He Tested Positive for Covid! But Needs To Sell Jobs! (Lawn Care Q&A)

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course. Today, we're answering questions from landscapers just like you. And if you would like to submit your question for me to review, make sure you text the word landscaping to 855-575-1267. Text the word landscaping to that number. And when I ask for questions, you can submit them so I can answer them on the next episode. So. So let's go ahead and jump right into these. This is, I think, the third part of, like, probably four now, because there's, like, hundreds of questions that came in this morning. So thank you so much for everyone contributing. I'm gonna get to every single one eventually. So if you do not answer now, you will get answered. But before we get into the show, though, make sure you signed up for Landscape Summit 2021. It's coming up in less than three months now. It's in January, it's 14th, 15th and 16th, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So. So what that means is you can literally work Monday and Tuesday, get everything caught up at your local office, leave Wednesday, get in here Wednesday evening, chill out, spend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, just hardcore on the business, and then fly back Sunday and literally just miss those few days at the end of the week. So it's not gonna take your whole week up. It's just a great event. I just can't overemphasize how important it is for you with your managers to get aside for an event like this at the beginning of the year. Get concentrated on what the plan is for 2021, how you're gonna grow, what the implementation process for P4P, open book management, profit sharing. Those are the things you have to do to create a great culture. A lot of people ask, how do we create the culture we have at Augusta? We're going to be talking about this stuff. It's not just like flipping a dice or flipping a coin. It is systems that you have in place and things that you do and take time to implement that change the culture of a business. Profit sharing, P4P, all of these things, having meetings. We're going to be talking a lot about this. Opening up your books, showing your profit numbers, showing your numbers, teaching your team about business, all very important parts of the culture. And we're going to be talking a lot about that at the conference. And I really recommend that, number one, you as the owner, but even if you have a key employee or even your spouse, bring them for this conference, get them on the same page as you, and I really look forward to the event. It's going to be great. And if we didn't have Covid restrictions, it'd probably be about five times bigger than last year. I expect it to be about two to three times bigger. Just because we don't have enough, we're not going to be allowed to have a certain amount of people. So anyways, make sure you sign up. Landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. Let's get into it. Today we got Tanya asking a question out of New Jersey saying, I am wrapping my mowing season. When is a good week in November to stop? Plus, I have fall cleanups scheduled as well. All right, so sometimes if you live in a state where snow might come in, that's going to be your artificial turnoff switch. If it snows, like, oh, I can't mow anymore. But usually what we do is we give a one, two weeks heads up to the customer, hey, we are going to be stopping service because we would rather be the ones that dictate when we stop instead of them calling us and having to ask and request for it to be stopped. So we're always watching the weather, seeing how it's going. But for us, usually end of November, you know, some people, you know, they call earlier and we'll cancel, and that's fine. The main thing is establishing the fact that you're coming next spring. That's the most important thing in terms of fall cleanup. Schedule those for the four weeks after, hopefully you're done mowing. Like, if you can. Like, it depends on. Every market's different. Some people stop mowing and go into fall cleanups. For a lot of people, they do fall cleanups throughout the last few weeks of mowing. So it just really depends on your market. And ideally, you're able to keep mowing, stop on a day, and then start doing fall cleanups. It's just a nice transition. There's not a big rush. You don't have to hire a bunch of people just for the fall cleanups. So ideally, that's the situation you run into. Next question. Should I offer sort of a good, better, best plan to simplify selling to the customer that wants full service? I like this idea. I would do it based upon services. So if you're doing full services, maybe, you know, the good is mo edge and blow better is that you take care of the beds, you blow things off. Maybe the best is fertilization, bush trimming, the whole nine yards. I like that idea. Again, this is gonna add a lot of friction to the sales. You Gotta explain all of these packages to the customer. That's totally fine. It's gonna be better for you in terms of profitability and staying smaller. But if you're trying to scale quickly, this is going to be a roadblock. Not that you should not do this. This is something that I usually see people doing later though, when they're trying to become more profitable and they're not necessarily interested much in growth. If you're interested in growth, this is gonna slow you down. And that's fine. Just want you to be aware of that. So I really like this model. This is how I started Augusta the very first year. I ended up, you know, stopping it pretty quickly, realizing it was adding friction when people called. I had to go, now explain these packages. Whereas now I can sell them, get them on the entry level services, and then upsell them later on. And if I want to convert them to packages, I could. All right, next question. This morning my text, my test came back positive for COVID 19. Oh, man. And we are only about. Oh, sick. Okay. All right. This is not fun. All right. This morning my test came back positive for COVID 19 and we are only about a week booked out currently. What tips do you have for closing construction jobs? 4,000 to $50,000 over the phone or other ways, since I can't meet in person. Garrett with Smith Lawn and Landscape in Nampa, Idaho. Wow. Okay. This is not a fun one. So first of all, hopefully you are safe and that you get healthy again. And I know the hardest part for a business owner is not necessarily the health part. Most of us can withstand quite a bit. We're out in the elements, things like that. We're pretty strong, but it's the not being able to be with people for two weeks, your employees, as well as your selling jobs. So this is what I would recommend for selling these larger contracts for construction jobs. If it's like four to $10,000, you should be able to rely on one of your employees, hopefully that knows enough about the job that can zoom call you.

Or Facetime or WhatsApp call you and figure out enough of the product to explain it to the customer and then kind of be the liaison between you and the customer. It doesn't sound like you have an office staff that would usually do that for you based upon what you've said here. But usually the office staff needs to be educated enough to be able to do this part for you, which is closing deals. The estimator needs to be actually know how to install the work to give accurate numbers to the office. But then for us, like we expect the office to be able to know how to close the deal and then if there's work change orders, they would come to the estimator. But it doesn't sound like you have an office person that can do that for you. So I would make sure, I would try to make one of your crew. Hopefully you have a project lead or someone that you can trust and that is pretty educated, the work part of things. And just go to the customer and explain what's happened in terms of even just saying, hey, you're sick and you're quarantining. Even if you don't say that you're positive, however you want to do that, but get information and then that person just be very clear with the customer. I'm the liaison to the estimator and to Garrett and I'm going to get the answers you need if there's work change orders or if we need to do things like that. Ideally though, this is why you have systems in place for an office person. This is why you have simplification of services so that anyone in the crew could really be that person and go to the customer and explain things. That's a long term outview. But four to $10,000 job, that's not so bad. When you start talking about 40, $50,000 jobs like on the upper range of what you said, definitely that's a tough one. And I would honestly just recommend pushing those meetings maybe out a week or two because it does not sound like you have office staff that could sell these jobs. And if you don't have someone in the field that could be a really good liaison, I would just try to push those off and just try to get through the next couple weeks while you're having to quarantine. Honestly, don't push yourself. Get better. That's the most important thing. Think about the next 10 years, not the next 10 days. Just get healthy. So. But yeah, our thoughts and prayers out to you. Next question. What are some good resources for developing a hiring program? Many aspects of my business are doing well, but this is my main problem and I know it is for most other companies. I let my crew leader go in July and the replacement didn't work out. Since then I've been, I have been the one filling his position because my hiring advertisements were not doing too well. And now my time available to attract and hire workers is limited. My confidence in growing my business is lacking due to my inability to find workers. Thanks Mike with Larson Lawn Care. Alright, so this Is the self fulfilling prophecy of getting bad hires with the landscaping industry. That is, you let someone go and then you find someone else. You don't invest a whole lot of time into them because you're like, oh, I hope they work out. I don't want to invest a bunch of time into them. And then they leave. So you don't invest a lot of time into them and what happens? They end up not doing well in their position because you did not invest time into them. And you start being discouraged by the fact that you find someone and they leave. So you're less inclined to really invest in them on the upfront. And then it becomes a culture within the business and there's no positive vibes when people come in. There's no long term goals. They're literally just there to work. And this is the culture that you got to get away from if you want to retain people. And more importantly, attracting people is going to be by turning the culture around. The best way to attract great talent is have a great culture. People want to work for a company that is actively engaged in their future, that is actively trying to improve the business, actively trying to grow, actively trying to increase opportunity for their employees. They want to work for someone like that. They want to work for someone who teaches them about business, wants to work for someone who shares with profit like shares does profit sharing. These are the things you have to do. And then you attract great talent. You, you do not attract great talent and therefore get a great culture. That's not what happens. You create a great culture and then you attract great talent because of the culture. All right, we're talking a lot about this conference because people get it backwards. Like, oh, like when I get a bunch of people, then I'll make a good culture. Like, no, no, no, you make a good culture to attract the right people so you don't have to cut everybody when you actually like want to make a great, good culture. So.

I really encourage you to focus on, even if you have one or two other employees focus on creating a great culture because they will talk to their friends and the good hires they know. And employees talk between businesses when they're stopping at gas stations and all the rest of it. They talk and they know who's paying what and who's treating who and they see each other's trucks and so treat your employees right, treat them the way that you would want to be treated and better and think about them and their long term success, not just you and your business, not just like, oh, I need somebody to fill this position so I can make more money and, and I can get these jobs done. You're not going to get anywhere and you're not going to create a good culture and you're not going to create a place where people want to work for you and are willing to take less money or willing to sacrifice to work for you and work with you. Really. They want to work with you towards the goal that you're trying to set in front of them. And if you're not doing something that's inspiring, if you're not leading from the front, these are some of the things we're talking about at conference, like leading from the front instead of behind, things like that. If you're not doing that, you're not going to attract or retain good people. So create a great culture where they tell other people about you and great talent is attracted to you. Next question. Mike, what is the best way to estimate time needed for small commercial mowing edging blowing times? Where's the best place to find a commercial contract and what is usually included in those contracts on smaller commercial properties? There is an example of both of those things on the the templates and downloads section inside the course.

But yeah, in terms of figuring out estimated time for those things, it comes with experience. You're gonna be off a little bit at the beginning. Just realize that, be okay with it. And with literally 10, 15, 20 jobs, you're gonna be very, very accurate on things like blowing off, weeding time, mowing time, those basic services. And that's why we love them so much. Just cause literally a laborer can figure out how to do the estimates pretty quickly after just a matter of a few weeks on the job. Next question. Best ways to do quality control and properties. I'm hoping to be out of the field this winter. Thanks, Mike. We do not believe in quality control in terms of having a separate position for just that thing. We believe in having P4P be the police officer in terms of making sure that quality is being maintained. And that's done by. If a crew shows up and a job has been done sloppily, we can see who was there before and we can ding their paycheck and bring money from the people who slacked off and got the job done and 5% of the time expected and move that money to the people who actually spend the time get the job done correctly. So we don't. I'm not a big believer in quality control as a position. I know if you're listening to this and you're A quality control person in a really big business, you might not like that. In a massive business like 15, 20 million, yeah, you might pay someone full time to drive around looking at quality control. But I really want the system to police the behavior and not the personality. In other words, another manager, mid level manager. That's complete overhead in the business. I'd rather have the system of P4P operate so that way that money that would otherwise go to a quality control person can be distributed to the employees, raise their wages and therefore be something that they want to work for you because you can afford a dollar or two more per hour because you don't have that middle level manager to micromanage and check all their work behind over their shoulder. Next question. What do you think about joining a rotary club or referral club? I like it for landscape hardscape jobs. Haven't seen big for residential mowing, but if you're into commercial or hardscaping, it can be work for knowing property managers as well as contractors for like design build. Currently solo, but we'll need a solid person next spring as I am growing to that point. Best advice for where to look and or how to find new area. So no friends or family available. Thanks for everything you do. Yeah, I would put a lot of ads out but in those ads I would make it very clear like who you want and who you do not want in the business. I'm not happy when we get 50 leads for a new hire position because usually it means that 48 of them are bad. So what we do is we try to weed them all out in the application process by making it hard. Like they gotta submit a resume, they gotta fill out an application, they have to do it over the phone, they have to come in person and if they're like a minute late, they're off. Little things like that. We try to weed them out, but the more we can weed them out before they even come for an app for an interview, the better. And those things like we say no smoking, we talk about how hard it is to work outside in the rain or we're literally just trying to scare them away so they don't waste our time in the application process. Sounds bad, but it's just true.

Okay, Alex Zark. Best way to find a lot of easy first jobs, literally get a rake and a blower and start doing leaf cleanups. Oh wait, this is a long question. All right. Hi Mike. We have Ohio based lawn care company with annual revenue a little over $300,000 and four employees. This is the first year I've stepped back out of the field mostly and I'm thinking about implementing P4P next year. I've gone through the course material and I think I understand the process but have a few questions. It seems that the original budgeted hours is the key component when setting up P4P. The incremental lift for the employee is to identify and implement efficiencies to reduce the time versus budget hours required. If I understand the process correctly, my question is does this provide enough incentive for most employees? In other words, can they identify enough efficiency in their day to rise above the base hourly rate consistently? Also, do you ever adjust or update the initial budget hours calculation? I appreciate everything you do to help. Is all us all to be better stewards of our businesses. Thanks. Okay, this is a great question. I love this. So someone has gone through P4P in the course. They're wanting to implement it, which you should come to the conference, get cemented in all your questions so you know exactly what to say. Come talk to people who have implemented since last conference and see what the changes they made to their business and how awesome it is. Get it cemented in your mind. All the questions answered, but couple questions here. So it needs to provide enough incentive for the employees. This is the thing about P4P. Someone like, oh, you're just trying to make the employees make less money. And there's people who have convicted me on comments on YouTube of trying to weasel my employees out of money. Okay, let's just get this straight. I want beyond anything else, my employees to be above base pay for a couple reasons. Number one, they're making more money. Number two, it means that if they're below base pay, it basically means that they can slack off and still make base pay. There's no incentive for them to work harder unless they're above base pay. So when people are below base pay, if they consistently are, they're just gonna realize, look, it doesn't matter how hard I work, I'm just gonna be under base pay. So if you rig the system against the employee to where it's very difficult to get above base pay, it will come back to bite you because you will not see any efficiencies. They'll just realize that, look, it doesn't matter if I work at 80% of capacity, 100% of capacity, or 60% of capacity, I'm still making base pay. Guess what? They're not going to be working any harder. You're not going to see any efficiencies. No reduction of Waste whatsoever. You have to make it where they're above base pay. So you've got to make it where if they just hit budgeted hours, they're a little bit above base pay. That's the goal. And so we're gonna talk about ratios, things like that. There's 25%, there's a 33%, there's different ratios that you want to be looking at in terms of your hourly rate, what you charge to your customer, what you charge to your employee on base rate. All those numbers are very important. But at the end of the day, you want them to be above base pay. And if they aren't consistently, but everyone else is on the team, you know, you need to let that person go. They're a laggard. They are not putting in the work that's necessary to, to achieve. But like for example, our last pay period, not a single person was a, was below base pay at or below base pay. Some people were only $0.90 above base pay per hour for the whole pay period. Again, but no one was at or below. That doesn't happen a lot. Usually there's one or two that are hitting base pay and that's not good. You want people to be above base pay because if they're above base pay, there's performance dollars on the table for yellow slips and for damage cases and for, if they did slack off on quality control, all of that stuff, you want them to be above base pay. All right, one more question here. Do you have a landscape? Let's see here. Wait one second. Did I answer that one fully? Oh, also, do you ever adjust or update the initial budget hours calculation? Yes, we do. If we're way off, the company will eat the expense, adjust the budgeted hours and not the price for the customer. And then we will try to adjust the price later on for the customer. And sometimes we will tell the employees, look, we know these certain customers are below budget hours what they should be and we're going to raise them at this specific time. You need to just make sure you follow up on your word. So when we raised prices, we were very, we knew there was these customers, a chunk of customers that we had acquired that were under budgeted hours. And we were very specific with the team. Look, we're going to raise them on this date and we ended up doing like six months earlier. And it's because you've gotta get buy in from them and they will not like it if you're consistently setting them up for failure on P4P by putting them on Jobs that have like half an hour budgeted and they know it's gonna take an hour no matter how fast they work. Just very demoralizing. So you have to watch that. And that's why you do need to be accurate. And if there's a job that you just completely messed up on, you should just eat it. Knowing that the long term buy into P4P is much more important. Especially at the beginning phases. If you mess up and you're a few years into doing P4P, they're gonn like there's jobs where they get done in like 20% of the time of budget hours and they're like making an exorbitant amount of money. But they have to know that the opposite is going to happen occasionally. But if that's happening in the first few weeks, that's going to hurt you in terms of buy in for P4P. So I would eat it and I would just say look, we're going to increase the budget hours on that job so you get paid more but the price won't be changing the customer. And then eventually you need to raise the prices for the customer. Bottom line, you need to listen to your employees. You need to listen, you need to hear them, you need to hear if their frustrations, you need to hear if they're not making enough on P4P. You need to hear their frustrations, don't necessarily need to react on, you need to listen and then we can make determinations of you move certain things around budget hours or a percentage of revenue going to them needs to change things like that. Alright, last question. When pricing leaf cleanup jobs, do you quote by budgeted hours or total job? If budget hours, what do you do when the job takes longer? Do you charge the extra hours? Okay, so we charge by the total job. But what you're saying, like we have budget hours in the back end and yeah, that's an estimate of how many hours it's gonna take. And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it takes shorter. When you're on P4P, the employees are trying to beat that time and that is usually what keeps you closer to that number. Because they're gonna be fighting for that number. They're going as fast as possible to get to that number. And we do not charge for the extra hours. It's very, very rare that we ever will tell someone. Like I talking like once a year and it never ends well that we will tell someone, hey, there's this amount of work and then anything above that will charge X amount per hour. Like that never works out good. Never. And we do it literally maybe once a year and I don't remember the last time we've ever done it. I'm not involved in day to day operations, but I know they avoid that like the plague. And in terms of us, we'd rather charge a set mount knowing that occasionally we'll be off and it takes way longer and we might even give the guys more hours on the job in P4P because we were so off. But we'd rather just take that than trying to convince the customer they need to charge more. Unless they did a work change order, right? If they did a work change order and they added more to the job, then yeah, we're going to charge more. But if they didn't change anything and we literally just did a bad estimate, we're going to eat that cost usually. So hopefully that was helpful. Going to start another video here. Answer the rest of these questions, but make sure you sign up for landscape summit in 2021 January 14th, 15th and 16th. It's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I guarantee it will change your business, change the way that you interact with your employees, and the culture that you've built at your It'll set you up for success in 2021. We're going to be talking how Covid changed this industry forever, and I promise you, you can take advantage of those changes. Make sure you sign up@landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. I'll see you next time. I'm Mike Andes on the Landscape Business course podcast.

Sam.