How to Double Your Income in 2017 - Ep. 21

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscapebusinesscourse.com podcast. Today is episode 21, and we're gonna be talking about what you're gonna do in 2017 to make sure that your business grows by 100%. How do you double your income in 2017? Is the question we're gonna answer today. The five things you've gotta do. And some of this has to do with some personal income things too, like personal finance stuff. But it has a lot also to do with your landscaping business. Exactly what you can do. And we're gonna talk about those things today. So let's run through these things. Five things that you're gonna do at this time of year. A lot of people are thinking about New Year's resolutions and all of that. And obviously I've talked to in the past about my goals. I think it was episode 16 I did on my goals for 2017 what I'm looking to do. And so that's very important. But now let's give some concrete five things that you can do to double your size of your business and double your take home income. That adjusted gross line item on your tax return. What can you do in your personal finances and business finances to make sure that happens? Number one is hire someone to do everything but your sales. Okay, so a lot of business owners in landscaping industry are gonna get consumed in things like are the blade sharpened, is the oil changed? And those things aren't like not important, they are important. And making sure that you're office is clean and the trucks are clean and the website design is nice and the design on your P and L is set up just right. Like those things are important, but they don't drive bottom line sales, they don't drive revenue growth, they don't make a company from 1 million to $2 million the next year in 12 months. So that's what we're trying to do. And in order to do that, you've got to focus on sales. And you've heard me say it before, you've heard me say it in the course, you've heard me say it in the podcast. But. But our industry gets so interested in how to mow the lawn and how to install the pavers and all of that and all the techniques and whether you should fertilize this way or that way. But really what it comes down to is you are a sales organization regardless if you focus on trimming or maintenance or install or mowing. Whatever you focus on doesn't matter. You are A sales organization that just happens to be selling, mowing, landscaping, maintenance, like tree trimming, all those things, snow removal, fertilization, all those things are just the services or what I like to say really is the product that you are just trying to sell. You have to realize really your role as a business owner is to sell. And so everything that's taking you or keeping you from selling, going out and making new estimates, going and meeting property managers, going out and meeting contractors for these new construction jobs where you can install landscaping and do 20, $30,000 bids. These are the people you need to be going out and meeting in order to create sales and generate more revenue. And so if you find yourself, you know, your time being consumed with answering phone calls and replying to emails, keeping track of payments, going to the bank, all these things are clerical and administrative things that can be delegated, can be allocated to someone else's department. You can outsource them if you're just getting started, or you can bring on someone, I suggest hire someone to do these things for you. And eventually, as you grow, you might need one person for accounting, one person for finance, one person for the web, one person. But all I'm saying is you've got to focus on sales. Even if you have 50 people in your organization, you're still focusing on sales. It might be you're actually managing sales managers, but you as the business owner have got to focus on generating income. If you want to scale your business, that's number one, the number one thing that you can do of the five things that we're going to talk about that can generate enough revenue to double your business in 2017. The second thing is call 10 clients. So what I want you to do is make a list of the clients that if you could get them, would completely blow up your business in 2017. So that might be a massive development that's coming in your area and you want to try to get all the landscape install for the 20 or 30 housing projects that are going in. And you know it's going to be a million dollar project or you know, 500,000 DOL project to install the lawns and make water fountains and make patios and do this whole project for these 50, 60 houses or whatever that's going in, like that's big deal.

That might be one of the top 10 people you need to call. It might be a massive apartment complex in your area that has 3, 400 units. And you know if you can get them, you're going to get a $5,000 per month maintenance contract for 12 months out of the year and that might double your business. But it doesn't like those 10 people, just one of them. It just takes one of them to contact you to make a huge difference in your business. And so a lot of people are afraid to call them. And if you listen to last episode, we talked about guerilla marketing, getting in with these property management companies, giving them cookies or making these cold estimates, because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to contact the big players, the ones that if you can get them to buy, it's going to revolutionize, completely change your business, blow it up. You're going to hire more people, get more equipment and really begin to scale your business. Like, yes, you can go after the small projects, yes, you can go after the little clients and advertise door to door or something like that. But if you really want to scale your business, if you want to Double it in 2017, make a list of the top 10 clients that you know would blow your business up. It might be strategic alliances with a vendor even. But like, what are the 10 people if you could call would make the biggest change in your company? Contact them and. And you will see a change in 2017. The third thing is to track your time. This is a little bit different one. It's about time and about productivity and efficiency. And a lot of times we talk about that concerning your business, but also about your time. Time's the one thing you got when you were born. You were given one thing and that's time. What you do with it is up to you. And making sure that you do whatever you're doing with your time efficiently is important. So track your time. It could be on an app, it could be just by paper. Just make sure you're tracking it. Do it for a or two, see where you're wasting time and try to get two more hours per day to focus on sales and focus on making your business better. Whether it be working on the website, creating a blog post, making a video, making sure you train your people right. Two hours per day. That could be the last two hours of your day before you go to bed, the first two hours when you wake up. But I promise you, there's things that you can cut out of your schedule that will allow that time. Like. Like, we're all busy. We're all business owners, we're busy. But I guarantee that there is something you can cut out. Two hours is just 8% of your day. I guarantee there's 8% of your day that you can cut out, whether it be mindlessly flicking through channels on the tv, whether it be listening to music or just flipping through a magazine, or watching highlight reels for sports, or looking at YouTube videos, there's mindlessly, I guarantee you that 8% of your day can be. You know, you can suck that time out of your 24 hour period and make more time to work on your business. That's number three. Track your time and then make sure you get two more hours out of every single day to grow your business. Number four, the number four thing of the five things that keep that will make your business grow and double in 2017, number four is cut your monthly expenses by 25%. And when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about your personal finances. Obviously it'd be great if you can cut your business expenses by 25%. However, if you've been listening to the podcast and are on the course, you should already have a very lean model. You shouldn't have a whole bunch of expenses. Yes, you want to keep your expenses down in your business, but as you grow and you're in this massive scale, like we're doubling every year and stuff, you are going to be putting money back into the business. Obviously keep it lean though. But when we're talking about doubling your net take home income, you want to also keep your personal expenses low. What I mean by that is like might not need to live in the nicest house in the neighborhood. You might not need to have the nicest car. Maybe just drive a company truck that you drive around for estimates. Use that. You can write it off. Like bring your monthly expenses down just by 25%. I was gonna say 50% but I was being nice in here. So 25%. Cut your monthly expenses by that amount every single month and use that money to either go push it all back towards your business and then even see greater growth. But I find a lot of times this part isn't even just about your business as much as when you take money out. Sorry. When you start saving and don't spend as much money on these expenses like cars and vehicles and your house, bigger house or more clothes or eating out. More, more entertainment. Like I actually find people are more happy and more satisfied with their life. More things won't necessarily get you more happiness. Spending time with family, making relationships, having experiences is what's going to make more fulfilled person. And many times those are the things that are free or low cost. But yet people still are trying to buy things and buy the Next, you know, next fad, the next clothing fad, the bigger house, the nicer car. And a lot of times they find, you know, minus the whole financial obligation part of it, they've all and the financial consequences that follow the financial drain it's being on you and your business minus that out, it's still as far as a lifestyle, just minimalistic kind of thinking of living with less. You'll have more time to go travel because now you don't have this house you got to take care of if that's what you want to do during the winter, perhaps when you're slower. There are so many benefits to living on less and making sure you scale back your consumption and allow that extra income to be used maybe for giving to your church or a charity or traveling or putting it back into your business. And you're going to see massive amounts of growth in 2017. The fifth thing, the last thing that you got to do in order to double your take home income is this year 2017 is to know your numbers and set benchmarks. And when I say know your numbers, obviously you need to know your business numbers. But also we're talking about your take home income. So right now, if you're only taking $30,000 out of the business in your annual income, how do we get that to 60,000? What do we need to do? We need to increase it by 30,000. Like how do we double that? Okay, well, let's break it down. If you're in January and you're making $30,000 per month, I mean, sorry, per year, that means you're making two and a half thousand dollars per month. Okay, that is $83 per day. Now that's knowing your numbers. We need to get to 5,000 per month and $167 per day in order to hit 60,000 in our years in order to double. Right. Well, let's set benchmarks. Like we don't need to go from, you know, from February and from January to February and start making twice as much. Let's set benchmarks. So in, in June, halfway marker, let's try to attack on 50% gains. And so now we'll be making $37.50 a month instead of 2,500. Now we'll be making $125 per day instead of $83 per day. So in that first six months we're going to 50% of the way to doubling our income. And you say, well that's really hard. Well, guess what, that's only $42 per day that you need to increase in your net income in order to get to that marker. And so you're saying, well, how do I do that? Well, now we're breaking it down. We got the benchmark, we got our numbers. Now we're breaking down $42 per day. What do you need to do to make $42 more today and then what about tomorrow and the day after? How are you gonna make for it? Might be hiring someone else. It might be getting one more job. Like, think about it, $42. That's one client. That's one residential lawn mowing maintenance client that you gotta do every single day. That would literally allow you to get to that benchmark in June where you've got 50% more income. If we want to go up to $167 per day.

Doubling your $83 per day at 30,000 per year, and we're trying to get 60,000 per year. We just need $84 per day. That's just a couple. A few more mowing clients per day. How do you get there? Focus on it. Break it down. Know your numbers. Break it down. So let's run through these five things again. Number one, this is all we're talking about. How to double your income, your take home net profit that you're taking home into your bank account every single month, every single day. In 2017, we're trying to double it. How do you do that? Number one, hire someone to do everything besides sales. Number two, call the 10 clients or the 10 people, the 10 companies that if they bought your product, your product, your service, your landscaping services, your mowing, your maintenance, whatever, if they bought it and it would blow your business. Call those people, even maybe walk in on their office. Number three, track your time and cut out at least two more hours per day. Cut out the fluff and get two more hours per day to work on your business. Number four is cut your monthly expenses by 25%. And number five is know your numbers, set benchmarks, and I promise you, you're gonna see massive amounts of growth in 2017. This is Mike landscapebusinesscourse.com if you haven't already, check out the webinar. We have one coming up this Saturday. It's a special one. We don't usually do ones on the weekend, but a lot of people have been asking just because of scheduling during the week. So if you haven't already, the webinar's free. We're gonna talk about the five things that keep small businesses small in the landscaping industry and talk about my marketing methods that I've used to scale my business up to $100,000 per month in revenue. This is Mike Andes signing off.