From $0 to $1M Landscaping Business | 4 Tips to Double Your Profits!

Hey everyone, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. And today we are going to be talking about how you can make more money on your landscaping projects. So we do lawn care, we do mowing, but we do projects like this as well. I'm gonna give you four different things that you can do today in your landscaping business to make sure you make more money on projects like this. Alright? We're gonna start with number one, and that is making sure that these projects are simple and systems oriented. We don't do massive 50,000, $100,000 projects. We focus on simple projects that we can usually do in a few days and projects like this one. This job here was a 64 budget hour job. We got done a few days with a couple people and we're actually, I'm going to try calling Ben, who is the gentleman with the hat that is in the video. We're going to try to call him right now, live and see if we can get him on the phone and talk about what he learned about on this job. But first of all, let's just take a step back and realize that we only tackle very simple, simple, simple projects. You saw in a couple videos ago that we don't do big 3D designs, we don't do massive blueprints for what projects we're doing. We focus on, hey, we're going to give you a free sketch of your project. If you want anything beyond that, you're going to have to go get an architect or you're going to have to go get a landscape designer to figure out that plan for you and then we can install it. But in terms of us doing a free estimate, we're not going to give a 3D design and spend a whole bunch of time with. We want to shorten the sales process and keep it simple. We want to use the same type of plants and materials on a lot of our jobs. So that way our crew gets really, really efficient at installing those products and those plants and they understand how to do it very efficiently. All right, so simple and very, very like just strip out all the complexity. We don't want to have to use massive pieces of equipment. Then we have to get more skilled laborers that know how to use big pieces of machinery and excavators. And we don't install pools and do artificial turf and fountains and ponds. We, we try to keep it as simple as possible. Now you might be in one of those more niche areas of hardscaping where you're doing patios or walls or you are doing water features, that's fine, but how can you simplify it? How can you focus on only a couple different types of templates of water features or certain types and designs of paver patios to make it as efficient as possible to sell these jobs and to be efficient at the labor when you install them. Alright. The second thing when it comes to these projects that you want to make sure, you know, to make more money on the job is the fact that these jobs are fluid. They change from the start to the finish. There's work change orders. That's the second thing. Work change orders is very important to manage these. Because a client, they change their mind, they decide, you know what, I want more plants or you know what, can we extend this out a few more feet? Can I go ahead and get a bigger tree? Can we take out another few feet off of the side of the house, Extend this Like all of those things are work change orders. And how that needs to work is you need to have in writing what the price change is going to be and what those changes are. Do not just get started on a project like this where almost always by 80% of the time there's going to be some change that the client has to the project. You want to make sure you have it documented exactly what that price difference is going to be and what changes are going to be made. Spell out how many more plants you're going to add, spell out exactly what needs to be changed on the original estimate and have it sent to the client. And have them accept it verbally is not enough. Them just saying, oh yeah, no problem, just add it to the bill. Well, what if it's $1,000? And then when you invoice them like, oh, I thought that was only gonna be like 50 bucks. You've gotta have it in writing, you've gotta make sure it's documented and that the client has accepted this proposal prior to you invoicing them. Let's go ahead and give Ben a call though. Cause I want to actually ask him if he learned anything on this job or if there were any work change orders. Cause I've seen this project just from the design element and we do simple sketches, but I haven't seen the end product and I want to know was there any changes on this job. Work change orders throughout the job. Let's go ahead and give Ben a call, see if he picks up. He's actually out mowing the day, so I hope he picks up here. Let's see here, Ben, give him a call. Ben, Lender.

Hello.

Hey, Ben, how's it going? This is Mike.

How's it going?

Good, good. So we're just watching the video of the project that you did with Cat over the past few days, and I was wondering if there's anything specific that the client kind of changed throughout the project. Were there any work change orders or was it pretty much exactly the way that we had it designed to be?

Pretty much everything that Marcus estimated and the beautiful aerial map that he hand drew became a reality on the project. So no work order changes. Pretty much all of the materials were very spot on. And I believe we even beat budgeted time just by a little bit. So I'd say that everything that was projected to happen on the job happened flawlessly for that job.

And in terms of like, just because I know, I think I was looking at it and there were 64 budget hours and you got it done in 56. Was there any specific things that you did kind of being the project manager to make that go more efficiently, either like transporting materials or equipment or anything that you did to make that happen and beat budgeted hours?

So we weren't scheduled to particularly have the skid steer for that particular job. However, in Marcus's video, he did suggest to have one. So the first thing that I did, after reviewing all the things, the day before we started, I asked our manager, Lee, if we could take a loader for that day and just like kept in touch with him to see whether we could have it. And fortunately, we were able to have it throughout the entire job. So that really, really boosted our efficiency as far as.

Getting the sod out, getting all the rocks down on site and doing it like that. If we were on a smaller job, I would have probably just said to do it by hand, because every single time.

You'Re breaking into a car or something.

Ben?

Nope. Just had a major hoa doing a nice routine maintenance. But.

As far as efficiency goes, that was the main big advantage is having heavy equipment on site for the majority of it so that we wouldn't have to be wheelbarrowing all of the cobbles and all of the river rock to the site.

And what was the logic. What was the logic on watering down the rocks afterwards once you've installed them? I see right now you're kind of using a hose and spraying them all down. Why exactly are you doing that?

Yeah, so when you get rock materials from anywhere that supplies it, it's always covered in dust, unless it is clear crushed. That means that they take all of the dust and little Bits of rock out of it. So the reason why I was doing that was so that when I got the client out, it looked as beautiful as possible instead of all covered in dust so that he could see exactly how colorful all of the rocks are at the end of the day. So that it looks as if it was just freshly rained on and. Or just, you know, to be much more aesthetically pleasing.

Cool. I know, I know it's Friday and you gotta get stuff done, but I have one more question. You've done a lot of jobs similar to this one, but this was the first time that I think Kat was on a project like this. I know you were teaching her a lot about the skid steer, how to use that. What would you say to someone that has done lawn care for a long time out in the field, but they're kind of switching over to landscaping? Is there any sort of like tips or even just a mindset that's a little different on a project like this versus where you're just going from lawn to lawn and mowing?

Yes. I think one of the biggest things is after each step, or depending on how big that step is, always stop and review exactly what you did and what the next step could be. Because something can happen on site, it could change and you might need to do something differently going forward. So it's always good to take a step back, review the big picture of each process that you're doing on the site so that you can determine what to do next. Sometimes that is like we need to get materials. Right. The second or sometimes it's like we need to hold off so that we can really work on this, that or the other as far as the job notes go.

Awesome. I appreciate it, Ben. I'll let you go. I really appreciate it though.

Take care, brother. Alright, bye. Bye.

So the third thing that you can do to make sure you make more money on these jobs is collect a deposit before the job starts. One of the hardest parts about these jobs, you got to buy materials, you got equipment rental perhaps, and that all costs money. From a cash flow perspective, we want to make sure we get at least 50% up of the money before we start the project. And I order materials and I get labors there and I get rental of equipment. That's a lot of money going into this job. I don't want to wait till the end of the project to collect the money. I want at least 50% of the job before we get started on the job so I can pay for the materials, pay for the labor, and the rental of equipment without my own money, but rather using the customer's money. And guess what? You'll get better customers if you require that upfront deposit because they're more committed to the job and the and they won't flake out on you at last minute, or worse, have you install the project and then try to get around the fact that they have to pay you. The fourth and final thing that you can do to make more money on these types of jobs is make sure that your scheduling is efficient. So when it comes to these landscape printing projects, if you use budgeted hours, you're able to accurately predict far out into the future, exactly what your schedule's going to be. For example, a 64 hour budgeted project like this one with two people we know right off the bat, that's gonna take four days. Cause 16 hours plus 16 hours plus 16 hours plus 16 Hours, that's four days each day having eight hours of two people, 16 budget hours each day is 64 hours. So they were scheduled to be here for four days, two people. The last day they knew they were gonna finish early. So just Ben went back to the project. What this allows you to do is book out way out into the future, but know exactly what day you going to be getting on a client's property. So if they ask you, hey, we want to get on the schedule, when are you going to be able to serve our property? You're going to know exactly what day because you're using budget hours to schedule the projects and schedule them tight and efficiently on the calendar. I hope that was helpful and I hope that you can make some more money on these type of landscaping projects. I'm Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com, we'll see you tomorrow.