He Was Wasting $3K a Month on Ads... (Unfiltered Turnaround)

I'm concerned with spending $3,000 a month on marketing. If someone, Google is not giving you a cost per lead, they have no idea what they're doing. I can almost guarantee it's a horrible return on investment. Yeah. One thing that might be helpful is like just having where you do start in the field click from a profitability perspective. But then it's like, okay, say three o' clock afterwards. That's how I do estimates. I do my email. Just some sort of delineation because otherwise the start and stop throughout the day can just make it super inefficient. It's hard to manage the crew. It's hard, like focus stresses me out too totally.

I'm like trying to set this paver and I'm also taking a phone call and like sending out an estimate real quick. And it's just not efficient at all. That's a good idea.

Like, even if it's okay, from 6 till 2, I will be with the crew. I'm 100 operations and then I'll switch to admin and sales. And really that's what you'll have to do at this size. Like until you get to that 400,000 level, you just, you're just not gonna be able to afford the admin person. And it just, there's not, there's honestly not enough for them to do. Yeah, I did a couple estimates a day, a couple calls.

It was like two hours a week.

That she was doing. Got it.

It wasn't worth it.

Got it. Yeah. No. Cool. All right. And so right now, like my biggest, like where I see the constraint in some regard or like a big not problem, like the fact that we're spending $3,000 a month on the ads for Google and we don't know where that's going. Like, we don't have traceable cost per lead customer acquisition cost. So like there's no information he's sending you, like clicks, keywords, Nothing like official.

I've never gotten a PDF or anything written in an email.

Okay.

Again, we've done some stuff on a video call and he shares his screen, but I still don't think I'm seeing an roi. I think we're just seeing like, this is your ad, this is how many people clicked and this is how many people were input into your CRM jobber.

Yep. So can you see that number? How many came from Google inside there?

Only if we have these video calls, I don't know if I can access it. You know, out of these video calls that happen once a Month.

Okay, so how many like leads in a month do you usually get?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, Pull it up real quick. Yeah. At least get a ballpark. Obviously this is a slope series. But are you still spending like. Like for example, last month. There's still a thousand dollars.

So he's lenient with me. So from end of November to we're starting up next week that it's been again.

Okay.

I wasn't paying anything.

Got it. So nothing like he wasn't paying for. It was like zero. So basically probably seven, eight months of the years when he's actually running ads. We're paying a thousand dollars in management fees and then $2,000 a month for ad spend.

That's correct.

Got it.

That's the plan this year. I think that's what we did last year too. Okay, so Jobber actually just is input a AI or co pilot in here.

Right.

So I can see how many like.

This one was three requests in the past 30 days.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Things now. Things are just now speeding up as well. And then a lot of these are calls too. Or that's not input in here, but I get calls too, so.

Got it.

That's not totally accurate.

Makes sense.

How many? Right.

You're good. Go. Go to your quotes real quick. I just want to see how many you're sending on average. And then we could even just search. There you go all.

Go ahead and filter this down.

This.

Yeah. And then. Yeah, and go custom range. Let's do April 2024. So just all of April and next.

April 1, like November or December last year?

No, just April. So go back all the way to April. All the way back. Cuz that's kind of your. I would assume that's kind of your busy season.

Sorry. Yeah, for sure. So like just April.

Yeah. 46. Wow. That's quite a bit. So you're basically getting like more than one a day at least. Yeah, during the busy season.

And I would bet May is probably our busier. Whoops. Our busier month.

Okay.

I could be wrong. That's always what I thought. But 46. So I'm at the same.

Okay. Okay. So you're getting one. Okay. All right, cool. Yeah, I'm really interested to see like if we can get any sort of other data from him in terms of cost per lead. So like I'm assuming he doesn't have tracking codes on your website to track when an estimate is being requested.

Nothing. That's. No, not at all.

Yeah, so. Because what we want. What we want to know is like how much are we spending to get one lead?

Right.

And like, right now we're spending $3,000 a month in go time. But if we get, say, 50, 50 leads and it's all from Google, like 100% of which I would assume it's like half. But you're saying we get 40 leads on $3,000. We are spending like $80 cost per lead. Right. And then if we close it, say, half of those, now we're paying $150 customer acquisition cost. And just knowing that number is important. Right. It's not even saying that it's bad. Like, it's not a horrible number. But I also, I happen to believe that out of those 40, let's just call it 50 leads, maybe 20 of them are actually coming from Google because the other ones that just are coming from your website and Facebook and seeing your. Your. Your truck and referrals and everything else. Okay. And so now all of a sudden, if we're paying $300 customer acquisition cost and we're only getting 10 new leads a month from Google, now, this might not be a good way to use our money. Because when I look at like, last year, we spent $20,000 in marketing, $2,200,000 in revenue. That's like a 10X. Right. But that assumes every single customer came from our ads. But you already had like 150,000 revenue the year before of recurring customers.

You know, like I said, I heard him later in the season too.

So.

Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. I'm concerned with spending $3,000 a month on marketing.

Yeah. Like, okay.

For the return that we're getting.

That's true. I know. I always looked at it like, okay, I want to spend 10% of revenue on marketing, but I never really tracked it.

Right.

And I never cared to choose. Like, that's why I hired out my Google Ads, because I didn't know how to track it. And then I guess I just interested in tracking it. Yeah, it's not good for sure.

Yeah. Especially do you know this person personally or they is actual business?

It's an actual business. It's like basically one guy that runs it all, though he's based out of San Diego. I was a cold lead. He reached out to me on, like, Facebook.

Okay.

And then like six months later, I was like, hey, I can't do this. Can you help?

Yeah. Yeah. If someone on Google is not giving you a cost per lead, they have no idea what they're doing, because what you want them to do is put a Google tracking code on your. Thank you Page. So when someone makes an estimate request form, they can actually. Oh, I like that ad. Made that lead.

So he set up basically a duplicate of my website.

Okay.

It's my website with Go at the beginning and I think that's connected to it. And I'm also concerned. I had this thought last year. I wonder if he didn't share those numbers with me because they didn't perform as well as he thought they would.

Yeah.

Because when I was managing them, I could be wrong because I don't track these things very well. But I thought I could have been getting more leads than he was getting me. Yeah, yeah, I was spending less than.

I'm also concerned with the whole sub domain thing because now you're driving traffic to a domain that's not yours. Like. Like that is not your main website. Like, I don't want traffic going to some other subdomain. I want all going to my main website so that Google's like, oh, there's a bunch of traffic going to this spot.

Plus they can't explain elsewhere on the. On the site.

They can't.

Yeah. Well, yeah, no, because it's just go trust. My website's trusttharve.com.

Yeah. Yeah.

His is go trusttharg.com which is not connected to my website at all.

Oh, at all. Yeah, it's just a, like a landing page.

Landing page. Yeah.

Oh, mercy. Yeah. No, really? Yeah. So if you spent. If you spent one day on like Google Ads, YouTube.

Yeah.

You would probably outperform him, honestly, just, just by having a Google tracking code that you put on your website and then being able to like, even if he didn't track the leads, just with the fact that you're paying $1,000 a month to him for managing it. Let's just like, okay, let's say you spend $2,000 a month on ads and $1,000 on him. If you run the ads, he has to beat you by 50% cost per lead to make it break even on spend. Paying $1,000 to him.

He just drowned.

Yeah. So, like, I don't know who he is, but. But like, I would recommend cutting that. Like, that's $3,000 in your pocket right now. And I happen to believe even if you turn that off completely, you probably get 70% of your leads still.

So here's the thing too. We locked into a year contract.

Oh. So, okay.

Which was last June, I want to say.

Okay.

So at a bare minimum, I have to finish out till June. Unless there's some clause that I can get out Somehow.

Okay, so that's basically April, May, and June.

Yeah.

And that's gonna be $3,000 a month. Okay.

Okay. Well, I can probably reduce my ad spend, but at a minimum, I have to pay him his fee.

Right. Okay, then what I would do then. Cause that's like spring rush, so it's okay. We're gonna kind of bomb for spring rush. In terms of work, you are spending a ton of money on ads and getting very little in return. Like, we're shooting for a 10x return or, sorry, a 20x return, as on new revenue. So, for example, if last year we did 200,000. If I spend $20,000 in marketing this year, I would expect a $400,000 increase in revenue, which would be on top of your 200,000. We'd be getting to 600 grand. In the perfect world. Let's just say you had a 10x return. That's $200,000, which means this year you should be doing 400,000 in revenue.

Just 200 base and then additional.

Well, because you've already. You already have that recurring revenue for last year. You already have a base of revenue from, like, recurring customers, et cetera. So, like, I want marketing dollars to be in addition to last year's revenue.

So I would just be careful with that one. I know people, especially reaching out from Facebook, and they are taking advantage of the fact that you just feel inadequate and you don't know the number side of things. But honestly, one day, if you just lock yourself in this room and I'm gonna learn Google Ads and you watch eight hours worth of content, you will run better ads than that simply by having a tracking code behind your. Your thank you page. Like, when they submit the form, it literally tracks like, oh, this is how many leads I got for X amount that I've spent.

Yeah. So, yeah, I do need a better job at tracking all that. I guess for now, like, until June, I just need to, like, be on it about, like, hey, I need to be getting this roi, you know, to even.

Yep.

For it to be worth it.

So for now, for the next few months, we're just like, hey, we. I would love to be able to see my cost per lead. Yeah, right. And if he can't give that to you, it's a really tell. Tall sign. Or just the fact that he knows that and he knows it's really bad. That could be possible as well. So I would really push for, hey, can I get my cost per lead? And he does not know. I know he knows that number because the Reason he did that sub domain is because he knows that every single lead that comes through that domain is a lead from your ads.

Okay.

So does he, like, when you get a lead from that webpage, does it look any different to you instead of copilot or inside of.

So basically like it goes from that, then it goes to his CRM and then I think it bounces it to my. To my jobber.

Okay.

So like there's some Zapier connect that.

Right. Do you see that different? Like, can you differentiate that between like a lead you get?

Yeah, yeah. It's confusing too because like, I don't. Yeah. If I go to my request, I have no idea which one of these came from him and which ones of these were just from my website or Facebook or whatever.

Okay. So another thing you could ask him about, you just ask about UTM to say, hey, could you do UTM parameters on these? That's going to allow him. If he knows what he's doing, he'll be a track these simply by. If they hit that domain, it tags the account. So ask him about UTM parameters and then also ask him about cost per lead. Like, can I just figure out, can you give me my cost per lead? At the very least, can you tag quotes that come from your CRM? Cause he sees that.

Okay. Like a customer tag.

Like, at the very least, like, that'd be more of a manual thing, but like I would imagine from like a tracking code or utm, he could do this automatically, especially if he's using Zapier to pull these in. But you could also just be like, hey, can I just have a list of the ones that are coming to your CRM? You could actually just ask for that.

Okay.

Like, hey, I just want to know which leads are coming from Google A. Can you give me cost per lead? Which I think he has, but he's not giving it to you. Or at least say, I like to be able to see which ones are coming through your CRM. So I can compare how many are coming from my other advertising. So I can almost guarantee it's a horrible return on investment. Yeah. Based upon that, how much you're spending and then like the amount of leads come in. The fact they didn't charge you throughout the winter is nice.

Yeah.

Right. I would say it's probably because he would. He. He probably knows that it's going to cost hundreds of dollars per lead because it just. There's low demand.

Yeah. There's like nothing coming in.

Yeah. So I would also like to see that Traffic going to your website instead of. It kind of makes sense as to why you have 75 Google reviews but you're not ranking super high because your traffic's lower than what I would have anticipated because you got 75 Google reviews which in this area is like basically the highest.

Yeah.

So you rank really well on Google listing but the native search is not there.

So in. We rank really well for native search in Chatham, Illinois.

Okay.

Because that was my first target market.

Yeah.

Only last year did I create a landing page for Springfield and keywords for Springfield. Because at first I wanted to stay out of Springfield because I was, you know, super small. I just want to hit this really tight knit community.

Yeah.

And now that we're expanding, I'm like, well I should really get into Springfield more.

So yeah.

Give it like a year or two. And obviously what you're saying would help but that should also.

Yeah. Pull up your website real quick. Did you build this?

I did.

Oh, that's very good.

Yeah.

Are you out here telling me you don't know technology and ads you can totally figure out it's just the numbers.

That I don't understand.

Gotcha. I gotcha.

I love graphics, I love design, I love creativity.

What'd you build this on?

WordPress.

Cool. Yeah, this is really cool. I saw the videos and the other pages too. Like the pricing one, stuff like that. Appreciate it. It's very cool. Okay. And then yeah. So in your header it's sitting chat is like they're setting Springfield right after that.

I should. I haven't changed that yet.

Okay. I would just take out exceeding expectations and just change that to.

You know, landscaping in Chatham and Springfield. Yeah.

Okay.

That'll help.

My fear too was like in like nevermind. I guess what you just said, Nick, is what I'm about to say.

So go ahead.

I was gonna say like I was gonna do just Springfield because I wanted to have exceeding expectations there. But it's not needed.

Right.

So I can just do those two. I was afraid of taking Chatham out and then losing my ranking in Chatham.

But yeah. Yeah. I would take out exceeding expectations because it's not helping the rank at all.

That's true.

And people don't get here. We don't get exceeded any expectations.

That's right.

Go to the top really quick.

The top of the page.

Top of the page. Yeah. So this is the part where I feel I get a little confused because if I take out this right here, I don't know what you do.

Okay.

Right. So like what I like to see Usually when I come to a website is, yes, the logo is nice. But basically what we just talked about here, I want to see this here like serving Chatham and Springfield, Illinois with lawn care landscaping since date for example. Or just saying like number one provider or exceeding expectations of residents in Springfield and Chatham and Zane lawn care and landscaping. I don't know what this is all about either because these are, these are sites. Great. I also know that you can just pull these images from Google. So like from a customer's perspective, it doesn't really add a lot.

Okay.

So I would be doing a couple of things right from the get here. From like a conversion perspective.

Yeah.

Is. Oh, you're good. From a conversion perspective, I would rather instead of having this stuff, I'd have an estimate request form. And so you already, you have the Jobber work request but super big.

Yeah.

If you have, you have you used like Jotform or paper form or anything. Yeah, perfect. And you know, zapier enough probably. Yeah, so perfect. So I would make a small form, I'd be putting it right here.

Okay.

And I'd be like request a free estimate. I'd probably make even a button up top here. So as someone scrolls down, they're reading about you, they're reading everything. Always a spot to like the call to actions. Really, really clear.

Yeah, that makes sense. So what about this though? Because like all these forms that are these contact forms that are on my page.

Yeah.

These are HTML from Jobber that I was able to plug in Will if I did some sort of, you know, jotform or something here, like would that still go? I guess those customer details I could zapier into Jobber.

Correct. And then secondly, even if it didn't, even if you don't connect to Zapier, it sounds like you know how to do that. But even if you didn't, I'd still recommend doing it separately because it takes you 10 seconds to copy and paste their contact information over. I'm focusing on conversion because the other part of like this is why I have a hard time actually judging this guy with his Google Ads. Because you can get someone to click an ad cause you do a great job at ads. But when it comes to site, if it's not clear as to what they're asking for the conversion, that's the other part that someone should be tracking when it comes to the website. What's the conversion rate? If I get 50 people from an ad, how many of them actually submit an estimate request form and then how.

Many of Them are actually turning into clients.

So, for example, I know as soon as I have a different page, if you click this and it drops them or it takes them to a contact page, immediately you're losing 30% of people. Yeah, just immediately, like 30% of your people are lost by the fact that I can't immediately insert my contact information.

Really?

Yeah. Okay, so we have one goal. Exceeding expectations. Great. They don't care. They clicked on an ad saying lawn care landscaping, and they're like, I have a problem. I want it solved. And when they're coming to the site, the only thing that you have to do is bridge them from I have a problem to we are the solution. And there's an estimate that is needed in between that. Now, I like instant pricing, but even if you don't do that, I would just make it really easy for them to be able to give you their contact number.

I'm down with instant pricing. I just don't know how to.

You actually have it. You have it kind of throughout.

Sort of like, I have it here. I would like there be a way for, like, them to fill out a form. Well, I guess if they input their square footage and stuff. A lot of people don't really know that.

They have no idea.

Yeah. So I don't know.

But what you could do, like. So one thing on the pricing thing, I said, no one's going to read this. This is a lot of information.

It is. Yeah.

I would try to take everything that's in this small text and try to make it one sentence max. So this is really just a lot of information. And if you keep scrolling, if I remember, there's like, there's even more sheets rolling down.

There's four.

Yeah. Okay. This is basically ask for question four.

Yeah.

It's just a lot of information that is hard to digest for somebody. What I was thinking, though, is what you could do is on your service page, have this information. So, for example, I want lawn care. Then the premium lawn care is there.

Yeah.

And then if I want, like, you know, property clamps. Okay. Seasonal is there.

That's there, too.

And then there's like, the landscape that would be on the landscaping page, because otherwise it looks like a whole bunch of random pricing information. And when you're saying starting at it's not specific enough for people, like, oh, like, that's what I'm paying.

And it's kind of misleading, too. Yeah, I've noticed that because, like, I had a call the other day. It's like, oh, you charge 100 bucks. For mulch install? No, like, that's per yard. Like, that's not really what we charge. And they were not interested.

And even would you want to install one yard of mulch?

Yeah, exactly.

Right. For 100 bucks. Not really. Right. So I. I would. I would probably say the one thing for instant pricing that we still don't touch is projects.

Okay.

Because the range is like.

Yeah, it's all over the place and so many different variations.

Insane. Yeah. Whereas with mowing, I'm willing to take a little bit of variation, knowing I can raise their price in the future. Right. But going back to the homepage, even if you didn't do instant pricing, which I would say, like, on jot form, if you get good at that, you could definitely make it where it, like, shows pictures, like, small, medium, and large. And then what we do is we actually. We do show the square footage ranges.

Okay.

So, like, small, it'll say have a picture, but It'll be like 3,000, 8,000 square feet. Medium be like 8,000 to 12,000 square feet. Large will be like 12,000 square feet plus. But then I have the pictures to make it a little easier for them. You could do that, but literally you would get like, a 30% bump in conversion if you just nix this. Put this as a small form. You want to cover, like, less than a third of the page where they don't have to scroll any further down.

Yeah.

So even if you wanted to move this thing down, make that form there, nix this and just make. It was like, because they're coming to your site, usually from an ad, or they saw your. They want to submit information as fast as possible. And as soon as you say, hey, you got to click on contact, you got to click on this button over here. We just dropped 30% of people. Wow.

I guess because we get a ton of traffic. A ton for what I would think of on our homepage.

Right.

And then anything else, like, it drops off, and then the time spent on those pages is like, nothing.

Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So. So what you're trying to do is like, this. This part of your page, it's kind of Google.

Yeah.

If you're not in the first, like, three spots of Google, you know, you don't get seen. It's the same thing with your website above the fold. Everyone sees it. Like, when they come to the site, they will see this. The likelihood of them seeing the contact page of the pricing page is like 1%.

Yeah.

So this is why this is the most important, like, real estate of the entire thing. And we're giving it to these people. Really? So, like, that's where it's like, let's just make it really lazy, like, focus on our cta.

Okay.

So also this, the picture in the background is a random photo of trees. I would just make it like more personalized to you.

Okay.

Right. Like, you have some really good photos of you and the crew you out in the field.

Okay.

I think like, even at your size now, leaning into like the. You can like a picture of family like you had is really good.

Yeah. Okay.

This picture, though, if it was like you on a project job with a couple of employees, would do way better conversion than random trees. Also tells me very quickly what you do versus this. Like, again, literally, if you cover up this, I have no idea what this is.

Yeah, just drop green and you see a tree. This is supposed to be a bed. There's supposed to be a whole landscape.

Oh, it's just, you can't see because.

On mobile it looks good, but I guess on this it doesn't.

So yeah, I would just like. It's kind of like when. When we make videos, like 90 of our time should be on the first 30 seconds.

Yeah.

Because that's what I know everyone's gonna see that. Whereas with your website, it's like, I want this to be perfect. All this other stuff. Great. I'm doing it mostly for SEO. If someone's digging into my site and wants to do a back end study about me, but most people don't care, I just got to get them to get an estimate request for me to make that as easy as possible.

Okay. So don't worry so much about CTAs. I mean, have CTAs on these pages, but like really just hammer it right here.

Yeah. Like 90% of our time should be spent on above the fold homepage. So I think, you know, here you could have either your phone number. Ah, very good.

It's small, but.

Yep. No, you're good. So here could just be contact us or even get a free quote. I would just move this up here, get a free quote. So that way as they scroll down, if they pass this form or if they're on and about pages, there's always a CTA to get a free quote. But then right here, I'd nix these four. One third of the page is gonna be a small form. I'm minimizing how much information I need from them. It's just like services, name, phone number, address, email. That's it.

Okay.

Make it as small as possible. The challenging Part with the HTML and Jobber. It takes so much space.

It does, yeah.

And ideally I push them towards that because it's perfect. It goes into the form, everything's connected. I got way more information, but I just want like base. I just want to get higher conversion.

So you're saying on Jotform, like Jotform has a thing I can put in here and it's smaller.

Yeah. Would you build this on WordPress? WordPress, they have ones too. It's just a matter of like, I don't even care if it's connected. Just something small, something. And if you can't connect it with Zapier, if you can't, it doesn't matter because it literally takes you 20 seconds to copy it over. And like, if you look at your conversion, like you said, like, there's such a huge drop off if we can just increase that by double. So for example, 1 out of 50 people currently submit an asset request form that get to the site, which is pretty average. If we get to like one more, it's like one out of 25. We double the business. So. And that will do like more for us than spending $3,000 a month.

Right now here I'm sitting here thinking like, my website was like super good.

It's good.

No, no, no, I know, but trust.

Me, I have seen a lot worse. Don't worry about that.

I do a lot better functionality wise.

Yeah, it looks good though. Like it's from. There's like two, like three elements. There's like design, there's conversion, and there's SEO. Yeah, right. Design wise, you nailed it. Like the fact that you build it super good. Especially on mobile. Actually, I really like design on mobile and the conversion part is the part we want to address. Like, the whole reason the website exists is to get people to go from interested to a lead. Right. So just a couple things on that one, but overall you built it really well.

Appreciate.

Okay, cool. So that's like the marketing side.

Yeah.

I think that for now it is a matter of actually, do you have a piece of paper? Could I have a marker also, like keep notes for you so it's a little more organized. Yes.

And then.

Actually, can I have the clipboard? Yeah, super helpful. Let's go. The employee handbook, my man.

That might be sensitive to.

Oh, okay. I won't look into that. Okay. This is the employee handbook. Sweet. Oh, very good.

Last year I really struggled. I shy away a lot from conflict and I try to avoid it as much as possible. And this is almost Mainly there just.

To help me have something.

Exactly. Because if someone's late and I'm like, hey, can you stop being late? Like, we really need you here on time. If I have something to actually back that up, it's.

It's.

That conversation goes a lot easier for me.

So, yeah, that's been helpful.

Yeah. Well, I just implemented it this year because last year we had a late problem, you know, with a couple guys. And again, like, I don't like conflicts of, like, hey, can we stop doing this? And then they'd be late again, stop doing this. And I'm. I'm like, too nice about it too. So this, It'll definitely help, I think this year, having something and they sign off on it and everything.

Okay, cool. And. And so really going into this year, though, you got one person been with you since last fall, and then two brand new ones starting next week.

Yep.

Let's go. And you've already hided them. They're good to go.

Yeah, that's what's underneath that is interrupt. You guys.

One of your mics, probably me. No, it's.

Says it's red.

That's the same brand that makes drone. Yeah.

Dji, we just got them.

They're really nice. Dji, mics, man.

What kind of job is he going to the day?

Huh?

What. What job is he doing today?

A mulch install.

Okay, nice.

Cleaning out a bunch of bags. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. How many. How many yards?

Three and a half.

Okay, so nothing crazy. Do you kind of keep him busy and you busy during the winter or just.

No. So during the winter he's laid off.

Oh, so he just started back up?

He just started this week?

Yesterday. Oh, wow. Okay.

So yeah. Yep.

So during the winter, what's your revenue usually around?

We don't do anything in the winter. Okay. I did shovel driveways this year and I made like a couple grand, but I'm never doing that again. I hated shoveling.

Really.

So if I. If I'm going to do snow again, which I'm not opposed to, I just want to make sure I have equipment to do, so.

Right, right, right. Because you guys, it's kind of intermittent with snow here though, right?

It's a hit or miss. Like, two years ago, we didn't get anything. Three years ago, we didn't get anything. Four years ago we got hit like we did this year. We had a big storm and everybody was out for three days. But yeah, it's. It's a hit or miss. So if I. If I buy something this Year it's kind of a gamble whether or not it's going to.

Got it. Okay. All right. So from a leads perspective, so when we look at the 4L framework, it's basically just gonna help us kinda like organize this stuff. So liquidity is the first for first of the Ls. So liquidity we know like right now the cash crunch is real and so we'll address that part in a second. But from a leads perspective, we know we need to know cost per lead. We are going to increase conversion of the website using the form, using the estimate request form as well as like this part being really focused on like what does this do? When a customer comes here, they want to know, do they serve my area and do they do my services?

What do we do, how can we help? And then immediately getting the info.

Yeah. The first thing thrive lawn care. Great. I know they do lawn care. The next question I have a customer has is do they serve my area?

Yeah.

So like that's why having Chatham and Springfield there is helpful.

That's true.

They just, they're trying to validate like does this work for me? Right.

I do that a lot. Like I'm looking at H Vac Co. And they're like out of pleasant planes or something. But do they serve my area? Yeah.

Right.

That makes total sense.

Cool. So leads, we got to know our cost per lead. For now we'll talk to the guy with Google, see if you can't give us that information. And if not, just ask for a very manual outlay of like, okay, give me all the leads that come into your CRM.

Yeah.

Just so I know just any information. Yep. Okay, great. That's leads. I genuinely believe that after June, if you just can him and you spend $1,000 on Google Ads yourself, save two grand, you'd probably get more leads, right?

Yeah.

And you can then control lead flow. So when you're crazy booked, you just throttle it back. When you need a little more, you can put more on it.

Okay.

But tracking the cost per lead, putting the tracking code behind here, you will figure that out in two hours. If you can build this, you can put a tracking code behind. And what's also cool, if you did the. The jotform or some sort of form separately, you could always know like you could just track. Okay, I'm going to send all the traffic to there from Google Ads. You'll know that form equals I have a converting ad. So that's what he's doing with the whole subdomain thing. It's Easier to track.

Yeah.

So cool. All right, so from a liquidity perspective right now, what's our. Our labor rate? Like, what are you trying to charge out in the field?

80 to 90 an hour. So I try to get. Doesn't always happen. The mowing side usually is hovering around 80, but again, that depends on things going wrong. The landscaping side is where we started last year. I would charge. Try to charge between 80 and 100, but some days we'd be getting like 50 or 60, and then some days we get 120, and it's just all over the place.

Right.

But. But yeah, my bare minimum that I want to hit is like $80. Now. I'd be okay if we hit like seven.

Yeah. All right. Do you know what approximately your close ratio is? Like, what percentage of. Too high?

Yeah, last year it was too high. So it was like, above 50.

Okay. Like 60, 70%.

It was. Yeah, around 60.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't think it was above 60, but maybe mid-60s.

Okay.

Low 60s.

Okay. Yeah. Like, my concern right now is that we have a few employees and yourself working. And at the revenue marker, we're currently doing, like. We're not actually hitting 80 to 100. We're significantly lower. But we really want to track that. So we know also to be able to track the efficiency of the crew. Yeah.

That's another thing I need to work on this year.

So, like, I know, like, pay for performance is not really in the cards yet, because I'm assuming you don't use budget hours for every job, et cetera. It's a little harder to track than jobber. So what you could do, though, is just track how much do you pay someone per day in wages, and then how much do they earn in revenue per day?

Yeah. How much do I need to be making with a certain labor revenue?

So, for example, if we take. For the labor side, if we just start tracking labor efficiency, and how we're going to track labor efficiency is simply. Is going to be wages paid. So that could be. Let's just call them 20 bucks an hour. That kind of average. So 20 bucks an hour. We had eight hours worth of work. $160 divided by. Okay, what was what we earned for that day? I earned a thousand dollars. Well, it's 180 divided by a thousand, that's 0.18. 18%. Good. We want that number under 40%. Yeah.

So last year, just to give you probably already maybe have crunched these numbers, but on my p. L. My labor to revenue, if I wasn't in the. So this, obviously, this doesn't include me. The labor and payroll.

Right.

Interrupt real fast. I'm just going to set this here recording. Yep. Here. Gonna put this right here. Sorry. So that way, as you guys are talking, we at least get. So if I wasn't in the equation, if it was just the payroll I paid out, it was like under 30%, which was really great. But I was in the field every day working 50 hours a week. So, like, if I put myself in that situation, in that equation, as if I was an employee, it jumped up to like 43%, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, totally. And what you can do. Cause you have the two trucks, is track it by the crew.

Okay.

Because what I would guess is that you are, like, crazy efficient and your other crew is just falling behind a bit. But just knowing what that is and actually having a metric instead of just being like. I kind of feel like they're like. It's also why it's tough to hold people accountable is when you're not tracking the numbers because you don't want. You don't want to, like, throw someone under the bus if they're trying, but you just take them wrong. But when the, like, the numbers don't lie. Like, if one crew is at 60% of revenue going to wages and. And the other one's at 25%, like, we have a training or an efficiency problem or work ethic problem. Right. And so even if you didn't pay, like, I would say down the road, you'd want to incentivize this. Right, Right. Because, like, we can have.

I was just talking to Brad about this morning.

Okay.

I was like, the more we grow and the more, like, the more money we make by your efficiency, I want you to win from that. Yeah, I just don't know how to implement that quite yet. The time to do it yet.

Yeah. Like, ultimately, pay for performance is nice for that. I think the simpler model is like, let's just track for now what percentage of labor revenue is going out in wages. And then down the road you could be like, hey, guys, if you beat 30%, you get some sort of a bonus.

Yeah, for sure.

Right. And so just tracking that would be helpful because, like, right now you can really easily know how long they work today. Multiply that by their hourly rate. Boom, there's their wages. And then look at Jobber. And okay, add up all the jobs I did for the day or the one project. Boom, there's that revenue marker. Now remember, it's labor revenue. So if they have, like, mult jobs, you're gonna have to take the materials out, right?

Yeah.

So even if it's an approximation.

Yeah. Now I think of it, yeah. Our landscaping side probably really sucked last year.

Really?

Yeah. Because a lot of, like, I'd look at our revenue, and I wasn't even calculating the materials on it for some of the jobs. Like, in my head through the day, I was like, okay, this is how much we made hourly. We paid this much materials. But, like, looking back on the month, I definitely wasn't doing so.

Okay. So from a labor perspective, the goal is track labor efficiency. Are our kind of equations going to be wages paid that day divided by labor revenue? It's going to take you, like, a minute, maybe two minutes per employee per day, which is 10 minutes a day. It kind of stinks. But if you do that every day and then over the course of time, be able to kind of see, like, what is the trajectory for each employee, the crew, and then just have better confidence when it comes to budgeting. Because, like, right now, like, man, we're spending so much in ads. I want to can this guy so fast. Whoa. Whoops.

How. What's the likelihood of getting out of the contract?

I don't know. It's hard to. Because I'm a pushover.

I know. I know.

I could probably make it happen.

Okay.

I would just feel terrible, I guess, but logistically, it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, I could probably make it, and I signed a contract. He's a good guy, though.

I might be able to make something happen. I would come from the angle of, I can't afford this.

Yeah.

Like, right now, we are spending way too much of our revenue on it. And I genuinely believe if you spend a thousand, you'd get the same results, if not better. And then the other 2,000, like, we need it in our pocket. We just don't have the cash. You could just be really straight and honest and, like, I don't have one month worth of advertising.

That's what I told them last week. We had our phone call for the year to get things ready, and we were supposed to start this week.

Yeah.

But I was like, I just don't have the money. I got to re register my truck. So I got to pay my cpa. I don't have the money to do ads right now. And I'm, like, banking on the fact that we'll have money in two weeks to be able to pay him. What?

Yeah. If we can get out of that contract, that'd Be huge.

Okay.

Because it's not just a thousand dollars of basically straight off to him. It's the $2,000 in ads. And I don't see any return. I'm just not seeing it.

Yeah, we were doing good actually on our, on our Facebook ads. When I was managing those, we had a ton of leads. The problem was a lot of them were low quality leads.

Right.

But you're good, man.

Every time you got new ones.

But yeah, I think that's doable. Then that makes a lot of sense. Like, that would literally be an extra two grand in my pocket at the end.

And that's assuming we still spend a thousand dollars on things that, you know, work. Right. The Facebook ads, for example.

My ROI could be higher.

Right.

And I could be making more money too.

And for example, if someone says, hey, I'm gonna a ton of leads from Facebook, but they're low, low quality, like, great, let's just add constraint to the ad. So instead of just saying like, get free lawn care, which is gonna have tons of leads, but low quality, I'm gonna put something like, hey, minimum starts at $49 or something like that. That's going to immediately guess, reduce the amount of lead they get, but increase the quality of them.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Right. So we're going to get out of the contract. Get out of the Google contract.

The guy's probably really nice. And I think it's a matter of just because someone doesn't do a great job does not mean they're not nice. These things can coexist, but I think it's a matter of we are spending way too much for what we're getting. And the fact that he's not giving us our cost per lead, we're not getting any sort of tracking around. It means we are literally throwing money and just coping and praying. And I got the bad strategy. Okay. Okay, let's try to get out of that. And even if you have to say like, hey, I'll give you next month or something like that to get out of the next. Because basically we're gonna try to save nine grand.

Yeah.

Over the next three, four months. If we can do that. Take control back of your ads. I feel like the time you're spending on just those calls, if you could just take one day before spring rush starts, like, even if it's this week, and watch videos on Google Ads and you already know Facebook ads, but like, watch another couple of videos, really hone it in a little bit, you'll do better.

Okay.

And Especially once you fix the site's conversion stuff. Like doing that could immediately put you above him in terms of conversion and, like, number of leads coming in just by.

Even if I didn't do any ads. Yes, just the website alone.

Because you already have traffic. You can see that traffic coming in, and it's not coming from his ads. Right. Because he's going to a different subdomain. And so if you can just increase the conversion, you might actually not spend money on ads, but because you double the conversion, get just as many leads. Yeah, right. Okay, cool. Okay. So liquidity goal is get out of Google contract.

Okay.

I think we can do that. If you wanted to pay them for one month, they're, like, dying. But, like, I think this is also a time, like, we got to put our foot down sometimes as a business owner. Like, this is what's right for the business. And just take, like, the fact that, like, we gotta provide for the family and, like, we currently can't.

Yeah.

And so sometimes just taking the angle of someone that is reasonable, hey, I can't afford this. And maybe I'll come back to you in the future. I would love to. And we can end this on good terms. Great. Like, right now, I cannot afford this contract, and it's going to put me out of business. Like, it seems like fatalistic, but, like, be like we're being honest.

Yeah, no, you're right.

And I really believe that with the conversion of the site and then you taking over the ads, saving two or three grand right now is, like, really important, so. Because during spring rush, we're probably doing what, like 15, 20,000amonth in revenue last.

Year during spring rush, actually, probably more.

Probably more like 25.

Yeah, 25. 30. Our highest was like 35 last year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we just. We do not want that money going there.

You're right.

So cool. So we got labor. We're trying to track the labor efficiency.

When it comes to, like, you kind of feeling like a bit of a pushover from the employee's perspective, is that, like, when they make mistakes, is it when they don't show up? Like, what are the parts where you just, you know, you're being steamrolled or just letting things slide?

So I don't let quality slide. I don't. I try not to micromanage, but I feel like I'm pretty gracious with mistakes. I had someone total a truck last year, and I wasn't mad at. Mistakes happen. You know, things happen if we miss a spot trimming. Like, mistakes happen just Try to do better. It's like, things again, like, things that I can enforce, but I didn't have in place to enforce, like being late or not wearing a company T shirt or, you know, things that I can enforce but I couldn't because, like, to me, it's common sense. To them it may not be. Yeah. So I think being a pushover in terms of what I can actually enforce, and even this year, like, I think that employment handbook is going to help. But because I can be a pushover, I am afraid. I'm going to be afraid to reference that.

Right.

Just because I don't want to cause contention and I just want to be liked.

Yeah, it's a bad thing.

But, yeah, that's. Yeah.

Like, how I got over this part. Because, like, when I first started, every single person in the company was older than me. So very intimidating. Cause I was 18, 19, not a single person was younger than me until I was 22. And so it was like, I am going to take away from someone who has a family. I'm going to take away their job. Like, this is, like, very daunting. And I'm going to let things slide because I don't want to have to address the firing thing. And so. And that changed after someone sued me, after I tried to nicely let them go. And then they said it was because I was doing it based upon them getting injured.

Oh, my gosh.

I was trying to graciously allow them to, like, get out without. With their dignity from the team. And they came around and sued me. From then on, it's like, all right, so this is the book. And if they do something wrong, you're out. And I'm not giving you a reason why. And so that seems harsh, but it'll take you getting burnt one time to where. And right now, the business can't afford to have to be burned. And that's where I was at. So, like, I had to go take a loan out to cover a lawsuit that was completely frivolous and made up. But, you know, we can't do that right now.

You're right. Last year, I had a. The guy who actually totaled one of my trucks, he was texting and driving. So I should have been mad at him for it, but it wasn't.

Yeah.

And, like.

There. I should have fired him a long time ago. Everyone around me, I told everyone about this employee. Everyone's like, you need to fire him right now. But I'm.

Prior to this. Prior to this.

Yeah. And I just have a hard time.

Kind of mixing like, okay, is everyone your wife? Okay, so we need to listen to your wife on all HR related things.

She was like, as soon as I hired him because she. Now she's like, I need to be involved in every interview.

Very good.

She wasn't in this one.

Good.

And. And yeah. So she was telling me from the get go, like, I don't like this guy. He shouldn't be here.

Yeah. And you're just optimistic. You want everyone to do well.

I want this kid to do better. I saw myself in him like 18 years old.

Yeah.

And that was a bad mistake.

So is she involved in the hiring process now? Yeah. And then does she meet with them, like, throughout the day or talk to them throughout the day?

Occasionally, yeah. She'll come out, she'll be outside, and they'll say hi to each other, you know, recap the day or something. But mainly it's like interviews, and then if I face any conflicts with the guys. She's heavily involved in that. Last year there was a conflict between two guys and she handled most of it. I don't know what to do. Like, so, yeah, she stepped in.

So in the morning, if the cruise needs to call out, do they contact you or they contact her. Okay. And does she want to be more involved in that area or. We're trying to kind of keep her where she doesn't have to be involved.

In the business more so the latter.

Okay. It's mostly like, you know, this is a weakness and it's a strength of her.

100.

Got it. Okay.

I want her to focus on the kids. Like, that's. Yeah. Let's just say, oh, I'd love that.

Yeah.

But, yeah, my weakness is the people and, and putting my foot down. And she's good at that.

And if she can do. Even spend, you know, 10% of her time doing that, it'll save you like half your day.

Yeah.

Because it's such a huge leverage point once you start having. Having employees. So, like, one thing I would consider is having her being tasked with creating a bench, which means there's a backup person that's hired, ready to go, that is like, not hired. I shouldn't say that. But like you, they're a good applicant and you're ready to hire them.

Okay.

Because if you have that person, you'll have more confidence to go pull the trigger on someone when you know they need to instead of, well, we kind of need them. We're in the middle of spring rush. Who else is going to be able to do it? And so if her JAM is hiring people, interviewing them, sniffing out people in terms of, like, are they a good fit? Okay, we need two employees. Great. But we're going to have another one that's like. We tell them. We tell them when they, hey, we don't have a certain start date. We're always looking for great people.

Yeah.

And then they pass the interview process. And then she tells you, hey, I got someone. They're really good. We're not gonna offer them a job. But just so you know, that way, if there's someone that, like, does something stupid today, you're gonna pull the trigger a lot faster.

Because I'm not afraid of losing someone good.

Exactly.

So if you guys want to open that window, too, if you want. I know it's a little bit warm in here.

Go ahead.

I'm fine. I'm fine.

Okay.

Okay. So on the labor part, I'm gonna put. Create a bench. Okay. And that's basically, we need a someone on the bench. That gives you the confidence of the coach to pull players knowing that there's someone else to step in.

Yeah.

And then you're not going to be involved in creating the bench because that's not our strength. Yeah, Right. Your strength is selling and dealing with a team out in the field. So I would say, technically it's like sales and operations. That's kind of you. But if. If you know your weaknesses, sniffing people out, being a little bit more skeptical of them, etc. Let her handle all that. And she only says, I have someone on the bench or I do not have someone on the bench. Then when you're on the field and someone doesn't show up for two days, you're immediately pulling their card and you have someone else to step in.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

But right now you're putting up with it because, like, we're busy.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And now you have. Now you have the benchmarks as to why their car would have got pulled.

Okay.

In the handbook, it says if you were late, this happens. And now you're going to actually have the kahunas to go do it. Because it says it and they signed it. Right, Right. And there's someone to back them up.

Right. I think it's a good idea.

Okay. From a leadership perspective, I think it is. It kind of ties into that. And that's just a matter of, like, having the organization of the employee handbook for you to lean back on is helpful. I'm assuming you have, like, meetings with the guys in each morning, etc.

I think a Lot of this will just come down to like confidence as you build the business and then not being taken advantage of. From the employee perspective, there needs to be some whip cracking in terms of efficiency because like when we look at three employees and like the revenue and you're calling probably half the revenue. So when I look at the numbers, I'm actually saying, okay, if 198 was our revenue, you working 50 hours a week, I bet you made over 100,000 of that with your revenue. And so then when 100 left for.

Two or three guys.

Right, right. And so like this is where actually my brain goes is I actually think you have last year made more money. You being solo, not doing any advertising, not worrying about any leads and just doing the work yourself.

You're right. I have a buddy who owns a lawn care company in Auburn where we used to live and he did more than me last year and it was just him and a part time guy and he doesn't spend any on ads.

Because what's happening is 20, 30% of your day is being spent managing a crew and doing more sales is required to fill their schedule. So you're doing all the work, advertising and overhead required to fill work that is unprofitable versus if you did, you know, just less revenue. But all of it was ding, ding you super profitable if you did once. I bet you could do 140 to 150 by yourself.

Yeah, for sure.

Because you're probably doing 110, 120 by yourself now. But if you didn't have to deal with the team, you could probably do the work yourself and be more efficient and then you wouldn't have to spend money on ads. You'd be like, forget that, I'll just fix my website. Cause it's free to make that change. Forget advertising, I have enough leads coming in as is.

I just, I don't want to be like that makes. I really want to make this business to where like if I break a leg, my sole income isn't gone.

Yeah.

So like I guess I would almost take this over me making 150 just because I have a bit of security, knowing I won't lose all my money if I get injured or if I have to stay home for my, with my wife for a couple of weeks to take care of the kid or whatever.

So I agree with you. The counter point to that is this. Right now, if you got injured, you're still making up half the revenue and now the business would lose 50 to $60,000 a year. Because you have employees are inefficient or, and, or pricing that's not high enough. The estimates were exactly accurate.

Yeah.

So there's two options. One, do we go to the very conservative route, which is literally the next year. We do 150 in revenue. But you're 50% profitable. Yeah. That's conservative. Or we do what we've been talking about, which is like, let's juice up the website. Let's cut back on, like, frivolous the marketing stuff. Be a better leader to the crew, hold them accountable, track our labor efficiency, make sure that they're actually making money for us. Like, if they're not making money, they need to go.

Yeah. Right.

And as much as we want to help them in their future life, if they're not making money, we need to fire them. Yeah.

It doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

Yeah. Literally, a couple days ago, I was talking to Anna and I was like, what if I just fire everybody this year?

And the more I thought, Thinking dark thoughts.

Yeah. Well, like, the money size, like, this could be nice. But yeah, it's not just what I want to do long term.

Yeah.

So definitely doing the latter.

And those things are set up like, what if, what if you did it for one year and then you got your prices up to where they need to be at and got like. So, for example, how many mowing customers do you have now? That's tough to lose. But this is the thing we would have to do. No more sales. You do 74 mowing customers, you make $15,000 a month. It'd be like 50% profit. And then I'd be really pushing is how do we convert those people into winter services.

Yeah.

So you can keep revenue throughout the winter. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I would just be taking a step back.

Yeah. Oh, you would. You would be. You would be. For a year.

I, I, I think that's what I. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I can do that this year with my current setup and just nixing out my unnecessary expenses. Like you said, becoming a better leader and just strengthening what I have instead of ripping out and starting over, essentially.

What if you had just one employee? Because I feel like having three employees right now. If you're going to shoot for 350, we could probably make it work.

That's what. It's very doable. We have quite a bit of work lined up for April.

Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. So what I would say is this. You have the two employees. You're pretty confident on them?

Yeah.

Has Anna sniffed them out?

Yes.

Let's go.

Yeah.

Good. So, you know, we're going into training, etc. I would say if you don't have enough work, we need to lay one of them off.

Okay.

We can't be like, well, we hired them. We've got to keep them full time. Because I have a bad feeling that if we don't have enough work, you will just keep them on staff.

And so it needs to be. This is why tracking the labor efficiency is so important. Because as soon as you start having people work four or five hours a day, you're trying to kind of just fill their time. You're having to do stuff around the shop, and that number will drop like crazy.

Yeah.

And so if we're not getting. If we're spending more than 40% of their wages, 40% of their labor revenue on wages, that should be, like, red flags all over. We're just not going to be profitable.

So one thing I want to ask you is, should I plug myself into that calculation of okay, I thought so?

Yeah.

I just want to make sure.

And the thing is, I would not be paying yourself what you're paying them. You should be paid what you're really in the equation.

It's what I'm paying them, but obviously I pay myself more.

Yes. If they're making 20, you should be at least $30 an hour. You're literally bringing half the revenue to the business. Right. But the notion that we are going to run a less risky business for the family sake by having employees is actually false. Because if you got hurt, the business would be negative profit. Right. If you were solo, revenue would stop, but you would have all these expenses. Right. So we've got to make that other side of the business profitable. And that's going to come in the form of better stringent leadership. It's like, this is. We make money here.

Yeah.

And so, like, this is a big turn for me when I just started being like, we're here to make money.

Yeah.

And when you make it about that, it makes it so much easier for everyone. And so, like, we're here to kind of like, improve. And, like, we want to be better landscapers and we, like, be about, like, making the customers happy. No, no, we all want to make money here. How do we make more money? We make customers happy and they keep coming back to us.

That's the conversation I have with Anna all the time.

Yeah.

She's like, this is a business.

I like Anna. Anna. I've never met Anna, but Anna sounds like an amazing person. We would get along very well, I think.

I hear this is not a business.

This is.

Or this is a business, not a charity. I probably hear that, like, once a week.

Hallelujah. Can I get an amen? Let's go. So, like, it is important, though, like, and I think talking to my team about it helped because, like, I just got sick of, like, being so stressed about money. I just came to the conclusion, I'm gonna make this all about money.

Yeah.

If I make more money, I'll be able to give them more money. And so, like, once we made the change, all of a sudden, like, okay, we knew health benefits. Okay, we have new paid time off. We can offer this other stuff, which all lines with their goals too. And so you're not being selfish. You're just making the goal post really clear. Like, we are here to make a bunch of money, and if you're not going to make me money, you're out.

Yeah.

And, like, it seems harsh, but it's like, if you make more money, the customers are being served. Well, it means they're coming back to you over and over again. It means they're referring you out. It means they're willing to pay a higher price to get you on their property.

Right.

And so it's really a win, win, win. But talking like that is a very different tone. And it's very difficult. Like, I was usually, like, the airy fairy, like, hey, like, we're here to, like, improve our lives and stuff. And it's like, no, we're make a bunch of money. And by doing that, I hopefully give you more money and then you can do whatever you want with it. I'm not going to dictate that you, like, be a better landscaper, like, listen to books. I'm just gonna make as much money as possible so I can give you more money and then you can do whatever you want in life.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I just got to put it to action.

And then when the reason it was so important for me to do it is then when I started pulling out numbers because they're not going to be used to this, it makes sense, like, oh, the goal is to make money. Therefore, we should probably track our labor efficiency.

Should I be transparent with them in terms of labor revenue, how much they're bringing in, how much I need to be making and stuff. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Well, this is what I would do at first. I would track it at first so you get some confidence.

Yeah.

So at the end of every Day, we're going to take wages. How, who was on the crew, how much did I pay them, how much they earn in labor revenue. So we take out the materials. There's my percentage. I would do that for a few weeks. You get confident, actually what that number is, what it should kind of be. You're also going to figure out who your highest and lowest performers are really fast. You also have half of your crew. You and one person are good. The other two people are new. You're going to have low efficiency for the next few weeks. Get them trained up. Once you know those numbers, then you go to your team knowing, okay, I know what these numbers should be at, and I know what they are. For some people, that's when you can start incentivizing it. Okay, so, for example, you say, okay, if you're under 30%. Like, if under 30% of your labor revenue goes to your wages, you're getting bonuses.

So just track this, like, before payroll hours are sent out.

Like, no, this is every day.

Every day.

Every day. Yeah. Right. And for now, I just keep an Excel spreadsheet. Like, Jobber does not have the budget hour thing nailed. So, like, you just have an Excel strategy date and name of people in that. In that cell. I am taking, how much did I pay them in wages divided by labor revenue they earned for the day. And if that number is under 40%, green. And you can literally make an Excel spreadsheet green, over 40%, red. If it starts hitting under 30%, you know they're crushing it, and you can afford to pay them more, but you just track it for a few weeks, and then you bring it the team. Hey, guys, this company is about making money. Why? Because if I make more money, I can give you all more money. So what we're going to do now is align the incentives of the company with yours, which is, if you make really efficient, you hustle throughout the day, you're gonna make more money. Here's how beat 30%.

I guess, like, a part of it that's a bit confusing for me is, like, on the landscape side, like, for the mowing, I know how long a lawn should take for two guys. On the landscaping side, it's a bit harder for me. So, like, if we're in the red, how much of that I need to figure out is because I priced it wrong and how much of that is because they're not efficient?

Yes. So there'll be other factors, like weather. Right. There'll be a piece of equipment breaks down. There's all these Other factors. And this is why no one likes to do P4P or pay for performance of any sort. It's like all these variables, but guess what? You're going to estimate a job for eight hours and they're going to run in three.

Yeah.

So, like, it kind of comes with the territory up and down that ladder, but it's more or less like you're not Even actually doing P4P, you're just tracking it. And then you're giving the incentive if they can beat it down the road. And you could just tie it to, like, hey, if you get under 30% for the whole week, you get, like, a $300 bonus. You know, you can afford that now because that's better than the 50 or 60%.

Yeah, yeah. And it's extra money in my pocket. Even if I'm paying out an extra 300, that's nothing to what I've profited.

And now when they leave the shop, you're like, I know they're hustling and you don't care about them looking at their phone. You're not wondering, like, battling your mind, like, okay, should I be telling them not to look at their phone? Like, should I be telling them that they need to show up earlier? Like, I. You know, because, like, look, the harder you work, the more money you make.

Yeah, yeah. Even if they don't perform well, they're gone.

Yeah, Right, right. So I would probably create some sort of thing like, hey, 30% great employee, you're going to make more money. 40%, meeting expectations, 50%, you're on the cutting like, you're on the chopping blocks. Yeah.

They gave me a lot of insight.

So for sure, I think the leadership side is just holding people accountable, holding accountable to labor efficiency. The other thing is when people make mistakes, like a skid mark, a damaged lawn, whatever. I'm assuming right now you're taking the phone call, you're going back to do the callback.

I make them do the callback.

Oh, you do. Very good. Fantastic.

Yeah. If it's like a fence post that they don't know how to fix, I'll do that. But if it's. They missed a large area of trimming or. Yeah, if there's something they got a seat over, they're going back. So they know.

Does it happen, like, once a week, maybe?

Last year, yes. We had an employee that was terrible.

Yeah.

I trusted him too early. And they were doing callbacks like, twice a week. And I was hoping, like, okay, you're going back. Learn from your Mistakes. He just never did.

Yeah.

Now, with Brad, it. I would say, like once a month, maybe.

So what I would do on the leadership side, too, is implement the yellow slip system. So what that is, you just get some yellow paper. We like yellow because it stands out a lot. You can make it pink, but, you know, pink slips don't have a good reputation. So go with yellow. But all it does is says when you get a phone call and you can put them in your truck or whatever, you get a phone call or a complaint or email, whatever, you put the customer's name in, you're already doing this. They're going back to the property. But then what I want is them having to go to the customer, resolve it, have them sign off on the yellow slip, and then when they come back to the next team meeting, they go over it with the team. I love that because the accountability that is caused when you have internal quality control, sometimes they have more pressure on making mistakes and telling their team members about it than having to go back to the property. Now, also, we want going back to the property now they're not going to be generating as much labor revenue the next day, so that number is going to get worse.

Okay.

So now we're gonna try to incentivize that down the road so that actually going back to their customer's property, they don't like it.

Yeah. Last year I did something if we didn't like, I really wanted to focus on quality last year. So if they didn't get any complaints for a week, they get a $50 bonus. And it was just so hard to track. But, yeah, I need to do a better job.

So now what we're gonna do is we're going to incentivize making more money, which is the quantity side, but then the quality side, like, if you have to go back to a customer's property, it takes so much of your time, you can't hit your numbers. Yeah, right. So it would break them from any sort of bonus.

Yeah, for sure.

Right. So the yellow slip system implemented is essentially you already kind of doing it, which is they go back to the property. We just want to add the extra layer of you are now accountable to the entire team on the next team meeting, and you're going to talk about it, why they're wrong, on whose property, what I learned from it, and how I'm going to avoid it in the future. Yeah, right. They sign off on it, goes into.

Their employee profile, and they're ruining their chance for a bonus for their other employees, too. And visible to everybody. I love that.

And then in your employee handbook, you say X amount of yellow slips equals.

Yeah.

Right. You're in a performance improvement plan after three. More than three in a month performance improvement plan. If you. That next month after that you get more than three, you're fired.

Yeah.

Right. Then you have it all in writing. They've signed off on the fact that they get those. That number that they've already signed to the fact that they're going to be cut. Good stuff. I feel like there's a lot there. Sorry. Fast.

Any questions on any of that stuff?

Is there like a certain amount of X amount of revenue that I should see? A percentage of revenue that I should see in liquidity?

Like, obviously, I had way too much in ad spend last year. I just don't know what I guess is normal or healthy in terms of cash flow and how much I should have in the bank for like, I read a book, obviously you've probably heard of it, called Profit first, and we're implementing that this year.

But I don't know how that's going to go. I don't know what metrics to look for. And I feel like with. If we ran it like we did last year, I would not be able to do profit first. So there's going to be a lot of things I need to change to be able to do that.

So Profit first, in my opinion, works really good if you have a bad habit of spending money when you see it.

I do.

You do?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Like, he calls it bank account accounting. I'll look at my bank account like, sweet. I got six grand in here. I really need this piece of equipment. I'm going to go buy that. And then next thing I know, employee taxes come out. Payroll tax come out a week later that I wasn't planned for because I don't follow my numbers.

Yeah.

And then I'm back.

Okay. Then Profit first will work. Good for you. Because I. I didn't think you had that because I didn't see a lot of spending on equipment and stuff like that. I'm very.

I'm very frugal.

Like, there's a reason I have.

Oh, I noticed this. I noticed. Yeah. And very old. Yeah.

But in terms of, like, I don't know, in the field, I want to make things easier for the guys. Yeah. And I feel like if I make things easier for the guys, they'll be happier and I'll be happier and be more efficient. And so I buy things for them.

Yeah. And one way they will Be more happy is if you can give them more money.

That's true. Yeah.

So let's optimize to make more money, give them more money, and then they can spend it on whatever they want instead of, like, they will, like, if I get them nicer equipment, maybe, I guarantee you they'll like. If they give you more money so they can go do something else. They like a vacation or get a nicer car. Right. So, okay, so if you have that, then. Yeah, profit first work. Well, have you set it up with.

Your bank accounts already in this early stages. So we just set up a LLC because we're still a sole proprietorship that just got approved. And he did an ein to set up the bank account.

Okay.

And now the bank account's there. Now we just gotta implement everything.

Okay. If. Just in case, you might want to look at this. If you're gonna do profit first legit Relay Financial online. You do?

Yeah. Oh, dude.

Yeah, it works really good with profit first. Great.

I messed around with a little bit. It's super cool.

Cool. Yeah.

And I have a CPA who's a profit first professional.

Okay, perfect.

And we're gonna do, like, monthly CFO meetings and.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Okay, good, good, good, good. So liquidity, then, I guess, really, is profit first implemented? Okay, I think we can get that in the next.

That's kind of what. As I was asking the question, I was like, yeah, that's kind of the answer there.

I didn't think you had that problem. You know, it's a good confession, you know, because usually I'm more of a fan of, like, look, if you're not gonna spend the money when you see it, what's the point of splitting the five accounts? Cause what's gonna happen, especially at the beginning, as you read the book, like, moving money between, like, oh, man, we're short a little bit and moving stuff around. But if that can constrict you from, you know, seeing $2,000 and going, buying something, let's do it.

I think it'll. And it wasn't so much like, because you don't see any, like, super fancy equipment out there. No, like, I'm more so, like, I don't need these fancy equipment. I can do this. I can rent until I need it or whatever. It's just like the little things that add up, I guess.

Yeah.

I don't know, like a truck box for the tool truck or whatever over the rails, like, making the trucks look nice or whatever. Things I don't really need.

Right. Okay, so profit first, I think we can get in six weeks. Have the EIN numbers, have it up. If you're in relay, easy peasy. It's really easy to split between the accounts.

And then, then what I would do, and this is the part I would stray from prop first a little bit on, is to determine how much money I need in the bank account before I get distributions.

Okay, Right.

So he takes profit out first.

Yeah.

And that's fine. Right? Go for it. When your operating account gets to a certain amount, I would then say then it's licensed to take more money from the business.

Profit. Yeah.

Yeah. So like, what the business is holding. Yeah. So for me personally, like, I'm trying to get at least one month of revenue in the bank account. Anything above that I'm willing to take as distributions.

Okay.

Now, you know, in off season, your revenue is dropping precipitously, which we can address later. But like, we're looking at last three months. So if I did 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 in revenue last three months, the average of the past three months is 50,000. Anything above $50,000 in the bank I will take as distributions. And the reason that's helpful is because down the road, if you do profit sharing with your team or general manager or anything like that, you've already set this, like, dollar amount that must be in the bank. And anything above that we can now split with the team.

My idea for this year was like, not so much taking distributions, but more so like paying, I guess not really the definition, but more so paying ourselves more stacking some of that in a savings account that we can't touch that we can use for the winter. And then anything that is left over in the profit account would be just invested back in the business. Because there's things I do need. Yeah, there were a lot of times last year where we, we couldn't pay ourselves. We haven't paid ourselves in two weeks because I spent a lot of money getting equipment worked on or working on myself and, and doing all that. No money coming in. So, like, this is our first week back. Yeah, a little bit of a cash that.

That, that leads me into like the off season because, like, I remember when I. I was burning 75 to 100 grand during three months of the year because we just lost money. We had only leads. So, like, we can't have that happen anymore.

Right.

We need to at least. Or you can be generating eight to ten grand a month. Like, that needs to be the expectation. And so how do we do that? Well, if we have this year, if we get like a hundred mowing customers, which I think is very doable, we're at 75 now. If we get to a hundred, we need to do winter services.

So like, if we don't get snow, what do you think? Like, I'm handy. Like I can do drywall and I can do painting in terms of like interior stuff. But like, if we don't get snow, what other winter services are there?

Yeah, so like we have a list of nine things. We hardly ever get snow at our place either. And so if there is snow, you pull, pull the next visit forward and you go shovel their walkways, put some salt down, etc. You can even just not do the driveway. Just like, hey, we do walkways and we do salting and that's included in your service. But what we're trying to do is keep recurring revenue coming in. So out of 100 customers, I'd be shooting for at least 50 to stay on recurring services on a bi weekly basis at their mowing price. And you spend the same amount of time that you would spend on mowing, you spend on these other services.

So like they're, are they paying this amount no matter what every week or two?

Every two weeks.

Really?

The same week they're paying for mowing. So if they're paying $60 every two weeks for mowing every two weeks, I'm just going to continue after mowing season into winter services. Now how we do that is we say, hey, look, there's two options here. I can do a fall cleanup for you, I can do a spring cleanup for you. It's going to cost you $800 and $700. 1500 bucks. Or you pay me $60 every two weeks and I, I come all throughout the winter and I get it all cleaned up over the course of the winter. Your property looks good all year round.

Wow.

Now, getting creative with what services you do is important because the grass isn't growing right. But okay, well, we can check your gutters, make sure there's down flow in the downspouts. We can blow off your walkways if there's a windstorm. We're picking up all the branches, we're edging the lawn so it'll still look sharp. We're going to trim any bushes that are touching the house so there's no algae that's growing. We're going to rake out the beds. Like you can stay busy for 30 minutes on someone's property.

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

And then how we sell it Is not just like, especially people in the past, like, well, you don't come to usually for three or four months. What in the world you pitch them. This is the cost of your property cleanups. Here's the cost of us coming every two weeks and keeping the property looking good all throughout the winter.

Right. And that extra additional, you know, if it's a $50 mo versus an extra $10 a week for every two weeks for additional services, it's really not that way.

And then how you picture them is like, hey, here's the list of stuff we're doing, and it's going to be like 10 things. We start at the top every single visit, and we work our way down, and we spend the same amount of time on this as we would mowing your grass. Because they already kind of know, like, they're here for 20, 30 minutes, right. So then expect you to be here for 20 or 30 minutes. You're going to blow things off, pick up the sticks after a windstorm, check their downspouts. There's also people of your customers, especially because you go more downtown. They're not here during the winter. They're snowbirds. So we have like, the last one on ours is property inspection and send video to customer. So, like, if we get to that. That one on the winter services, they're going to video their property every. Every. Some people, they've said that we just do winter services. So we get a video of our property every two weeks. Because we're in Florida for six months of the year and they just want the place looking good. No one. We had one person get burglared and we get sent in the picture of the window broken, say, hey, this is messed up. And then they went from there.

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

And just thinking of it as, like, more like you're selling insurance and peace of mind, not the actual, like, service itself.

Right. Even just an inspection is huge.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And now how you sell that is a month before the end of mowing season. You're going to pitch it to them. You're not going to wait till the end when they're canceling, like, oh, do you want winter service? No. A month before you end mowing. Hey, I'm going to say October 1st, you finish mowing.

November.

November 1st. November 1st, we're ending mowing season. This is what we go into this year. We have an affordable way to keep your property looking good all year round to avoid the extra cost of property cleanups. Here's what it includes if you'd like to opt out of this, let us know and we'll just get you on the schedule for next spring, starting in mowing. And then that way if they opt out, you can put them on the schedule for next spring. If they don't say anything to you, you keep moving forward. You go into winter services and you keep going.

But does that.

Like. Because my current clients didn't agree to any of that.

Right. That's why you're going to literally contact every single one. Okay. And so what we do is we have a PDF. I can send you the breakdown of it and you can. There's, like, different ways to do it. One is just send them an email like I just mentioned. Very much like, here's the list. If you don't want this opt out, let us know. Some people aren't going to see the email, right? And they're just like, oh, it's another email from him, and they don't even see it. The goal is if you need to answer, you can.

It's a spam call.

Okay, potential spam, let's go. Like, that's like the least conversion you're going to get. But the problem with that is there are people who won't see the email and we refund them. So if they accidentally see the email and, hey, I didn't want this service, we will just refund them there first that month and no worries, we'll get you started mowing. What I would recommend doing when you have 100 customers is talking to every single one.

Okay.

I would knock on the door of every single one. Because if you knock on the door and actually explain that they're saving money, everyone goes for it. It makes a lot of sense if you just, like pitch it like, I'm trying to make more money. That's how they hear it. But if you say, hey, here's the cost of your fall cleanup, here's the cost of a spring cleanup. For half of that, we can come every two weeks and chip away at it, make the property look good all year round. And if it snows, like in that list of services, it says if snow is present, shovel walkways, put salt on steps. Like, we put that all in there.

I'm guessing this is probably something that I would do solo, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Because if you get 50 customers, you can absolutely do it solo and make seven to $10,000 a month. And right now, that's the difference of us going negative and having to put money aside versus at least breaking even.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it Wouldn't make sense for two guys to go out for.

You don't need to.

Yeah, okay.

And then you'd still lay everyone off, but you know, you're at least going to cover all your bills and not have to save up money and take it from the family during the winter.

So. Okay, yeah, I was going to have.

Something else, but so, so on leads, I'm going to add that in, which is winter services.

Okay.

What I would recommend as you get started this year on your estimate for mowing, just put in there, winter services continues throughout the off season as part of your mowing estimate. Every single one, no one bats an eye. And then what happens is during the fall, you say, hey, you accepted this. I want to make sure you're fully aware of what that is and why we do it. And he pitches 100% as a budget friendly option to keep your property looking good year round. Now the thing is this. You're like, well, why would I want someone to pay me 5 or 600 bucks instead of 1500? Yeah, because I just rather do two cleanups. The thing is right now during the fall cleanup and spring cleanup stage, you're having tons of leads pouring in and you can't control the work anyways. I'd rather you go getting new customers and then service the existing customers during the off season.

Yeah, that makes sense, right? Yeah, that'd be huge. That's crazy.

So usually what we see is on new customers, we can get about 60 to 70% conversion.

Okay.

The old customers, the ones that you currently have, the 75, let's just say 60 of them are still around in the year. Of the existing customers, they're the ones you really got to explain things to because they don't know what's going on.

Right.

And they think you might take an advantage. We go knock on every door. It'll take you a week, but you would go knock on every person's door. And you have, here's what you. The advantages of it, here's what we do, here's how it works. Then you have no refunds. And so those ones, usually we convert 30 to 40%. So that's why I'm saying between existing. Exactly. So because they're kind of like used to like not having the fees, but the better you can explain that. I've seen it go higher, but like I'd say conservatively 30 to 40%. So if we get new customers this year, get to get to 100 total. I think 50 of them you can convert into that. Keep yourself busy. All throughout the winter.

And that would allow to. Because like this year I don't really want a second mo crew. I think the demand could be there, but I am looking for ways other than just higher prices to sort of throttle the incoming accepted mowing claim.

Yeah, well, we're gonna get so many leads from fixing the website that we're gonna hit that capacity very quickly and either a be forced to raise prices or you go do get a second crew or you potentially convert your landscaping, which you didn't make any money on last year, into mowing. And now that we have an off season where we know we can make money on those recurring customers, that might not be a bad option. Also easier to manage those jobs, easier to do estimates for those jobs, easier to train employees on the simpler services. So not a bad option. Like if you know, last year we are making 40, 50 bucks an hour on landscaping. You didn't make any money. Let's just do, let's just do mowing. Like if that's where the things are coming in, like if leads are coming in from that, it's good.

I mean you've probably thought through this, but in my head, like it's good for weekly cash flow and even throughout the winter. But like.

I guess if, like we can do a lot with landscaping whether it's raining or not.

Right.

And we can do a lot whether there's a drought or not. So that's my, my, my bonus to landscape.

Yep. That's why we keep landscaping too. Because I want to be able to upsell my mowing customers when things slow down. In the summer, it gets really hot. I want to be able to throw my guys in a proper cleanup when it's raining outside. So it's not a bad thing to keep it. But when it comes like marketing, I'm focusing on the recurring services because I want them during the off season.

That makes a lot of sense.

And then, then what you're going to do is you're going to use upsells to get those recurring customers into the projects.

Okay. So the mowing is a vehicle for the 100%.

Yeah. Because if you can get someone on mowing, the likelihood that when they need mulch installed, you will get that job as well. Very high.

Yeah.

And the likelihood they have you doing their mowing, they're going to do their own mulch. Very low.

Yeah.

So like the likelihood of getting a customer to lowest, lowest cost per lead, lowest customer acquisition cost for mowing, then upsell them into project based work. But then now I have the ability to get them on winter services. And that's really what I'm trying to target.

Yeah.

And we also know that that's where you're making money because last year like the landscape was already tough and from a project management perspective, that's where the biggest mistakes happen, the biggest headaches happen, customer complaints happen, etc.

Yeah. Yeah. I never even thought of winter as like a money making opportunity other than snow. It's huge. I definitely need to do that.

Yeah, no, it's super good. Cool. Any other questions? We got a couple of things on each one. So basically liquidity. We're trying to get out of the Google contract in the next six weeks. In the next six weeks we want to implement profit first inside of relay. Get everything set up with the lc. From a leads perspective. We got to know our cost per lead. If we get that from Google, whether it be from this agency or we figure ourselves. But we're going to get out of the Google contract. So we're going to figure ourselves. We're going to increase the conversion of the website using the banner, using the estimate request form and, and adding Winter services verbiage into our estimate notes.

Okay.

So even current mowing customers, it's just gonna be aligned. Winter services are completed year round. Labor, we're gonna start tracking our labor efficiency which is wages paid that day divided by labor revenue. If you wanna do it on a whiteboard Excel spreadsheet, have Anna put something together for you. So it's really quick.

She likes numbers too.

Fantastic. Let's go. Love you Anna, wherever you are. Thank you. And then she's gonna help us create a bench which is one employee that you know, you've interviewed and you're gonna be honest with them like, hey, we don't have any open positions, but we're always interviewing for great people.

Yeah.

And then when you're like, I want this person, you tell them, hey, we want you on the team. As soon as the available spot, we'll let you know. And they might go find something else that might happen, but you have that person in your back pocket. Cool leadership. We're going to hold people accountable using the yellow slip system and using labor efficiency as a tracking mechanism.

I just. Yeah, there's going to be a little bit more management involved and back end stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think at some point you said 400,000 I should start considering hiring out some of this back end stuff? Like in terms of hiring someone in the office or to answer phones or whatever?

Yeah. The thing is this from right now, the constraint is profitability. We don't have enough cash. If we were like, hey, we have 100 grand in the bank and we're trying to grow, like, great, just get an office person now. Throttle tons of money in marketing. Let's grow this thing. Yeah, but we need to stay profitable.

I think that's what I was like thinking last year. I just wasn't there yet.

Right.

Yeah.

And if this guy that you're spending three grand a month on was giving you leads at 20 bucks a pop or 30 bucks a pop because they're so good, that'd be. We'd be. So we'd be drowning in leads. Right? We're not. So, like, that's where I say, okay, we need to be profitable. We don't have enough cash in hand to be able to say, like, let's just dump money in marketing, hire more people, get an admin person and scale this thing. We don't have the money, so that's fine. We're going to a little bit slower, which is going to be. We're not going to spend money marketing. We're to increase our conversion. We're going to raise prices when we hit capacity. Like, if you get so many leads this coming spring, can you make these changes? You're going to have this dilemma in two to three months, which is, do we've hit 120 customers? Do I raise prices to keep that down, or do I go out and get another truck? And that's going to be determined based upon your cash, how much is in the bank?

Yeah. Okay.

If you have more than one month of revenue in the bank, I would be giving you the green light. Go get the other truck, scale this bad boy. Okay. And then if it's like, no, we. We're still tight. Yeah, we're growing Great. We have 120 customers, but we're tight. Raise prices by at least 20%.

20%?

Yes. 100%.

Holy cow.

Yep.

Yeah. I did it by 5% this year. And I felt like after I sent it out, I was like, I don't know if that was enough.

It's not. No. Anyone that leaves over 5% will leave over 15%.

Yeah.

I look at the 15%, double our profit margins.

Would it be. Would you advise possibly increasing prices like mid year, even. Even on the ones that have already increased?

How many customers do you think you could take on before you need another truck?

Like 90.

When you hit 90, let's do 100. Because my goal is like, hit you 100 and then get 50 winter service customers.

Yeah.

When we hit 100 mowing customers, we raise prices.

Okay.

That's capacity. And we're not going to have the capital to go buy another truck and hire more people. So instead we're going to raise our price by 20%. No less. No less. On a $40 mo, it's eight bucks.

Yeah.

That's not much.

It's true. You're right.

You raising them to 42 versus 48, the person's going to leave or not, doesn't matter. Yeah.

And the money I make from the.

Raise, it doubled your profits.

Yeah. And doing less work.

Yes.

Yeah.

And this is the thing. The reason you raise at capacity is because you can't get above 100 customers.

Right.

So either A, you turn off new customers, customers, like, no more leads, sorry. Or you have to go make room by cutting customers out.

Yeah.

So the reason you have to do 20% because you need to lose 10 customers.

Makes sense though.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

So we're hitting 100 customers. We're raising prices by a minimum of 20% like we did 27, 28% at my location this past year. And we lost 10% of customers. And this is the thing. Once you can make that margin, that's when we like by raising the. The prices. Guess what that does increases labor revenue, which now the labor efficiency looks better for your team, which means they're going to get under 30% more often, which means you can pay them more.

So are you looking so on jobber? I have the ability. I don't know if I'll be able to show you because it's a new year, but I have the ability to go to timesheets and see.

Like, where. How long the guy spent on each job. So if I go to July 17, it shows they were clocked in this long to this long on this property. Are you going through individual accounts? Are you just doing a blanket increase to everybody?

Yeah. So when we.

Some of them are priced really well, you know, to where, like, I would almost, you know, it'd be bad to increase their price.

Here's the thing. I agree with you that technically we should go with precision, like accuracy, and go through everyone and raise the hourly rate.

Yeah.

The reason I never suggest that is because people don't do it. They'll just be like, I'm too busy, because we're talking like, peak of the season. Are you going to really go through 100 customers, track every single thing and be like, oh, I need to raise this person 15%, this person 18%, this person, 32%. You're not going to. And so, like, I need to look at, in the trailing price, you know, all these people's names, you know about personally, et cetera. We need to raise price by 20%.

Okay.

So whether that be surgically doing it where some of them are 15 and some of them are 25. I need to raise prices by 20%.

Yeah.

So the. Usually the people that actually raise their prices are the ones who just across the board do it.

Okay.

And in one day make the decision to make more money.

Yeah. And then if I ever do get a call, like, hey, what are you doing with that price? Like, oh, sorry, you were already. You know, I would word it differently.

Well, here's the thing. Because you don't like making confrontation at the bottom of price increase. You say, if this is gonna put you in financial hardship, please reach out to us. We don't want to leave you as a customer over this.

Yeah. Okay.

So instead of them canceling, they're just gonna call you out on that. And I can guarantee you it's a whole lot less than you're thinking.

And then at that point I can do. Yeah, there would be less than what I would think. At that point, I can decide who I want to let go and who not. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Right. And so you don't even get the option of like, call us for questions. Just like, if this puts you in financial hardship.

Yeah.

Because above that, you explain why you need to raise prices in a couple sentences. You said, here's the prices and then we roll with it.

Yeah.

But yes, you could do this. And this is the right way to do it. Yes, 100%.

It just takes too long.

No one does it. Yeah. Because you're going to be at the very peak of season. Leads to are pouring in, guys, everything's going wrong with the jobs. You're not going to sit down here for a week and make sure every single job down to the minute is done. Right?

Yeah, now you're right. I didn't even do that. I just, I just sent out the price increase like a couple weeks ago, and I still didn't even do this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was in the middle of the winter.

Yeah.

So yes, this is good. But like, I wouldn't worry about it for now.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah. Anything else?

No, I don't think so.

Cool, cool, cool. Do you want to talk to him here, outside, or what do you want to do? Yeah, we could get an interview with you. It'd be cool if we could talk to Anna if she wants to.