He Started a Lawn Care Business at 65 Years Old!

I've got more work than I can. I can barely handle. So I've decided that I want to keep my prices high, because if you want to pay my price, then I'm not going to turn you down. But I don't want to lower my prices because I've got too much work on my plate. I don't. I need to maximize my. My opportunities.

Good morning, everybody. We are in Mooresville, North Carolina. We drove yesterday, got in late. We went to a Mexican restauran. There's our third one, which you've seen. And I think I left my credit card there. We couldn't find it. We went back this morning, searched the whole hotel, searched the car. So now we're late. This is the theme throughout this whole episode, I think, is losing things. But anyways, we're headed to John Yuze. So John Yutze, really kind of a cool story. He's 65 years old, retired from working at American Airlines and started Augusta Lawn Care. He'd been doing mowing in the past. He'd been doing like two, three thousand dollars a month. Last. I think he started in June. I want to say March. No, May or June he started, and he last month did, I think, 15,000 in revenue. Over 15,000. So really, really proud of him. His biggest struggle has been software, just because he's not used to using different technologies that we use at Augusta Lawn Care, social media, things like that. And so that's been probably the biggest struggle, but he's still learning. We're probably gonna help him a little bit today with his Facebook, Google, local services, and other things like that. It is kind of a really wet. Actually. There's a sign, I think, right there.

Next to the road. Get that?

Yeah, kind of. So, yeah, we're headed over to this place now. Gonna connect with him and his crew. He's already got a couple employees, and so, yeah, really looking forward to meeting with him and getting his perspective as an older gentleman that has joined the franchise. We have everyone from 19 years old all the way. Mr. Yahtzee 65. So let's go ahead and roll the tape and hopefully you enjoy our ride of the day. See your second truck?

That's my second truck.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, man. Good to see you.

Sorry we're a little bit late. I lost the credit card this morning. Have no idea where it's at right now, but we'll find it.

Hey, y', all, this is Mike. Andy.

Good to meet you. I'm Mike.

James.

James Henry. Henry. I'm Clay. And Clay, I've heard too, about you two, but not. And you're the new. New guy. Awesome.

He is going to take his spot. He's. He went back to the airline.

Oh, cool.

All right. He was a manager at the airlines and he's. We got him his job back. He was a ramp agent at the airline. So he's going back Wednesday. Henry's going back Wednesday to the airline. But he's gonna. He's probably gonna be part time, but he's gonna have three weeks of. Of training, so hopefully we'll. I'll be able to use him on a. On a part time.

Is it all American Airlines, then?

Yeah. Very cool.

Very cool.

And Clay is Henry's friend and he bought him on board and so. All right, that's how we're going to roll SA.

Out here at this beautiful reservoir here at Mooresville. And the drone had a mind of its own. I was flying it over the. Over the water.

I am you air. That was crazy. All of a sudden I just got. Comes tearing across, hits this tree. That one's gone and it's broken. Like, actually broken.

So I guess no more drone shots for the rest of this trip, which stinks. But yeah.

My name is John Ytzi. Location is Mooresville, North Carolina. One of the main struggles for me is.

Trying to balance.

Time. My biggest. My biggest issue is time I don't have. Since I'm just starting out.

I, I mow in the day and I have to do estimates at night.

So it. It does cause a little bit of the work life balance is not where I needed to be. Yet I know that once we get all the systems in place and I. I get more employees and some more trucks, then I can step into the estimator role and, and do the estimator roll during the day and have a little bit. Little bit more.

Family balance. But right now that's. That's a struggle. Okay. Trying to wear all the hats. The best part of coming to Augusta is.

Mike's sincerity and trying to raise the professionalism of the industry.

His attention to detail.

What I like the most about Mike and the company is it's. It's a company that is raised up, in my opinion, on the principles of the Bible.

It's a godly company. I'm proud to be a part of this company. I'm proud to be a franchisee.

I'm proud to have gotten in on the early stages.

Of the company, and I look forward to seeing the company prosper and to become the dominant force in lawn care. I believe it could be the dominant force in lawn care in the country.

Like the golden arches is the hamburgers. Augusta could be to lawn care and taking care of customers.

And customers knowing that when this company pulls up, they're going to be satisfied.

Sam.

So what I did here is I opened up the Facebook app on here. It's the same thing on here, same app. But right here is all of your groups. Right. So your franchisee group, all that. But this is where pages. That's where your business pages are at. So that's this page here, and this is pages you manage. So we click on that, we're gonna open up our page.

Okay, there we are.

And now on here, we do the same thing. We go here, and then we're going to open up this page right here. Augusta Long here in Mooresville opens up the same thing. The reason I'm showing you on both is because a lot of times you're going to take a picture on this, and it's going to be faster if you just post it directly from your phone than trying to send it to the computer, upload it from here, all the rest of it. Right. So this is your page here.

It looks like you got a couple photos up.

Back in October. Okay, perfect.

Right. That's where I'm looking for help.

Yep. So what we can do here is from right here, we're gonna go to publish. That's where you're going to be able to put photos up, things like that. Now, is there a photo on your phone that you already know you would want to put on Facebook or not? If not, that's fine.

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay, that's fine. So let's do this. We're going to go back to our home of Facebook. We're going to go up to search, and we're going to search Augusta Lawn Care Services, and we're going to go to the one in Bellingham is the one Liz always posts on. And then instead of trying to create your own photo right now, which you might in the future, get confident and feel free to do that. But for now, we can go here, see what she's been posting.

See if there's something we want to post on here. Let's see.

So, for example, let's say we wanted to use this one.

Okay.

So I was scrolling on the page. I click on the photo, and then I hold my finger down, and I click save photo. So I hold it down. Now it says photo saved. So now it's saved to your Phone. It's in your camera reel and you go back on the camera app and see it. Well, now what we can do is go back over to here, go up to our page, Augusta Lawn Care, Mooresville, scroll down to photo and then go ahead and add that one in there. Done.

And then you could say something, but it already has a quote on there. But you could like say for example, you took a picture. So post, publish that. So now it's published in there.

This is one thing I didn't like. I couldn't get. See how it's cut off up there?

Yep.

I didn't know how to size it.

Yeah, you can see, see this is the same photo and just different sizing based upon if you're on a desktop or mobile device. So I think this is fine even though it's not perfect because it does resize it.

Okay.

Okay, so let's see here. So there's a lot of different place you can get photos. Like for example on dashboard. Every month we've been posting a whole bunch on there. So what we could do.

And I'm up real, real good with that whole dashboard thing.

I mean, so let's open up the dashboard here. So each month we put new photos on there. So let's go.

That would be a great one right there.

This one right here. Okay, so let's open this up. So we're gonna go ahead and add it to cart check out.

So I think there's about 15 or 20 in here and.

Alright, now it's going to come to your email. Alright, so I just got the one photo out there. So we are on the dashboard. I checked out for all of September 2020, the photo assets. So it sends you the email, has a whole bunch of photos. Right. So I pull out the one we want which is right here.

So we're going to upload that one. And so we showed it on the phone. Now let's go ahead and go on to our Facebook on the desktop. It's gonna be very similar and so we're gonna go down to where we can actually post the photos and create content here. So in create post you can also click here. So photo or video, it's gonna ask you which photo do you want to do? We're gonna desktop because it's on our desktop here.

Go ahead and open that up. And then what we're going to do, because it's just a picture, we're going to say.

Fall is here and your bushes need trimming.

Give us a call at. What's your number?

704360 3639.

Perfect. And I click post.

There you go. So this is the one we.

You want to put dot dashes or something in between there?

Yeah, I can do that real quick. Let me just see here. I refresh the page. We got the one that we just posted from the desktop, but then before that is the one we posted from our mobile device.

Okay, so now you said something about wanting to check the Google because I was. Oh, yeah, I was messing around trying to do the dog track thing that you said to do.

Yep.

So. But then I thought, well, wait a minute now.

Lonnie. And you all asked and had a card when I went to full service, I thought, well, maybe they're doing it. So I stopped, but it was too late. The card was already coming.

Okay, that's fine. That's fine. I don't think you messed anything up. So Google Local Services, they don't send a. A card in the mail. So let's go to Google.

You know, the card with the number?

Yeah, that's Google. My business. Okay, you don't have to worry about that. You're already set up and good to go there. This is Google Local Services. Let's go ahead and sign into your Moore's account here.

Does that make sense, though, in terms of the Facebook page?

Yes.

So if you have questions, let me know. But honestly, the best thing to do is if you see like, oh, that's a great picture, and you snap it on your phone. Usually you're gonna post from your phone, but if you are downloading from Dashboard or you see something that Liz has, you can always drag it out on your desktop and then upload it that way as well. Well, so, all right, so Google Local Services.

Now, that cost me $400 next month.

What was that?

Google Local Services. I got that many leads.

Well, if you did, that's great. Okay, here we go. So have you been in here before?

I was in there. Yes, I've been in there and I listened to them, but I haven't been in lately.

Okay.

I haven't been in a long time.

Okay, that's fine. So we got archived new Active. So Lonnie can do this for you if you want her. Okay, so do you want her? Because it'll take her like two minutes a week.

Okay.

That way, because this is the thing, you just don't want to be charged for leads that are just spam or they're asking for concrete. Right. So let's see here. Active.

Yeah, she can go through these.

Yeah, she'll go through these for you. Because I'd say of that 400, probably half of that isn't actually, like, you shouldn't have been charged for.

Okay.

So they'll refund that.

Okay.

So I'll let her know the day that she can go through these 44. Because I'd say about half of those are probably not even good leads. So she'll go through them, dispute the ones that she needs to. You'll get an email saying like, oh, this was disputed. You got money refunded or whatever. Great. But that's.

Anything you take off my plate is great because my plate is running over.

Yeah. I was talking with the. So I was talking with Henry and.

James at. When you were doing your thing with Josh. And so they kind of. They were like, wow, like, it's really grown. First of all, this year it went from like, Henry's like, well, it used to be like once a week. And now I'm like, it's like a real business. So that's a good thing. But they definitely realize and recognize the fact too that you need to be able to do estimates throughout the day and not after they're done working. Right. And so I told them, like, the goal is definitely to get you out of the field as soon as possible. And they all agreed with that. They realized that, hey, the best thing for you to be doing is estimates and them doing the work throughout the day.

Right.

And so I think getting the second truck is a good step because it allows you to go do those estimates even if one crew isn't going out and mowing to go do the estimates in the middle of the day. That way, you know, you're not keeping Cheryl up till 12 o' clock at night.

Exactly. And that's one of Cheryl's issues. She only sees. She sees me less now than when I worked at the airline.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And.

You know, she sees me an hour a night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the second truck is a big step because, like, right now we're slowing down a little bit as we go into the winter, but next spring, Right. What we've seen this year is gonna be very small to what's gonna happen next spring in terms of how many leads you're gonna have. All the business coming in, all the rest of it. Right.

I mean, they're putting up new developments all around here.

Yeah.

I mean, it's crazy.

Yeah.

And my closing rate is not that good. I'm the highest priced guy in Moore's world, and I Know it and my customers know it.

Yeah.

And what I've started to do, and I was losing a lot of aerating jobs because I'm. I'm double what everyone else is.

Yeah.

And what I explained to a customer that I closed, that she saw my sign and I explained, I said, look, my prices, you can go out there and get other prices and they're going to be cheaper than mine. But what you're going to get from them is they're going to be on your property 45 minutes and they're going to be gone and they're going to make one pass with the aerator and that's it. I said, when I go on a property, I make at least a double pass with the aerator. I spend my time. I use premium seed. I throw a lot of seed down.

You're getting more value for your money if you hire me. And in fact, I had one customer say, yeah, my husband used to get so mad because they would just come in and be gone and be a kiss and a prayer.

Yeah, yeah.

But I haven't heard back from that one either. So I don't know whether.

So let me just pull up your Sarah's autopilot here real quick and we'll look at your estimates while we're at it. Your close ratio isn't horrible. Like, I'm not, I wouldn't look at this and be like, oh, you have to raise. Like, I don't think it's horrible.

What is it?

I'm not, I'm just looking right now. But the number, I would say, I know last month I could pull up.

I think last month you're around 40, 35, 40. So it's not horrible. But like, if you're trying to grow, usually you want that to be 50 to 70%.

But I don't want to, I don't want to grow.

Right.

I'm, I'm grown. I'm, you know, I feel like I'm, I've got more work than I can, I can barely handle. So I've decided that I want to keep my prices high because if you want to pay my price, then I'm not going to turn you down. But I don't want to lower my prices because I've got too much work on my plate. I don't. I need to maximize my opportunities.

So then if you're going 30 to 50% in close ratio, you're fine because that means your prices are probably just where you want them is high, where you're making higher margins and you know, you're not getting every job, which is sometimes a little bit discouraging, but you can have the higher prices, so that's fine. And then what you know, though, is like, if you get to the place, like, okay, I want to be. I want to really scale, then you can always, you know, dial that back.

Right.

And that's exactly. But honestly, I think just by you getting out of the field next year, being able to work during the day, that alone is going to, I think, improve your close ratio because you'll get the estimates done sooner. Instead of them getting a day or.

Two, they're not getting. Right. They're getting them late. And I've lost some jobs because, yeah, they're getting their estimates late. I mean, I'm not able, you know, some nights, you know, if we have like, for instance, tomorrow, I'm not going to be able to do any estimates because tomorrow we're going to combine today's most schedule. Look at today's most schedule, and we're going to combine tomorrow's most schedule. I want Augusta to be a place where young people can come in, have an entry level job, and then learn some things about life and send them out of here when they take their next step with the tools to be successful, with the tools to understand what it takes to be a good employee, what it takes to rise in an organization.

And I want to share all those things with them. I want to help them grow into being successful adults. And that's my goal. So. So I don't want to fire people just because I'm sick of them. I want to be. I want to give them the patience. I want to have the patience to be while they're becoming.

Right. Yeah.

If that makes sense.

Yeah.

And I, And I think that's. I think that long term will help me get employees because when these.

Kids come in here and when they tell their parents and as the word spreads that, hey, Augusta just doesn't hire and fire kids, they're actually learning some life lessons. And I think in the long term, as that spreads, maybe I'll have parents that will be encouraging their kids to come to work for me, you know, and that's what I want. In fact, I've already got that in a way.

Hi, Michael, this is Dee calling from Loudy Hood Mooresville. About your voicemail that you left. Yes, Your card is here. We'll be open 11 to 9:30. If you want to swing by, just bring your ID with you. Thank you. We found the credit card. Let's go. Mexican restaurant Number four coming up. All right, so we are just head out to Charlotte. We just are leaving Mooresville. We had lunch with John and then PNG Landscaping, Orban, he's a listener of the podcast and they refer work to each other, John and him. So he met us for lunch. We're headed to the airport. We're gonna be flying out to New York. And I'll prep you tomorrow, but it's gonna be a bit of a different episode. But look forward to sharing that with you and thanks so much for coming along for today. And if you're, if you're someone like John, maybe you are retired or maybe you, you've been an employee for most of your life or you know, you're older, don't feel like that. You can't say, start your own business. Like, you don't need 20, 30 years to go build a great business. You can absolutely spend 5, 10 years building the business, the systems in place that you can get out of the business day to day operationally. And that's really something that he and I talked about today off camera a little bit is like, what's the next steps in terms of getting the three, four employees, getting him out of the field as soon as possible. So he's not mowing like he's a machine. He's a machine. He's 65, 67, 66 years old or whatever and is just, you know, kills at everyday mowing and out in the field working. But it's not sustainable long term, especially when you're that age, you'd rather, you know, let some other people work, have the systems in place. And so that's really going to be working on next year because the systems are in place, but you really need to have the revenue in place. And he's still getting used to this, of the, of the software and things like that to manage those employees. And so he's taking a big step this year, going up to 15, 16, probably get to 18,000amonth in revenue this year. Our goal next year is 30 plus thousand a month in revenue for him. So that way he can afford to be out of the field and doing estimates throughout the day, managing the crew, but really letting the systems do the work instead of him doing it via sweat and pushing mowers all day. So anyways, thanks. Thanks so much. Hopefully you learned something today. We'll see you tomorrow.