Friday NIGHT at the Office - Q&A Landscape Business Marketing

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Hey everybody. Mike Andes here, landscapebusinesscourse.com we're going to do some live Q and A. It's Friday evening here and I am at command center just here in the office. So I figured I would go ahead and answer some questions because on our last couple videos I haven't really get to Q and A. So feel free to go ahead and post your comment or question in the chat box and we will go ahead and pound through as many of these as we possibly can. Brandon, Matthew, Ken, Paul, Jeffrey, welcome. Thanks for hopping on tonight. Nothing like a Friday night to dock some some business.

Hey, Dean, how's it going? Dean, I've been watching your videos. I didn't watch this week's yet, but those are cool. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Diego, how's the California franchise going? He just got started. Forest is killing it. He's going to be a force of nature. He actually owned a a metal fabrication company before. She's actually trying to work on a really cool bed system similar to the ramp rack. But it's going to have a dump ability to have a dump insert in as well. I told him he has to keep it under $5,000 though if it's going to be of any value to anyone. So he's working on it. He thinks he can do it. All right, let's see here. Lawn care monster from Mansville, Kentucky. Matthew, what's up brother? I could just talk to our mad smoke Kentucky franchise yesterday. Matthew, do you know Anthony and Zach? Okay, Mark. Hello Mike. Hope things will clean green lawn care. What are you looking for in a potential franchisee? What? Red flag steer. Well, okay, I got a question. They're kind of coming in one second here. What would here. What are you looking for in a potential franchisee? What? Red flags tend to steer you away from a person. For me, red flags are going to be mostly if they they're speaking bad out their employees, number one. Number two, if they just want to stay small, I usually push them away. It's only about one out of six or seven. I think it was last month. At least one out of six or seven of my calls actually go to a second call because usually I am encouraging them to start their own thing, start their own lawn care business. They don't need Augusta. If you're trying to stay small, it's not the right thing for us. But in terms of red flags. In terms of red flags it is definitely going to be if they're speaking bad their, their employees and things like that. Red flags too. If they're completely unexperienced with business whatsoever is also red flag because it's difficult. Based in Benton, Larry. Based in Benton, Arkansas. And I see your Bryant, Arkansas location every now and then. That's crazy. I just got off the phone with Dave. Doing good, John. Hey, Mike. How do you determine if a market is oversaturated with other lawn and landscape providers or does competition even factor in much? You know, it's really funny is it's like when you're driving down the street and you see landscapers all over the place. But then today we, I went and got a whole bunch of Red Bulls and then I got a whole bunch of ice cream sandwiches and we literally were trying to drive around in an, you know, I took off my uniform and everything and we're just going to hand out like, you know, ice cream sandwiches and Red Bull drinks to like guys on like a hot Friday afternoon and literally could not find hardly anybody. We ended up actually taking a whole bunch to the local dealership, the lawn care dealership, and just handing them all out there. There were landscapers there, but it was good. In terms of how do I determine if a market is oversaturated? Honestly, I don't feel like you can get oversaturated really because if there's a whole bunch of competition, it really just means there's a large demand for the service. And if I'm looking at going into a market, I am actually really happy when there's a lot of providers. What I'm looking for is a under saturation online, because if there's an under saturation online, it means I can get great SEO. My website can rank really, really fast. So for example, because Larry was the question before, he's in Benton, Arkansas and Bryant, Arkansas in Saline county, we have a franchisee there. And because that market was so under saturated with people online doing a good job with lawn care. Within about 48 hours of his website being up for Augusta Lawn Care, he was ranking number one on Google. That's very, very, very rare. But it's the type of thing I'm looking for when I'm looking at a market is I don't really care about how oversaturated how many competitors there are. My concern is how many of them are online doing a good job with SEO, doing a good job with their website because that's really what is going to be determined of whether or not my cus I get customers from that or not. I'm actually, I really love the markets where there is like hundreds. I see Landscapers all over the place. But I go online, I can only find one or two. That's opportunity. That's. That's a really good market. In my opinion, this week is being a bum. Dean, I didn't watch your most recent video. I saw it was something negative. So hopefully your employees are sticking with you. And Dino, how do you charge mobile home park since they're so small? We have a minimum charge, so that's what I would stick to. If you have a certain amount of square foot, you say, hey, look, anything under 5,000 square feet is a certain price or whatever it might be, minimum charge per cut, I would say just implement that.

Chase dying from not being able to hire. What's the best advice for times like these? Listen to my last video about the labor shortage Chase. I talk a lot about what to do until the labor shortage begins to get better, which I feel potentially knock on wood. Fingers crossed. We'll get better in September once the unemployment boost is up. However, until then, you should really probably buckle down with what you got, raise your prices, increase your margins, maximize efficiency and not be spending a whole bunch of money on indeed ads and Facebook ads. And you're getting bad hires and you're spending your time and wasting your time with people who don't show up for interviews and things like that. So I would buckle down for now. Unless again, we're assuming that you can't find people that you. We're assuming that when you put out ads, you don't get anyone showing up. If you can double down and go, go grow. But I would definitely otherwise lock down with what you got. Maximize the profit from now until the end of either September when it gets better or maybe even next spring, so that when you come to next spring, you have the capital to actually deploy against growth. Double brusky. Do you think you need to have passion for lawn care in order to be successful in this business? Well, I do not have passion for lawn care as much as for the business owners themselves, so that could be an inclination of my answer, but I don't think so. I think lawn care landscape is a great industry to learn business in general. And so you might be passionate about a completely different industry altogether, but the fundamentals of business don't change. So if you can learn how to market, how to hire, how to have meetings with a team, how to figure out your website and all the rest of that, how to sell, how to upsell, all of those skills will translate to any industry. And whether you know you're passionate about sports or some down the road. You can start business around what you're passionate about but learning those skills. I think lawn care, landscape is a great industry for that to get started with. Roberto Martinez. How are you, Mike? Roberto from New Jersey. Elegance, lawn and land and garden care. Should I get a dump truck or dump trailer? What are your thoughts? Good question. I like the trailer. It's more versatile because I can use it for a bunch of different stuff. I can transport materials, I can transport equipment. If I'm behind on a mowing crew, I could potentially take it out for a mowing trailer as well. I really like dump trailers for debris. It's a lot faster and traditionally I can carry more weight on a double axle trailer than I would dollar costing average for a dump truck. So what I mean by that for example is I can get a $15,000 truck, maybe a half ton or a three quarter ton or a one ton truck along with say a seven, $8,000 dump trailer. So now I'm looking at let's say $25,000 all in for a good setup for a dump trailer. Whereas if I can get a dump truck, I could be spending 30 or $40,000 just to get in the door. And my bigger concern is all that weight is over the chassis of the vehicle and where all the motor and all the internal components are. And there's a lot more wear and tear on a very heavy, a very expensive piece of equipment. It's on my, you know, 30, $40,000 dump truck is all that weight and all that wear and tear versus just a simple, you know, chassis of a dump trailer which is just metal. And two, you know, whatever they're called the axles. Sorry it's getting a little late. Methodical cuts. Matthew Gordon. What's up? Hey. Yes, I do really good friend with them. I am one, I'm the one he talked to you about joining them. Oh really cool. Matthew, you should reach out to me if after you've talked to them. I talked to them last night, so that's awesome. I'd love for you to get on board with them. They're just awesome people.

Gabe, when if at all do you think you'll switch to battery operated fleets Provides customer with a unique value prop that I think is becoming more appealing. Yeah Gabe, at the end of the day I've talked to several providers that have done this and test this extensively across the country and to based upon what we're seeing, 95% of people are not willing to pay one penny more for electric operated equipment versus gas so at the end of the day, if the customer doesn't care and is not willing to pay more for it, it's going to take a while for it to actually become mainstream. Right. In terms of my. I agree with you. There is people who see it as a value proposition and it is increasing in value proposition. Especially when it comes to commercial work, especially when it comes to hospitals. When it comes to corporate headquarters, they want quiet, they don't want all that noise. That being said, the traditional customer, residential client is not willing to, they're not willing to pay for it. Right? So it's like you go into a restaurant and they're, you know, they're coming out and they're, you know, washing your hands with, before the meal with like some golden water. That's like $500 a gallon. Like you could really care less. Like, I just want to eat, I'm here to eat. At the point, at this point, battery operated equipment is that equivalent. People are not willing to pay more for that kind of upgrade of service. But you're right, it's trending in that direction. I think there is absolutely value.

If you're trying to go after city work, for example, which usually is low margin, I'm usually not a fan of. However, if you are going after the type of work they.