don't let partnerships DESTROY your lawn care business | RoundUP Podcast ep32

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. On this episode of Roundup, we're going to be talking to two partners that are 22 years old.

I remember I called, I was talking to my accountant, and I was like, we're both out of work. I don't know what to do.

And we're going to talk about some of the conflicts that you can have when you have a partner or a co founder with you.

I wouldn't even understand what I did wrong, but, you know, we learned a lesson, and now there'll be limits on everyone's cards, so.

And how to actually organize the business. Using an org chart to basically determine the roles and responsibilities of each co founder. So who constantly are not butting heads. Here we go.

Let's go.

Tell us a little bit about college student lawn care and kind of why it's called that. What got you into the business right from the top.

So we're now simply lawn care as of next week. We started officially April 1, 2019, was it?

Yeah, yeah. Right.

When Covid hit during that spring, I want to say I was working as a waiter, and we run Massachusetts, so all of our restaurants shut down. So you couldn't work at a restaurant. So he got the bright idea of, hey, maybe we should do some landscaping.

Yeah.

I remember I called, I was talking to my accountant, and I was like, we're both out of work. I don't know what to do. I said, do you have any stuff skills? I was like, I don't, but Scott does. And I knew he had done landscaping, you know, for his family and stuff, So I was like, hey, man, how about you teach me how to do landscaping? Let's do it. We'll just make some cash. Yeah. So and from then, I mean, it just took off. We just. We did the first year, we did 63 in revenue, I want to say. And then we just finished at 225 this year.

Very cool. And so walk me through kind of the logic at the beginning, at least, as to why you had college student lawn care and why you recently changed to simply.

Basically, when we started, I was a college student. Brandon was still technically in college. He was in a leeway period where he was kind of not a college student anymore.

But on my way out the door.

Yeah. So most landscaping companies around us are all very generic names. It's like lawns for something or whatever. It's like. Or it's like Jose's lawn care or something like that. So it was more of a. In a way, a marketing ploy to Try to get our neighborhood people to see, like, oh, college students. It's really sweet, you know, it's nice. Maybe we should try them out kind of thing. And early on we did a bunch of door hangers. Obviously we had a little cartoon logo. We put them on the door so everyone saw, you know, we were friendly. We're not the regular landscaping company, like Jose's down the street. And we heard that a lot, actually, because everyone said, like, you know, really nice to see young kids working and you guys are doing a great job. So that became our introduction into our location where everyone. We're the college student, or no one said the real name, so we're the college kid landscaping.

Or. Yeah, no one could ever get it right. So it's like, is this College Landscapers College? But yeah, no. And then we hired a lot of college students. You know, we thought it was. We offered a lot of part time for them because with school and whatnot. So, you know, really started as college students. Was really great for marketing. I mean, we spent the door hangers. We made. We made an Ms. Paint together and then we just printed them out on my printer and just cut them all out ourselves and then just went door to door in our neighborhoods. And then after that, we really just used social media because when you go in the Facebook groups, like all the towns around us, Scott found them. He did most of it, like town of Peabody, town of Danvers, town of Beverly. You throw in the community page and like everyone's like, oh, college student landscaping. Like, that's really sweet. Definitely want to help them. And it really just helped us get a ton of customers. In the beginning, did you feel like.

It somewhat limited you in terms of price flexibility? As the business has now grown and even a matter of people perceiving that only college students mow their grass and then they find out, okay, this is 35. Or was it a matter of you guys moving out of college and it being like, well, now it's not college. Like, what was the determining factor? Or. Or is it a combination of those making that switch to simply.

I'd say combination for sure.

Combination of a little bit of everything you just said. So, like between the professionality, payment wise, because college student lawn care, you know, Susan down the street is going to think, oh, they're like 20 bucks. Obviously we were not 20 bucks. And like when we started, we were really cheap, obviously. And we found out we're doing it too cheap very fast, within the first.

Month at like $20aman hours.

It would be funny you would be funny though if you had the college lawn, if that was name is to make packages like, called like top Ramen would be like the cheapest one and then like, like that'd be fine. You could really play that up. But, but I agree, like I think people immediately perceive like, oh, this is cheap labor. People are doing this on the weekends. They might give you a little bit of flexibility on quality because they don't expect as much. But the pricing would potentially be an issue. So that became more of a kind of a problem as you begin to grow.

Yeah, definitely this year. You know, you would just get it when you answer the phone. So Scott would answer the ph handled office this year. I handled all the estimates and both of us would just get that. You know, when I'm in person. It wasn't common but it was enough to notice where someone's just like if anything surprised or so professional, which is nice that they know we're professional and they like it. But I don't like that they were that surprised we were professional. You know, they usually never ended up booking the job after that when they saw the price.

But do you think it kind of helped at the beginning there at least get your foot in the door. Oh, 1,000% differentiator. And then for someone that potentially might have a funky name because there's plenty of funky names that nicely aren't around college, but some sort of play on words. When does it become where it's like, hey look, now we want to scale it, we want to grow it and was there a certain number or was it just a matter of like, hey, if this is not going to be a 2 million, 5 million, whatever your goal is business and we have to make the change. And did you think that was going to be difficult at first or I guess it's only been the past couple weeks. So I guess you don't. You haven't seen the results yet, but have you seen any pushback from customers in the change even the past couple weeks?

We actually haven't notified them yet. We were going to notify them. So our winner schedule is two weeks behind right now. All of this was supposed to happen two weeks ago, but I went to conference. What is your advice for someone who's on the other end of the spectrum, who's a lot more business minded and cannot wait to get out of the field and go more from the top down view?

First and foremost, you should be working in the business still more than you probably think because you are a business mind. You're Very entrepreneurial. You're going to. Your desire is to work on the business and be in the clouds. And you're not that size yet. Right. Just stay in this, in the lanes of those depths of business that we talked about last time. Right. That'd be my first thing. The next thing in terms of the balance is realize that the balance between micromanagement and being way too hands off is a micro, very small, like on the edge of a needle. You'll either be on one side or the other.

Then we had a vacation with my family together and a contractor had a little fun with one of our credit cards. So we've been dealing with that for the past two weeks. But, you know, we learned a lesson and now there'll be limits on everyone's cards. So.

You know, now that the police stuff in court is all done, we've been back in the swing of things. So actually this I think I had in the calendar for Friday. We're notifying all the customers. So we'll see. I mean we're obviously going to put, you know, formally called student lawn care and most stuff for the first like three months, all the customers, I mean we use Lawn Pro so we have everything right there. We can use the. We can just do it through our conveyor and we're actually switching to service autopilot and so that'll be interesting. But we're gonna do everything through Lawn Pro and then figure out service autopilot before then.

Very cool.

And then I know a big part of your story is sort of your partnership together, the both of you and based upon even just talking to you now and then you want you being at conference and things. I imagine your skill set and personalities are very different. How has it been good and potentially a struggle at times to work together, growing the business from at 60,000 really just being enough to put food on the table for the both of you, providing for two of you. But now having employees needing to have defined roles in terms of what those employees who they turn to for what. What has been some of like the pros and the cons of. Of that partnership.

You can, you can definitely go first.

Yeah. So starting out with year one. Yeah, year one, we were definitely have polar opposites every which way. We both had business backgrounds from completely different reasons. Like I went to business school and we did work for similar companies that kind of were business oriented. So we got like the gist of it. However, Brandon took a lot more time into studying it and I was. I've never been like a studier However, I had all the hands on knowledge where he didn't. So starting out where we kind of had to do both of them together and no one had a specific role and we were just trying to make money. We definitely butted heads the entire time where every day, every single day where I'd. I would go home or I would see something at our trailer and I'd be like, brandon, what'd you do? And he'd go, what do you mean?

I get a long text. Because I didn't even. I was at. I was so lacking in knowledge, common sense when it came to labor. I wouldn't even understand what I did wrong. Like, and I think that was the disconnect at first was to him, it was common sense. For me, it's like a whole new world. So he's like, why would you not do this? And I'm like, what did I not do? Like, I don't understand. Isn't that done properly? So, you know, I would say every, every night, just like a lot of angry back and forth tax calls. Like, I remember we would, I give Scott credit because we would literally. We're doing like 12 hour days, barely making money, and we would literally show up, work on a job together. And because of the fight the last night, we just wouldn't talk for like six hours. But we'd be like pulling weeds next to each other still. He'd always show up. Like we both always show. And there were times where I was, I'm sure Scott had this too. I was like, maybe today's just gonna be like, I quit. You know, we're not doing this anymore. But no, like, he always stuck it out and you know, I'd say going after year one, so I'm just coming off Covid right now for the second time.

Not me though. Never.

Yeah, I know he still hasn't gotten it somehow, but yeah. So we going into the second winter, so the winter before this one, we sat down and had some really heart to heart talks about, you know, what we needed. It was really us. We were the choke. The bottleneck in the business of our communication was just. It was lacking. We had made an org chart, but we weren't really following it that well. So I remember we redid our whole org chart. We just had some honest conversation about our strengths and weaknesses and we kind of just promised to communicate a lot better. And I'd say from then it went a lot better this year compared to, I mean, maybe we're on like two fights this year, but we worked them out and, you know, it's definitely, it's definitely a working kind of relationship. You know, it's like a marriage. You gotta keep working on it.

Oh, yeah, big time. No doubt.

Like Scott, when you know it was difficult or like, you know, there was, there was tension or disagreement with what was it that kind of like, kept you in the game? Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying the episode so far. I just want to take a quick break. If you haven't already, talk to Brad here over@p4psoftware.com he'll teach you everything you need to know about P4P setting up in your business. Before hopping back in with Scott and Brian, make sure you leave a comment on how partnerships has affected your business, but make sure you stick around for the rest of the episode to hear how these two have managed to pay themselves and grow the business at the same time. Let's get back into it. What was it that kind of like, kept you in the game? Like, why, why would you still want to work together? Is it just a matter of like, hey, he has certain things I don't have and I have things he doesn't have and we're just better together, or is it a matter of like, it's very intentional in terms of what the size of the business is going to be and we need each other and we're going to like, is it all thought out? Like, what, where, what kind of kept you during those times when you probably did want to kind of like, hey, Brandon, go fly a kite. I'm going to go do something else.

I definitely wanted to say that about. Actually, I probably did say that very often. He said a lot. There's been times where I told him to leave, but more colorful, very colorful language. But the main point really being because we got so invested in the whole situation between us where we did both have our own kind of strengths and weaknesses, obviously. But going through it together, I just know even the terrible $60,000 total we made the first year, we still did a lot. And if it was just me per se and like doing, you know, whether it be phones, estimates, everything all together, I know I probably would have been overly stressed more than I already was just trying to start the business. And then seeing that Brandon did a lot of the corporate oriented things while I had to do all the stuff that I knew how to do for sure. And now that we're together, growing, I know that it's going to have to be more of a, a training experience now where he has to train people on Things that he had to train me on and vice versa. So knowing that if it was just me, for example, say I left and I just didn't want to do it anymore, I just know I couldn't have done it alone for sure. Because of all the stuff we've actually went through in total. Especially the 12 hour days.

Yeah.

All year long. So, you know, and then that's, that's excluding the online work that we didn't do.

Yeah. And it definitely helped having each other because if one of us was just really stressed out from the day and just really feel like you got nothing left in the tank and you still have like a task to do, we could always like call each other and just be like, hey, like, can you do that? Like, I really don't want to do this.

There's been times where I would leave or he would leave first to go do an estimate. Because how our schedule was, it was just us, obviously. So I would book him estimates at, you know, 3pm if the sun was up. Yeah, if the sun was up. We're doing estimates. Meanwhile, you know, we didn't finish the mulching job or whatever, so I got like three more yards to spread on my own. And he's going to an estimate. So I'd have a task that night. I'd be like, Brandon, can you just send those out? He'd be like, okay, okay. And like we'd get it. You know, we started to. I think actually the main point was kind of when we hit the verge of learning that we should wear our own hats kind of thing instead of trying to. Because we had this weird system of I did estimates and he did estimates, and then I'd have to answer customers asking for their estimates. And then we'd be in like a leeway of confusion of who had. Who had what, where are the estimates?

Yeah, every call that came in, it was like we'd have to text each other first to be like, are you doing it or me? Like, I would text like me, then he text like me whenever he took it.

So, yeah, when you said the end of 2020, kind of sat down, recreated the org chart. What does that look like when really it's the two of you and potentially now planning for maybe one or two employees going into 2021. What does that org chart look like? Is it a matter of just like listing everything that needs to be done and saying, hey, you're responsible for this, I'm responsible for this. Or is it was an actual chart that you kind of drew up and Looked forward into the future when you'd have employees.

You know, I wish we were in the trailer right now because it is hanging up in the trailer right now, our org chart. And we put ourselves in it and the workers too, so everyone can see where they are. It's right in the trailer where we meet. But basically, yeah. So we.

Around winter was actually when I found your videos and Basie, I probably watched every piece of content you've released for the last, I want to say two years and then four years back I've like watched sporadically. So I remember watching your org chart video. And we literally went through the video minute by minute and just like set it up how you said. So we envisioned a million dollar business with a general manager. We need an office manager, obviously. So as a general manager, office manager, office assistant. And then for the general manager there was an estimator. And then what we actually had was we had crew leads. Crew lead was really just our word more for an experienced crew person. It's someone who can train. We see it as. And yeah, we kind of just made as in, okay, if we were going to do a million dollars in revenue this year, what would we need? So we feel that that would do it. And it's helped a lot. It's definitely helped a lot when we defined all the roles.

So at the beginning when you, when you made that chart, obviously looking forward and the goal is eventually put other, you know, butts in those seats of, you know, truly estimator, etc. At the beginning, did you basically just say, hey, who's the estimator, who's the general manager now? Who's the office person? And just you've had your name on there five times. That essentially what you did at the beginning.

Yeah, it is still on the whiteboard. We put on a whiteboard just so we could like.

And we never touched it again. So there's names of previous employees still on there, but the gist, the gist is still there.

Yeah, it was more important that we knew our roles and the workers, if anything. So yeah, it's still there. And we just literally plugged our names in. Like, you know, I have like three jobs. So it's funny, we kind of treat as whenever talking to a customer. You know, we should act as if we're a million dollar business. We kind of see it as. So if I'm on an estimate with a customer and they hit you with the question of like, oh, are you the owner? They might just be asking it or they might be looking to haggle So I just say, oh, I'm an estimator.

Well, at this moment, I'm the estimator. Tomorrow you might call me, I'll be the office manager.

Exactly. I'm not lying. I am the estimator right now.

So very good.

Does seem easier that way, though.

And then in terms of, like, your plans for future growth, the two of you, as you're kind of have this partnership, is it a matter of clarifying what that goal is? Because I find a lot of times partners have two problems or two areas of. Of friction. And that is the beginning, just kind of figuring out roles. And then it becomes a matter of, hey, now the business is successful, but now it's a matter of what do I want from this business in terms of either an exit or, you know, I want to grow to a certain size. And then there becomes friction over, well, I want to grow to 10 million. Well, no, I'm happy at a million and a good cash flow. Like, have you sat down and had a discussion about what that looks like in terms of success for simply down.

The road.

I'd say during weed pulling, we had a lot of talks kind of thing. So we've talked about it for the full year, I'd say. And like on and off and early on we had struggles with, like, me being the person who actually liked doing the work. Brandon hated it. He expressed it a lot. You could tell by his face. At the end of the day, I still be smiling. He wouldn't. And going from how we first started, where we did every sort of money, income, landscaping job possible. So if someone asked us to do something in retaining walls, which I had no idea how to do, I would, like, learn as we go. And obviously we realize this, it's not what we should focus on if we want to keep growing like we were because we realized the whole simple services really worked out for us. So getting over the. The fact that I have to realize that there's more to just like me being in the field, I want to get this stuff done. I want to do these big jobs where Brandon always would tell me, we shouldn't do that. Let's do this. Once we kind of figured that line out.

Yeah, the tension at first was definitely Scott, you know, he would always want to do more, more services. And obviously the first year, like, you gotta just to make money. But a lot of the tension started happening when we got into that second year where I wanted to simplify. That's why we call it simply lawn care.

But basically I want to simplify Everything. Let's do basic services. Like, I don't even want to need an excavator until we have a yard, for example, because it's easy, we can see, systematize it. And Scott wanted to do a lot more like irrigation. Want to add hardscape. Want to do. Which, you know, I. I definitely got, but I didn't. I wanted to make sure we could grow as efficiently and quickly as possible, and mainly through watching your videos. That's what helped me realize that was the way to go because I was definitely on board with it at first. So, yeah, let's just offer like 4, 40 things. We'll just do it all. So, you know, now our goal, I would say we've kind of talked about it a lot more this year, is we're just going to stay simple. I mean, maybe we'll add one service a year. Like we just cut the lawn treatments, for example. We probably won't add that back to where it like 750k in revenue. And we're just gonna do basic treatments, nothing complex. You know, if we want to do hardscape or irrigation. We already talked about that. That's something where we're waiting to. We're at a million in revenue. Maybe then we'll look at it. We just want to make sure we stay in our lane and grow as efficiently as possible in our lane. And then if we think it's viable to add one thing, we'll do it, but we're just going to take it slow. Focus on the 12 services we offer.

Right now when it comes to acquisitions, and then also pay. I feel like sometimes that's also a point of contention for founders that are co founders. How have, how do you handle? Like, hey, whether or not we should buy this certain type of mower as well as even just paying yourself. I know there's some, some people that will say, hey, look, we take an hourly rate for both of us when we're working, and then we split distributions. How have you all kind of come to agreement where it's not something that's always a discussion or a problem, but you've settled on something. Hey, this is how we're getting paid. This is how we set it up so that there's not always this question all the time.

You want this one? Yeah.

Yeah. So we. It's great being 22, I'll say. Because we don't need money. You know, we. We literally, I have it on the Google Drive because we broke all this down. We broke down each of our monthly expenses every Single one. And we pay ourselves the bare minimum to cover all our expenses and then plus $100 spending one week. So that's all we get.

And then Scott actually still does. Works at a diner on Saturdays. Saturday mornings, so he makes a little more. But I have, like, this apartment, for example, so mine's. I get paid like 200 more a week. And then we don't do any distributions. I mean, we just pay ourselves a minimum. We both understand that, you know, the more money we keep in, the quicker we. We can grow. So just keeping the spending to a minimum and then, you know, distribution. I'd say we gave ourselves, like, we went on that cruise and we had Christmas, so I think we gave ourselves, like, bonus. Yeah, yeah. We gave ourselves like a thousand dollars each.

For each whopping thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah.

So our workers made more than us this year.

Every week, for sure. They made more than us.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

And we're just gonna keep it that way. I mean, this year we did. We did it like three weeks ago. I want to say we went through all our expenses again and we just recalculated it and, yeah, we're just gonna do the same thing. I mean, we Both work like 60 hours a week. It's not like we're going out a lot when we're working anyways, you know, so.

Well, thank you so much for both of you coming on. If anyone wanted to reach out to. Whether they're local or potentially online, how can they get a hold of you guys?

I would say through our website. So Simply Lawn Care Services dot com. If you go to the contact us, there is our email on there. I think it's the contact at Simply Lawn Care. So just reach out through there. I mean, I'm always down to talk. I met a lot of great guys at conference. I remember, like, Jeff down in Sandwich, Dean King in Pennsylvania. So really cool. I mean, I'm always down to chat, you know, if. If you want to talk shop, talk business, like, I'm your guy.

We do it all the time in person, too. The landscaping companies at the gas station or at the dump all the time, and they. They question us because we're a little different, obviously, because we're going the Mike Andes kind of path with the trucks and such. So people are very confused by us, and we like to give them the information because, you know, it might spark some interest.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for both of you coming on. Best of luck in 2022. Maybe we'll have you on next spring and see what's up.

See what the growth looks like.

Like, absolutely.

Take care, guys. Have a good one.

Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

I hope that was helpful and entertaining. If you want to watch another episode of Roundup, check this video out here where we talked to a much larger company doing over $6 million in annual revenue, 35 plus employees, and uses a very, very different type of subcontracting model to scale up their mowing operation. Check out that video right here.

Sam.