Door Hangers That Actually Work (Here’s the Formula — Q&A)
A recorded Q&A session hosted by Mike Andes (YouTube video) focused on practical marketing and operations advice for lawn, landscape, pressure-washing, and mobile service businesses. Key themes: door-hanger vs EDDM performance and timing (do more door hangers closer to "pain"/spring rush rather than switching channels), inexpensive sourcing of print materials (example: 10,000 door hangers for $500 on Alibaba), customer-acquisition math (examples: 5 responses from 3,000 early distribution; estimated CAC ~$75 in an example), scaling/operations (single-member LLC recommended initially; consider S‑Corp after roughly $40k–$50k profit), pricing and estimating (track budget vs actual hours and use square-foot buckets), and growth tactics (website conversion fixes, brute-force outreach like door knocking and yard signs). The transcript contains multiple concrete numeric examples and tactical recommendations for small service businesses.
Questions this video answers
April 13, 2025
He said he handed out about 3,000–5,000 door hangers and got five customers so far (5 responses from 3,000 distributed).
He said he bought 10,000 door hangers for about $500 (Alibaba purchase).
Mike estimated about $75 CAC in an example where 300 door hangers per new customer and a $25/hr hired deliverer working 3 hours per customer (3 hours × $25 = $75).
EDDM was cited around 0.1% to 0.3% (sometimes up to 0.3%), while door hangers can see 3–4× higher response when timed with customer "pain"; Mike suggested door-hanger response can approach 0.5%–1% in better conditions and 0.05% early when distributed before demand peaks (speaker gave multiple examples).
Chapters
I got a quick question here for you. I've been pounding the pavement hard this, this spring, this spring rush. Like I've been, I probably handed out like three to five thousand door hangers and my return rates are just so low. Like I've handed out 3,000. I've only got five customers from it. Like five calls, five customers, 100 customer acquisition. And I'm just wondering if I should do an EDDM campaign. And I just want to know your thoughts on that. If you think if there's something I should be doing better with the door hangers, and they're the instant quote ones. I have piles of these everywhere. I got like 3,000 on my desk right here. You know, I'm just.
Have you started mowing, Thorsten?
No. First week of mowing is going to be next week for me.
Yeah. So that's why. So your, your demand in your market. So, so, so with door hangers we see a three to four times increase in the amount of people who respond when there's pain. So the only people have respond, there's five people that responded are people that plan ahead. Because until we're three to four weeks into spring rush and their lawn is overgrown, they have no pain. And so I actually think 5 out of 3000 is not bad given the fact that you are doing this before anyone needs their grass cut. And so I would also say that if you put 3,000 out, you will probably get another five over the next three weeks, simply because people will be like, okay, now I have pain. I will contact this person. But I would, I would really say, like, even if you run the math, let's just say, like, because you're early, you got five out of 3,000. Let's just say in three to four weeks, you do this now, the grass is a little bit shaggy. People actually thinking about it, it's beautiful day outside. Let's just say we can get 10. Well, that means we need to basically do 300 yard, 300 door hangers to get one new customer. And if you're doing 100 of those per hour, that's literally every three hours you're getting a new customer. And three hours, let's just say it's not you, it's someone else that you're hired to do it. That's $25 per hour. Let's just call it $75 customer acquisition cost. We can make some real sense of this now. Right? Right. So I, I wouldn't discount the door hangers yet. I happen to believe if you would have spent that same money on every door. Direct mail, it would have been worse right now, but I believe in three to four weeks that that same 3,000 could bring in 10 to 15 customers.
Okay, so wait, wait till the, let's say like first week of May and then, then pound out another, you know, as many door hangers as I got left. 2500 to 5000.
Yep, a hundred percent. And I the reason I know this person because if you did five out of 3,000 before you started mowing grass, I can promise you when you're three to four weeks, book into the winter or into the rush, you're probably on that same next 3,000 at least 10. And the math on 10 starts to look really good. The math on 20 starts to look amazing.
Yeah, I was planning ahead. Like, you know, Everybody says all 1 to 5% on door hangers. I bought 10,000 for extreme for an extremely good price. Like, I bought them for like 500 bucks off of Alibaba. For all you guys out there, you guys go to Alibaba and contact some like, of the suppliers. You know, guys could get marketing for extremely cheap, way cheaper than Vista Print everything. So go ahead and do that. And I got $10,000 for $500. And I was like, all right, this is all my marketing for the spring. So now I'm in a position where I'm like, all right, well, I'm not afraid to, you know, put a couple thousand dollars on my credit card because I know it's going to pay off. But what do you think my next like approach should be? You think I should go for an EDDM campaign here soon in the next like, you know, like three weeks?
No, no, I think more and better before new, before you go start a new marketing channel and go get more marketing collateral. I would take what you currently done, which is you have five out of 3,000. If you got, if you got 1% on a door hanger, you should back up your truck, take a mortgage in your house and keep doing it. I don't think you're going get to 1%. But if you even get half a %, which is 15 out of 3,000, which I think you could get to in three to four weeks from now if you do that, that's a phenomenal return on your, on your money. And you won't get it with every door direct mail. We're just not seeing it across the whole system in terms of like dollars in versus dollars out. Because right now I would imagine you have more time than you have money and so you delivering is essentially free. I made this $25 per hour thing up. But the alternative to you doing door hands right now is sitting at home. So, like, let's not do that. So if I was you and I had 5,000 or 10,000 more of these, I'd be still doing them now, because even. Even. Even at five customers for 3,000, how long it take you to get to 3,000? Like a.
Week? Yeah, like a week to, like, a week and a.
Half. Great. So we got a week. You got five new customers, dude. Let's just keep doing.
That. Yeah, that's. That's what. I guess that's what I'm gonna keep doing. But.
So. And I believe. I do believe that as you do next, like, one. Next week. The week after. The week. After the next six weeks, you're. You'll get more and more as a function of percentage closer to the.05%. But, like, I would not get discouraged with your current. I just keep doing what you're.
Doing. All right, well, that's. That's all I needed to hear. I need that reassurance of, you know. Well, I. I have a quick question. If I want to do, like, EDDM for mulch, because I feel like. Like.
I'm. You.
Really. You really love Eddm, don't.
You? I see these YouTubers like.
Facebook.
You know, so who would be a.
Good. They all have sponsors, bro. They have sponsors behind them, trying to get them to buy stuff from.
Postcards.
Their postcards from their.
Website. Yeah. Like, trust me, like, get the door hanger. You got it. You already have them. The cost of delivery is literally your blood, sweat, and tears for the next six weeks. And I genuinely believe if you did what you've done the past week, which is 2,000, 3,000 a week, you will wake up and you will have 50.
Customers. All right, well, that's what I'm going to do. Thanks.
Mike. Report back in the Facebook group. Let's go. I.
Will. I'm going to be pounding them, everybody. Alibaba.
Contact. Hey, be careful with all the. With all of these tariffs. It might not be much cheaper here pretty soon.
Thanks, Mike. We'll get Q and A started. Go ahead.
Marco. Hey, Mike, thanks for having us. We're happy to be on copilot. I'll keep this brief. Ran into some trouble with trademarking issue. I sent this question on the group as well. You might probably be thinking. I answered already, but dying to hear what your thoughts.
Are.
So. We started this company 26 months ago. We're on track for about 850,000 to a million this year. Just hired a superstar sales guy who's on this call and somebody hits me with a, hey, by the way, you're using my name. So he's using Riptide Pressure Washing. He's, you know, a couple hundred miles north of us. We're using Rip Tide Softwash. We're not crossing paths. We registered the businesses roughly within a week and a half of each other. But he went the next level and trademarked Riptide Pressure Washington Soft Washing, roof washing, and a bunch of other crap. So he's basically forced a name change on us. How would you tackle moving forward the next four weeks once we solidify with a new name? What would your strategy be in terms of notifying existing clients and changing your digital advertising and stuff? Just give me like a high level, 32nd. It's a big one, first.
Off. So first off, I wouldn't stress about this. Customers don't care about the name of your business. And so what I would do is. Have you already switched over to copilot Marco or not.
Yet? No, we're about to. We're going to start May 1st, but I just did the onboarding this.
Morning. Cool. So that makes it easy because you're like, whether you're switching a software or you are switching like bank accounts and all the other stuff that you're going to have to do, you're going to have to like ask customers for their card information again. So you could kind of just merge these two. I would not overthink this. I would do, I would, I wouldn't even send an email to everyone telling, hey, Riptide is now this name. I would bake it into my first email correspondence with them that I'm already doing, whether it be an invoice, an estimate, or a marketing email down the road. And no one cares that Riptide changes their name. What they care about is like, I got an invoice, I gotta get paid. And you need to get their card information on file because now you don't have it from the last account. And so I would just bake that need for them getting their card information into that same email. And that same email could just say, hey, exciting news, Riptide is now X, Y and Z. I would, if I was you, Marco, I would say, hey, due to this, now you have the ability to and just list off all the positive things about why Cobot's gonna be helpful. Like, for example, I don't know what you used in the past. Like, now you have Automations now you can put your card on file, like list off some positives for them. But I would bake it all in one email. I would also not make a big deal of it to confuse customers. I'm assuming you're like changing your logo and everything or is it just like a very small.
Change? It's going to be a name change at the bottom of the logo but the wave everything will stay in the graphics side. So we're just keep it as easy as.
Possible. Cool. Yeah. Customers won't even notice. It'll be.
Great. Okay.
Perfect. Thanks.
Man. Yeah, you got.
It. Tuesday and I'm closing on 50 accounts for my sons and want to get them like upload. I think we met with.
Arrows. Yep. Arrow.
Yep. Okay. In any. What's the next step once we get where error when we leave the closing there they're putting all 50 accounts in an Excel sheet. He said he's going to upload them and you're buying them from a previous person. So I kind of similar to I guess to the previous question. We just want to make sure that transition is smooth as possible from them to.
Us. Yeah. So because you are changing ownership, it's a little different. I would be sending an email to all my customers saying, hey, you know those 50 that you've purchased? In the perfect world, what I would be doing is I would be having a video with you and the previous owner. Like is that person available for a video call or a video with.
You? Yeah, I think he'd be cool with.
That. So what I would do is in the email builder of copilot, you can actually embed a video. And so I would do is I would make spend some good quality time on designing a nice email that has your logo. And their logo says, you know, Billy Bob's Towing is now, you know, your towing company name. And they have a video just saying the, the business like one minute or less. The business owner saying like, yeah, he's now going to be taking over your accounts. He's super awesome. Really trust him. And then you being like, we look forward to having you as part of this upgrade. You're going to be getting all these extra advantages like make it positive for them. Um, that's always worked well for when I do acquisitions and.
Mergers. I was wondering what is better to set up a sole member EIN or an S Corp. Any thoughts on.
That? Yeah. Have you just started the business.
Dominic? I started something with a friend last year. It was more of a learning curve. He's going off into the air Force, So it'll just be me. So I'm just kind of trying to restructure.
Everything. I would just do a single member llc. So the LLC will give you a little bit of liability protection. I don't think you need S Corp right now. You're going to spend a lot more on legal fees to get it set up as well as with an S Corp you basically have to file another tax return in addition to your regular 1040. And so whereas with a single member LLC, it's a pass through entity, it's going to show up as a schedule C on your tax return. And so you'll Pay, let's call it 5, $600 for someone to file your taxes versus 2000. So I would stick with that. That being said, once you cross like 40, $50,000 in profit, take home from the business, your CPA should be smart enough to know that you file a form 112011 form 1120s and that's going to allow you to be, that's going to allow you to, to file as an S corp but still just remain an llc. So you don't really need to start as an S Corp. I would not recommend.
That. So do the sole.
Member. Yep, I just do a sole member llc. I wouldn't do a sole member proprietorship. I would do an.
Llc. Sole member llc. Okay, let's see. Okay. And then since I am new, I'm trying to. I've got trucks and everything or one truck purchased and all the equipment that I need. What's the best way to actually get people? Because I've got the equipment and I've got the bills. Now I just kind of need.
Work. What industry are you in.
Dominic? Lawn maintenance. So like lawn mowing and all.
That. So I have a solution. Landscapebusinesscourse.com It's a free course. Go watch that. It'll walk you from start to finish. On like the marketing side, different ad channels, whether it be door hangers, Facebook ads. Just start there. There's a ton of information on there. It's all.
Free. Okay.
Perfect. Got.
It. Well, thank you very.
Much. You got.
It. Hey Mike, I've been doing the landscape business course for a while and that's like the best like advice I've ever had.
I was just wondering what your best form of marketing would be to get myself out there. Like I, we, we've been part time, I've been just doing this part time for a couple years and this year I was like, you know what, why not just jump ahead and scale it and Definitely did scale it, but not where I want to be. What's the best form of like getting my name out.
There? Everything. Everything. Like, it is a function of posting on Facebook about it is a function of making a better website, is a function of doing door hangers is a function of telling the person, your waiter and your waitress and your hairdresser and your accountant about you. Like, it is a function of like brute force. And so I was talking to someone yesterday. They, they actually have a really interesting like beef jerky company and they're like, oh, I need an investor and I need like scale this thing up and do a big marketing campaign. I'm like, no, you have 70 stores, you're going to get an RV, you can talk to 10 a day and you, you're closing eight out of 10 stores, you're going to go in an RV and you're going a three, three month vacation going from store to store to store and come back with 500 stores. And so this is a function of brute force, especially if you don't have thousands of dollars spent on ads. But I would be looking at first, if you're going to spend a dollar on marketing, make sure you're at your, your website is set up correctly. Right. And so I'd be looking there first because every dollar I spend on marketing get significantly more effective if I just have a great website that converts. So I look there first and then I would just go brute force and as door hangers, yard signs, whatever you got to.
Do.
Okay.
Right. We have all the equipment. I have like, it's, I have enough work for myself, but not like I have right now because it's the spring and it's, it's heavy and I have enough work for another guy. But once I only have probably 25 long accounts and it's not enough for me to keep him on, but I want to keep them on because he wants to work for a while and he's good and I hate to let him go because, because I want to scale it eventually. And he's good, he's reliable enough where I can let him run a crew or something if I wanted to. Um, but yeah, like I, it was part time and now I'm doing like we're set for a hundred thousand in revenue, whereas like the previous years it was like 30, 40 grand. And I definitely brought it up, but not where I want to be. Don't have marketing.
Either. So yeah, it's a function of time. Right. And so like I would also recommend like, if you like the landscape business course. Go do the workshop. Mikeandies.com workshop. It's free. It walks through, like, all the different parts of, like, not just having the seasonality of spring rush, but how to actually capitalize on that in the rest of the year. So I'd highly recommend that. But, like, I think you're from a marketing perspective and a leads perspective. If leads is your current constraint. If, like, I don't have enough leads, then there's a function of, okay, how do we get leads? Let's make a great website. That's my storefront. And then I'm going to drive traffic to it in the form of door hangers, yard signs, Facebook ads, Google Ads, and the list goes.
On. Yeah, we're going crazy with the Facebook and.
The. I.
Definitely. I put out like a couple thousand door hangers this year, and still I'm only booked, like, two, three weeks out. And it's like, I don't. I want to be booked out till June. That's what I want to.
Do. Yeah. Like, what's your website right now.
Noah? It's gorgolandmanagement.com. it's actually. Someone made it for me as a gift for, like, my.
Birthday. What's the name of it? I'm gonna look it up. What is.
It? Gorgo land.
Management.
Gorgolandmanagement.com.
Yep. Gorgo G O R G O. Yep. Land.
Management.
Yeah. Oh, here we go. Okay. Yeah, I would be looking at this first. Like, so if I here, I'll share my screen. So you can drive all the traffic in the world, but the site doesn't convert. We've wasted money. Okay, so, like, this picture doesn't scream to me anything about you, your business, your brand, your logo. I don't see anything about your trucks. Your.
Logo. We actually just created a new logo today, actually, a little.
More. Yeah. So, like, I would lean into that. I would redesign the site to be able to collect information. Right now, Google form, like that button, not going to convert. I would have a estimate request form above the fold to the right hand side of the screen, one third of the screen, and it would be four to six lines. I would not go to a Google form. Like, your conversion list is not going to do well, you know, making sure your Google listing is optimized with more than 30 reviews, it links to this site. These are the type of things that it just.
Time.
Gotcha.
I. All right, I appreciate that. And now one more thing I got. I keep getting these calls about for. For the website to make it, like, show up as number one. Is that actually a thing I should look into? Making it like, like once I get the website fixed and neat and orderly, getting it to show up sooner.
Than searching and optimization, you know, it's just a function of like, let's get, let's. I'd focus on number one, which is make the site better. So go to, go to YouTube. I've done done this before. I do like 50 websites and I go through one by one and say, you should change this, you should change that. If you watch one of those videos, you will get the top 10 things that you like. Okay, I need to change the picture. I need to put the, the request form above the fold. It needs to be on the right hand side. Like I need my phone number. I need, like you'll get the top 10. You can do those yourself. Those will be low hanging fruit. And then if down the road you want to do SEO stuff, there's a bazillion people in their mom that will want to sell you that. Okay. All.
Right. All right, sounds good. Another thing, do you think I should let this guy off or should I keep him on and hopefully the business grows? Because I'm not profiting. Like, I'm, I'm staying afloat revenue wise, but profit's not there because I not. I don't have two jobs booked today. I have a job booked a day and then maybe one day a week, I won't have a.
Job. Yeah. So this, this just comes down to like, if you're going to be default aggressive, I would be talking to every one of your 25 customers the next 24 hours and trying to upsell them into a project of some sort. Because if five of them accept, all of a sudden you're booked out an extra two weeks, you can keep him busy. That buys you two weeks to go fix the website that get in those two weeks, I'm going to start calling people I'm going to contact. Like, you have 25 customers, you probably have 50 to 100 contacts in your database. I'd be going to every single one of them. But I think it's just like if you're conservative, like in terms of you don't want to spend money, you're very concerned about, you know, your current finances, then I would let him go. I would be working crazy amounts of hours, like 12 to 14 hours a day in the field, I'd go home at night and we work on the website. I would work on posting on social.
Media. Okay, all right, sounds good. I appreciate.
It. These Are some great questions, man. I'm. I'm new to this industry as well.
So. So thank you, everybody. Real quick. My other question was about the customer appraisal. So the guy we're acquiring the company from, I don't want to lose or scare them, but I do want to make sure that we appraise these properties correctly. When I was with them and we was doing due diligence one day, he was like, Yeah, I charge 65 over here. I'm charging them 50. I'm like, well, how do you know to charge them 50? He like, well, he referred somebody to me, So I took $15 off. I don't know if he's. You mentioned earlier about, you know, like, cutting himself. He might be losing money. I don't. I don't.
Know. Yeah. So in terms of, like, creating an accurate estimate, there's two functions of this. One is that the likelihood if you're buying these 50 counts is that they made these numbers up. So we should assume that. And then I'd be tracking your budget hours versus your actual hours inside of copilot. So have every time you're at the property, you're going to clock in and out. You're going to say, okay, there was 0.4 budgeted hours or, you know, 35 minutes or whatever it is. And I'm going to compare that to the budget hours. Now, how do I come with the budget hours is, let's just start. 50 bucks. Great. If you're charging a hundred dollars per hour, then that's 0.5 budgeted hours. You should be getting the job done in 0.5 budget hours if you're trying to hit $100 per hour. And so then how you raise price in the future or determine whether or not these prices are accurate is, am I hitting budgeted hours? If I'm not, I need to raise the prices. And so the vast majority of people make up numbers when it comes to estimates. And so going forward, you will start to get to know, okay, if it's a 3,000 square foot property, it takes about x long, and if it takes x long, that's x amount of budget hours. As you multiply about my rate. Oh, boom, that's a $43 cut. Right. So it's simply going to come down to, you know, tracking budget hours versus actual hours to determine whether or not these accurate pricing and whether or not you need to up.
It. Okay. So that it's. Okay. So it's based more off of hours versus like a dollar a square foot type of Thing, let's say they got, like you said, 500 square foot. We charging whatever, 56.
Square. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you're paying your employees, you know, to get the job done, and you pay them for time, you pay them to get, you know, for them to show up, I want to. I want to track budget hours. Square footage is good, but square footage is a function of how long it takes me to do the job. So that's what, like, I. We still measure based on square footage and then give someone a price. But the real. The real math of it is how long does it take to do 3,000 square feet of lawn? How long does it take to do 6,000 square feet of lawn? And so if you just determined, okay, I'm going to make. Have five different ranges, I'm going to have 0 to 4, 4,000 square feet making up numbers. I have 4,000 to 8,000, 8,000 to 12,000, 12,000 to 16,000. Like, that's enough granularity, in my opinion, to get started in terms of what your pricing is based upon square footage. But what I'm really going to be doing is tracking budget hours versus actual hours on every single job so that in six months, when I need to raise prices, I know exactly who to raise prices on, because I'm simply looking at who am I not hitting budget hours.
On.
Good. So my first question would be, what is the response rate you guys typically see on the E.
Eddm? Yeah, like, it's very, very seasonal. Right. Like, the thing with every door direct mail is you could send it out this week and get like a 0.1% response rate, and you send it out in four or five weeks once the lawn is completely overgrown and get like a.0, 3.4% response rate. So it can triple, like, pretty easily just even the day that it's delivered, like, if it's just nicer weather. So I'm not a huge fan of every door direct meal. The only way I usually do it is if I can't do door hangers or door knocking. And I really want after a very specific neighborhood, that's, like, the only reason I would do it. It's usually a pretty expensive alternative to doing door hangers where I can do an instant price on it. And if I was doing every door direct mail, I would make sure there's an instant pricing functionality in it to get a higher response rate because the response rate is just too low. It is like I am seeing across the board, like, 0.1, maybe 0.3. It's just not great. You already in the hand of a whole bunch of junk mail and you gotta like do such a crazy offer to get out of that versus like a door hanger. There's nothing else on that door typically. So I have a little bit more exclusivity in terms of their attention and they're not hovering over the garbage can already. So we see a better response rate on door hangers. As long as you can make the math work on, in terms of like delivery, we're good. But from a delivery perspective, if I can't get the door because of HOAs, gated communities, etc, then I would go every door, direct mail. But we're seeing pretty low response.
Rates. Got.
It. Okay, thank you. Marketers ruin everything. So I think marketers have. This whole EDDM thing has become so popular now, everyone's kind of ruining it. But door hangers will eventually be ruined too. So, you know, currently I'm seeing mostly the better numbers on the door hanger.
Side. So I have a truck washing business. We don't. It's primarily truck washing, mobile truck washing. So you go, what's.
That? Do you go to.
Them? Yes, sir.
Correct. Cool. Awesome. Got.
It. Yeah. So, so we, we wash anywhere about an hour out. And I've got, there's a certain area close to like the PA, Ohio state line that's about an hour and a half out that there's a lot of business available there. So I'm trying to figure out what, what's the best way to kind of target that. You know, I actually have a guy that lives in that area that works for me. So do I just, you know, start put. Having him take a truck and trailer home? I mean, is it that simple or do I start marketing in that area? What do you.
Think? What's your main customer acquisition channel now? Is it like shops that refer you to their.
Customers? A lot of door knocking really going around? Yes, sir. Yeah. So I have a sales guy that works for me that between him and I, we try to knock on like 40 doors a day. Big trucking customers. So we'll go around to these companies and just. We've got some, some flyers that we hand out to them and just try to get them signed up on a routine.
Basis. Cool. And like the average customer, how many trucks they usually have? Like 3, 4, 5, or we're talking like a fleet of.
2030. I'd say.
2030. Okay.
Cool. We have a company that has 200 trucks, but then we also have some that have smaller amounts. So I Mean, it's, it's all over the.
Place. Well, that's interesting. Do you think you're, you're, you are demand constrained like in terms of like your current service area, like there's no one else that really needs your service and you don't know who to knock on next or is this a function of like, it's just a bigger.
Area?
I'd say a little bit of both. So like if I'm driving down the highway, pretty much every company that passes me, I've talked to them.
Now typically I've, I've started to realize it's just a matter of time before end up losing whoever they're using and they give us a call or whatever. But it's also just, I know there's a lot of business in that particular area. So I guess it's a little bit of both. Like I wouldn't say we're completely maxed out on our demand, but at the same time if there's a lot of work in that area, it just.
Kind of, I don't know. Yeah, I think the thing to be careful of is you can always make sense of expanding service area because like, honestly like you can always prove yourself right because you always, you will get more customers there. So like it's very hard to say like, oh, it's a bad thing because you can always make sense of it. Same thing with adding services. Like it's always easy to justify it because yes, you will make more revenue. So it just becomes like, do you want the kind of business where someone takes the truck home? Do you want the kind of business that they're, they're two hours, three hours away from you? Do you want the kind of business like that's what it comes down to. And then there's a matter of like, well, does your, is your close ratio lower there? Because over here you have more brand equity, brand, brand awareness in the local market. So like it just becomes a function of what kind of business do you want to build? Like and like what? I would also ask like how many employees you currently.
Have.
So full time employees I've got five. But on the weekends whenever we're washing trucks, it could be up to 10 guys.
Typically.
Cool. Would you ever want, would you ever consider doing a satellite location? Yeah, because I feel like, I feel like that 5 to 10 marker could become a general manager that runs that one. And then how far away is this other area? Like two hours.
Away. Yeah, so. So a lot of the companies that we already do are an hour away. We Will drive an hour max. But then I'd say an hour from there. In that hour gap, there's a lot of.
Opportunity. Yeah. Like I would say, like I would probably, if I was you, instead of being on sales road, you and this other guy, I would probably try to go into profit mode, Take your current customers and raise prices as you hit capacity. I would try to get to six to eight employees instead of that, that 10 side. But you're probably going to shrink a little bit anyways just by not constantly working on sales, but then by raising my prices and turn that into profit mode. You could technically afford a general manager. Now, the intermediary here, the intermediary is that you kind of juggle both for a second. From a financial perspective, if you don't have like a hundred grand to kind of like, okay, I know I'm going to have a bit of a dip in profit if I have a general manager. Great. You could kind of manage that one as is and send yourself or one other person going to the sales three hours away. Maybe they stay over two or three nights in a week or whatever and sell jobs and then just hire one person. You could do it kind of halfway or you could just be like, okay, great, I am going to set this date. We're going to raise prices, we're going to stop doing sales working a general manager or promote someone into becoming a general manager. We're have six to eight employees at this location. And I'm going to go over here and I'm just going to crush it. So it's kind of what business do you want to build? But that, that model, that size, like I was thinking one to two employees. So like as soon as you said five to 10, I think general manager, because the people can manage six to eight employees pretty well. And then as long as you're not in, in growth mode and you switch it to profit mode and you're not doing sales, instead, that one person door knocking is just managing the crew. You'll be.
Profitable. Okay, makes sense. Gotcha. And do you think I need to buy more equipment for that.
Area? What might be interesting is even if you took one truck, for example, over there, that would then be the one truck that currently you're doing all these sales to fill. So you take the one truck to get started and like Zach, do you think you would go over and start it or do you think you have a salesperson that would do.
That? I'd probably go.
Myself. Yeah, that's what I recommend. Like especially your second location, even Inside of Augusta, when people are like, I want to start a second location. Great. Find an operational GM that can just run the business. They don't need to do sales. They just run the business. You, as an entrepreneur, go do the sales for the new location, and you ramp it up. You get to four, five, six employees. Because that's the skill that if someone else had the skill, they would probably go start their own.
Business.
Right. Makes.
Sense. So. So I would. I would say if you're thinking multiple locations, three hours is a long distance to try to juggle one location. And even if you send someone with a truck there, they're going to feel so isolated that eventually they'll probably start their own.
Thing.
Right. That makes sense. Yeah. Got it. Cool. Okay. I appreciate.
It. Stuff.
Man. All right, Mike, I figured it.
Out. Let's go.
Gavin. Yes, sir.
So I got two questions. The first one is, what? Last year we was at around 120,000 in revenue. It was our first year. We started in March, and now this year we're at 26 right now, 26,000. And so I'm looking to go to 200,000 this year. What are some key points that you can suggest that I need to be looking at and kind of working on right now to get to.
200,000? I assume you just. You've hired an employee this.
Year. Well, I did, but just let them go yesterday. It just wasn't working out. Wasn't weed eating and just kind of slacking big.
Time. And. So what's your goal for the business, Gavin? Are you trying to grow to, like, a crew? Are you trying to just make it really profitable with you, like, as a job? What's your.
Goal? So I. I want to grow and just kind of, you know, rinse and repeat, you know, just as. As big as I can get. You know, I kind of want to use your systems and. And join Augusta.
So I'm just trying to. To get there right now and. And try to get, you know, a franchise location, you know, maybe in trustful and. And then go from there and kind of hit, you know, the areas surrounding my. My route's about 47 miles wide in.
Total.
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm hitting a bunch of different communities, but my. My co pilot saying that I'm. I'm still doing pretty good as far.
As.
Right. Efficiency score. So last year I talked to somebody at Copilot. We was doing a coaching call, and they said that I was around 30 something percent profitable. So, I mean, it seems like things are working out. You Know, I'm not really sure. I'm not good at all the numbers, but I'm just, I'm good at hustling. That's about, you.
Know. Yes. Like the skill that you have acquired today is that of a labor. Like you can get the work done as you pass 200,000. The, the skill that's required is to go that from a labor to that of a manager. And so that's like your first employee didn't work out, right. The unlock will be can you become a good manager? Can you actually lead people? Then it's a function of like, well, why did he leave? And it's not a matter of this person individually, it's like, okay, why was he slacking off? Okay, well maybe I should institute something like pay for performance because then they actually are incentivized and motivated to move. So the skill that you lack, and I don't say this in a derogatory manner, cause I lack skills too. But like the only skill you lack between 200,000, 500,000 is the skill of a manager. Like can you hire someone, train them up, keep them efficient, make them accountable, have one on one meetings, have team meetings, have safety meetings, compensate them correctly. Like those are the skills that are required. So getting more customers, you've proven you can do that. And at 200,000, we believe you can make you be very profitable. You will probably be 50, 60, 70% profitable if you just did the work yourself. So it's not surprising that you're a 30% profit. If you are 3% profitable on a $200,000 business, that's $40,000 a year. You should probably just go flip, flip burgers if that's all you're going to do though. And so I would venture to believe that there's a lot of inefficiencies and it's being masked by the fact that Gavin is a hustler and works crazy amounts of hours. Because being 30% profitable, when you're out in the field, if you were replaced by an employee, that 40 grand goes gone like you're at zero. And so I actually think either you have in you, you do have inefficiencies because the massive service area or your pricing is way too low for scale because you could make it profitable and you have at your size. And so what usually happens is once you go from labor to manager, there's a period of time, okay, I actually have to reduce my service area because now it costs me money when I'm driving. Because in the past you just Drove more hours, like, who cares? Now it's actually going to cost you to have inefficiencies in the truck or the equipment or the downtime. And so the rethinking of labor to manager is going to be what's required and gaining skills of that of a manager. And that's not an easy thing to do, but it's certainly something that can be acquired in terms of books, audiobooks, podcasts. It's not a matter of get customers. It is a function of how do you become a great.
Manager.
Right. Okay. So it's probably, I mean, my hourly rates at 75 right now, so I would assume that the 47 miles, you know, I need to just, I don't know, raise prices or just can. And that way that I condense my route or just condense my route.
And raise prices, I would probably get. I would try to identify what is the area I'm actually wanting customers. I would do all my marketing there. I would. I would identify what my max capacity is in terms of number of customers, which I think you're probably pretty close to it right now. So, like, how many more customers do you think you'd serve now, Gavin, if you had one employee, like a decent.
Employee? Well, I have a hundred cuts right now. And so if I do. If I get up, if I have an employee and he, you know, takes on this, this. This truck and he has an employee that works with him, then I can go out and, you know, I, I could do, you know, it's probably 70 yards, 70, 80 yards.
Myself. Okay, but let's just say you didn't have an employee. You're basically at capacity right now, right? Like 100 lawns by yourself. Got it. Oh, yeah. So this is, this is a good time to be able to cut back now, because what I would do is take your 47 miles and be like, okay, great, if I get 10 more customers, I like, I am over capacity. I'd have to be working weekends and all this crazy stuff. Great. Instead of 45, 47 miles, let's just try to get down to 20. I bet if you had 20 miles, you would probably still hit like 60 to 70% of your customers. And so what I would recommend is every time you get a new customer, the next few weeks, you're going to eliminate a customer that's 47 miles away and then the next one that's closer, the next closer from you, and you're like, well, do I actually remove them? No, you give them a price, A price increase. That's Substantial. Like I'm talking 50% price increase. And if they say no, they weed themselves out. And if they say yes, okay, we will drive the extra 5, 10 minutes to their property.
Gotcha. Okay, and one more question about Christmas lights. So on the second year, do you charge the same amount that that you charged for the first.
Year? We usually give them a discount on years after the first year because we have all of our costs on the initial install. And so we want to incentivize, like we make all of our money on years 2, 3, and 4. And so we want to incentivize that. So usually we give them like a 10 to 20%.
Discount. Okay, all right, great. Thank you.
Mike. You got.
It. I guess that's kind of the.
Question is being solo wanting to transition.
Into owning another one to two trucks. Like what? I don't know. What would be a good, good step to get there? Yeah, like, it's, it's really a matter of like, you're lead constrained and so, you know, if you had a bazillion leads coming in tomorrow, you could probably figure out a way to get another truck and hire people, et cetera. Right. So then it becomes a function of like, okay, is there, do we have a website, do we have social media, do we have Google reviews? Is that site optimized for conversion or is it optimized to look nice? Because like, if it's not converting, you can pay all the money in the world to go to door hangers and Facebook ads and Google Ads, but if you drive traffic there and it stinks, then, you know, organic. One out of 50 to convert. Well, I just need to Change that to 1 out of 10 you5 X the business. And so when, when we talk about having a lead constrained business, whereas Gavin is like, he's trying to find an employee so he can continue to grow the business. When you're lead constrained, it's just function of like, I would be first looking at your conversion on your site because any dollar then you spend in the future to drive people to that site is well spent.
So. And even like your Google listing, like having, you know, your Google reviews that it's.
