How to Build a BIG Lawn Care Business! (Inflection Points & Catalysts)

Sam.

What's everyone up, everyone. It's Mike Andes, landscape businesscourse.com and today we are going to be doing a live Q and A after I do this episode about how you can grow your business and the inflection points and the catalysts to growing a seven figure, $1 million lawn care business. So first of all, if you do not want to grow a big business, if you do not want to grow, that's totally fine. This podcast, this video, this Q and A is not for you. This is for the person that wants to grow, wants to grow their company. And I'm going to be talking about different parts of the business that really allow that growth to happen. So first off, let's define inflection points and catalysts because that's not fun, it's not cool. I could have made this video in the thumbnail. I could have put catalysts and inflection points of growing a successful business. Guess what? No one would have showed up. But that's what we're talking about today. And it's very, very important because that is what's going to lead to your success and growth in your lawn care business. So the definition. And I'm going to talk here for maybe 10 minutes and then we're going to go live in the Q and A. So if you're here listening live, make sure you leave me a comment and I'll get to it. In terms of a question, okay? So especially as we go through the seven steps, because I'm going to go through seven steps in order of what I had to kind of figure out in terms of what to delegate, what, what to let go of. When do I actually get out of the field? When do I, what are those metrics? So we're going over this today, but we're going to define first an inflection point and catalyst. So an inflection point, if you're looking at a graph, an inflection point is the point at which the degree of elevation changes, the degree of change changes, that is the inflection point. And always when we're looking at data from the standpoint of like science, et cetera, things like that, we're always looking for inflection points. And then we ask ourselves, what happened at that inflection point? What made what was going this direction all of a sudden make a steep change upwards or downwards? What is the inflection point? How does it affect our businesses? First of all, I want to make sure everyone can hear me. Okay, I'm using this microphone now. It should sound a lot better than what I was using last weekend. So I hope that was helpful. And we're going to be making this, this whole set a lot better, slowly but surely. Anyways, let's go ahead and talk about inflection points and catalysts. Catalysts are when, when you, A catalyst actually comes from when in science or like in chemistry you have catalyst. A catalyst is something that is added to a chemical reaction that makes the reaction take place a lot faster. So for example, if I'm fusing two different elements together, it might take 30 seconds. But if I add a different element, a third element as a catalyst, it speeds up the reaction time maybe now to 10 seconds. So catalysts are things that speed up and allow your business to grow faster. Alright, so it's a catalyst, it makes the reaction, it makes the process of growing your business faster. Alright, so inflection points, when things change in the miss a turning point in the business. You know, it's a type of thing when people ask what's that one thing that made a big difference for your, you and your company? What really, what was that thing that like turned the light switch on for you? This is what you're talking about, the inflection point. Catalysts are things in your business that you do that allow that growth to happen faster. Okay, now necessarily, sometimes if you add too much catalyst to a reaction, the reaction will actually break down. So I still remember studying a lot of this stuff in like organic chemistry and all that. Not fun stuff, but what was really cool was to take that application to business and realize there's certain things you can do in your business and to catalyze or make that reaction and that process go a lot faster. Okay, so the degree, the change, the degree that is what an inflection point, when does that happen? What caused that change? We're going to be talking about the inflection point today. What is it that in your business that you need to change to actually change the direction, the elevation, the pace of change and growth in your business? Number two, speed up that chemical reaction. Speed up your growth. Okay, we're going to go over the seven steps of getting that million dollar business. And what I had to do in my evolution of growing the business, what were the inflection points? What were the catalysts that allowed that to happen? All right, now before we do that, I want to talk about the four different job titles of an owner. I've talked about this before, but I want to really lay this foundation here. So as we go through these seven Things you can relate in your mind. Okay, that's where I'm at now. That's where I'm going next. Where am I at in this whole process? Okay, so the first step is you're in the field. That's the first stage of an owner. You're out mowing lawns, trimming bushes, installing mulch, pulling weeds, you're out mowing, you're doing everything. Okay, the second step, the second phase of the owner is going to be the office manager. This is when you get out of the field. This is where everyone wants to be in terms of getting out of the field. Because most landscapers and never get out of the field, most landscapers never ever become number two. They never get to the office manager position. They're always in the field and if they stop working, revenue stops flowing. Okay, so stage number two is the office manager, Number three is the estimator. So this is at this point now is when you've hired someone in the office and now you are focused completely on growing the business, sales and all the rest of it. Usually this is going to happen when once you get to the point where you can't manage all the emails and the phone calls, sending out estimates, customer communication, routing, scheduling, invoicing, billing, all the payroll, all those things, that's usually when you start handing off certain and start delegating towards an office manager. And you step primarily into growing the business from an estimator standpoint and growing sales. The fourth position is what everyone dreams of being and really in my opinion, only happens once you cross that seven figure marker and that is the CEO. The CEO in that position is when you've hired all the estimator, you've hired the office person, you've hired everyone in the field. You have a great culture, you have systems in place and now the CEO doesn't have to be there on a day to day basis. They don't have to show up to work. Not all the sales and the estimates are required to go through them. Not all the calls and the emails and everything is bottlenecked by them. They can show up to work if they want or not, they can go on vacation for a week and everything just keeps working without them because they delegate everything out. That is the role of a CEO. So that's the four stages. The out in the field, then you got your, your office manager position, then you got your estimator and then you become CEO. In my opinion, to get to that fourth stage, the fourth stage of being a landscaper, you have to in My opinion, get above seven figures because you've got to now afford the overhead of covering your number two and your number three, which is your office manager and your estimator. Okay, so we're going to go into that more detail because those are actually pieces and parts of the seven steps of building a million dollar business. Step number one, these are inflection points. Remember, these are points in your business where you're going to hit and then after that point you're going to grow substantially or fail. If you, if you any of these points, these inflection points, you're either going to start accelerating your growth or literally you're going to retreat back to being solo or you're going to cut back on staff, you're going to start focusing again. You know, I'm just going to cut back. I'm just going to mow myself. I don't have any employees. That's at an inflection point. One of those two things is going to happen. You're either going to start growing faster, you're going to realize that there's a catalyst and you're going to on that, you're going to pivot on that inflection point and start growing the business or you're going to retreat and you're going to fail. Okay, number one, a big catalyst in your business is going to be when you go full time. So for a lot of landscapers, they do this on the part time, they do this in the evenings, on the weekends is a part time gig for them. Your first major inflection point and catalyst to growth is when you go full time. So my very first year as Augusta Lawn Care. So remember I started mowing when I was 11, at 18 years years old, I started Augusta Lawn Care. When I was 18, I was doing part time physical personal trainer while getting my MBA at night. And then I started Augusta Lawn Care and was doing it part time. I literally had a 6 by 12 enclosed trailer, parked it for $40 a month at a storage facility, would come pick it up with my truck and because that truck was also my personal vehicle and we were off to the races. That first year in business doing it part time, I did 28,000, a little over $28,000 in revenue. Year number two, I went full time. Why? I hit an inflection point and decided I'm going to grow from here. And I knew that a massive catalyst to my growth was going to be me being able to spend more time all day, not just in the morning on my business. So going full Time is a massive catalyst and an inflection point at which you make a decision to either stay small, grow. So if you're going to go full time, massive catalyst to your future growth, and it's going to be a point at which you can really scale. And some people, that's when they draw back, oh, you know what? I'm just going to do this part time. I'm going to stay small. That's fine. That's up to you if that's your goals. But if you're trying to grow at that inflection point, you go all in, you go full time. And year number two, we did 195,000 in revenue, just under 200,000 revenue we did. In year number two, we went from 28,000 to almost 200,000 because I hit the inflection point of going full time. That's the first inflection point in growing a lawn care company. The second inflection point is your first employee. The first employee is an inflection point for this one reason. You've already purchased the truck, you've purchased the trailer, equipment, all that sort of thing. Having your first employee is an incredible catalyst because it literally for no extra overhead in terms of storage equipment, fuel, you already have all that stuff covered. Now you're literally going to throw a body into your passenger seat of your truck and you're going to be able to grow. You're going to be able to scale the business because now Instead of taking 10 hours, it's going to take six hours. You're going to be able to grow. You're going to be able to grow 30, 40, 50% simply by getting your first employee. So again, another inflection point in the business. Some people hit it and retreat back. You know what? Employees just aren't for me. I'm going to go back to being solo. And they, they retreat from their inflection point. They do not take advantage of the ability to hire people and to be able to take other people's time and give them a great place to work, a great place for them to get to the next place in their career. But then you be able to multiply yourself. I can't go work even though all the hours that the laborers work at Augusta, I couldn't do a piece of fraction of that. What you're doing when you employ someone is you're literally trying to duplicate yourself. You're literally trying to speed up the reaction. It's a catalyst. Employees and hiring other people is a catalyst to the growth of your Business because I can only work so many hours out in the field in a day. I was limited by the fact that I had allergies and my eyes would get puffy, I'd get a rash, my nose would be going down like by 12, 1 o' clock during the heat of the day. I would like, literally sometimes have struggle breathing. I'd have two shirts that I would switch out, use the second one for a snot, snot rag. Once I got to the point of, you know, being all completely. No, just blocked up, it was horrible. If you have allergies to grass, you know what I'm talking about. And so I physically can't work, you know, 25 hours in a day out in the field. So hiring someone is going to be that inflection point. You make a decision, do I hire someone? Do I go all in? Do I start hiring someone full time? Or do I just retreat back? Having that person in with you in the truck is one of the most efficient, most profitable things you can do for your business. Because you don't have to go buy more equipment. You don't have to buy more equipment and another truck and another setup to get that first employee. That's why that first employee is a massive catalyst to growth. It's going to put you ahead of literally 50, 60% of landscapers that stay solo. So again, a lot of landscapers don't get past inflection point one when they go full time. Second inflection point, hiring somebody, a lot of people do it and then they retreat back to being solo. You look at other YouTubers that have got hires, got employees, and they retreat back to being solo. What happened? They hit the inflection point where they had to make a decision to either grow or retreat. And they were treated. And that's fine if that's with your goals, that aligns with your goals. But if you're actually trying to grow a business at that inflection point, you have to realize hiring that person is a massive catalyst to your growth. And you got to double down on it. Okay, that was the second one, hiring your first employee. Then the third catalyst is your second truck. This is a big one. This is now when you're starting to feel like you have a business because now you've got your second employee, you've hired your first employee. Now you've hired your second employee and you're buying a second truck. Now you have a fleet, you have a fleet of trucks. You have. It's not just you. You're driving the same truck. All the time. You have multiple trucks. Now this is a big deal. You got your second truck. You literally can double your production. That's a massive catalyst. To be able to take the reaction time of a chemical reaction in chemistry and half the reaction time is a big catalyst. It's a big change in the reaction time. And I remember being in the lab, sorry if I'm. I don't mean to be talking over your head, but like reactions and like chemical stuff was a big part of my life in school and in college, doing pre med. And so when we were doing organic chemistry, microbiology, things like that, we would always be looking for catalysts that we could add to the reaction so that when we were doing the experiment, we would have to wait three days for the reaction to take place. We could add a catalyst and they could go much faster. I don't want to sit around and wait 15, 20 years to grow a million dollar business. I'm sorry. I'm all about patience, I'm all about persistence. But I don't want to wait 15 years. I'm going to try to look for catalysts in my business, whether the marketing we just talked about, hiring, getting your first employee, getting that second truck is another catalyst to your growth. You're literally able to double, double your production going from one truck and you and one employee. So again, first truck, it's me and an employee. I don't get a second truck for my second, my first hire. Okay, it's me in the truck, then my, my first employee. Working together, really just ingraining the training and the culture of what I want the company to be in that first employee because they're going to become the cultural standard going forward. Then I get a second truck, I get a second employee. Now, now I have two employees, two trucks. I can go get a third employee before I need a third truck. So literally getting that second truck allows me to get two more hires, which literally can double the production of my business, can double my re down in Mount Vernon. They're going to be able to do 35 to $40,000 in monthly revenue. Having three employees and a general manager with two trucks, that's all you need at this point. And it's a massive inflection point to get that second truck. A lot of people, they're like, you know what? I can't deal with the stress. I do not want to get a second truck. I'm going to stay with my one. Maybe I have a helper. Maybe I keep, I go, I go past inflection. Point two, I get my first employee, but I never get to inflection point three, which is the second truck. Massive step, because there's a lot of fear in knowing that now I'm not going to be on every single route because now there's two trucks, there's go, they're going two different directions. I physically can't be on every job. I physically can't be a part of every single project, every single lawn service. There's going to be things fall through the cracks. This is the point. This is the point when a lot of people again will retreat. They get their second truck, and then they retreat back because now they're out of control. They can't be on every job site, every single customer, every interaction, every lawn service. And now they have to actually start relying on training employees. Finding a second and a third employee is a lot harder than finding one good employee. You might luck out on your first one and then really struggle to find your second and third one. And filling that second truck can be difficult. Now you've got more estimates and customer service and phone calls and emails because you're literally double the production of your company. All right, inflection number three was their second truck. Number four, the next inflection point. The next part in your business can be a massive catalyst to growth is going to be the fact that you get out of the field. And that's really that stage when you go from. Remember we talked about the four stages of the owner, right, going from the field to the office manager, right now we just went from went from number one to number two. So now we're out of the field without the office person. So catalyst number four is that you're a primarily out of the field and you don't have to be on every single project. All right? So whether it be using video, using audio, having a good team in place now to where you don't have to be on every job site. You trust them. They know how to interact with the customer. They know how to upsell customers. They know how to manage materials and project times and budgeted hours, and they're actually trained to do this. This is usually running when you have four to eight employees. Somewhere in this time is when, depending what type of services you offer, you're going to now step out of the field. You're going to become the office manager. You're going to do everything above that in terms of sales, hiring, the CEO position, all the things above that. But now you've delegated everything below that. So remember, we have down here we have, we have out in the field, then we have office manager, then we have estimator, then we have CEO. When we move from field worker out in the field all the time to being the office manager, we still have to do all the tasks up above that we still have to do estimates. We still are focused on the CEO level position strategy, all the rest of it. That's all still part of our job description. But primarily I'm thinking I'm an office manager, I'm focused on email customer service. I'm contacting people like that's my daily operation. While I'm going to estimates, I'm calling, I'm emailing. That's what I am primarily doing as my job description. Again, a massive catalyst growth. Because if I can get out of the field, that means that I can focus on serving my customers better, better quality control, training my team, actually focusing on developing systems, actually taking a day off to focus on creating a new strategy and a new process in the business that's going to result in a massive amount of new leads. Because I figured out how to do Facebook ads, I figured out how to do YouTube ads, I figured out how to create my Facebook page and create good content and make pictures and video. It's at points inflection number four, where you're primarily out of the field, that spending time on the business is more valuable than spending time in the business. A lot of times I get this, this, this is, this frustrates me all, all so much. When people are so low or maybe have one employee and they're like, oh, I'm going to work on the business, I don't want to work in the business. I'm like, are you crazy? You're not making enough revenue to where if you made a 10% efficiency gain by working on the business, it would not have the effect on the business as much as if you would have just spent that time working in the business. Do not try because it sounds cool or because some person, whether it be Me or another YouTuber, says, oh, you've got to work on your business and focus on strategy. If you're solo, if you're, if you have one employee, your time is best spent working and making money. But as time goes on and we get to inflection point number four, again, some people retreat back from this. They want to stay in the field. They don't want to let go of everything out in the field. They want to stay involved, they want to keep their fingers in everything and they forget that they, they've got to get out of the field. They've got to focus on now. Okay, I have five, six employees. Me spending four hours focusing on the layout of the shop is going to save 10 seconds every day when guys show up and when they leave. Okay, Now I have eight notes. Let's say five employees. That's going to say five minutes a day, every single day. Five minutes times that by 200, like now, it starts to make sense to work on efficiencies and all the little tweaks in your business and focus on marketing strategies and focusing on planning and how are we going to train our employees? And what's the future of the business look like? Where are the inefficiencies? How can I improve? P4P profit sharing, creating systems. These are things that you can do once you're out of the field. And that's why it's a massive catalyst to growth. Because it now allows you, it frees up the mental space and your time. Instead of you working 10 hours out in the field now, maybe you work. You're working mostly working from estimates, driving. You're answering phone calls, all the rest of it, but you're thinking. You now have time to think about the strategy, what you're improving. You have time to take some of the good pictures and post them on your Instagram and your Facebook and send out email newsletters to your customers. That's only allowed because the time of you now being able to spend on working on the business, that's inflection point number four is when you're primarily out of the field. Inflection point number five is when you can get an office person.

Again. This is usually going to come once you're now past 8, 9, 10 employees. Sometimes this can happen earlier, but you better be sure that you have enough money because overhead when you hire an office person is a big killer. This is why most people don't hire an office person, is why we have command center for franchisees. Because a lot of companies will get to this point where they need an office person, but they can't afford the overhead. This is why, because a good office person is probably going to cost you 20 to $25 an hour. You're going to have to pay them when it's whether you're busy or whether you're slow because you don't want to lose them for the rest of the year. So you keep paying them a salary or their hourly wages to keep them. It's going to take them three to four months to learn the software, learn Your systems understand, your clients know how to use everything. And if they leave, then you're really in a pickle because now you're still out trying to do estimates and all the rest of it. Now you got to go in an office space. You got a rent space, get Internet, get utilities, get a bathroom and water. And now what used to cost just three or four hundred dollars a month for some storage of parking for your trucks now is going to cost fifteen hundred dollars a month because I need an indoor space. And you have it permitted, built, whatever it might be. And now it needs to be closer to town, so now it gets more expensive. These are all things that happen when you start adding an office manager. And so if you don't have something like command center, well, you got to realize, okay, I'm going to hit this inflection point, and when I get this office manager, my overhead is going to go up, but I'm going to use this as a catalyst, this inflection point that I'm about to hit. I'm going to use it as a catalyst because now that person is going to be able to take away all the minutiae of phone calls, customer service breakdowns, all the little things that happen. Running payroll, scheduling, billing, invoicing, all the little stuff. Hey, Mr. Jones. I can't. Mr. Jones calls like, I can't get my credit card to work. I think it might be expired. Like, that's not what you need to be focusing on at this stage of your business. You're now breaking probably 6, 7, 800,000 revenue. You need to be focused on selling and your team, you need to be out selling, right? That's when. Now you are the estimator. Remember, our four stages went from the person out in the field working to the office manager now at the estimator position. Why? Because you've hired out the second position, which is the office manager. Okay, so again, massive influx right now of overhead because you're going to pay this person if they're good, if they're worth their money and they actually do stuff without you having to micromanage them, they're going to be expensive. Then you've got to have more overhead of actually having an office space. That's a pain. But again, it's an inflection point. Some people hit it and they retreat because like, oh my goodness, it's not worth it. I got to pay this person 50,000 plus I got to pay for office and computers and utilities and all the rest of it. I'm going to retreat or you say, okay, look, I got to have this overhead in order for me to grow past it. I've got to really scale the business. Because, look, If I have $50,000 in salary for a office person, plus, let's say $10,000 per year in upgraded rent, you know, $500 in extra per month in utilities and Internet and computers and all the rest of it. Let's just say it costs us $75,000 or. Or let's say $6,000 per month, $6,000 per month extra to have an office person and have an office space for us to now operate out of $6,000 a month. If I'm running a 20% margin business, I'm learning 20% net profit. That means that I need to generate $30,000 in gross revenue just to make up for that $6,000 worth of overhead coming in the form of an office manager. So you've got to step back, like, $30,000. If I times that by 12, I literally have to make $360,000 more in gross revenue in order to calibrate to my $60,000. That's going to cost me more or 70,000. I'm sorry I messed those numbers up, but you got what I was saying. You basically are looking like I'm 20% profitable. My overhead is coming out of my profit. So if I'm going to pay $75,000 in a year to an office person, that means I got to make five times that in revenue. So that's a big amount of commitment, and you've got to scale. But guess what? You're not going to keep growing your business without it. You're not going to grow your business out. Someone else answering the phone, someone else. Someone else answering your email, and you will hit an absolute roadblock, a wall in your growth if you don't, at this inflection point, make the commitment to. I'm going to get someone in the office. Okay, get an answering service. If you don't have command center, get an answering service. There's several out there. There's, like, pink callers. There's call boss. There's a few other ones that are pretty good. Like, you do not want to be answering phone calls. It makes you reactive. All right? If I'm working, I'm doing estimates. Whatever I'm doing, I'm training someone, I'm hiring, and all of a sudden I get a phone call. Guess what happens? Whatever I'm doing right now gets stopped. The things that are important most likely get stopped, and I pick up the phone. And I become a reactive business owner, always going at whatever stimulus comes my way. I'm like, oh, phone call. Oh, email. Oh, unhappy customer. Oh, billing, billing problem. You're all over the place. You've got to focus on selling. You've got to become the estimator in this position, okay? That is the fifth catalyst is the office person. Number six is when. Now you get someone else to sell the jobs, okay? At this position. This is the hardest position to give up because you give up the lifestream of the business, which is sales. You are now not. You're not longer in the field. You're no longer in the office. You've hired that out. Now you've hired an estimator. And that's what allows you to become in the fourth stage of CEO. This is the hardest position to give up. That's where the sales, the iv. The lifeblood of your business is sales and estimates. The estimates are wrong if they're priced incorrectly. If you have budget hours messed up, if you have materials messed up. If they're not experienced enough, the business literally can follow power. And so that's why people are afraid. And so what do they do? They spend the rest of their life being the estimator. They spend the rest of their life driving around from job to job, driving around from client to client, and they just have one person in the office and a whole bunch of field workers. Guess what you are. You want me to tell you who you are? Go back a week. You're an octopus. Everything still goes through you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back last week. Go to the one about where I talk about momentum and I talk about being a rabbit instead of an octopus. An octopus just has a bunch of tentacles. And you don't want to be the owner. That every employee is really just an extension of you. Here's another minion doing what you want. Can't think creatively, can't think on their own. There's no system that governs their decisions. Everything has to be run through you. You are the bottleneck for everything. Every single estimate. If you leave on vacation, jobs don't get sold. Stuff doesn't get happened. You people don't go anywhere. Okay? That's the sixth catalyst is when you've hired someone to do your sales. The seventh and final catalyst. Last one. All right, we're going to the seventh one. It's going to be great. But before we do, you got to hit the like button. I got to get some love to go to number Seven. I'm going to change the banner here. It's going to be super fun. All right? We're talking about the seventh thing that you need to do to actually grow your business to a million dollars in revenue, and that is you need to hire someone else to hire other people. This is a big step. Okay, so we've already talked about you getting out of the field. Then you hire an office person and, sorry, you become the office person. Then you go become an estimator and hire out the office person, then become the CEO. What really, really is going to be an inflection point for you is when you no longer interview people and you no longer hire people. Only recently in the past couple years have I been able to get this position where people on my team, people I've hired, are hiring other people without any sort of direction or instruction from me. I give them the systems. Hey, here are the questions you ask. Here's what you ask the references. Here's the document. So, like the franchisees, we give them a document, literally, step by step. Here's what you ask in the questions in your interview. Here's what you ask the references. And based upon this, you should know very clearly if this is a good camp.