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

What's up, everyone? It's Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.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 gonna go live in, 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 gonna go through seven steps in order of what I had to kind of figure out in terms of what to delegate, 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. So slowly but surely. Anyways, let's go ahead and talk about inflection points and catalyst. 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. All right, 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, the miss a turning point in the business. You know, it's the 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 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 is, 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. Number two, 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've delegated 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, at 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 on, 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 because that truck was also my personal vehicle and 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 or, or 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 in 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 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, you know, 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, or retreat and they retreated. And that's fine if that's with your goals, if 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 go 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. And 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 wouldn't 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. Oh, 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 on 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, create good content and make pictures and video. It's at this point, 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'm not, 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 other 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, I have eight, you know, 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'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 and 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 they. 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've got to go in an office space. You got a rent space, you get Internet, get utilities, get a bathroom and water. And now what used to cost just three or four hundred 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, what 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 minutia 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 in revenue. You need to be focused on selling and your team. You need to be up selling, right? That's when. Now you are the estimator. Remember our four stages? We went from the person out in the field working to the office manager. Now at the estimated 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, 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 had $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 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 earning 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 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. Sorry, I messed those numbers up. But you got what I was saying. You basically are looking like I'm 20% profitable. My overhead's 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, whatever stimulus comes my way. I'm like, oh, phone call. Oh, email, 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 four stage of CEO. This is the hardest position to give up. That's where the sales, the, like the iv the lifeblood of your business is sales and estimates. If 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 fall apart. 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. 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, every single. If you leave on vacation, jobs don't get sold, stuff doesn't get happened. 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 an 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 candidate. All right? That's a system that needs to be in place so that I can hand it off. I can't get out of the field if I don't have systems, and I can't become an office manager. If I can't hand things off to the people out in the field. I can't become an estimator if I haven't created systems to hand someone off in the office. And I can't become a CEO if I haven't created systems to be able to hand off to an estimator. So as I move up the ladder from field to office to estimator to CEO, I've got to make sure I have systems in place for the position I'm leaving. That's what makes the catalyst a possibility. Because if your estimator has no idea what they're doing, they're making stuff up on the up on the fly because they don't have a system in place for pricing, then you're gonna fall apart. The business will not do well. There will be an absolute lapse when you step out of that role. And that's why people retreat. They get. They go from the office manager into the estimator position, and they freak out because now estimates aren't being done right and the emails aren't being done right. And they didn't answer that call exactly the way I would have. And the reason is because they didn't create systems for it. Then it create a system for how to answer the phone. They create a system on how to leave a voice note or send an estimate or how to do the pricing for an estimate. Those things need to be done if you're going to hand things off the same way if you're in step number one. Phase number one, you can't step out of the field if you haven't created a system to make sure that your employees in the field can actually produce the work at the quality standard you expect, whether that be project management videos, whether that be training. You've got to have systems in place to make sure that when you step out of a role that the business is going to keep going forward, that they're going to have all the systems, all the knowledge necessary to succeed and grow and expand without you, without you being the octopus, being connected to every decision. So literally today, I have yet to meet two employees that were hired. One at command center because they're getting very, very busy and we are behind on a lot of stuff. They're trying to hire as many as fast as possible. And then one at the local shop in Bellingham. I haven't met them. I haven't done an interview. I didn't call the references. Someone else did all of that and followed the systems to make sure that that person was a cultural fit. Okay. That is the seventh catalyst is when you no longer are hiring the people. You have people you've hired that hire those people. All right, so those are the seven steps Growing your lawn care business to a seven figure company. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to now answer questions. We're going live into the question section first, though. I got to get this banner off. I appreciate you all coming on today. I really do. And I promise not to try. I'll try not to. I shouldn't promise. I'll try my best not to disappoint when it comes to the Q A. Someone asked if I'm on helium. I saw that. I gotta scroll up, though. Here we go.

Oh, they say my voice sounds weird. Oh, audio is calibrated wrong. Oh, see, I'm just saying this now. That's horrible. So something's wrong with the audio. Okay, well, let's see if it's really bad. I can switch out sounds. High pitched.

Uh.

Oh, okay. Give me. 30 seconds. Let me switch out. Here we go. This is what we do, man. I was trying to make it better with this new microphone, but obviously that did not do well. But stick with me. I'm gonna go back to the tried and true lapel mic. Gotta do a little finagling here. I did have a backup. I knew that, you know, things happen, life happens.

So here we go.

Let me clip this bad boy on. Let me change my input here.

Let's see here. Let's go to my settings. Audio.

Here we go. Okay, Is this better? Is this any better now? Can you hear me better? Is it less sounding like I'm on helium? It really does sound like you're on healing. My goodness. Even my franchisees are turning on me. Oh, man. Okay. Does that sound any better? Yes, it does. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, let's go through questions and answers. I apologize for the sound issues. We will improve. I'm trying to get better here. I was hoping that that audio. This bad boy would be good, but supposedly a $400 sure mic still can't compete with my $20 clip on mic. So here we go. Questions and answers. Oh, good. That's all. All about voice sounding like, I'm coming through helium. I'm going a thousand miles per hour. Yeah, well, if you were on helium, I guess that's what happens. Just checked. It also sounds high pitched on YouTube. Yep, it was probably the microphone. Sorry, everyone. Okay, I sound like a mouse. Okay, this is really chipmunk. Mike, something is wrong. What was step one? Okay, I'm trying to get questions. Keep scrolling here. What do you do about getting new customers that try to lowball your prices? Because I'm a black businessman, Jerome. First of all, I think in my mind, you've got to get over the last part. And that is you're starting to put certain biases on other people. Like maybe that's true. Maybe like when I was four feet and trying to sell life insurance, maybe that was a detriment to me, my age, and the fact that I looked like I was, like, 12 years old. But absolutely, if you think it. If you think it's a disadvantage, it is. The moment you can overcome it in your mind, it eliminates it. There's people that have been black businessmen that have been successful. There's short people that have been successful. Then fat people have been successful. There's white, red. There's old, there's young. So if they've done it before, do not allow that to be the excuse in your mind, because if you allow it in your mind, yes, it will manifest itself because you won't be as confident. You'll back down when you really need to step up, you won't push as hard. So I really, really think this is true when it comes to this sort of thing. It's like if in your mind, it's a big issue, it will be an issue for the customer. If I think I'm a small business and, like, I don't know if I can get the big contract, guess what? That property manager is going to pick up on it. If I don't think I can take a big project on because of, you know, I've never done something before, the customer is going to pick up on that. Don't allow your own insecurities to keep you from growing your business simply because in your mind, you have certain hurdles and you're put. You're mirroring things on a customer that they potentially might not have. You just are thinking about it so much that it actually manifests. And it's not to say that there's not absolute stereotypes and stigmas around race, culture, color of skin, ethnicity, age, weight, all of those things. There's absolutely negative stereotypes. But the moment you can overcome that in your own mind, that's when you have the confidence to actually portray that in a sales situation and actually overcome it.

All right. Is it me? Yeah. The microphone is weird. I'm sorry. I'm going live. Okay, cool. I have two trucks and it's just me. Okay. All right. I obviously sounded really crazy. I'm sorry.

Okay, try to get some questions here. I hear that. That all the time people come to work that are working for another company, and two guys would be out working and a husband and wife trying to run the business and earn a paycheck. Not enough revenue to run a household. Okay, I'm scrolling here. I have. I just give an estimate for mowing five schools. Congratulations.

Octopus. Yes, love the octopus analogy. I sent that to a few employees so they can understand why they need to step up.

Do you say Dear Tentacles.

But I guess then you're admitting that you are an octopus. So there you go. Thank you so much for the information you're teaching. Adds so much value to my business. Great. Thank you, Leonard.

Okay, let's keep going here. I want to get some questions. I don't want to miss anyone's actual questions, but I'm just trying to get to where we're actually talking about business stuff. As much as my voice sounds like a chipmunk and all the Rest of it. Okay, I've got past all these. Okay, that's. Yes, all noise. Okay, now we're normal. Okay, here we go. Jeff Logan, do you think higher pay will entice people? Since I can't afford to pay for benefits. Again, this is a great question. I've talked about this before. When it comes to benefits and your pay, benefits are usually going to attract an older demographic that has family. They're more established, perhaps they've been injured in the past. If you're going to be trying to go after younger people that probably have insurance to their parents, for example, or they're living at home, good chance you might just want to offer them more cash. Right. So it really depends on what market you want to go after. In terms of labor market. And you want younger people. Cash usually speaks volumes. If you're going after an older audience, you want people with families and all the rest of it, you're probably going to want to offer benefits and they would be willing to take a little bit less on dollar per hour because they understand the tax implications. That being said, there's definitely pros and cons of having young people versus old people. The positive part of having a person that has a family is they got to show up to work. They can't just like disappear for a few days. They've got to earn a paycheck. So that dependability is amazing. But you also got to realize they have family, they have kids, they have relationships, they have issues, they have back pain, all these other things that are going to come with that. So there's a balance between whether you have an older labor force or younger labor force. But again, how you pay in terms of benefits or more cash is going to really indicate which direction you're trying to go.

Dean, thank you so much for the 999. I really appreciate that you give me $5 pre live too. So I really appreciate that. I'm glad I saw your website. That looks really killer. How do I manage my time? I am more than doubling and can get all the clients I need, but don't have time to train, do fieldwork, manage an estimate.

All right, so this is the point at which you make a decision. A, do you go get someone in the office to handle all of those things or even a field manager that's going to train people or designate someone. So for example, let me step back a second before I became CEO and I was still in the daily operations, something that we did is I took everything that was in daily operations and tried to delegate It. So we literally said, okay, sharpening blades, who's responsible? All right, washing the trucks. Okay, who's responsible? What was it? Cleaning the office, who's responsible for this? Literally every single thing in daily operations. Cleaning out the trailers, filling up spools of the line on the trimmers, every single thing. We took one person that was. Had a field job, that they had a position there, but we delegated every little thing that I did. I would, as an owner, you know, you check the tire pressures, you check brakes, you check oil, you check in about certain things. All of that, I think there was about, I think I want to say 12 or 14 different things that I was doing at the time. And we just delegated one thing to each person. And that way, if there was something wrong, if I was going down the street driving and I saw a mower that was filthy dirty, I'd go to the one person that was responsible for cleaning the mowers and like, hello. And I knew who I could hold accountable. Right? So that's what that would be kind of what I would say, Dean. But keep in mind, you're hitting an inflection point right now. That's what's happening. You're hitting that point where you either going to get an office person and really, really ramp up, because you're going to have to. To be able to absorb that overhead, or you're going to stay where you're at now, spend a year, raise your prices, maximize your profit, increase margin, and then you're going to be able to really afford that office person and maybe move into a new shop or whatever it might be. So there's two different things you can do. An inflection point, either pause and not participate in the catalyst, which in this case is hire an office person, or hire the office person and realize that with growth, with speed comes waste. I've said this before. When you grow fast, there's going to be waste. Hiring that office person is going to be a massive waste for the first, probably six to 18 months while you're trying to catch up and make up for that overhead and actually grow fast enough.

When in CEO stage, is a person or two in the office plus an estimator enough to have the company run itself, or is it an operations manager necessary too? What are your. What are their roles? So I really think if you're involved and in the CEO stage, like if you're still at the business, I wouldn't hire an operations manager. In my opinion, you don't need an operations manager until you're starting to not be there now you might be willing to take less money home just so you don't have to have that tie to the business and you can go on vacation, things like that. Then maybe get an office person or sorry, operations manager. But operations manager is not cheap, okay? Because they need to know everything in the field and in the office. This person is usually highly paid. Again, another step of overhead. So the same way that I said, hey, if I'm going to pay $6,000 a month to a office person, an office manager, I'm going to Therefore, at a 20% net profit margin, that means I need to make $30,000 in more revenue just to break even on hiring that person to make up for all of that overhead. Well, now I also get a second person in the office. Now I get an operations manager. So you literally might need 50, $60,000 a month in revenue just to pay off the overhead of having non revenue producing employees in the form of office people, estimators, et cetera. So again, I talked about that conference. Like you've got to really watch how many people you have on non revenue producing employees. How can you make a revenue producing employee really try to get other stuff done in the business? Like what an operation, like an operations manager should not be go checking the tire pressure. That's what I see in so many businesses. The person who's getting paid the most money is literally doing all the minutiae. Get your employees out in the field, like I said, delegate to them even when you have an operations manager, because they cost a lot of money. In terms of your question directly though, it really depends on your services. If you have a very high touch service, for example, mowing, fertilization, recurring services, residential, that's going to require more people in the office. If you're doing commercial work, you literally might have one office person and grow to $2 million in revenue because you only have 20 clients. So that's where that trade off is. Again, for commercial, I'm not gonna be able to charge as much per hour in terms of a premium price, usually as residential.

All right, how can I target other company supervisors to hire? I don't like targeting.

Honestly. Be a magnet instead of trying to pull people away. If you could create a great culture. If your guys are always talking about the other landscapers, about how great it is, how you have paper performance, you share in your profits, you actually share your numbers with your employees and you share the numbers of how much revenue and profits and all of that. That culture is what's Going to be magnetic to a grade A supervisor, a grade A manager at another company that's sick and tired of dealing with their owner, that thinks they're all that in a bag of chips, doesn't share numbers, is manipulative, micromanages, doesn't share any profits, is stingy when it comes to employees, but then goes and spends a weekend in Malibu for, you know, $50,000 and goes on yachts in a private jet. That's going to make them very disengaged, very demoralized. That's the person you're going to magnetize by having a culture that's actually worth working for. So thank you to, you know, the 110 of you that are live right now. I really appreciate that. Let's keep going. Do I go to city hall to get my license for my gardening business? Note, you probably can go online, go to your department of licensing for your state and you should be able to license. No problem there.

Thanks, Ray. I'm having problems with people. If I have one employees, I need three others on backup. Is $15 good enough pay? So $15 is gonna depend on where your market is at, what your cost of living is. But you should definitely not have one full timer employee and three backup. That's a horrible. You have no accountability. How in the world can you schedule? You're not gonna be able to keep these three people around because you can't offer them stable work. If you don't create stability. If you don't have that dependability for your employees in terms of hours you're traditionally not gonna hire, you'll be attractive of the best employees. Being able to commit to them on a certain level is what they need as an employee for security. No, they have certain amount of hours, know they have a certain amount of pay. If they wanted a bunch of risk, Sometimes they work 60 hours and sometimes five hours in a week. They would go start their own business themselves. They want security. They need that dependability of how many hours they're working, what they're getting paid. And I would much, much, much rather you go get two full time employees, commit to them and then expect them and hold them to the accountability, hold them to the standard that you expect them to show up. If they don't show up and there's unexcused absences, they don't get profit sharing, they get some sort of disqualification on P4P. They get them out of their paycheck, something happens and I'd be willing to pay $18 an hour for two solid. Really good employees that I can count on book a schedule for actually know that they're going to show up and be accountable for something instead of having one employee. And if they don't show up, I'm depending on three part timers that potentially have no experience, don't know how we run things, don't know how our systems operate. I can't trust them with the employee with this, with the customers, can't trust them with the equipment I'm constantly have to micromanaging them because they've only worked for me once or twice in the past. That's a failing formula. Get a couple good people, start creating a culture that you can trust them on and pay them more if you need to because there's absolutely waste that's happening when you have backups and you have people like, okay, I have four people full time. I have three part timers that if I, if these people don't show up, I'll call these people. That's a massive amount of waste, you calling and you know, oh, hey, can you work tomorrow? Oh, do you need a ride? Oh, I know you don't have a license, but I'll come pick you up in the morning. That is absolutely going to keep your business from growing. It's going to keep you locked into that office manager position, juggling schedules, juggling when people can work, juggling their time when they need to get off for their kids. And then, oh, I got to take you because you don't have a license and oh, you're on probation. So like all of that garbage is what keeping you from growing? I'd much rather pay a little bit more money for higher quality employees. Have less of them. They work full time and I can keep them accountable to the systems that we have in the business. What's your best resource or method for hiring the right employee? We've had some horrible hiring experiences that have hurt us. Just you stay tuned, Leonard. This weekend I'm going to be launching and sharing about when I hired one of my first employees and they sued me. So you talk about bad, bad hiring practices on my part. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have systems, I didn't know how to call references and what questions to ask those references. I didn't know how to figure out certain things after in an interview, what questions to ask. I didn't know. So this weekend I'm going to be posting a video. It's about 20 minutes long. I share the story and the things that I learned from it. That is going to be a very valuable for you, Leonard. Make sure you watch that. The title will be something a little bit catchy like My Employee sued Me. Okay. If you live in a giant metro area, is it work? Does it work opening more than one shop or stick with one right in the middle?

Depends on two things. Number one, your service area. But that being said, a five mile radius in the middle of, you know, some hick town might literally take five minutes to drive across because it's all highways and the other one drives fast. If you're living in a metro area, urban area like you said, if it takes an hour to drive five miles, you might want to think about getting like a storage space where you can park some trucks and some equipment, maybe like a container to be able to store some stuff. So that way you can have a different start location for your employees. But again, your employees aren't gonna be happy if they have to drive an hour in traffic just to get to that location. So keep that in mind too. A lot of people think how it's best for their business. But keep in mind, like if you have a satellite location, that means your employees have to travel to a different location. And that's again unsettling for an employee who's looking for stability. If we can get some likes, I'd really appreciate it. We've been consistently above 100 live streamers, which will like never fails to impress me. I appreciate all of you this evening logging on here and we're going to keep going through questions here, but if you could hit the like button, just smash it, obliterate it, just give it a little love tap, I'd really appreciate that. Paul. Mike, I've started, I'm starting over this year. Have top spot on Google in my area. When do I leave my day job? I've noticed that either my selling ability has dwindled or my prices are too high. Should I lower?

Let me try to get the next.

Part of this question.

I gotta scroll down. Should I lower?

Oh man. Your question, the rest of this question's cut off way too far down because too many questions came in. So I know what you're trying to say though. So basically, Paul, you're trying to get, you're at stage, you're at that inflection point of number one, you're right there. You've got to go full time now. That being said, does it align with your goals? So for example, I just talked to one of our potential franchisees that might join. He needs to stay on his current union job for two more years because he's gonna have 25 years there and, and he's gonna get massive amount of benefits. So I'm like, look, stay on the job, working there full time, that's fine. Do the, do the guest of lawn.

Care on the side.

You have the money to be able to invest. You don't need to take any money out of the company since you have the other job. Great position to be in. But when he hits inflection point number one, after he, after the first two years of him working his other job, he's going to grow massively. So in your position, Paul, you've got to ask yourself, am I in a financial position to be able to jump in full time knowing that for a few months it might be tight, might be tight financially, but this is your, you're at the, you're at the inflection point. Do you go all in on the catalyst which is going to be you going full time or do you stay where you're at and keep your prices high? Keep in mind, when you start going full time, you're going to be more efficient. You're not going to be trying to work two hours here and an hour here and on the weekends and like doing inefficient routes. You're going to have full day, you're going to a full route. You can make sure it's efficient. You're also going to get your estimates back to your customers faster. You're going to spend more time on your estimates and talking to the customer because now you have the time. So that's going to improve your close ratio as well. You're going to answer the phone faster. Again, adding value like we talked about two nights ago. If you didn't hear it, you got to go back, you got to go back. Two nights ago we talked about it. Value versus price. A lot of the things that happens when you go full time is you raise value and, and therefore your price is no longer an issue because as long as value is higher than price, the transaction takes place. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. All right, next question from Harry. Mike. I have the opportunity for a high paying job, but is a new kind of work that my company doesn't offer, should I take it and learn the new work or just pass it on?

If I have, if I have the opportunity for a high paying job but is in a new kind of work that my company doesn't offer, okay, should I take it and learn the new work or just pass on it that there's so many different layers, I can't answer that. Right. It depends on your family, what you need in terms of money, dependability. What are the job prospects for this new position? Like, is this a position that's gonna elevate you in a lot of room for growth, a lot of upward mobility, or is it a dead end job that just has a bunch of pay? Because like, I'm always amazed by people that go for a higher paying job and then they don't have the foresight to look down the road and be like, in five years, there's nowhere else I can go. This is the farthest up in the company. I'd much rather join as a mid level manager in a company that has a lot of upward mobility, that is growing really fast, creating new opportunity than I would. I'd rather make 50 grand there than I would make 80 grand at some place where, look, I'm gonna make 80 grand. It's a lot more than I was making before. But like, there's nowhere else I can go. There's. The company isn't growing. It's been the same always. I'm doing the same thing. There's no upper. No, I can't grow. I would much rather take the company that's going and have the upper mobility. Allow me to learn, Allow me to grow and expand and learn new things. People just don't value that enough and it hurts their careers. I'm bad at hiring. I finally turned it over to my operations manager. She does a much better job, honestly, in general, like, you can call me sexist or whatever you want. A woman is gonna be a lot higher eq, emotional, intelligent than us dudes. All right? We look at the guy, oh, he's strong, he can work. Let's go. And they're like, does that person treat everyone nice? Do they actually care about customers? Are they going to be able to communicate? Like, they're a little more emotionally intelligent than us guys and you've got to be humble and realize like where your weaknesses are at. That's why I tried to shove my role as like hiring off as soon as possible to my operation manager who is a woman. Like, they do a much better job than me. Okay, on the subject of systems, do you have a system for standard operating procedures? That's hilarious. Do you have a. It's like saying, do you have a. Do you have a standard operating procedure for standard operating procedures?

It's a lot of, you know, figure out what works in your area. So every single category or business Needs a system. Whether it be payroll, whether it be office work, whether it be pricing, whether it be doing estimates, whether it be project management, Every single one needs a system.

How do you manage P4P for two man mowing crew? If one is the crew leader, split the 33, 50. 50. Yes, Seth, you do. That being said, you might change the base pay if you have designated drivers or something like that. But I am a big fan of not segregating or distinguishing between employees in terms of their percentage. All right, 50, 50 up there on. If they're on a mo route, if they're doing the same work, they just deserve the same pay. I don't care how long they've been around, how old they are, how much experience they had, how much they got paid their last job. Don't care about that. How long have you been with the company? If they're producing the same amount of revenue for the business, I'm going to split in half.

What are good questions asked potential employees during the interview process? One that comes right to my mind is ask them, what will Bob, who first of all, who's a good reference for you, he worked at your last position. Okay, Bob. Okay. What was his position? What was his relation to you? Was he a direct report? What's his phone number? Can I get that? Thank you. Great. When I call Bob. Not if. When I call Bob, what is he going to say about your performance? Listen, when I call Bob, what's he going to say about your punctuality and dependability when it came to showing up to work? When you ask those questions and you say, when I call them, they like you. I've seen this so many times, they'll literally pause and be like, oh, great, he's actually going to call this person. I actually need to think about this because I don't want to say like, oh, he'll say, I did a great job. If actually there was a bad something that happened before that person left that position, all of a sudden they start confessing. Well, actually, if you call Bob, he's gonna say probably that like, when we left, it didn't really, you know, end on good terms. Like, I didn't really agree with where the company was going. Like, you're all of a sudden gonna start getting that. And that is the test. If they start saying negative things about their past employer, big red flag. Now, do bad things happen? Yes. But how they say it, if they start nagging about it, complaining about it, you know, saying stuff that's just stupid about their boss, whatever it Might be they start talking about their feelings towards their boss and all the rest of it. You better make sure that's a red flag. If they think that boss is bad, guess what? They're gonna think you are too. All right. Like if people don't change, all right, just don't think you're gonna reinvent the wheel on this person. They're gonna continue to look at all your hinder parts, all your issues. They're going to be a poison in your company. They're gonna look at all the negativity. There's me a sponge for it. So I would definitely be asking about references and what not. Not if I call them. What are they going to say when I call them? What are they going to say? Can you talk about the difference between a click and an actual call? On Facebook ads with a call button getting a lot of clicks but only two calls. Trying to understand the analytics. Yes. So when you click the call button again, people can literally just go right back to Facebook and they're out of the call. Right. So people again, people sneeze and they accidentally tap the button. Guess what? You got charged. All right, that's why, like Google local services, that's why other platforms are going to be much more accurate in terms of cost per click. Because cost per click when it comes to clicks on a Facebook ad is very inaccurate. A lot of those clicks go right back to Facebook without ever seeing your website. Okay, Jerome Harden, what are some unique ways to create value to your customers besides price? We talked about this two nights ago. Go watch that. We talk about value versus price. Best advice for making a leap to a new mower and trailer purchase.

Only my second year, but some bigger lawns are demanding a larger mower and trailer. It could get those without debt.

Okay, so you can go back, watch my videos about trucks and trailers and what you need to buy. You need to match your truck and trailer setup to two things. The amount of crew members that you're going to have on the route, like how many people are in the truck, as well as how big are your properties. If you're dealing with four acre properties, you're going to probably have two or three people in the truck. You're probably on a big trailer with big zero turns. If you're doing metropolitan postage stamp, 3 to 5,000 square feet of turf lawns. Probably going to be with a trailer setup. Probably going to be either with a small zero turn or just push mowers. Okay. That, that's going to be completely governed by the size of Your property.

Website is killing it by the way, for being so new. Oh man, I can't see. When you post from the landscape business course Facebook group, I can't see your name. So I'm assuming you use lawn careweb design.com. so thank you. Things are really crazy right now, but have no idea how many clients I will get. When do you recommend purchasing a new mowing setup? Considering right now our mowing crew is at full capacity. Rodriguez, another inflection point. You got to always think about everything your business and decisions and inflection points. Okay, when I hit an inflection point means I have to make a decision. What have I been talking about recently on decision? Make them fast, make them painless. Just go for it. Either when I say speed, I don't mean like, oh, immediately, I'm gonna go buy equipment, I'm gonna go buy trucks. No, it means I'm gonna make a decision quickly. I'm not gonna ponder, think, debate. Go to five different dealerships, go out of state, go to dealer to dealer shows, go to gie, see what I want. Like all that time is wasted. Make the decision when you hit an inflection point and that inflection point might be at that decision, you might actually decide to take a year, slow down growth and increase your prices. That's fine, but make a decision at the inflection point.

I'm in Florida. I just got started. Cheap prices is the way to go.

Only if your name is cheap lawn care. That way it's good branding. But otherwise I don't like cheap. I like high value, high price, premium product, premium prices. Let's go make some money. Where are all the likes at? Loving the live streams, Mike. Thank you, I appreciate it. Why are you so amp? Hey, Mike, thanks for all the great advice. Listen to you regularly. All right, Mike. Adding on a new crew this spring, starting him out on P4P and he should be working on his own at first. Once I get enough work, I'll add a second employee. Should percentage wages be the same for one man? Yes, yes, exactly. This question from earlier, you just split that amount in revenue in half. So for example, if you make $400 in a day solo and you're going to give them 25%, just for example, they make $100. If they make $1,000 a day on a two man crew and you give them 25%, that's $250 split in half. $125 each. Just for example.

Loving the content man works well even with my detailing Business works a lot of this stuff. Business is universal. It is so universal. The people that I watch, most of the content I absorb is not from landscapers because business principles are fundamentally the same. How you apply them is what's important. I can learn a lot from Google and Apple and other companies have done really great stuff. I can learn from the technology industry, I can learn from the oil industry, I can learn from retail. I can learn from gyms and stores that are currently being sold, slaughtered and restaurants. How, whether they adapt to the new economy. These are things I can learn from whether or not I'm in this industry or not. What is a good weekly revenue goal per two man crew? Completely depends on your hourly rate to your customer and the hourly rate that you charge you pay your employees. That's the percentage you want to keep in mind. It's not about how much revenue you make. That's going to completely depend on what services you're doing. It's going to completely depend on, on what your cost of living is in your market, what you're able to charge, what's going the going rate in your market. What you need to be thinking about is what's my revenue to wages paid in that week. That's the most important thing. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Too many questions. Adding three new crews this season, what would you suggest for training all the employees simultaneously? We have some good videos system, etc. However, the on field reality can be much different. Yeah, there's a good software for videos called Greenius. I've seen it. It's kind of expensive. We've played with the idea, we've made our own videos for our team. There's just nothing like in field training because a lot of these laborers, when you turn a video on for them that's, you know, educational, they are literally asleep in five minutes. And we had four hours and it was all like super perfect and we had it all. It would not go as well as me taking five minutes and showing someone out in the field. So what I would recommend in my opinion is have a staged basis for your training. So for example, first day you're only going to learn a weed whacker and a blower. Day two, if you did well after day one, maybe we'll teach you a push number. Day three, maybe I'll get you on a zero turn. Day four, if all those things are checking off and you're doing really well, maybe then I show you how to do edging. Then maybe next week I show you how to drive the truck. Maybe the next Week I try try to show you how to drive with a trailer. Maybe next week I show you how to use the dump trailer. Then next month or week I show you how to use a skid steer. Again, that tiered approach. Infield training has worked really well for us videos. We just have not had a lot of luck with this. Laborers don't like it. Office people, great. We make a lot of video tutorials for office people and it works great. A screen sharing Dean, you gave me money again. You got to stop that man. You gave me $5, then $10 and then $15. So if I stay long enough, maybe you'll give me 20.

All right, let's see here. How many estimates should an estimator strive to do a day within a 10 mile race? Really? Again, depends on your market, how much your traffic grab. If you're in a metropolitan area, if you're in a wide open area, you get a lot done. If you're going through traffic all day, it might take you 30 minutes to get from one side to the other. Right now I'm putting out door hangers for spring cleanups. When should I stop and start flying? Focusing on mowing flyers? Great question. Mowing is usually the demand peaks around two to three weeks after the lawn season starts simply because people have been putting it off and now they're actually feeling some pain. I either long the grass is shaggy and long and they're embarrassed by it. So definitely I would be saying that your best time to switch over is about two to three weeks after mowing season starts because that's when the pain for people who don't have mowing service, their mower was broken, all of that stuff. That's when the peak demand in pain is for the customer. Mike, thanks for all you do. I'm at 280k, 110k, take home, not in the field anymore and I'm ready for office staff. Best way to start someone when the phone's not ringing all day, get them on training and focus. Make sure you have tasks always that are piling up that they can do when the phone isn't ringing. This is going to be things like sending out estimate emails, following up, doing follow up calls, calling all the estimates that are in the queue that have been sent in, going through overdue invoices. You need to have that list so that way the dips, the ebbs and flows of when calls come in gets a little more even in terms of their workflow.

Okay, I'm going to speed through some of these. My dad is in need of 10 employees. Do you find Facebook ads help with hiring? What's your best tip? To find new hires. So we usually do a blend of Craigslist. Indeed. And Facebook usually brings us pretty good leads. Again, is the hardest year ever because of, you know, like literally today. Today the stimulus package is in effect. $300 per week in unemployment boost. What that means is it's not just $300 a week. It means that it's $300 on top of the state unemployment benefits. So that means that a labor, if they're unemployed, can literally make four or five hundred dollars a week doing absolutely nothing. It's gonna be harder than ever to find entry level employees in this industry. Oh, Zachary, thank you. Hartford Lawn and Landscapes. He's a client of Lawn Care Web Design. Thank you so much Zachary. And I liked your video ad the other day. It can definitely be a little more succinct like people were saying, but just post it. I'm glad you just went ahead and posted it. And try to get closer to your truck because your truck and your uniform is the brand. The owl, for example, in your logo for us it's the Max. Max the dog. That's our, that's our, our. Our branding and the yellow trucks. So in those videos, try to stay close to the truck in my opinion.

Okay, let's see here. One second. We got too many questions coming in. Just started online and landscape business this year. Projecting the one hit 1.2 million revenue by November and looking to hire more people. How should I handle this massive growth? Probably watch this video again and see the different stages. You're going to be hitting up against stage number six and seven. So watch those parts again. Sutton Lawn and more. I'm looking for someone with a great work ethic who is willing to learn. Oh, you're. You're trying to give me the actual job ad. I see what you're doing. Okay, that's gonna be a little bit long for this. Sorry. I'm enjoying listening, learning from you. Sorry, Sutton Long kid. The everything is getting cut off because you post a long thing. So sorry about that. It's just. No, not probably the best place on live. Hey Dean. Okay, Dean, thank you again for the dollars. Any. Any idea that Google Local Services problem? It's a huge headache and except expense to get my fertilization license, time insurance to hang the license, etc PS Lawn Care Web Design did an awesome job. Oh cool.

Thank you, Dean.

Yes, Google Local services is cracking down. Cracking down on people trying to get into lawn Care on their platform that don't have a license. In the past, sending a business license 90 of the time would get you through that step. But now there's sometimes requiring contractor's license or an applicator's license. I still believe it's such a good deal on Google local services, it's worth getting your license just to get in. But I know it's a pain. I know there's insurance, so keep that in balance and in check. And if it's going to cause a lot of insurance, then maybe don't. But if it's not going to jump to the steps, try to appeal your case and say, look, I'm not applying fertilizer, I'm not doing hard skipping. Like what do I need to do get through because I don't need an applicator's license. Try your very best. And a couple of our franchisees have actually got their contractor's license in order to get past that step.

Okey dokey. How are you planning for wage increases with minimum wage going to $15 and how that translates to loss in business and profits? My state is putting a bill in the House right now for a vote soon.

So should all just expect two things the next several years. Taxes are going to go up and minimum wage is going to go up. I predict there's just no way they pass a 1.9 trillion dollar bill today and they're not going to raise taxes. I don't care what any politician tells you, you're going to get taxed more in the next five years. We can't spend money as a country without paying for it. Okay? So taxes are going to go up. Just count on it. And minimum wage is going to go up. Guess what? You've got to raise prices. This is why people are so afraid of inflation right now. The cost of everything going up. Because if labor gets more expensive, lots of stuff is going to get more expensive, okay? Including our services. So don't be the guys like, oh, I'm going to charge the same prices. I don't want to raise prices. And if I raise price, I'm going to charge like a dollar more per week. No, don't do that.

All right. Hello, Mike. I just started my business this year in Omaha, Nebraska. I've been watching your channel for the last two months and I've learned quite a bit. I just want to say thank you for the videos. You're welcome, Robert. Thank you for watching. Best way to explain to a customer that the job is out of your wheelhouse being Too big for a sole proprietorship. Just trying to be polite without burning a bridge. Yes. What I would say is, look, Mr. Jones, we do not specialize in XYZ service. If there's any of these ABC services that we can provide for you, we'd be more than happy to give you a quote for that. We really try to focus on these services and become the best in them. And if we don't feel we're going to be the best fit for you for given service, we're going to let you know by doing that, you're going to get all sorts of credibility from them when you do say you can do certain services. So when I would say, hey, I don't. We don't do irrigation. We're just not the best of that. Here's a few people we would recommend. When I did say I can do this, they know I can do it and they trust me a lot more. Sometimes saying what you don't do gives you a lot more validity in terms of what you can do. Okay, big question. Coming to year two, pushing close to 70 clients. Goal already in my area. Things will be full speed within 8 weeks. Weeks. Need another 10k to start another crew. I feel I can save it by then, but worried about working capital in the busy season. Could easily get the money privately at 5%. Thoughts? Save versus borrow. I would make sure you run the numbers on the fact that when you start paying on those payments, you're still going to be profitable. Because if you're growing really quickly, growth sucks. Cash and speed creates waste. I've talked about this past couple months a lot. So if you're going to keep growing, you're going to create waste, you're going to be less profitable and you're going to. It's going to suck cash. You're going to need trucks and equipment and all the rest. You hire more people, then you got to get a bigger shop. Now you got an office person like that's just how growth happens. So you better make sure that you can afford those payments because debt gets very scary when you are unprofitable. Maryland REQUEST CONTRACTOR LICENSE I'm taking the test on Monday. Zachary, congrats, brother. Yep. That's what's going to happen to wages. Wages will have to go up if the bare minimum is $15 for an inexperienced person. Guys who now more will want more money too. Okay, and that's it. All right. Thank you so much everyone for watching tonight. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for everyone joining the course. Landscape businesscourse.com and lawn careweb design.com it has helped me so much in the past four or five days that I've been doing these live streams that I've seen a lot of you supporting me. Because we are hiring two new people. One of them starts tomorrow, another one starts in three weeks. And it's going to be for creating more content for the community. And it helps me a lot when I have that revenue stream coming because we're kind of going out on this limb to afford them. You'll get office space. I gotta get them computers and equipment and all the rest of it. But I really appreciate you guys support like all of this. Microphones, computers, the software compute stuff we're setting up now. Trying to make this better is all because of you guys Supporting with landscape businesscourse.com the MBA for entrepreneurs, lawn care web design. I just can't say thank you enough. And it really does help the whole industry. So I really believe a rising. A rising. What's called it. It call it rising tide floats all boats. So by us supporting be able to create more content, I think it's gonna help our whole industry. And that's the goal of what we're trying to do. We're trying to improve and raise the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. And whether or not you're part of Augusta, I appreciate you being a part of what we're trying to do. I really appreciate it. The last thing I would ask is before you leave this video, give a little tap to the like button. Thank you so much, everyone. I really appreciate you guys coming out tonight. It really means a lot that you stuck with me for literally 72 minutes. Have a great evening. Thanks so much.