How I Got 89 NEW Lawn Care Customers in the1st MONTH

Last month I started four brand new lawn care businesses out in Charlotte, North Carolina using my regional manager, Chuck.

Spot on Rockstar. Awesome.

Today Chuck's gonna walk through the actual numbers, the revenues of these new locations.

Revenue, marketing and mowing customers.

Our goal is to grow these locations very quickly in the first three months and try to get them to a 30 plus thousand dollars in monthly revenue.

Lots of work coming in. I just need more time.

We've looked at how they've gotten customers.

$16 customer acquisition cost.

We talked about the Dr. All the things that were the good, the bad and the ugly that happened with these locations.

Who sliced his leg open with a pair of hedge trimmers.

But now it comes down to the brass tax. What are the numbers?

Didn't do real well when everybody says, oh well, you guys raise prices and the company makes money when you guys will too.

Let's turn it over to Chuck and see how these four brand new Augusta lawn care locations are doing in their first month of business.

All right, so we are going to do a recap here real quick of the new corporate locations.

March first was when they started actually doing the actual work. We started marketing the week before that. Here we go. Cornelius, Huntersville, Highland Creek and Concord. These are all in North Carolina and the Charlotte market. So we're going to track revenue, marketing and mowing customers. And you'll be able to see kind of the difference of what they spent and different things like that. Cornelius, first one up. $10,467 in revenue generated is what we invoiced at the end of March. Marketing. We spent $3,000 in marketing. We got 24 mowing customers for Huntersville. We invoiced $10,133. We spent 3,000 in marketing. We got 35 mowing customers. So you can see the difference here. The revenue is pretty much the same. A couple hundred bucks more. Marketing is the same, but a higher cost here. A lot of door knocking a lot and a lot a lot of talking to people on the street. I've handed out 250 door hangers in the past less than a week and gained six customers.

This house right here, we did an initial MOW last week. I did some five rounds. Now we're doing an initial MOW on this one today. So we got both of these today. Getting that density up. Let's go.

Door hangers are working. 425 door hangers. 11 accepted estimates. One neighborhood. Guys, these are one neighborhood. This is all one neighborhood. One neighborhood. Come on. Gotta get after it. You Won't get this better customer acquisition cost. You can't beat it. So for a total of like, I don't know, 200 something dollars or whatever it is, 200 bucks. I'm get $2,000 in projects minimum, plus another 1500 dollars per year in mowing door hangers. All of this, he was more project heavy. He did probably nine or ten projects alone in one neighborhood of just all mulch jobs. Anywhere from four to $600 mulch jobs. Right. So he just has a lot more recurring base work. So he should be able to use that leverage to springboard into the month of April because he's already starting off with a higher revenue base. Right. And he should be able to upsell some of those customers. Highland Creek $8,917 3,000 in marketing, 20 mowing customers. He had a good mixture. 9,000 to 11,000 is where we want him to be. For one employee, that is about where we want one employee working. General manager right here now you will see Concord definitely more than 50% lower than the Highland Creek. So we had issues with his Google for the first 12 or 13 days, no Google Ads. So started off really, really slow. He no revenue, no revenue for the first 10 days of March.

So in our first month we've had, we've had some success. We had some, some downfalls. Some of our big success this recently we've been picking up the every door direct mailer's been doing awesome. We're getting, getting to those instant quote mo hangers. They've been doing good here in North Carolina area. Some of the downfalls is just in my location. It was a little slow and I feel like part of it was due to be trying to market the entire service area and not really having it narrowed down. We're still looking to take it out. We're moving a little slow here in terms of getting consistent flow of clients during revenue. So that's one thing I'll be looking to make a big increase on in next month here. But as a total, I've learned a lot. Going to Gusta Nation has been a great opportunity for me and every day I've, I've come to live better with that decision to do this. So I just want to keep growing and keep moving and just having everyone around me to help me has been a big thing. Chuck Connor, all the gm, Sydney here in North Carolina, reaching out to those guys and having them help me and help. So it makes it feel like, you know, we're a team. I'm not alone looking to keep doing better things.

So when Google did get reactivated, I doubled his marketing on Google just to try to salvage the month and get some sort of revenue. So we spent a lot of Google money that second half of the month, which it did end up paying off. We did every door direct mails, we did door hangers, all those different things. I don't think every door direct mail really worked. We were dropping 5000 mailers and only getting maybe 1012 estimates out of it. Our every door direct mail for Concorde has not been working. It started off very slow in Concord. So the first round we did 2500, didn't do real well. Second round we did 5000, targeted into more specific neighborhoods. Did okay, did okay. I wasn't going to invest a whole lot of money. This last round we're getting a huge dump of estimates. So they're finally working. I was very, very negative on the every door direct mail and the Concord. I and I touched on that in the recap. But now it's April 3rd. Spot on Rockstar. Awesome. We probably got between accepted and estimates scheduled. I'd say we're in the 20. Not great, not beautiful, not anything. But it's going to, it's going to get us closer to a half a percent, which again is not fantastic. So we're just going to keep hammering away. It's a lower market. It's our one that we've been struggling with, but we'll get there. So not a good return on every door direct mail here. But we did the same thing here. We did mailers, mailers and mailers. This one just did not perform well. And we increased the Google at the end of the month to try to catch up and it didn't. So lesson learned there. Not a good market for every door direct mail, only tin mowing customers. So we got to get things kicked in high gear. GM's got to get his tail moving, got to make money, right? So this revenue has come up. We know that. So we've got ideas and we'll get that going here soon. So now you'll see all four of these kind of in a nutshell, 10,467, 10,133, 8,917, 4,249. Collectively 33,000 in revenue between those four. So not a bad first month. Going from zero customers to 24 customers, 35 customers, 20 customers and 10 customers customers, all starting with zero. There it is. Four new corporate locations for Augusta Charlotte market.

My first month as a general manager at our new location In Cornelis, North Carolina has been challenging, but rewarding. It's been really, really great connecting with clients, meeting so many new people. One really cool thing that happened was getting into this senior community. I've probably done 8 to 10 mulch installations in this 55 plus community alone. And they've all been super, super good to me, super, super kind. They've offered me food and water and all this stuff. And connecting with all the people in that community has been really cool. I feel like they're all honorary grandparents at this point. Some of the challenges in this first month have been time management. Still learning time management. Got very overwhelmed with work, which is a good problem to have a lot of accepted estimates but tough to keep up with the workload. Been trying to hire. Hiring's been a big challenge. Finding people that will actually show up and do a good job. Yeah, the. I know it's only going to get busier. They call it spring rush for a reason. So excited to get a good crew in and keep moving forward with this thing.

Apruary 2, quick recap. So for the month of March we had a lot go on. So it was our first full month. We did training in February, we got back, hit the ground running, got a little bit of work done. Then beginning of March, you know, it's time for spring rush. So hired our first guy, brought the guy on, wasn't great. It's alright, you know, figured we'd work with him. Didn't end up working out. I had to let him go after about two weeks. Just wasn't cutting it. Poor quality and whatnot and was hard to train. And I saw that limiting our ability to grow because I wasn't going to be able to train anybody else because I was probably going to take two to three months to get this guy trained. Then we worked alone for like the third week of March and then last week we brought on another employee and then we're bringing on another one this week because since then we've blown up and you know, like today I got a nine hour project that I have to do on top of nine or ten estimates. So. And that doesn't even include all the over the phone ones that are being sent out. So you know, it's good, it's, it's slowly ramping up. We ended up doing just over $10,000 for the month of March. So that's not bad for the first full month in business. Nowhere near profitability but you know, we'll get there. So the goal for April now is between 25 to 30,000, at least for the Huntersville location, I believe we'll be pushing that upper end of 30,000. Lots of work coming in. I just need more time. You know, the ability to close. It's been. It's been a roller coaster. There's been lots of hard days in the field. Already feels like lots of wins with getting jobs accepted, seeing those come in left and right. But it does suck. So seeing the denied ones, you know, we're. Our close ratio right now is not great. It's at like 40 something percent. That needs to be much higher, almost double that. We need to shoot for like 70, 75. So, you know, this month we're really gonna try to figure out how to raise that close ratio by, you know, 30, 40%. So a lot to work on, but it was a good first month. So here we go.

You guys. This is what we call about Pete for people. We talk about our pay, right? So currently we charge $70 an hour to the customer. So these are hours you completed yesterday. $70 an hour. 1082 is the revenue y' all generated on the truck. We give you 33% of that labor, which is. This is your labor revenue. So you get $356.90 divided by two, because two people, 178.45 is what you guys earned. Yesterday you worked nine hours. So yesterday you made $19.83 an hour. If you would have done it 10 hours, you would have made 1784, but you would have made 18 because that's our base. So you would have felt just below. If you would have been eight hours, you would have made it 22:30 is what you would have made per hour. So you get a portion of the labor at 356 divided by 2 gives you 178. And then goes through the. This is what you actually made yesterday. The more efficient or less efficient. So this is, you know, maybe you hit up QT, maybe you hit up McDonald's, like, and it slows you down. And you turn the same day you guys worked yesterday into a 10 hour day. You are you. Right away, you'll. You won't make as much per hour, but you finish this work here in nine hours. But if you go a little quicker, you can even get it in eight hours. So. So the harder you work, the more you get to make, right? But you got to work hard to get this. This is quick in and out. This is, you know, no Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, all that baloney. That's. You just get more Right now, in April, middle, probably mid April, we're going to $80 an hour. For 80 bucks an hour, we are going to run exactly the same math for you guys, but at $80 an hour, which is happening in April. So why when everybody says, oh, well, you guys raise prices and the company makes money, well, you guys will too. So you see now it's 1236. Because it's $80 an hour. 33% is 407.88 divided by 10 gives you 203.949 hours. You would have been at 22.66. So, yes, we will make more money as a company, but you guys make more money because you're generating same budgeted hours. But because we're going to raise prices, this is what we get instead of 1082. So in April, we will raise prices because we only need about 20 more customers and the trucks will be full for pretty much all week. Then you'll see like the 10 hours it'll be 2039. 8 hours should be as. So we are raising prices. Come April, this is what it will look like. So your math will be slightly different in effect. And like I said, we're gonna go. We're bumping to this now. Our new customers already paid this. Okay, Anybody that's come in this year already pays 80 bucks an hour. But our 75% of our customers are still here when we raise them, everybody will be here. So then the revenue, same work you did yesterday, we'll pay you more per hour, same work, but we're going to raise the prices, which puts more money in your pocket. Divide it out and here you go. You would have made this yesterday. What will end up happening is when we raise these, all the push mows will get an even bigger increase with the post that they pull out. Either their price gets so great for us that it's okay to push mow or they drop. And now we've got room for the people that don't that don't want us to push mow. Good to go? Yes, sir. All right.

Check out Augusta longer services.com franchise. We're taking on more franchisees and available spots in July's training are filling up. Only about one in eight applicants that try to join Augusta Lawn Care do we allow into the system. But if you'd like to get on call and see if joining us to lawn care be right for you, go to GustAlongerServices.com franchise now. If you enjoyed today's episode, just you wait. Because in June 2023 I'm going to moving across the country and starting my own Augusta Lawn Care location from scratch. I'm going to do it in 30 days. Subscribe to the channel and in the comments below. Let me know what you would like to see me do in my first 30 days in business.