Fall Cleanups, Leaf Removal, Property Cleanups - Lawn Care Business 101

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast. Today we're going to be having a quick episode, but I'm going to be giving you four actionable tips that you need to have as we go into the fall season. There's fall cleanups, there's leave cleanup, you know, trimming bushes before the winter comes. So what do you need to do in your business to make sure you take full advantage of the season? We're going to be talking about that today. Before we get started though, I'll give a couple announcements about what I've been up to. Last week I was in Michigan with Mitten Mowing and Landscape and then I went over to Rhode island to meet with White Pine Landscaping just south of Providence. And so meeting with them for the second season of Zero Turn, so you can expect their videos to be showing up in the next few weeks. And in a few weeks we're going to be at GIE in Kentucky. So I'm flying to Iowa, then Illinois and then Kentucky in about three weeks. So if you're at gie, I'll be there Thursday evening and I'll be speaking there about building a world class culture as well as pay for performance. So make sure that you are there for that. Last thing is some cool things we've been working on here is for the franchisees. We are now we've set up a call center that's going to be live in November when the first 10 franchisees start. So that way if they miss a call, it'll actually get forwarded directly to our call center and we can set up their appointment, take payment, etc. And it's pay as you go. So they just pay by the minute of our call center being used, which is great because if you're kind of in that in between zone where you don't need an office person, the calls can get routed directly to the call center. They set everything up for you and you can be out working in the field or on sales calls or doing whatever you need. So really, really awesome there. As well as we've been negotiating some discounts for the franchisees, including this week we got Gravely to give us a discount 15 to 18% off of all Gravely products for franchisees of Augusta Lawn Care. I'm really excited about that. As we grow and get more franchisees, being able to add more and more of those discounts to make it just an absolute slam dunk. And it's really, really a good deal for the franchisees. So looking forward to that. But today, we're talking about the four things you need to do to. To take full advantage of this fall season. Whether it be cleanups, whether it be trimming, leaf cleanups, et cetera. We're going into that season right now. What do you need to do? The first thing is keeping the pedal to the metal. All right? It's so easy to get lax right now. A lot of our mowing seasons are starting to slow down as we go into October and November. And it's easy to be like, okay, it's almost the end of the year. You know, Christmas is starting to come around. And it seems like every single year, earlier and earlier. You know, the malls and retailers are reminding us that Christmas is around the corner. And so it literally seems like the end of the year is almost here. When literally the next three months, October, November, December could be some of your most profitable months. If you keep the pedal to the metal, you keep accelerating. You keep marketing, you keep sending out monthly newsletters. You keep putting door hangers out. Don't coast through the end of the year. The big mistake I see with landscapers is as we go into October, mowing starts to slow down, and they just wind down their business. They go on a couple vacations. They kind of getting ready for Christmas. Thanksgiving comes in, it's like, basically, they're done for the year. And so don't do that. Keep the pedal to the metal. Keep accelerating, Keep growing the business into the end. It's a mindset thing that I'm talking about here, not so much a tactical thing mindset. This is not the end of the year. You still have 25% of the year left. October, November, December. Keep the pedal to the metal. Number two is book out your big projects after the mowing season is done. So right now, you should be focusing on the things that are more immediate. People want leaves cleaned up right away. They aren't gonna wait three or four weeks. So what I recommend you do is during the next several weeks or whenever your season is coming up here, where you're doing leaf cleanups and trimmings and fall cleanups.

You'Re not gonna be able to push those things off and keep business and keep the customer, you're gonna need to do those things immediately, within a week or two of them asking you. So when you get other projects, book those far out. So if you do fall cleanups throughout all of November, book any projects that you get, like pavers or wall projects. Book those for December. Book them next spring for all I care. Like Just get the money that is time sensitive, that is the fall cleanups and the low hanging fruit. Try to book the projects in the winter when you slow down, maybe depending on where you are in the country and your seasons. But try to book those projects for after the fall rush of cleanups, leaves, storms, stuff like that. So try to book those projects out later so you can focus on the immediate need of customers that are not going to wait three, four weeks for a cleanup or leaf removal. Number three is test creative revenue streams for your winter season. So if you're not in plowing and you struggle throughout the winter to create work, this next couple months is a great time. When you still have mowing, you still have customers calling you to start getting creative about different revenue streams that you could offer and testing different services. Maybe you focus on pressure washing, Maybe you focus on tree cleanup and storm cleanup. Maybe you focus on bush trimming. Try to figure out a type of service that you can keep busy over the winter and start testing it out now in the fall so that you can kind of play at what works, what's the response rate, how many of your customers in your existing database respond to an email about that service. Start playing with so that you can get creative with those ways during the winter. If you're a one man operation, maybe one or two employees, you can get really creative. For example, you can. You know, I've seen companies build playground sets during the winter, sell them throughout the summer, but it keeps their crew busy during the winter and keeps them busy and they actually make money. They profit from that. I've seen other companies that are smaller be able to really diversify and do some of those kind of specialized stuff. Larger companies that have lots of employees, you might have to add a new service. You might have to think about doing pressure washing or tree trimming or bush trimming or storm cleanup and following storms and really working a bunch of overtime when you get a storm in your area, depending on your market. So these are all things you can start testing now in October and November so that come December, January, you already have that service ready. You have the system down for estimating solid profit margins, you know exactly what it takes and you can roll with the winter and have those projects ready to roll. The fourth thing is you should use fall cleanups as the lead generation tool for next season. So a lot of people right now, it's like, okay, it's the end of the year. Like, whatever I can get in terms of revenue, I'm good. Like, it's bonus. It's a cherry on top of the year we've kind of passed through our mowing season. How you want to look at it is all the leads that you're getting for fall cleanups. Because you're gonna get a bunch. If you have a storm in the next few weeks and a whole bunch of leaves fall down, you're gonna get a whole bunch of leads coming in for fall cleanups. Use these leads. The way you should be thinking about this is all these leads you're getting is really a lead generation tool for next season. All the people that are contacting you right now for fall cleanups, you want them for mowing next spring. So as you're getting all these leads, don't just be like, oh yeah, fall cleanup one and done. Like great, that was a cherry on top for this year. You know, extra money in the bank. Woohoo. Look at this as like, I can market my services now for fall cleanups. Get them into my database so that next spring I can pitch them on recurring services like mowing or spring cleanups, or mulch or flower installation and get them for the entire 2020 or next year's season's services. So don't look at fall services and the amount of the influx of leads you're going to get the next couple months as a one and done. A one stop for your customer. One service, one project, they're done. Look at this as a way to market to them, capture them. Maybe your customer acquisition cost isn't the best best because you're only gonna get one fall cleanup out of them. Maybe your lifetime value of that customer seems like it's small. But don't look at it as a one and done. Look at it as a way to generate leads. Because everyone needs cleanups during this time of year. A lead generation tool to then convert clients into recurring services next spring. That's how you wanna look at it. So what are the four tips? Number one, keep your mindset of accelerating to the end of the year. Don't just lax off cruise control, just glide into the rest of the year. You got October, November and December to accelerate. Keep the pedal to the metal. Number two is book out big projects later in the year so that you can focus on the immediate needs of the customer, which is cleanups, leaf cleanup, trimming of bushes, whatever it is in your market for the next couple months. They're gonna want those services right away. Whereas big projects like retaining walls and paver patios can be scheduled out five, six weeks from now, when those fall cleanups are no longer people aren't ringing. Your phone isn't ringing off the hook for those immediate cleanup services. Number three is test creative revenue streams for the winter and number four is that you need to look at these fall cleanups and all the leads you're getting as a way to generate leads and then convert those customers into recurring paying customers next spring. So don't look at it in isolation in terms of just a one time cleanup this year. So I hope those four things helped you. I really do look forward to this next quarter. Again 25% of the year is still on the books. Like you got a lot of time left. This is what is going to separate your business from hitting your goals or falling just short of them is if you're gonna keep accelerating and keep on the offense throughout the next the last quarter. Q4 is important. I feel it's the differentiator in terms of your profitability is how you perform in Q4. So I wish you all the best until next time. Be great cause nothing else pays.