know, 18 to 30 year olds. This book that I'll be writing this winter is going to be pretty cool. It's going to talk about a real life example of real course students, things that have come up through the course, things I've learned in my business. But even taking all the course members and what I've learned from them and their experiences and what they've done to change their business since joining the course, I'm going to create really a book on creating, you know, starting your landscaping business, creating it with systems, creating a team, all the things you need to do. We're gonna go through, we're gonna go through one of the examples of Larry, that's gonna be his name, that starts his business and starts it the wrong way. He starts it the wrong way and he grows and everything looks good. And then we'll break it all down, how it all happens, numbers, what type of equipment he's getting and then we're gonna see just how that, what that leads to, the unsustainable growth and how that breaks apart growth when it hasn't been set in the right foundation. And then he's going to join the course or he's gonna start using the business model that we talk about here on the podcast and start changing his business around. And we're gonna see how that helps him and how he can go from that zero to a hundred thousand dollars in revenue each month. So looking forward to that. So without any further delay, let's jump right into the episode. This is Mike. Like I said, there's a little bit longer of an episode, a little bit more kinda, a little bit back and forth. But I think it's something a lot of people think about, especially when they first start their business because going hourly is easier in a lot of regards. But we're going to talk about charging by the job versus charging by the hour. Here we go. Mike from Pennsylvania.

I decided to start getting, I was always more into hardscaping. This year I realized where I lived there's like a ton of just high end residential, like 500 to a million dollar houses. Yeah. And they, they, no one is happy with any of their maintenance, even the big companies. Because where I live it's.

It'S a, it's a big area. There's a lot of money in Pennsylvania and it's in an area where it's less than an hour.

West of New York city and about 45 minutes north of Philly. It's a big metropolitan area. So a lot of people commute to the cities and they have a lot of money. So even though my experience was in hardscaping and doing like design build stuff, I, I realized real quick that I could keep, I started from scratch this year and I kept myself and two guys busy.

With overtime all year. Just mowing grass like one day a week and then doing basically maintenance the rest of the time.

I, I had a lot of calls for lawn mowing I could have, but I didn't have the manpower. I have an old dump truck that's not too rely, it's reliable, but I don't really trust it to be going all day every day.

Yeah.

And then I bought a newer pickup with a dump trailer.

Yeah.

And.

And instead of just taking all these lawns that were, that were coming in.

I just basically said I'm only going to take a lawn if it's within a half mile of my house and my shop. Yeah. And I mean when I started I had like 300 in lawns. Now I've got.

$1200 in lawns that me and one guy can do in like one 12 hour day. Yeah, you know, that's pretty good. Yeah. So I figure.

What happened was since my experience, my whole life was like my last job, I mean I went to college, I graduated from temple. My last job was working for a company that did like 7 million a year. They had eight crews. I was a hardscaping crew leader and I didn't get anything that less than a thirty thousand dollar hardscape job. Thirty thousand dollar hardscaping jobs and up. That's what was in my folder for what I had to do as a crew leader. And then I did a lot of on my own. I, I, I have a bachelor of science in community planning and I'm just a couple classes short of landscape architecture. Sign up. How to design things. Yeah. So I visualized building this design build company and then just mowing grass a little bit just to like, I don't know, just help out a little bit, you know. Right. Fill some time. But then as this year went on and it turned out that by the 4th of July we were working.

50 hours a week doing spring cleanups and putting in mulch. I mean.

And then after the 4th of July we had just months of structure from, by regular customers, you know. And I just started right off with no real name for myself or anything. Just $60aman out somebody. I tried to keep it. My idea, the beginning of the year was I would never charge by the hour. Everything's going to be a set price. But then I get a lot of people calling saying hey, does your company pull weeds? I say yeah, we pull weeds. But I don't feel like going and wasting two hours looking at this guy's house trying to figure out how much time it's going to take. So I said, hey, he wants to pull weeds. I'll send two guys over. It's $120 an hour for them to pull weeds. How many hours you want? And oh well, okay, we'll start out with four hours. And I just send them over. They're there for four hours and I give them the bill if he says, hey, can you come back again in two weeks for two more. So I, I do for certain things charge hourly.

Yeah.

But what happened was I got into the fall. Now because I'm in eastern Pennsylvania and my whole life I was, if I was working for a big company and right now I would be working on like an $80,000 hardscape job and there'd be four other crews that were going out and like raking leaves and stuff. I didn't pay any attention to what they were doing because I thought one day I'm going to start my business and I'm never going to worry about cleaning up leaves if I ever do. It can't be that hard. So now I have a Turf Tiger 2 that I bought with the bagging system on it and I have a walk behind mower and I got a trailer and now I have a lot of lawn accounts. And I, I'm really curious how people charge for leaf cleanups when peop. Some people say, hey, can you just make it part of your mowing routine and say, I'm charging $50 for a lawn.

And then they want leaves cleaned up every week.

Like.

I don't know how to like price off.

Yeah, yeah, like, like.

I know you, you have the concept of, you know, you'd rather try to do stuff by the job by then, by the hour. And, and especially, you know, as, as you, as the business grows, you will end up, you know, going out and doing a lot of estimates. And some of them you don't get. And it is kind of a waste of time. But what I try to do with us now that I do mostly, mostly just estimating is if it's a job like that where I kind of feel like it's a weeding or like leaf cleanup or something that's super, like self explanatory. I try to get the office to set up a, what we call a drive by, which means I don't set up an appointment to meet the person. I just go to their property. And so literally I can knock about six of those out in two hours. Instead of taking, you know, an hour to talk to them, go over it, talk about, you know, who knows what, and then give them an estimate. And so I'd start off with that. And then as far as your leaf cleanups, usually you can kind of guess, have a pretty good estimate. Like if you want to start off hourly and kind of get the rhythm of, of just knowing how to look at a property and know how long it's gonna take. Cause that takes a while. But eventually you'll learn just like you do with landscaping and hardscaping stuff, eventually you'll learn, okay, there's a massive maple tree that alone is gonna dump a bunch of leaves. And so even in the spring, a lot of times I could really give them an estimate for what their leaf cleanup's Gonna be, like, based upon where their house is at, what, their neighbor's trees. You just gotta look up a little bit. Right. And.

Yeah. And, like, I kind of get that, but my issue was, like, if I would want to go out if I could, when we were just mowing grass, and me and one guy could go out and do twelve hundred dollars worth of mowing in ten hours.

Yep.

Well, now half of them want me to pick up the leaves as we go.

Yeah.

So I gotta get. Put the bagger on, and I can't do them all in one day because I can't put that big bagger on that and, like, mow some and bag them and then take it off and not mow and then. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Right.

This might be the time, though, that, you know, you take an opportunity like this and you get, like, a cheaper truck than the. The bigger Ford that you got now and the nice dump trailer, it might be a good time to get, like, a 150 that's a little bit older, put on a smaller dump trailer, a setup that might cost you ten grand, and hire someone that's a little bit cheaper. And then all they're doing is things like leaf cleanups and things like that while you can still make the 60, 80 bucks an hour doing your other work.

Yeah. Cause, I mean, I interviewed a couple people, and I got one guy that's available, like, Monday through Thursday that I could just tell him, go get in the dump truck and go pick up leaves. Right. I. I have it all set up so that next year, the guy that was with me mowing, he's really good, so he's just gonna mow full time, you know?

Yeah.

And he's just gonna have to use the old dump truck for the time being. And mo. And I'm gonna hire two more guys that are gonna be with me doing landscaping. Right. And that way I'll have the two. And then I. I need more time to do estimates. And basically, what I decided to start doing for these people that want the leaves cleaned up every week, I say, okay, if it's $45 to mow your lawn, and every week, you want us to clean up the leaves, too. I'm gonna mow your grass. And then, like, every extra minute it takes on top of mowing your grass, it's a dollar a minute for me, and it's a dollar a minute for my helper. So if I mow your lawn and then we spend. Me and Somebody else spend 20 minutes cleaning leaves up out of your Gutter and all that, then it's 40 extra dollars. If the next week we spend 10 minutes. That's what it is. And then at the end of the month, it's just going to be your bill, you know, and most people are happy with that. And I think a big thing is that I'm learning my customers because they're all new. You know.

I think, too, what you'll be surprised by, Mike, is even though $60 an hour is great, I bet once you get. And you nail down your times a little better, as far as, like, estimating you'll be able to make. You'll be able to move that to $80 an hour just by being able to give a per job price. And what I mean by that is like, $60 an hour is good. And. And it allows you to make a solid profit margin. You know, what you're gonna be making right from the yet. However, it also caps you from doing a job a little bit faster or making yourself more efficient. And so that's the only thing I have against an hourly rate is it makes, number one, your guys are getting paid by the hour. They're not gonna go any faster. You are inclined to get better equipment or tools that are gonna make you go faster. Whereas. Whereas if you have a $400 job and it's gonna take you eight hours, but you can figure out how to do it in six hours, like, that's really interesting because now you have two hours to go do some other job, and that's all gravy on top. And so.

And that's why I mix it in, right? And the only reason why I took some of these is. Cause they weren't people that I was doing. I'm not mowing their lawn. They got somebody that mows their lawn, but that guy doesn't do anything else. And they say, I got a guy that mows my lawns, been doing it for 12 years, but he doesn't want to trim shrubs. He doesn't want to pull weeds. So I'll go and I'll say, All right, it's 1200 to trim your shrubs. Yeah. And I know damn well me and a helper can go and do it in five hours. Yeah, okay, good. And as far as pulling your weeds, and I know his wife's gonna be coming out and saying, oh, well, could you do that too while you're here? Yeah, and if I'm not there, my worker can't decide. So I just say, okay, you want to pull weeds, fine. I'm gonna send a Guy over, you tell him what weeds you want pulled, he's gonna work however many hours he's there. If he's there for 10 hours, I'm gonna bill you 600 bucks plus a dump fee. Yes. And what I'm trying to do is what the reason why I decided that everything was, is because I'm gonna, I have so much work that I couldn't get to. I, I'd like to have a solid amount of people that just want to be able to call at random and say, hey, can you send a couple guys over for six hours? And that way I know when I over hire and, and I got my jobs. Like just today I went, I looked at one job, she wants a bunch of shrubs ripped out and then new plants put in. And she said she had six grand. I know I can go in with a machine, I can rip those shrubs out, throw them in my big dump trailer and have them gone by noon. I can spend fifteen hundred dollars on plants and have them put in. I make planning, you know. Yeah, but then what I like the reason why I'm dealing with these people and getting them on my, in my software and on my account list is because when I have a bunch of people and I got a two man crew that, you know, maybe they get done mowing early one week and you know, there's nothing for them to do from 11 till 5 on one day because it started raining or something and the lawn, they had to do it real picky and the people don't want you ripping up the lawn. I can just say, all right, go over to this dude's house for six hours, pull his weeds, and then I know I can just send him an invoice. I, I, I think that it'd be good to have like just some people that are like that, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it's, it's, it's, it really comes down to how big you want to grow the company. Right. Because when, when we were smaller, we did the same thing. And, and it's so much easier because you don't have to go there. Like, like all the things you mentioned, you know, if people ask for more things.

And honestly like we did, we're somewhere from April 1st till now, me and I had one guy full time that came through every single day. And then off and on I had a third, got a second helper, you know, and I mean, we're well over 120 grand in revenue right now. And I figured it out that next year, even if that one guy Just went out and mowed by himself. He could easily bring in like 10 grand a month.

And then if I have my crew going I like next year, as long as my three full time guys and one part time guy, as long as everybody actually is working 30 hours a week, there's no way I can't do 40 grand a month in rapid.

Right?

So. And then I plan on getting bigger.

My problem, my. And I just don't mind certain people. The biggest reason why I went to hourly was like you said, I don't, I didn't have the time to go through the estimate. I said, listen, I, I could come and, I could come and look at it and I could try to give you a price. And I probably would have said, okay, it's a thousand bucks to pull the weeds. I send two guys over, it ends up being 950, you know, so I, I did, I could have made more. That's the hourly thing was mostly because I didn't have the time to go and do the estimate. So I tell them, if you're cool with it, I can just do it hourly. But I do understand that you can make the money given the set price. That's what it's got to be. I just figured, you know, like you can see on Amazon now, people can go on and they can buy three hours of work for dollars an hour. So I thought if I've got enough workers.

And I just had like two that were just hourly workers that I had so many people call and willing to pay hourly, they could just go out and I don't gotta worry about anything. I just say, hey, you go out. Here's three different addresses. You start at one, you do whatever they want, you know, until you're done. And they say leave. Make sure you track the time and go to the next one. And if I could keep two out of, you know, people doing that, then the rest, I gotta have the big jobs doing it. You know what I mean by the job? My biggest issue right now was these fall cleanups. When someone messages me and says I've been trying to do too much estimating without going to the place. Yeah, yeah, so I see what you're saying. I gotta get over to home so that I can just be doing the estimating all the time. Because I realize.

It is easy to just. And that's what I do as much as possible. If it's maintenance work, I say, you do not have to be there, you know.

Yeah, like I think, I think there's, there's two things you know, like, as you get bigger, the value of having standardized pricing also comes into play when you can just schedule out the work. And what I mean by that is, like, for instance, if I have a leaf cleanup job now, I go out there and say, okay, it's gonna be $90 per visit, and we're going to come every week. Yes, it might be take two hours one time, but one time might take 30 minutes. The thing is, I don't have to call them or they don't have to call me to ever set that up. It's similar to mowing, right? You just show up every time. And then what happens is next year, come September, I say, hey, leaves are falling. Last year we were doing X amount per week. We'll be doing the same thing this week. Let us know if you want to change your service. And then that way they don't have to call you, you don't have to call them. And then you can schedule out your guys and. And then know that work is coming and not count on them calling you.

So is that what you do? Somebody says they want leaf cleanup every week. Rather than say, I'll see how long it takes, and then charge you by that, you just say, okay, if you want us to come every week, it's just gonna be. I just look at it. I know. Like, I can take a look at it, and I know. And I just say, okay, it's gonna be 80 bucks a week. We'll come every week. We'll clean up your lawn.

And that's what it is, Right, because this is what. Right, because this is what happened. Let's say. Let's say October, November, let's say two months out of the year, let's say eight weeks, is when leaf cleanup is what will happen. If you do an hourly thing, this is exactly what will happen. We've tracked it, and it is. They will call you about two or three times, and you'll go out and do the work. Right. And that sounds good. You'll make 60 bucks an hour. But if you go there at the beginning of October and say, hey, we're gonna do it every single week.

And.

And you give them a set price. Now you're coming eight times.

Yeah, it's just like mowing grass.

Exactly.

A little less because you got a double cut, whatever. But then when it slows down, you're making it back, and it averages itself out.

Exactly. And no one. No one does on call mowing service. Right. It just. No one even thinks about doing that. However, the reason the leaves Is it's a little bit more variable as far as how many leads are there. But you get really, you know, like, you kind of already have an idea of what it might take on the higher end. What is going to be on the lower end. Average that out. And I guarantee you, like, for instance, if we're cutting down a tree or we're doing like a grading job, like, if I was charging my regular rate, I would be losing less so much. Right. Because we'll literally do tree trimming jobs and make over 100 an hour if we priced it right and if. Right. Whereas if it's 60 bucks an hour, there's two things that happen. One, the. The client's constantly watching you. If they're that way, they're constantly trying to make sure you're. And then on the other hand, you're losing out on profit and there's no. You want to make it in your best interest to become efficient. And one of the worst ways to do that is just charge by the hour because then it's like, oh, it doesn't matter if we have a better truck or better equipment, or the guys are in two groups of two versus three or four, and you don't play with that as much. And it, it doesn't seem like a big deal when you're charging by the hour because like, oh, it doesn't matter. But in general business, that's inefficient.

My idea was if I had one or two workers that had free time.

Yeah.

If I could just keep them out there.

Right. And that's fine. Totally. And I think that's fine as long as you, you know you have about three, right? Yeah. And I think it's fine as long as you have three, four guys. It'll work. It's hard though, when you have five, six, when you hit like that six guy marker. And now it's like either a, you're gonna have a ton of phone calls that are like as needed work and you're gonna constantly be trying to fill up your schedule. Or like, like you have it where it's priced out and you get a few phone calls to set up service initially. And it's all scheduled out.

Yeah. Well, see, this was what I was thinking about the hourly thing. I got my one guy that was home with me all year. Yeah. Next year I want him just out on his own.

Yeah.

I figure I, I don't want any lawns that are more than, like, more than a half mile from the shop.

Yeah.

Because there's just so many So I thought to start out, if me and him could bust their ass and mow all 1200 in a day, I'll tell him, okay, you just mow by yourself Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, odd, maybe 400 onto that, you can probably do 1800-2000 by yourself. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Now what about Monday and Tuesday? I figure I can give him those hourly things where then I know him. I'm already gonna have a three man crew out doing nothing hourly. Every single job we do is going to be.

Set price. But if I know he's got a mo by himself Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Monday and Tuesday, if I don't need him helping the other crew and he's got nothing to do and I got these people that just randomly want to call, I can say, okay, well on Monday I got a guy that, you know, he said he wants, he, he wants a guy over there for six hours. We'll just go do it. I know that I'll make my 16 hour. I can fill his two days until I fill his mowing route just to keep him busy. I can give him that hourly work. And then eventually I want to take my time rather than spread out and wait and hire like a second guy to be mowing with him and get enough lawn so they could be busy all week, there'd be way more drive time. I'd rather fill my route slowly with really, really dense. Close to the point that maybe not this coming year, but by the second year he can be mowing with two guys and doing three, 500 or four grand. And by third year, I think if I only take the really close, good high profit lawns that need that, the people want it done once or twice a week. And they're so close that literally we, and if we mow one day for 10 to 12 hours, our total drive time is like 30 minutes, you know. So I figure if I just take it easy, I can't fill him. I could fill him five days mowing by himself, but he'd be doing a lot of driving farther places. So rather than force it and give him all five days of mowing alone, I'll just let him fill that time with some of these hourly jobs. Or if, if I can find something where I look at it and I give a price, I can. But if worse comes to worst, I know that I got people that at any given point they're just waiting for me to send somebody over and pay him hourly. Then at least I got work for that guy. And then my crew, everything, like, you know, I went out, I did a couple ten thousand dollar jobs that they wanted. That was just yard. They wanted the grass ripped out, created into plants. And you know, you work there for four days and you make freaking $6,000. That's where it's at. You know.

My biggest thing, and it's good to hear talk to you because you make things clear. Because I am really unsure about a lot of things. My biggest thing was these people that want regular leaf cleanup. Whether to try to charge them based on how long I spend extra each week, or just say, hey, I'm gonna keep mowing. And if you want leaves cleaned up every week, it's just a set price, you know. Yeah. And I did that with a couple people and I told the one guy, all right, you want your leaves cleaned up. And it doesn't necessarily need to be every week. It can be every two weeks, but you don't want them to accumulate too great. I said, thousand bucks, you know.

Yeah.

And I'll come every two weeks and I'll clean up your leaves. And I know it is one thing that screwed things up where I live now.

Normally our first frost is by October 1st, maybe October 1st 5th. It's been in the high 80s until this week. Like the grass that we had, I, I didn't. There was not one week. The first cut I did was April 10. There was not one week that I, I didn't have to mow a single lawn all year. It was, it just did. It just kept growing.

And even now, this week, it. You would think that it was June. So it was a very warm fall. Like really, really, really warm. So like the maple trees haven't even begun to change colors. There's plants that should. The leaves should be on the ground that bloom in the spring and they're reblooming right now. But it's gonna change. It already changed. Like today was our first cold day. It was like in the 60s, so that's gonna change real quick. And that kind of threw me off because the leaves are all going to fall real fast and I'm gonna have a short time. There were certain leaves that fell, but that's kind of what I. Kind of an answer to my question for the people that want that, that they don't want leave leaves, you know.

Yeah. Like, I think, I think your idea of like the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is really good. And then if I were you, I would, I would take the customers that, you know, want weeding service, know that want leave service, and try to convert them from hourly over To a set schedule. And then. And the best. The most efficient thing is, is to have a mowing client, but you do leaf or weeding when you're there. So that, like, the whole idea of having to go back to their house on a different day, like twice in a week to do two different services, it's super efficient when you can send the guy, but because you have a scheduled amount of, you know, weekly service of leaves or weeds, that the mowing service, you might make 60, 70 bucks an hour. And then. But then when he gets that weeding part, it might only take him 10 minutes and he makes 20, 30 bucks.

And that's what I'm trying to figure out, is how to give them a set price, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I think I got a lot of stuff standardized.

Yeah.

I pay $20 a yard for, like, the highest quality get anywhere around here. Well, I know I charge a hundred a yard to deliver and install it. I don't tell people that. But when I go and I measure and I realize they need, like, my average mulch job was like 25 yards.

Yeah.

So. And I know, I look at it, I know what the cleanup's gonna be, and I know how many yards of mulch I'm gonna eat, and that's what I charge. When it comes to edging, we hand edge. I know how much I need to charge per linear foot to edge it, clean it up, take it away, and dump it. That's all done. Like, I could have a girl in the office, I could go look and I can say, okay, we're gonna need 20 yards of mulch. There's going to be 600ft of edging, and it's all done set. It's no question about it. It's done. And people love it. And I can make a pretty good profit off that because I have big dump trailer, big dump truck, and I can bring 20 yards of mulch in one shot. You know, two guys, literally a two to three man crew can spread 25 yards in a day.

You know?

Yeah. And I think. I think, too, a nice way. Way to segue if you're having kind of trouble thinking about leaves especially, but like, trimming and stuff.

That was my problem.

Yeah.

Figuring out because there's people that I was charging, say, $45 to mow their lawn, and now they're saying, okay, well, there's all these leaves in my bed. There's leaves in the yard. And I want every week when you come, I want them to be blown out of the beds and picked Up And I, I'm having a hard time trying to say, okay, well it's going to be an extra 50 bucks because.

Every week. But I guess that's just what you got to do. At first I thought it was crazy to tell people that I wanted a hundred dollars a yard for bulge installed because a lot of the people around here might charge like 80 or 85. But I had so many people calling me, I couldn't barely.

So that's what I gotta do. Just do a standardized thing. Don't try to keep track of how many extra minutes it took me each week. And then do the invoice. Just say, look at it, look at how many trees there are. I'll have a really good idea. I'll say, okay, it was $50 to mow your grass every week. I'll clean up the leaves and it'll be an extra 30, whatever, you know.

Yeah. And I think the happy medium too, if you're having problems with kind of figuring out the get mike is break it up into four different kind of categories. And that's one hour, two hour, four hour and eight hour increments. So instead of trying to like say okay, that's going to take an hour and 20 minutes, say something like, when you look at a leaf job, is that going to be a one hour job? That's usually going to be like a weekly visit. Is it going to be a two hour kind of like a big weekly visit, like a big estate? Or is it gonna be a four hour, like a half day or is gonna be a full day for a guy and then just have those four kind of different, like, you know, gold, bronze, silver and platinum or something like that, different packages that you sell. And then in your mind you know that you're selling those many hours, but to your customer they have a set price.

Yeah. The other issue I have is trying to do a route with a big 61 inch zero turn rider with the bagger on it and a walk behind and a pickup and being able to go around all the lawns, bag it and pick up all the leaves and still have room.

To like take them all away. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's right. That's part of why you want to try to get them on the weekly thing though. Like, like literally right from the get every single time you get a mowing client. Like this is what we've been trying to do is offer like I don't care if it's in May, you know, I'm offering them weeding optional and Then leaf cleanup optional weekly from, for us, it's kind of like October, November, December. And then offer that to them. And even if that way too, they always have something to call you back on, like when the actual leaves do start falling. But. Cause once you get that, what you can do is plan according with your trucks and stuff like that, so you can just take, you know, less equipment so you have more room for debris, things like that.

I think you can make a ton of money if somebody signs up for weekly weeding. Because, man, you take care of those roots in the spring and you put down good.

There'S not even going to be any.

No, exactly. Exactly. And so that's why it comes down to, you know, why in the end game. And like you said, like, I would still recommend, even if you go to, to the per job route, still keep track of your time. And at first you'll see a downward slip from like 60 to probably 54, $55 an hour. But I can guarantee you you'll go up to like 75, 80 and you'll be happy you're not at 60 anymore.

And because what you'll do is you'll send guys to a job and say, all right, guys, I need to get this done within four hours. And they'll get it done. Instead of just sending them and saying, hey, get this done. And it takes them six hours. And you just, you'll get more money like in the, in the, in the end. Because you don't pay as much in, in the payroll.

I just, I, I started out and I, I treat my good workers that I get really well.

Yeah.

And I have a lot of guys that work for many years for other companies that are calling me, asking if they can work for me. Yeah. So that I don't think I'll have any problem finding good workers. You just gotta pay them, first of all.

Yeah.

Just pay them one. And that's the thing. I'll take a guy that knows what he's doing, that's been running a crew for somebody else that was paying 13.50 an hour for the last five years. I'll tell them instead of say, oh, I'll take you, I'll give you a 1375. I'll give you 18, you know.

Yeah.

Because I'd rather take him and make an 18 over two $10 guys. Yeah. Any day. So that's the one thing that I, I am in really good shape and I have, I, I, I'm able to get good workers. They, they like the fact that they can Go on my Facebook and they see that I work at all really nice houses. The work is done. The people that want to work for me are people who work for companies that tell them, I don't worry about that, leave it looking shitty, we're getting out of here. And they want to work somewhere where they can take pride in it and they can get paid what they need to get paid. And I think I can get my hourly rate up enough. And if I'm smart about my mowing route, my mowing guys can get paid, you know, a little bit more than what the average is. And you know, I mean, this year I did fine. I was able to pay the few guys that I had like holidays. I said, you don't gotta, you know, not only do you not have to work on the 4th of July, I'll pay you for it, you know, So I got things set up and I was smart enough to not think that I could charge $30 an hour. I got a lot of accounts that people want to pay a lot. The other problem I have is there's a couple customers that they want a year round comprehensive contract to keep their property looking perfect. Year round, almost like a commercial contract. And I need to work on that.

Because I don't do contracts for mowing.

Yeah.

It's not worth my time.

And, and I'm thinking about, I've been using yard book. I'm thinking about switching to service autopilot for next year.

Yep.

And I know that I'm not like huge or anything, but there's no possible way that I can do less than 40 grand in revenue. And I think it would just be worth it to start on it now.

Yeah.

Then wait. You know, totally. I don't know what you use, but.

Yeah, we, we use service autopilot now. We made the switch when we were about doing about 75, 80 a grand a month.

Yeah, I think it's just worth it because honestly, I don't need to add on. I don't have seven crews that I gotta pay 15amonth for each of my crew leaders. Yeah. You know, I think that for the couple hundred bucks a month I, I can. It would definitely be worth it for me to get used to using it and get really efficient with it. And then by year three when I am doing 75 or 80, I'll already have it all in place. Right. You know, I just wanted to see if that's what you're using because as far as I can tell, that's, that's the one to use.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a good program. It's a really good program. But so, so, so I got to go for my three o'.

Clock.

But like definitely, you know, let me know how it goes. Let me, let me know how you know if you're having trouble with the estimating part. But I think, you know, I think you kind of have a pretty good idea of, you know, what it's going to take per hour. And I think you'll figure it out, no problem.

My biggest problem was all these people were saying, hey, can you make picking up my leaves part of your weekly thing? Because we've been mowing normally the grass isn't growing the way it is now at this time of year. Yeah, the grass would have slowed down and mowing with a big bagger wouldn't have been a problem because you're not bagging 2 inches of grass along with the leaves. But because of that it creates such a large amount of debris it becomes a little bit more difficult. But it's going to slow down now. And that's the biggest thing that you telling me is a, it's a big help. Just, just give them a price. Say, yeah, I can make picking up your leaves part of the, the plant, but it's 50 to mow your grass. It's going to be whatever, it's going to be 40 a week to do your leaves. Some weeks it might take us five minutes, another week it might take us 20. But it works out because that's how I'm doing my snow removal this year. I got too many residential customers with small driveways that don't want plow trucks on them. So I just bought a three thousand dollar Honda snow blower and you know, and I'm keeping the accounts low to like 15 because none of the driveways are real big. And I just said it's a set price. Any storm from 2 to 12 inches, like if it's something that I know I could snow blow. I just looked at it as if it was a 10 inch storm, right? How long would it take me to snow blow if it was really wet, heavy, 10 inches of snow? If I, and I figured ON I wanted 180 an hour. So I figured if it would, if, if, if I figured that 10 inches of wet snow I would want $80. Then I just told him for every storm from 2 to 12 inches it's $80. And that's what it is. Yeah, we might get a couple storms that's three or four inches and I'll make out we Might get some that are 10, 11, 12. You'll make out for every inch over 12 inches. If it's an $80 thing for 2 to 12, it's $8 an inch for every inch over 12. And after the storm's done, just look on the National Weather Service, whatever they say the total accumulation was for our zip code, that's what it goes by. And that's the same idea for the leaf cleanup basically, right?

Yeah. In, in general. Right. You're trying to do a. Standardize it to that level because it's just so much more efficient.

Why I'm even doing residential snow removals because there's just too many customers that want me to do year round stuff. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make any money, but I'm just gonna send the guy out with a snow blower, let him do it, and then next year I'll have more manpower, I'll have more plow trucks. I'll always let one or two guys go out with snowblowers and do my customers driveways for them. And then I gotta take on commercial snow if I want to make any money, I think. Yeah, because I just been getting calls after calls after calls for commercial snowplow. Yeah. Like it's unbelievable. All the condominium villages and all that. That's a whole nother. Yeah. But I appreciate it. And basically I could just come up with a standardized thing where I look and I figure I can pretty much figure out about how many hours it would take if all those leaves fell and they were all down on the ground, how many hours it would take and then just split it up over to six weeks. Right?

Yeah. And, and I think you'll what, you'll. What will happen, you know, if you get six, you'll get six visits instead of, you know, two visits. And what'll happen is even though your per visit revenue might decrease, you'll still end up being making more because you'll have three times as many visits.

Yeah.

And I'm doing it there. So if I look at a place and I figure, hey, if all these leaves were down and it was the end of November, they wanted me to come and clean them up and I want a thousand dollars. I just split that up over six visits and say that's what it's gonna be.

If I was you, I would, I would actually look at what each visit would cost. Like if you'd, I would say, okay, if there's a bunch of leaves on the ground, like let's say, like Half of that tree fell down. How long is gonna be. Take a rake out the beds, mow over them, suck them all up, put them in the dump truck. If that's, you know, three hours, I would do that each and every visit. So that'd be like 18 hours total. Whereas you might look at it and say, well, if I did it one time at the end of the season, I could do it in 10 hours. And that extra eight hours is where you make your money, you know? Because the reason they want to do that and the reason they want to pay more for that service, because they don't want to see the leaves for six weeks before they get cleaned up. So don't take that last number and divide it by six. If I was you, I would take each visit and say, alright, if it, if I got to break out these beds and suck all these leaves up and put them in the dump truck every single week, how long would that take? And then multiply that number out and you'd probably be at like 15 or $1600 instead of the thousand.

Right.

The thing about it, the thing that was getting me confused.

Hey, Mike, you're breaking up.

And then the next week there's like hardly any.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, totally. But then, you know, the next week there's a whole bunch. And I think you'll be amazed how much, how little, how little the customer will actually care if they're on a schedule. Because all they want is just not to see leaves for those six weeks. It's like mowing. Right. Like, rarely do people actually call and cancel service when it's not growing very much because they know it's going to be growing a bunch in the spring and the fall and they just don't want to think about it. And so.

And then we know that there are going to be a week where there is a lot. And then they'll make out. Yes. Yeah. And I'm lucky that I was very, very cautious. I could have grew a lot faster this year if I would have taken all the customers. But I kept it to customers that were hiring me because they wanted someone that was that. That they can have for the next 10 years. They don't like having to switch customers. They're loyal customers. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I think that's what's gonna save me that instead of trying to buy another truck and hire two more people halfway through the year and take on a bunch of customers that were maybe not the most loyal, they hired me. Not so much based on price, but based on that, they wanted me. So you're right. And that's good. That kind. That really helped me.

It.