GROW YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS NOW! [massive opportunity]

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. Welcome to another live show here. And today we're going to be talking about the recession as we head into it and whether or not you should be growing your business or if you should just be focusing on profitability, stacking cash aside. And what is that balance? Because ultimately we know that if we're going to a recession, we're going to be able to buy things for pennies on the dollar in just a matter of six to 12 months. And so the question is, well, do I save up cash right now or do I grow and expand my business? Because leads are coming in. So we're gonna talk about that. Before we do, though, a quick couple announcements. First off, thank everyone who supported the channel. 45,000 subscribers. We just passed yesterday. Little bit of a milestone. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate that. And yesterday actually sent out our first members club email. And in that I had talked about several things that are somewhat new. We're hiring another person for the media team here. And so thank you all for your support channel. Everything that you all give, whether it be landscape, business course members, lawn care, web design members, just all different products and things. Links are in the description. And everyone that has ever been a customer or paid for anything of my services or products, I put on a new newsletter and yesterday we sent our first one out. And on there I had a few articles of things that I've written and then also some things that in the economy that I think are coming up. And that leads me into today's topic about the recession that is in, in my opinion, already happening, going to really affect mainstream over the next six to 12, 18 months. And so one of the things that I linked to was a video about car repossessions. And when you look at things that are more liquid, the more liquid something is, the faster it can move with the economy. So things that are more liquid are going to be things like cash, they're going to be things like credit cards, bank. The stock market is relatively liquid. And then you look at things that are less liquid, like cars, like it's harder to buy a car and sell a car. You can't do it like in 10 seconds like you can on in Robinhood when you're trading an app, trading a stock. And then you look at real estate, takes a lot longer for that to change and evolve. Then you look at things like employment, they also take a long time to evolve. So when you look at indicators of where the economy is at, I think the things that are the things that have shown the first cracks over the past six to 12 months that I've been looking at is things like consumer demand, really looking at how much people are using their credit cards, etc. The consumer spending. But now what's really, really interesting is you look at the car market, there's a lot more repossessions now happening than ever before in the past few years. Even in 2017, 18, 19, like, there was not a lot of car repossessions. The stock market was doing well, especially after 2018. The real estate market's been going up for the past 14 years. Everything's been going really, really well. But right now, there are definitely cracks in our economy. And a few of those things are starting to go beyond just credit cards, beyond just cash. The stock market is down like 20, 30% on all the indices. And beyond, if you're in more speculative stocks, 50, 60, 70% down in many cases. And now we're starting to see in things that are less liquid, things like your cars. So high repossession rate happening right now. And this is my opinion, people have bought cars during 2020 and 2021, whether they used PPP loans that they shouldn't have, whether they use stimulus money, whether they use what they would have otherwise been spending on their rent or their college debt. And now they were buying brand new vehicles and brand new trucks and cars. And all of a sudden, anything that is a bubble eventually pops. And so this is why when people are like, oh, the used cars and trucks are so expensive right now, I'm like, look, it's a bubble. It will pop. And it's easy in the moment to be like, oh, this is never gonna change. Like, real estate prices will never come down. Stocks will only go up. Like, it's very easy in the moment to get wrapped up in the fact that things are only gonna continue to get bigger and bigger and the bubble just gonna continue. But, like, it doesn't. And so this is why last October I said I was selling out of the stock market is cause I felt like, hey, we're getting too much bubble territory here. And then I looked at the real estate market being like, it's probably gonna get hurt too. However, rents are gonna continue to rise over the next 12 to 24 months. So I talked about that in October. And now what I'm seeing with credit cards being used less and the people who are traveling are the ones with money. So again, the most insulated group is gonna be with wealth. That's great, but still gonna have a massive impact on our economy, especially frontline employees. When the lower and middle class really starts to get hit very hard by rising interest rates as well as cost of energy and fuel going through the roof, rent is gonna just continue, continue to go up like crazy. Just like I talked about last year. Rents are going to go, keep going up because as interest rates go up, it's going to affect the buying power to buy new houses. But it's also going to make it more unaffordable to buy a house, which therefore is make rents go up. Because people are going to bail out of buying a house and they're just going to go and rent. And then also as you have unemployment go up, people are less likely to buy houses, they're more likely to rent. So all of that to be to say that we are going into recession. I've talked about this very consistently. But now the question is what when it comes to your business, should you grow your business right now or should you just focus on increasing your margins, focus on increasing your efficiency, take whatever trucks or equipment that you have now and make it as efficient as you possibly can and then next year grow or potentially just wait until next, till the bottom of the recession. Wait until there is things going for pennies on the dollar. Wait till the cost of trucks does go back down and the cost of land and real estate does go back down. When do you grow your business is the question. So yesterday this was kind of sparked by one of our franchisees. His name's Thomas, and he had texted me and he said, hey, like, we got tons of leads coming in. We've gotten 10 new mowing customers in the past two days. I think he said, and that's just over the phone estimates. People call in a command center, command center sells the job on the phone. They set up the job for the franchisee. And you know, he had like, we've gotten like tons of these coming in and we've already maxed out the few trucks employees that we do have. And, and this is their first spring rush. And so there's two owners, I think two or three employees already. He's like, well, we could easily get another two trucks and another two or three employees because, like, we got tons of work, we're booked out, we're already falling behind with just the mowing jobs. And so we have a couple big hoas that we also take care of and they're really lucrative. We already raised the price and like, those are really high price, high margin. So we don't like cut those out. So the question is like, well, do we continue growing in 2022 or do we. Do we take what we have, increase prices, just make it really, really efficient, turn off all of our estimates, turn off all our leads and then just grow, you know, next spring rush. In my opinion, spring rush next year is going to be a golden opportunity for anyone that just stays in business this winter, I've said it the last few months, we're going to see a record number of landscape companies that are for sale and that go out of business. You're going to see it all over the place. Just wait for Craigslist to have like five landscaping companies in your local area that are for sale. People are not going to see any profit in their businesses this year. If they have run them unprofit profitably in the past, it's going to be like, if they've run them on thin margins, like 5, 10, 15% or without systems this past year, they have a few employees, they're. They're not going to want to be in business. And so I. You're going to see a record number of people going out of business this coming winter. And so going to next spring is going to be a massive opportunity. In my opinion. You're going to have just a massive opportunity if you can just stay in business. And when the unemployment rate is higher next spring, spring compared to now, right now it's like three something. When that becomes four and a half or five or five and a half next spring, it's gonna be easier to hire people, easier expand and grow when you have a bunch of competition that doesn't show up to their first few cuts because they went out of business over the winter. Massive amount of opportunity. And this is just for long care and landscape. But every industry is gonna see this. And so.

Those are great opportunities. And furthermore, trucks, equipment, everything's gonna actually be in stock hopefully by then when the supply chain catches up and things are not. People are not price gouging you because there's nothing to sell. I went to a Honda dealership the other day to get something fixed to my car. And literally the entire car lot had maybe 15 cars. And it usually has about 400. Like, it's a massive car. It's completely empty. That's not gonna be the case in a year. It's just not. And again, everyone always, like, goes into this thing of like, oh, no, like, it's always gonna be like that. We have in the supply chain and then like, you know, shutdowns over in China. Like, it's like, no, in a year that's going to change is going to be different. And so the one side of the, of the, of the thought process, like, well, then we'll just, we'll wait till then. We can buy trucks for, you know, 30, 40% less. And we like, literally the other day on a mastermind for our franchisees, we were talking about repairs. In the past, if a truck had like a two or $3,000 repair, I literally scrap it and just go buy another one. Because we were buying trucks for like 3, 4, 5, 6,000. I did not. Prior to 2019, 2020, I never spent more than $8,000 on any truck for Augusta. Longer ever. Well, now you can't buy for anything half decent for under 15,000. And so yesterday we were talking our mastermind, and it's like $7,000 someone just spent for a new engine. I just spent $6,000 on a new engine at a location. Like, it's, it's all of a sudden worth it to spend $6,000, $7,000 a new engine compared to go buy another truck. That's ridiculous. That's crazy. That's not going to happen forever. So the one thought process, like, well, then just wait till next spring rush. Wait till there's. It's easy to find employees, trucks and equipment are cheaper, and go get some land maybe to buy from my shop space or my storage space, way cheaper, rent's going to be cheaper. And all that potentially could be true. However, this is the deciding line, in my opinion. Do you keep growing your business now or do you wait till next spring rush? Wait till the recession's in its full swing. Because we're going into it right now. Like, when you're really in a recession in, like, peak fear of recession, when the best prices are going to be there, when the unemployment is the highest, when there's the best opportunities, when you really want to go all in is when mainstream media starts picking up massively. When you start seeing, like Tucker Carlson saying it with CNN's. It's all over them. Like, when they start seeing stuff. When they start seeing, like, there is a foreclosure crisis. And when they start saying that peak fear, that's when. That's when we'll be there. And I think we're still a couple of months away from that. Honestly, right now, the only people thinking about recession like I was last year is people looking ahead. Now only people thinking about recession is, like, investors, business owners, people who are investing in the stock market. That's who's thinking about Recession. CNBC is talking about it. Just you wait until it starts hitting mainstream media and the people that are watching on their couch every single night, that's when peak fear will happen. And so that potentially a great time to grow your business next spring, this winter, for example. Well, this is my opinion and this is what I told our franchisee that was asking me whether or not he should grow. I said, look, what I would recommend is only take customers right now that you have a zero customer acquisition cost on ones that are just coming to you for free. In other words, you don't have any marketing on. You're not spending money on Google or Facebook or any sort of ads. You're not spending money on HomeAdvisor. They're coming to you for free. And you're charging the prices that you know you need to in order to make good margins. So a higher premium price. That's the type of growth that I would take now. And then I would be stacking aside all the money that you would otherwise be spending on marketing and advertising and growth right now. Stack that aside for a rainy day. That is when the recession is in full swing. And you can deploy that and get 2 to 3x the amount of return on that money compared to if you spending it now. And that might mean doubling up people in your trucks. Like instead of having solo one guy going on a truck and mowing a lawn or doing fence repair or doing roofing, whatever you do in your business, instead of doing one, maybe you need two people in the truck so that way you can store up the cash so that that $20,000 truck now all of a sudden becomes 12 and $13,000 in a year or two. That is a absolute possibility and a potential. So in my opinion, the only way that you should be growing right now is if leads are coming to you without any marketing. Okay, now if you're going to grow and expand, totally fine. Just realize that you're going to be spending more right now on trucks. Equipment hiring is gonna be harder right now than in six to 10, 12 months. And so what I would say is A, take what you have, make it profitable, raise your prices, and then just focus on stacking cash. Or B, only take leads new customers that are coming without you spending money on marketing. So that way you have no customer acquisition cost. There's no cost to spend to get new customers. They're coming from your website. This is why it's so important. We've talked about getting websites for years. This is why it's important to have a Website, a website that just consistently is pumping in leads. I talked to the franchise yesterday. Like, we turned off all our marketing. Like, legions are coming in. That's what you want. That's when you have a lot of confidence to raise prices and lose 5 or 10% of your customers. When you know you're already getting three, four new customers every single day. Why in the world would you not raise your prices? And why would you not want to lose the 10% of customers are giving the most headache? If you're confident that you're getting free leads, free leads in the form of no additional customer acquisition costs coming in, why would you not want to do that? And so that would be my recommendation to everyone out there right now. Do not be spending massive amounts of money on advertising in the form right now to grow and expand. Especially we're past the spring rush. Your customer acquisition costs gonna be higher anyways. Like, save that money till next spring rush, when you're gonna get twice as much for that money. But ideally, right now, if you're investing anything, you should be investing in sources like a website. You should be invested in things like branding, making sure your trucks are painted, whatever it might be, so that you're getting leads organically. I'd rather pay $3,000 to get my truck painted and decal and all the rest of it, but that brings in leads in perpetuity that I don't have to keep paying on. All right? It's like buying real estate versus renting it. If I'm gonna go rent real estate, I'm gonna pay for every single month. That's what a Google Ad is. That's what a home advisor ad is. That is what a Facebook ad is. You're renting it. Every single time you get a new lead, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for it. You have to pay for it. I'd rather just buy up front and then have the equity of that. Like a real estate deal. You buy it once, and then the money just keeps rolling in. You don't have to keep paying for it all the time in terms of paying rent, like flushing money down the toilet. The same thing goes for owning a really good website, having good branding. That's why you paint your trucks, you put your decals on your trucks. You look professional. Those are all things that have leads in perpetuity. They have a zero customer acquisition cost, aside from the initial upfront cost.

All right?

So that's what I'd be focusing on right now. I would be taking any sort of Leads that are free. Any leads that are coming in. And if you're already to capacity, I'd be doubling up people inside your trucks, trying to prevent having to buy equipment right now, as well as I would be trying to focus on raising prices, weeding out the people that you're not making money on. Because if you're getting free leads coming in, you should be replacing the ones that are the most profitable in your business, cutting out people that are far away in your service area that you're driving to now. And it costs $5 in gas just to get to their, Their, their property every single week. So use this as an opportunity. If you've got leads that are coming in from a great website from a great brand to get, start weeding out other customers. So if you're like, oh, I don't want to buy trucks for till next spring, great. Use this now as a time to take out the bottom 10% by raising prices 20%, that's fine. And then replace those over time from those new leads coming in. You can only grow and expand your prices when you have confidence, you can replace those customers that cancel. And so making sure you have a stream of leads is the most important thing that you're not paying for all the time. People like, oh, Home Advisor is so fantastic. I'm doing Facebook ads. It's so fantastic. Great. But every single time you want to lead, you have to pay for it. And you're at the whim and the mercy of that platform, raising prices, changing the way that they do targeting, and all the rest of it. I'd rather invest in owned real estate, I. E. My, My website, my branding, my trucks being painted and decaled. Those are the type of things that give you leads in perpetuity. You don't pay for it every single time that you have to get a new lead. So that's kind of my two cents for the day. We're gonna be turning over to the callers. First call is from area code 219. You're on the show. Welcome.

Hi, Macandies.

How are you?

Good. How you doing? What's up?

Hey, I'm doing great. So I have a quick question for you. I am currently 18. I do about 50 properties a week. And as you're. As you keep saying, there's. There's definitely a recession coming. And I just want to know, should I be buckling down and preparing? Because my situation is a little bit different than probably most everyone else's in the fact that I'll sell a roof over my head for the next couple years and I don't really have any large expenses. So should I be marketing heavily as the recession comes into play and as more companies around me go belly up, or should I more so lay low and try to ride it out?

Yeah, I don't think we're see a lot of belly up things until this winter because most people hold on through the growing season. What's going to happen is people are going to look at their tax return for 2022 and realize that they would have made more money just going and getting a job. And so that's a real realization for people when they have one or two and three employees and it's been a headache all year and they realize that they made only $20,000 at the end of the year. That's what's going to happen this winter. Right. So the thing is, one, you don't have a lot of fixed expenses because you're able to be, you know, you don't have a lot of family and you don't have a lot of costs. Right. You don't have a house and a cars and all the rest of it. Right. So it's a great time and a macro for your life just to invest in the business. So all of that to say like right now, do you have an employee?

I do not. I'm just solo, set to the point where I can expand, probably double my capacity. I have, you know, commercial equipment and everything, so that equipment isn't a bottleneck. But currently right now, I'm just solo.

Yeah. So I would be trying to invest in things that are not fixed expenses. So instead of buying another truck, another trailer, I'd be looking at things, what are your variable expenses right now that you can increase to grow the business? And that's going to be number one, getting an employee. And then it's a, well, how do I get the employee because I need more work? Well, then it's a matter of do you hire someone? So that way you now have time. Because if you're doing 50 properties a week, you probably don't have a lot of time to actually go do marketing, whether it be knocking on doors, door hangers, fall up on estimates, et cetera. So I'd be really looking at, okay, either A, I'm going to get a website that can start bringing these leads in for me over the next six months, eight months to start to rank well. And then B, I'm going to be looking for a variable cost, which is an employee. So that way I have more time to Follow up on estimates, get the new jobs, do some door hangers around my existing customers and really focus on route density, increasing prices, really doing all of that. Because then what's going to happen if you can double your capacity, then have an employee you can probably almost triple and then it's a matter of stave that money. So that next spring rush you're probably another truck, another one or two employees. Your website by then will be ranking really well. So your leads will be pouring in and then you'll have the cash to decide to invest in fixed assets like the truck, the equipment that's going to be required to be able to actually really expand next spring rush.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so yeah, it suits me.

Yeah, it does, it does. I do recall you saying though in previous episodes and such website isn't necessarily for when you're starting out, which I would qualify myself as that, you know, I'm at large. You said it's more so for like larger companies. So at what point should I consider it a website? Because that's a fixed expense, you know, 400, what was it, a month or something. And that's pretty pricey in my opinion.

So you don't have to start with it's more than like long, long care web design. I've been on record saying like you only want to use lawn careweb design.com if you're going to, if your goal is above 200,000 in revenue, right. In annual revenue, like so if it's not this year, you're not going to do that. But if next year your goal is that I would say you probably spend the $400 a month now you don't need that to get started though. Go use Weebly Squarespace, just get something started and start tracking it so that your domain name starts to rank well. Because even if you're going to use long care web design like in a year or two years at least get your Ur start ranking well, right. So you can, you can go on create like literally for 20, 30 bucks a month get a half decent website, get a domain, all the rest of it and start, start putting stuff on there so you get, start getting some leads. Right. So I would definitely recommend doing that. And then down the road you could always use long care web design.

True, yeah, it makes sense for sure, for sure.

But yeah, I think, I think overall, all right, my big thing is like, you know, try to invest in variable cost right now, which is going to be the employee and then really focusing on maximizing your profits and your Capacity this year and then next year when you need to buy fixed assets. And that's when I feel like you'll really expand and grow. If you start the website now, and those leads will start really starting to pour in next spring rush, and then you'll have the capital to buy fixed expenses, which is going to be the truck, the equipment, all the rest of it. Make sense?

It does.

It does, for sure.

You have a great day. Take care.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time.

Yep. All right, bye.

All right, goodbye.

All right, next question is coming from. It says Branson.

Area code 417. You're up. Go ahead.

Hi, my name is Riley.

I live in Branson. I'm 12 years old, and I have a 36 inch, a mower and a blower.

Right now, I think I have about 10 yards.

And it's all in one week. I was gonna ask you what would you do in that situation? Because I only have about six summers.

Until I have other goals.

So just like advertising and stuff like that.

Yeah. When you say other girls are gonna go to college, like, do something else, is that kind of your plan?

Yeah, I wanted to go to a military college, so I don't think.

Yeah. So, like, I would say, you know, I would say just try. Try to keep really focused on route density and getting more customers without spending a lot of money. Right. Because if you're only gonna do it during summer, you're not trying to make a big business out of this. Your goal should be profit maximization, which is like, I wanna make as much profit on these as possible. I'm not interested in, like, grow, grow, grow, get more customers. Cause I know one day I'm gonna cut ties with this whole business. So I'd be focused on how can you get from 10 to 20. Like, if you're at 10 now, how do you get to 20 customers in the same area that you're currently in? Probably, like your neighborhood? And then how do you take those 20 customers and instead of making, say, $800 a year on them by mowing their lawn, how do you. Instead of 800, you make 2000 on them because you sell them a weeding package, a fertilization package, a bush trimming package, mulch installation, you clean out their gutters. How do you just improve that value per customer you already have sold? That's what my focus would be. Because if you know you're walking away from this business and your goal isn't to make this into a massive company, you shouldn't worry about, like, marketing and advertising. Advertising that's expensive. Like online, you should simply be looking at door hangers, flyers, knocking on doors, because you're not gonna have your license for the next few years, so you can't even drive far. So just stay in that one neighborhood and just really, really make sure every single person knows who you. Who you are and what you do. And then upsell those customers once you get them into other services. Does that make sense?

Yes, sir.

Awesome. You got it, brother. Have a great day.

You too.

Thank you.

Bye. All right, next call is from area code 71 7.

There you go. Cool. Go ahead.

Hey. Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike, this is Ryan. How are you?

Good. How you doing?

Doing good, man. Hey, so you were talking about website. We just had our website.

Done for us, and it literally just went live, like, I guess a couple weeks ago or a week or two ago. And my question to you is, they want us to pay, like, 600 bucks a month to manage this site.

Do you think that's really necessary?

So how much did you pay up front for the site?

It was, like, two grand.

Mercy. Yeah. So, like, you know, obviously you're talking to someone who has a web design company, so obviously I'm gonna be biased. Right. So we've priced ours at 399, and we know that what it costs, just full transparency, it costs us about between 280 and $300 per month to keep a site running. And so what that means is it takes us about six to 12 months just to recoup the cost of the initial build. So what a lot of people will do, they'll charge that 2000, 3000, $4000 on the initial build so they can cover their costs. And then they'll. They'll raise the price, like the 600 for that. That recurring. We've just done the 399. There's no contract. And yes, we do get people that, like, will cancel after one or two months, and they'll rip off our design. It's. It's very, very frustrating. But $600 is a little bit steep if. Especially because you've already paid two grand. Like, in my mind, two grand should get you a half decent, like, okay website. And. But it's probably gonna be stale, and they're not gonna update it. So, like, my next question is, what are they doing for the 600 every month?

To be honest, man, I'm not exactly sure my wife handled that whole process. I think it's basically just, like, keep it updated every. You know, with the seasons. Like, if we're doing leaf removal. They'll change, like, the pictures and that type of stuff. And I'm sure there's other things, like, like analytics.

Do you mind if I look at.

They're going to be handling it.

Do you mind if I take a look at your site?

It's. No, go for it. It's lionscape lawn.com Lion.

Like, I like lying in the. In the. In Africa.

The animal. Yeah. L, I, O, N S C A P E L A W N.

Dot com.

Got it. Okay. Lion. Scape lawn. Okay, let's pull this bad boy up. This looks cool. Let's go. This is built on WordPress. Okay. Boom. Let me share my screen. I love doing this. This is so much fun. Okay, here we go. Yeah, this site looks cool. Oh, no, they did the worst thing that I always hate. They didn't put you on here. Where's your. Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, so. So this is.

Well, no, if you go to the. If you go to the About Us tab and you click that, it. There is a little blog on me and my family.

Okay, cool. I'm just looking at about us.

Oh, cool. Let's go. There's your family. Let's go. Five kids, man. I'll keep you busy. All right.

Yeah, cool.

No, this site looks good. I think it's the only thing. Oh, I love these. These are great. These are fantastic. I love these before and after sliders. Those are cool. I think the only thing is I say this pretty consistently on most. Most. Most sites, honestly. And that is. This is an easy fix. And that is just try to make sure that, like, this background image on your homepage and as much as possible, shows your trucks, your trailers, your uniforms, because that is your brand, right? Like Lionscape Lawn Land. I love the logo, love the name. I actually really like the site. Designs really well, too. It's just a matter of, like, all these pictures of lawns and mowers. Could be any landscaping or lawn care company in the world. In fact, I know this image right here is a stock image because I've used it in one of my thumbnails. So. So. So just. Just keep that in mind. Like, that the fact that your brand, which is strong, in my opinion, in terms of your logo, should be all over this. These pictures, like your uniforms, your trucks, et cetera. But aside from that, because this is a good site. Like, they did a good job. My question is, do you. They. Do you have to pay the $600 per month? Is that like some sort of a contract or is that like, just no.

No, no, we do not have to. No.

Oh, that's cool. Like if you did nothing would, would they let you keep the site?

Yeah, yeah, they just won't manage it.

Yeah, that's the challenging part because a lot of times what will happen is these companies will do this. They'll say, hey, you don't have to pay anything and you can keep the site. But then when you want to make any changes, it's like, oh, well, then you've got to keep paying us from all this time that's gone by because that's part of the package. Right. So I would just try to get clarity from them. Like, hey, if I want to make annual changes, do I have to keep paying? Right. Like long career web design. We've kind of figured, hey, we know that $399 what we got to charge for unlimited changes because people add pictures or video like you said, like a seasonal basis or they, they want to add a different service to their company or whatever it might be. We recently added something similar to this where it brings in their, their reviews. And so site's not bad. I think it's a matter of asking, what are you getting for that? 6, 600 bucks. And if you could possibly make it where it's like, hey, if I pay you $1,000 at the end of the year and you make changes once a year, like, is that going to cost me something? It is nice to have consistently having new banners, different pictures based on the seasons, et cetera. And so I am a big believer in having unlimited changes. 600 is a little bit steep, but the site's good. I just wish you would have, wouldn't have to pay the upfront two grand. But it's a good looking site. I think they did a really nice job, honestly.

Well, thank you. Thank you. All right, well, yeah, thanks for that. And then my second question would be SEO services, is that something that you would Recommend?

So for $600 a month, I hope they're doing SEO for you. Like we do SEO for 399. So there are some companies though that will try to sell SEO is like, they sell it. The reason they able to sell it is because, no, not most landscaping home improvement businesses don't understand SEO a lot. They think it's like a job to do SEO there. You can do a lot. You can do 99% of SEO that companies will charge $1500, $2000 a month for. You can do that in a matter of a few hours a month. And that's what we do at Lawn Care Web Design. And so this is a matter of looking at all of the backlinks, is looking a matter of looking at your titles and where you're ranking on certain things. Like, all the SEO management stuff is probably what they're gonna be trying to tell you for the $600. And you do need SEO management, but you just don't need to be paying thousands of dollars a month for it. We had someone join Lawn Care Web Design, and they were paying $1,200 a month just for the SEO, not including the web design. So just don't go down that path. But if they're charging you $600 a month, I sure hope in the world that that's including your SEO management.

Is it okay?

Okay. Honestly, I don't think so. But like I said, my wife, she kind of handled that whole thing.

Yeah.

So I'm not exactly sure.

Honestly, I don't want to badmouth them because I think they did actually do a really good job on the site. I think just being really clear about what's included in terms of changes. And then is the $600 just for design or does it include SEO? And those are usually sold as two different things. So for anyone out there looking for a designer or someone to build their site, like most companies will sell SEO separate as an additional item to design. We at Longer Web Design, we combine it all together and we do SEO for the 399. But you just got to make sure that someone will usually. Someone will usually sell you a design up front, and then they'll say, oh, by the way, you need SEO. And so here's this monthly, because you do kind of need someone to manage the SEO. You need someone to make sure things are updated every time Google updates their. Their whole algorithm. You do need to adjust your design a bit. You do need to change the backlinks. But I just get really frustrated when people are paying 1200, $1500 a month and it doesn't even include any ad spend. So anyways, but no. Great site. Great site. Best of luck to you, brother.

Awesome. Hey, thanks, Mike.

You got it. Take care.

Cool. You too. Bye.

All right, next question is coming from says Rodney, but this is from an error code of 954. You're on the show. Welcome.

Hey, Mike. How you doing today, man?

Good. Good.

Yeah. Can you hear me?

I can. Yep. What's your question?

Yeah, the question I have is for someone that's just starting out from zero, no long equipment, nothing like that, and with this moving well, Actually recession starting, and I've been through a few of them.

Can you hear me?

Yep, I can. Yeah. You're kind of cutting out a little bit, but I can hear you just fine.

Oh.

Yeah.

I'm at the end of the world here in Homestead, Florida.

Yes. Someone just coming is just coming in with zero equipment, zero anything. Would you recommend them still going ahead and trying to start even with this recession coming in?

Yeah. Like, I think it's gonna be a good opportunity to pick up a lot of customers. I'm seeing a lot of very, very large companies scaling back simply because they just can't find employees. So that's the biggest mover in the market. Because if someone goes from 50 employees down to 20 and they just focus on their core competencies, that is going to mean that literally 20 solo operators could get started with just the work they're letting go. Right. So I feel like starting is going to be the easiest. And a lot of people are very right when they're talking about. The other day, I said, like, a lot of Chuck and a Chuck and a Trucks will go out of business. That's true. However, there's gonna be a lot of. Of truck. Trucks starting because they lost their job and because there's tons of work being handed down from these companies that are downsizing. So I actually feel like it's the best time to get started. Go ahead.

That's what I was thinking, the same thing. But as you say, you know, trucks are like $20,000 on my ear. 25. And they're used with like 180,000 miles on it.

Yeah.

So it's kind of like I gotta pay really big up front to start, and hopefully I recruit, you know, next couple of years or so. But I get what you're saying.

Yeah. So I'd just be trying to minimize your fixed expenses. Right. So that way, when. When we do hit recession and things do get cheaper, you have cash set aside. But in my opinion, when a recession happens, I feel like we're going to have a kind of a polarization. Everyone in the middle is going to get squeezed. Whether it be the middle class, they're going to get squeezed like crazy. But then also, when it comes to businesses the size of business, the bigger companies, they're going to be fine. Like they've got the. The finances to get through this. But then also the small little guy, the one solo operator guy, he's gonna be great because he's all this work coming from the people who are downsizing. It's the people in the middle, they're gonna get squeezed. If they don't have systems in place, they don't have enough margin. Right. So for someone just getting started, though, if you talk to a lot of people in lawn care and landscaping and home improvement, they actually got started in the last recession because they got their job went goodbye. Right. So they got started then. So I think it's a good time to get started. I think it's a good time to also just button down the hatches right now if you're, if you do have influence, few employees to be able to have a higher profit margin and make sure systems are allowing for that margin. That's the really focus I'm really thinking about right now.

All right, well, I appreciate the info. That's, that's going to, that's going to give you confidence. I've been, you know, tossing attorney. I've been through like last two recessions and each time it's always trying to recover. So I got to be very smart this time. I'm up there in age or not up in age, but getting there. I appreciate your comment.

You got it, brother. Take care. All right, bye bye. Yeah, I think the big thing is you have to realize that during a recession, it's going to be the scariest time to start a business, grow a business, hire employees, grow and expand your company. But ultimately, whenever the most fear is in any sort of investment opportunity, that is the time to go all in. And when it's the opposite, when everyone wants to do it, that's when you should be getting out of it. All right, so Bitcoin, Ethereum, that's gone down so much and all these cryptocurrencies. And what was the other one, Dogecoin, like when everyone was hearing about it? That was when you should have sold. Right? So, for example, let's just take the a meme coin, like Dogecoin, for example. You should have sold Dogecoin the night that Elon Musk went on to Saturday, Saturday Night Live and talked about it. That was the peak, like 74 cents or whatever it was. If that was peak, everyone knows about it. It's on the like major network. Everyone knows about it. That's when you got to sell because that's what everyone wants to buy. That's where you should be selling. So, you know, like I said last October when everyone was talking about buying stocks and they only go up and the next meme coin, like you had this whole craziness, GameStop and all this garbage, I'm like, I'm Out. Forget this now. What's going to happen over the next six to 12 months is you're going to start hearing all the people in the Facebook groups, all your friends and other business owners that you talk to, they're like, man, it's so hard. Can't find employees, trucks are so expensive, the gas prices are high. And they're right, it's hard, it's very, very difficult. But the moment when everything is the lowest, that's when you should be going all in. The same thing goes for stocks and real estate when they go way down and everyone's talking about how horrible is we're going into depression and everything is in a bear market and we're all going down, we're all, everything's collapsing. That's when you go all in. And it's very, very counterintuitive. It's very, very scary. But that's why most people lose their shirt in the stock market. That's why most people lose their shirt in business and that's why most people lose their shirt in real estate is because they go all in. At peak mania, when everyone's thinking about it and then when everyone's against it and everyone thinks it's a horrible time to start a business and a horrible time to be buying trucks and a horrible time to be expanding your company, then they sell out. And that's what's going to happen this winter. People are going to sell their company because of a really, really brutal 2020 margin compression is everywhere. When you have gas prices double in home improvement industry, that's going to SAP your profit margins. When the cost of labor goes up 30, 40% in a matter of a couple years because employees now have 50 different options and unemployment rates are so low, you're going to have massive margin compression. So when in 2021 someone made say 80 grand at the end of the day on their business, like take home profit was $80,000. All of a sudden, when that becomes 30 at the end of 2022, guess what they're going to do? $30,000, man, I got to just go get a job and make 60 or 70k. That's what's going to happen. That is what is going to happen. And it's for the people that will jump in and go all into their business during the time of peak fear when everything is at the lowest and they go, okay, I'm all in the next 12, 24 months. Maybe it means talking to your spouse, maybe it means talking to your employees and be like, hey, you might not See me as much next 12, 6 to 12 months. I remember the specific conference. There was someone who had questioned. This is at Landscape Summit. But by the way, everyone's a join mikeandys.com summit. We have a conference coming up in January and I'll get to the callers in the queue in just a second. But one of the questions that really impacted me was this gentleman in the back. He said he raised his hand. I don't remember his name and I don't remember exactly the full extent because I asked a bunch of questions to get context. But he basically said.

At the end of the day, his wife was not on board with him growing the business and wanted him basically to be at home more often. And when I started questioning him, I came to realize he was only really spending about 20 hours actually out in the field doing estimates and working the business because he was trying to be at home as much with his wife. And I said, look, you've got to realize that if you want to grow this business because it's really, really tight financially, is really, really tight. And it makes sense when you're a small business and you're only working 20 hours inside your company trying to grow it, like, you're just not going to make it work. I can just guarantee it 99% of the time, you're not going to make a business work when you're doing it 20 hours a week and it's going to struggle financially. And so I told him, like, look, you probably have to sit down with your wife and say, hey, honey, the next six to 12 months, I need to lock in on this business and I'm going to spend 40 to 50 hours a week working in the business. But if I do that, it's going to set us up, our family up for generations. Like, if you just give me these next 12 months, I can turn the business around. I can make this work. And I truly believe that for some people, they've got to sit down with their spouse, their employees, their manager, people that are close to them. Like, look, we're going into recession. The next six to 12 months, I need to focus on my business because I am going to go all in on it now, because the returns that I get over the next six to 12 months, if I can just go all in, is going to be 3 to 4x what it would be if I wait 3 to 4 years. And I truly believe that. And this is how I look at, you know, even for myself now. It's like, look, yeah, I know I don't have like a lot of social life and family and family life and all the rest of it. But like, number one, I enjoy business. But secondly, this is like a window of time. It's the time to go all in. Because if you go all in at the right moments, you can literally set yourself up for years beyond that when you don't have to go all in, you don't have to be pushing your business 60, 70 hours a week. But the person who goes all in when everyone else is like, don't start a business, it's a horrible time. We're going to a recession. That is not the time to be scared. That's not the time you're walking away from your business and neglecting it and second guessing and getting a side job. It's not the time to be doing that. And it's the opposite of what everyone else is going to be doing. When times are going to get harder and it's going to get more and more in the news that everyone's losing their job. Just wait till like unemployment's high, start getting a bunch of foreclosures. Real estate market starts to pop, especially in markets like Boise, Austin, all these like, you know, places that people have been loving to live in the past two years. Just wait till all those start to crash. Because everything goes up that fast is going to come down. There is no, there is not going to stay that way. It's like, oh, well, people are going to keep moving to Florida. I agree. People are going to keep moving to Florida and Texas, but they're not going to move at the same rates that we've been seeing over the past two years. It's going to pop. It's not going to pop down to what it was before, but it's going to come down 20, 30% easily, like guarantee it. So whenever you see in business investing any sort of emotion like public opinion, when you see things spike, it always comes down. It always does. And guess what? When everything goes really, really far down, guess what? It always comes back up in a few years when the economy is red hot because of all the cash that's currently on the sidelines from investors that are not spending money on this market right now and you have a new administration coming in, cut taxes and open up things like fuel and oil production. When you see all of that happen and we see this massive boom in the economy, that's what everyone's like, oh, it's a great time to start a business, let's go. And they'll do fine. But the People who will actually make generational wealth and will crush it and have two to three extra returns that those people will have are the ones that start now in a recession that focus on their business and go all in now. They're the ones that will really win in the next decade. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut it off here today. I got stuff I gotta do today. I appreciate you all hopping on and last thing is I mentioned it, I put on a community post. But landscapebusinesscourse.com we're completely revamping the media team. We just hire, we're hiring a new person do graphic design full time for us locally and so we have a lot of team people on the team developers website.

And then the print side for long term media, et cetera. But we're hiring another graphic designer and we're going to re redoing the entire landscape businesscourse.com which is this one right here. So check out landscapebusinesscourse.com if you want to join. It's important because when we are done that revamp and that whole redesign it's going to be all new lectures. When that is done, we are going to increase the price. So if you're looking to. If you've been thinking about joining landscapebusinesscourse.com then I would do it now because everyone that joins now is going to be grandfathered into the new program. Program anyone that buys afterwards, it'll be at a higher price. So I just recommend if you're thinking about joining landscapebusinesscourse.com, join now, there's like I think about 35 hours worth of lectures, including some of the conference recordings from previous years that we've taken out. So check that out. There's some training on P4P et cetera. But I really recommend if you've been thinking about join landscapebusinesscourse.com now. Everyone joins in the winter but like join now. Even if you watch it later, once we revamp the course and it's all new content, then you can watch it then but the price will go up. So just I'm warning everyone now. So if you think about buying it, you've been putting it off, just buy it now and then watch it later once we revamp the course, adding a whole bunch of new stuff in there. And I really appreciate all the support that money goes directly into this channel, goes directly into making all this available. So I really do appreciate it. And I think there's another update I had. What was it? Oh yeah, Anyone that does join the course or buys anything from me is how you kind of get on that email list. Someone text me later like, hey, I saw you sent me. Someone said you sent an email out and I did not get it. To join the email list, you just have to buy anything from Lawn Care Media, Lawn care Web Design, P4P Home Service, Web design, any of those sites. So I sent out one email yesterday, had a video about those car repossessions and kind of that trend and several other things, articles that I wrote and written. So if you, if you want to be part of the email list, what we call the, the members club that I'll send out like on a monthly basis and create some exclusive content for you. I showed you behind the scenes of the new set we're building. Then make sure you just buy something, anything. Long care media, landscapebusinesscourse.com, lawn care web design, all of that is there for you. And I really believe that all those things will help your business. Longcarebookkeeper.com by the way too. A lot of people will just join end of November, December, which is fine. But if you join now, you'll have everything all your ducks in a row because we go back to January 1st and do all of your reconciliations of your accounts and making sure your QuickBooks is set up correctly and all the rest of it so you'll be. Everything will be in order by the time you hit January for tax season. So hope it's beneficial to all of you. Long caremedia.com we have some really cool stuff coming up. That's why we're getting a graphic designer. Check out that too. I appreciate all of you and oh man, I just saw you have a ton of questions. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Let's do, let's do some questions. All right. I didn't do questions last time. Okay, let me take this down. Boom. We're going to do questions. Here we go.

Here it's. See here. All right. I've seen a significant amount of less and less calls. Just a few months ago, business was booming and the phone was ringing. Now I might get 10 calls a week. Interesting. Very interesting. Really would depend on your market. Depend on your real estate market locally as well as what services you are offering recurring. We're staying still very, very strong projects. We are seeing a drawback across the board. Mike the type to tell to tell you that you can make $8,000 a day just to do eight cuts for a thousand dollars each. Oh, someone's mocking me about my tiktoks probably I use a wagon and walk because I'm 14. Let's go.

I just recently about a year ago started a longer company. Appreciate the videos dude. You taught me a few things. Cool. Hey Mike, what do you think of leasing trucks compared to buying? The ROI should go up significantly.

This is what you're assuming is that leasing the trucks and the cost of those trucks is going to go down in time. Potentially. Leasing is extremely expensive right now too though. So leasing trucks are a little bit dangerous in my opinion because if you dent that thing, you're going to have to buy it and now you're buying it at a premium and I've seen that not work out well when someone doesn't have the cash and all of a sudden they need to buy a truck and then the financing doesn't work out and then the interest rates are so high that now they're paying way more on the loan than they are on the lease. So I get a little bit worried about that type of lending when we go into an interest rate hike environment like we are currently in when the interest rates are going up. But if you're from Germany, similar things are happening. But.

It'S not a bad strategy to lease a truck right now. I'm just going to say it because it's the truth. It's not a bad idea to try to try lease a truck and then in a year or a year and a half if you expect buying trucks to go down in price to then buy a truck. My apprehension or my thought process though would be that the lease is probably 40 to 50% higher than it was in the past anyways. So you're still just going to be renting, quote unquote, that truck for those period time at a very inflated price anyways. Like everything's inflated. But that is an arbitrage. If you really do believe that trucks are going to come down 40, 50% that you'd lease right now for 12 months and then you'd be able to flip it over into buying a truck down the road. That being said, you better hope and pray that you do not dent that truck, mess that truck up, have some sort of issue to where now you have to buy it.

Yeah, my main mower just blew an engine seal. I've been pushing, mowing all my accounts. It blows. But there isn't enough business to just drop 3K on a new mower.

All right. Haha. Try use trucks around me in Pennsylvania. Good luck trying to find anything that drives less for less than 12,000. Yeah, it's crazy. Right now I'm planning to go to the Landscape Summit 2023. Do I have to bring something specific with me? First time going to the U.S. let's go. I wonder where you're from, which country. That's cool. Yeah, no, just go to mikeandy.com summit. We've got new speakers coming in that have confirmed they're coming in. I'm really, really excited about, like Mike Callahan, Some Simple Growth is going to be trying to make it working. A couple other big speakers, but can't say them yet because they haven't confirmed. And also going to have a deal. Someone who is a dealer and owns a nursery and owns a dealership in the lawn care industry. He's going to be speaking also about light installations. And so, yeah, I'm really looking forward to this year. I have more speakers.

It took me three years of life just to figure out how to walk. I didn't expect starting a company would be any different. Crawl, walk, run. Very cool.

Save cash and grow your business. Nothing gonna stop me. Let's go. In my opinion, if Amazon drops under $98, buy it. So when it comes to stock market, you gotta realize that, you know, let's just say what goes from 98 to 200, right, you double your money over the next year. I truly believe if you spent $100 on one stock of Amazon right now. Yeah, maybe you can double it in the next couple years. Okay, if you spend $100 on a mowing, getting like a mowing customer, just use mowing, for example, and you're able to make $1,000 per year in revenue on that customer, and you're 20% profitable, that's $200 in profit. All right? And if you get two customers for that $100 or $98, because you spend $50 for your lead acquisition, for your customer acquisition, you get two customers like that, that's $2,000 in revenue, $400 in profit over next year. And by the way, you keep them for the year after that and the year after that and the year after that. You have an arbitrage of skill when it comes to your service industry compared to the stock market. Most of us are not in the top 5 to 10% of stock traders. So why in the world do we do that? Why would you spend $100 on Amazon instead of your business? If you're really, really good at your business and you're not in the highest percentile of, of stock pickers? What is SEO? Sorry? It stands for search engine. Optimization basically Google ranking. Trying to make the website rank better on Google. Hey Mike, can you comment on the issues command center has had with franchises? I work for a franchise and command center seems like a mess scheduling things when we ask them not to.

This is Mr. Awesome FTW. Feel free to email me. Don't know exactly what you're talking about. So yeah, in the spring I talked about on the public channel too. We had a lot of issues with Command center just because of turnover and losing a lot of people. And so since then though, a lot of those issues have been fixed. We have a lot of team members now. Stuff gets out really fast, we answer all the calls, everything's back up to spec.co is web pages.

Connor Stead. Is the bottleneck still labor or is it lost customers? Don't know what you're saying there exactly.

I see recession as a fire selling everything. Real estate is slowing down. Interest rates are up by the crashing the bike during the dip. Won't get any cheap. I can't call in right now, but I'm super serious to know how to deal with Chucks. I lost a job over $25. Long story short, the client hired an uninsured, unlicensed guy. Yeah, I would not worry about that. Just move on. Don't even spend the time of the day yet. I have all my credentials, experience. How did that job slip through the cracks? You just don't want that client. Which is exactly what Vladimir says here. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's affecting your business, what you want to do do is make sure that you're. You're making it more and more apparent that you are not them. Right. So you got to focus on what can you do to ensure that when someone's comparing apples to you know that they're comparing apples to oranges and not apples to apples. Because if they're. If all you're doing is cutting grass and that's the only differentiator and is that your insurance and licensed. You've got to start thinking beyond that. Right. Like that is a differentiator. And high margin, high value clients will value that. However, what can you do beyond that? Whether it be a website, whether your truck would be professional uniforms will be your marketing matrix or branding. All of those things go into creating value in the mind of the customer. Perceived value that will allow you to create differentiation between you and Chuck.

Half these guys straight lie to your face and tell you whatever you want to hear to get the job. It's almost not the customer's fault. I'm a Little scared of starting out now. I just got the truck and trailer but haven't got the equipment yet. Should I wait till next season? I would not let scared of a recession right now stop you from starting. I would keep. I would prevent. The only thing that should scare you from in terms of growing your business is going into debt in order to grow right now and go extending yourself when you're not profitable and not cash flow positive.

On the other hand, I have seen some legit companies doing right and still getting steady business. Can't figure it out. Yeah, again I would really lean into what can you make yourself. How do you differentiate yourself beyond just license and insured? That is a differentiating point. But how can you go beyond that would be my recommendation.

I work full time as a cook, make $16 an hour, work out to like 34k a year. How hard do you think it will be to replace that as a one man operation? As a one man operation, you'll need to probably do about $60,000 a year just to be.

Conservative. So $60,000 a year. You can run the math backward if you let you say you don't do a lot of install work. So if you're doing a lot of maintenance work, you probably need 50, 60 customers in order to replace that income. Thanks for the golden Nuggets, Mike.

Welcome.

Does your business accept bitcoin payments? No, it does not. If you have enough jobs, I'd walk away. If you don't have any jobs, I'd take it. You don't need the stress over $25. Plus the personality. Cool.

I'm a lion cook right now too, making $15 an hour. And I just started working as a solo operator. I don't have any recurring jobs yet. I'm just starting to do my door knocking. Let's go. Good stuff.

What do you guys think the bottleneck will be in the next few years? Labor or customers?

I actually think that in the short term it's gonna be labor. In the long run it'll be customers for project based work. But I think that we're going to have a very, very consistent maintenance. I don't think the recession is going to hurt maintenance very much at all. To be perfectly honest.

Everyone is talking about universal income. Yeah, that's just because politically popular, it's horrible for the economy and it's bad for people's brains in my opinion. Would you pay your employees in Bitcoin under P4P? Never. No, I would never do that because it would be bad for them.

Their pay would have gone down by 60% in the past couple months. Hey Mike, I was wondering what you do with all your grass you get from your clients. Yeah, we have to bag clipping so we just have to find shop space where we can dump it.

So man, someone really wants me to take bitcoin. My goodness, no, we don't take bitcoin because bitcoin has really no foundation, has no way to actually value it. It is simply a matter of who will buy. Who will buy this, who will be a greater fool than I to buy it. That's the only really thing holding it down. Holding it up I should say. And yes, it's being used in places like Venezuela and other countries as a form of currency.

But trust me, the central banks and central governments are not going to allow bitcoin to rule the world because it would eliminate their power 100%. Hi, I'm my own business for mowing lawn care. But I was wondering if I could do Augusta for my weed control and fertilizing side. Feel free to talk to Lee. You just go to augustalongerservices.com franchise. You can book a call with Lee and see if it might be working work well for you. I wouldn't do this unless you already were pretty big. There's no point in joining Augusta if you're just gonna do some fertilization stuff on the side. There's really not like you don't join Augusta just to do something on the side. You want to do it, maybe decide to get started but you got to have the ambition to kind of grow it. Otherwise just not worth joining a franchise. Just started a solo and I've been using a small car. Every time I go out to work on a yard. I have to take apart my equipment just to fit in the car. Also I have to drop it off to get trash picked up. Let's go. Hey, you gotta start somewhere. Like our first. When I first got started with mowing when my when my brother got his license, we used a Dodge Caravan. We'd throw two push mowers in the back the trunk as well. In Germany we need actual dump trucks due to all the debris from hedge trimming. New trucks cost 33,000. Used ones are 13 to 15,000 in good conditions. Do you still recommend to buy used? I would say so. A lot of times what people forget is the fact that insurance on a new truck is sometimes double. Just keep this in mind. I'd run the numbers with your insurance agent. I've seen it before where the payment on a truck is almost as much. Sorry, the payment on, on the truck is barely more than the insurance paid on that truck. And if they would have just bought a cheaper truck, the savings would have paid for another truck payment. So just keep that in mind. That, that, that's the biggest thing.

Wait, I didn't. Your question was about bitcoin? I was about doing Augusta for my weed control and fertilizing side of my business. Is that something you'll be interested in doing? I think we did address that one. Would you recommend bumping up marketing when entering a recession? Recession. During a recession, marketing is going to get cheaper because companies will start cutting on their spend. So if you look at like the recent Google earnings reports or Facebook trade desk, the like, they are seeing a decline in marketing spend and that's typical. Going into recession, companies stop spending money on marketing and that's the first place they cut. That's why like in March 2020 there was like a six week window where you could spend money on Google and get like for nothing. You get clicks because everyone froze their marketing budget. So this story is Jose from so Canvas. He spent about 20 hours in the field and others at home working on the biz.

My thought of new truck was with the Warranty losing over 600 per day when repaired. Yeah, my big thing is like, look, as the company grows, if you have four, five, six trucks, you might as well have an extra one that is like cheap and old and you use maybe for 10 days out of the year when another truck is in the shop. So I think a lot of times people use not as an excuse, but they somehow like make sense of buying new for the sake of like, oh, if a truck goes down, the time in the shop costs a lot of money. The fact of the matter is if you just bought a truck Instead of spending $600 a month on a lease or $600 on a truck payment, why not just buy a 10, $12,000 cheap truck and use it for 10 or 12 days out of the year when you need it because another truck went into the shop, it's still cheaper. So again, you're gonna have to have some sort of scale in order to. You can't have like one truck and then one backup like that 50% asset utilization. You don't want that. Where one truck is always sitting there as a backup and the other truck you use, you don't want that. But if you like two, three, four trucks, get one other one that's cheap and literally you'll use a few times a year when the other trucks are in the shop and you won't have to go buy brand new on all four trucks. You'll just buy one cheap truck to make sure that when the other trucks are down that you have something to back them up.

But your customer acquisition cost will skyrocket. Correct. Even with the lower cost of marketing. Depends on your service. Right. So the only reason that your marketing costs would go way up is if demand starts to fall apart. And I feel like this would happen in project based work. That's what I've been talking about is less demand for project based work and therefore a collapse in demand will cause price to go up. But if you're having the supply of advertisers go down, the cost will come down for advertising.

He can see the retracted post. I don't know what he's talking about. About. I don't retract any posts. So I know in Washington state we have to bag our clippings. However, does your business have to pay to dispose of clippings that the city dumps or wherever you dispose it? No, we just have it our shop space where we're able to dump. My O3F250 runs strong. But if it were to go down, I have an 82. Let's go F150 as a one man business. That's cool. Let's go.

Tax wise, vehicles are depreciated. So it helps somewhat. Yeah. When you start bringing taxes into the equation, it's a total different ball game. A lot of different stuff. Right. Because you start talking about, okay, well if I can get a $50,000 brand new truck, I can get a loan on it. But then section 179 immediately, everyone always talks about that. But you got to realize that you got to do if you sell that truck or before the full depreciation of the value of the truck, you got to do what's called depreciation recapture. So you can't buy a $50,000 truck, put it on debt, take a $50,000 deduction on this year on a section 179 and then next year sell it. You can't do that. And if someone's telling you you can do that, they have no idea what they're talking about. I see people talk about this all the time on social media. It's like, oh well, just buy the truck in December on as a loan, on a loan. And in section 1 and 79 you can write off the entire, entire value of that truck even if you get a debt on it. Yeah, you're right. But if you sell that truck before the full depreciation, you have to depreciation recapture. So if you sell it in year number two and you did a five year depreciation, guess what? 40,000 is not going to be. You're going to get taxed on that 40,000. You only depreciate the 10,000 over the course of five years. And take a section 179 up front. There's depreciation recapture on that. So keep that in mind.

What tip with the one reserve truck per three to four trucks was really helpful. Thanks, Mike. I don't even think you need one reserve truck per three or four. Okay. It depends on how, how old and junky your trucks are. But I would say you just need one truck for your business. Unless you have more than probably 15 trucks. You get about 15 trucks, you probably need two. But I would say you probably need one reserve truck per 10 trucks. Unless you really plan for multiple trucks to be going down, which we rarely have seen that.

How do you feel about long term renting a truck to work with? I don't think it's a great strategy because if you dent it, et cetera, and if you're using it consistently, it's probably worth it just to buy a truck. Renting is pretty difficult honestly to make it worthwhile if you're doing it long term. If you're doing it for like a month or two, like a one time project or you do it on the weekend once a month to do a project or two. Probably a good idea just to rent like u haul. First loan should be a new mower. Everything that'll get you motivated. Cheap truck and trailer or those. You can come later. Cool. All right, we're going to call it a day. We're over an hour. Hope you all have a fantastic rest of your weekend. Check out lawn careweb design.com, landscapebusinesscourse.com lawn caremedia.com P4P software.com what else do we got? HomeService web design.com. i don't know, I just forget they. I got to pay the bills though. We gotta pay the bills. Every dollar goes back into making this stuff better. And I appreciate all of your support. Oh, we got more questions. I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to call it a day. Take care of one. We'll see you next Saturday for live and I'll see you tomorrow for regular regularly scheduled programming. Tomorrow's a good one. It's actually gonna be about buying a shop space, and I just show you a real shop space that I was looking at. Ended up not buying it because the offer didn't go through. Spoiler alert.