YouTube video transcript of Mike Andes advising lawn-care business owners to prioritize depth over breadth: focus on core maintenance/mowing services and a tight geographic footprint rather than adding services or expanding far afield. Uses a client example (Matt of Bayside Lawn and Garden) who is at about $800,000 revenue with an estimated 1.5–2× additional upside in existing maintenance before needing to diversify; Andes strongly recommends exploiting that local opportunity (to roughly $1.5M) first. Key motifs: lower customer acquisition cost and higher margins when customers are close and homogeneous; “drill deep and get oil” analogy for specializing.
Questions this video answers
$800,000
1.5 to 2 times (i.e., roughly up to ~$1.5 million)
100 mowing customers in a 1-mile radius rather than 200 customers in a 5-mile radius
Chapters
So I'd highly recommend drill deep and get oil. Stop drilling a whole bunch of dry wells and settling for water.
Should we expand geographically, spreading ourselves out further to different towns or add services in our current location such as hardscape, pressure washing, tree arborist work or buy land and use for dump, compost, soil, bulk material and other nursery type activities. Currently have landscape maintenance focus lawns, gardens, hedgings and stratas. Matt with bayside lawn and garden. Some other info we're at 800,000 revenue this year and could still grow maintenance in our area by 1.5 to 2 times before needing to go down one of the above expansion routes. Okay, so that's the big kicker. I'm glad you gave me the second text message Matt, about the 1.5 to 2x more opportunity on the maintenance side, I would 110,000% recommend you exploit the 2x multiple of 800,000. So what you're saying is you think you could grow to basically $1.5 million business still doing maintenance in your given area. Do that before you start adding services. Do that before you start expanding the geographical areas you're going to serve. I've said this to our franchisees during training. I'll say it again, I'd much rather have 100 mowing customers in a 1 mile radius then 200 mowing customers in a 5 mile radius. The amount of profit I will generate if they're all in 1 mile radius, no traffic, very little windshield time. All of my target demographic, not spread out, all very similar property types and sizes. That's where the money's at with mowing. So spreading yourself out thinner and going in terms of like 5, 10, 15 miles away is crazy.
It's always easiest. The path of least resistance is always adding services and adding how far away you're willing to serve. Those are the two fastest ways to grow your top line revenue. They're also the least efficient and the least profitable way to grow your business. And so everyone typically will go through this expansion period in their first few years like they're wanting to grow. So what do they do? They keep serving areas further away. They start adding more and more services. You start, oh I'll do junk removal, oh I'll tow weight, debris, oh I'll do the gutters and I'll do the moss on people's roofs, I'll do treatments, I'll do and all of a sudden and that is the path of least resistance. Going after the more services or further geographical reach is the fastest way to grow your business. It's also the least efficient and least profitable. The most profitable is focus on your core competency, mowing or maintenance in this regard, or if you're focused just on hardscaping, focus on hardscaping. Don't listen to someone like me. Like, you got to do mowing and like, oh, I should do mowing now. And now I should do bush trimming and train my gu guys on weeding services. No, focus on whatever niche you're good at, whatever service you're really good at, and if efficient and profitable at and just zero in on that thing.
And this is actually something I thought about a bunch with lawn care media because we have all these different, you know, postcards for different services. And in one regard I was like, okay, as much as I want to give a big package, like we have 160 designs in there, right? I was thinking like this is actually almost against what I believe in. That is I don't want people to offer all these services at the same time. I don't want you to offer all 16 of the services that are in the package. I want you to focus on like three or four of them and really, really drill down deep on those. You know, if you, if this is, I thought about this today. If you dig down like 3, 400ft or even less, you're typically going to be able to get water from a well, right? You drill, drill down, you dig a well, you get water. Great, let's go. If you dig down though thousands of feet, you know what? You hit oil. And you know, the value of that oil is so much greater than the water. You know, the water might, you know, you get to flush your toilet, you get to have a shower, get, drink some water. Woohoo. Great for you and your family. But an oil, an oil well can literally supply thousands of people with energy. It can make millions of dollars if you hit oil. And so I highly, I truly believe people keep drilling for oil and all they do is keep hitting water like it's okay and it's a good business. They're getting lots of water, lots of gpm gallons per minute. But they got to drill deeper. You know, they got to take the mowing and just keep pounding mowing. They get the postcard, they get the door hanger, they drill down on mowing. And so for you, Matt, I'd say drill down on what you're doing now and the geographical area you're servicing. Do not expand other services, do not expand to different areas. Especially when you know you are only hitting half of your existing. Your total addressable market tam. Especially when it comes to software. Everyone's always asking, what's your total addressable market? Your tam, your total addressable market, you're only hitting half of it right now, so double down on that because your customer acquisition costs me much lower. If you're going after services and people that are already used of seeing your trucks, they're used to seeing you mow their neighbor's lawn. The customer acquisition cost on them will be much lower than you trying to go the next door city or 10, 15 miles away. And those, those services and those customers, we much less profitable for you too. So I'd highly recommend drill deep and get oil. Stop drilling a whole bunch of dry wells and settling for water.
Hey everyone, Mike Andes here. Thank you so much for watching the video. If you haven't already, click the links below to check out Lawn Care Media where you can get door hangers just like this for a variety of services for lawn care, landscaping, fertilization, irrigation, fall cleanups, and the list goes on and, and on and on. You can get all there and customize these and make money mowing lawns, doing landscaping services. We'll see you there.
