How to get RICH working alone!

If you have no employees and you're a solo operator in your business, I'm going to share with you 5 secrets to make way more profit when you're going from zero to $100,000 in annual revenue. I'm Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care, and I've seen it 150 times where people start a business and then they start to grow. And I'm going to share exactly what they do. Five things to make sure they make a lot of money during that time frame. The number one secret when you're a solo operator is, is to make sure that you spend the majority of your day actually doing the work. I've seen solo operators where they maybe work for 30, 40, 50% of their day out in the field, and they spend the rest of their day doing paperwork, doing estimates, driving around, and meeting customers. I want to maximize the percentage of my day that I'm actually producing revenue. And so if you're mowing grass, keep the blades turning. If you're painting walls, keep the brush moving, do that as much as possible because that's when you're actually generating revenue. All the other time spent on admin or sales or doing estimates is not making you any money whatsoever. I'm going to have what I call an estimate comments template. It's going to be in my notes app. It could be in Google Drive. It could also be in your CRM. We basically have the verbiage of an entire estimate. You can quickly copy and paste, change one or two things and quickly get the quote to the customer instead of typing out every single letter on an estimate. And all of a sudden, either A, you're, you're gonna have really short estimates that don't have enough detail, or B, you're gonna spend 30, 40, 50 minutes trying to create an estimate. At Augusta Lawn Care, I've made estimates in five or 10 minutes for jobs that are, well, 10, 20, $30,000 projects simply because I was able to copy and paste and then change just a few things. Even on a massive, like construction or paver, patio, retaining wall job, I just changed a few things and I'm able to get the estimate done in just a matter of minutes. By doing this, I'll be able to make sure I get all the verbiage for an estimate completed before I even leave the customer's house in their driveway. I am going to have the estimate comments done. I'm not gonna wait till the end of the day. Why? Because at the end of the day, I've done Five estimates. And I've gotta remember back to what happened four hours ago. I wanna do it when it's fresh in my mind. I'm in the driveway, I copy and paste my notes, I make a few changes and done. The second secret to being a profitable solo operator and making more money, simple scales. Fancy fails. And when you're first getting started, you don't need to get super elaborate with your marketing. You want to stay basic, you likely don't have the capital, go do massive campaigns in the form of Facebook and Google. And I'm going to have massive billboard, I'm going to run a TV commercial. You don't have the money for that and that's fine because simple scales meaning every single time you get a customer, I'm going to do a five around of every single house around that customer's property. What's a five around? It's a door hanger on the neighbor on the left and right side of that person as well as the three houses on the other side of the street. So if I'm doing mowing, I am going to then do five different door hangers at all their neighbor's house and I'm going to put a price on that door hanger. And so that's simple, it's basic. And then while I'm there, I'm going to do a yard sign on the intersection that goes into that neighborhood. I'm trying to simply scale something very simple like door hangers and yard signs. I'm also going to do things that are free, like going on to Facebook looking for local groups. I'm simply gonna introduce myself, probably have like a picture of my family, like, hey, just got started up. If you ever need X, y and Z services, I'm your guy. Having that local feel inside of a local Facebook group is the move. And it doesn't cost you a lot. It's simple, but simple can scale. Not all payment for your services comes in the form of cash. You can also get referrals, you can also get upsells and you can get reviews. And so if you're just getting started this, those things are just as valuable, if not more valuable than actually collecting payment for your services. Because if I can get a bunch of Google reviews, I will get more leads. If I can get upsells and I do one service for a cheaper price or free to a customer and I upsell them something that's five times larger. Fantastic. If I sell them mowing services and I give them a really, really good deal or free, the first service, I might sell them a $5000 project. If I sell them a $5000 project and I give them a discount, I. I might actually get them on a recurring mowing service where I make a couple hundred dollars every single month. So I always think in terms of if I can do an upsell and I take them from a recurring customer, I can upsell them into a one time project. If I get them on a one time project, can I upsell them into a recurring service? The person that gets through being a solo operator in a matter of a few months versus people that never get out of being a solo operator. The difference is who has the ability to sell. You got to sell customers on the that they want your services, but also you gotta sell them on getting a review. You gotta sell them on giving you a referral. This ability to sell is what's going to allow you to massively speed up this process of going from solo operator to an employer. The third secret to making as much money as possible when you have no employees is to make sure that your response time is dialed in. Whether it be someone calling you, whether they chatting with you from your website, whether they send you an email or they send you a text message, your response time is super important. I know from tracking thousands of leads across home services that the vast majority of people that accept an estimate, it goes to the person that answered the phone first and then got the quote to the customer as fast as possible. And so if you can just answer your phone and get the fast response time and then do number one, which is do your estimates very fast once you've met the customer, you will win this game. So if most estimates are one by the company that simply answers their phone, we want to make sure that we have someone to answer the phone as many hours of the day as possible. Not going to your voicemail, not you getting back to them in two or three days, but getting a response time as fast as possible. At Augusta Lawn Care, we have it where their phone is literally answered 247 because we've seen over and over and over again the data that points to the fact that the first person who answers their phone is going to get the job. And so I don't really want you to be the person answering the phone. Why? Because you're out in the field doing work. And if you're going to get interrupted five times a day with a phone call and eight times a day with an email, and four times a day with text message, you're never going to get any work. Done. And that's what leads to being unprofitable as a solo operator and feeling like you're going in a hundred different directions throughout the day is simply because you're being reactionary to all of the communication. So one of two things happen. Either A, you don't get a fast response time and customers are choked and they never actually do business with you because you don't get back to them fast enough, or two, you feel completely scattered throughout your day. You're jumping from one task to the next. The phone rings and then jump on it. Oh, a customer text you and they're mad and you jump on it and you're going from one thing to the other throughout the day and you just runs you absolutely ragged. How do you avoid this? Get someone like a virtual assistant or a part time office person that can answer the phone and answer emails, answer text messages, answer web chat, and take all that communication and do it much faster than you, but then you're able to lock in on one thing and then remember, at this point in time, we want to be maximizing how much percentage of our day is spent doing the work. Generating revenue is our focus, and a bunch of distractions is not what we want to be having. And it's not going to cost you a lot. All those things I just mentioned, the four text messages, the eight phone phone calls, the 10 emails, it's gonna cost you very little because it's not a lot of time to actually respond. But the switching cost of going from mowing grass to then answering a phone call, and then when you're on the phone call, you get a text message. That switching cost to getting finally back on mowing grass takes you way longer than someone else that is just dedicated to answering the phone. So if you can hire a virtual assistant or a service that like, you get charged by the minute, they're not gonna be perfect. They're not gonna answer things exactly like you. But the goal is that you can focus on doing the work. The fourth secret is use the sniff test. What is the sniff test? It is a quick way to know whether or not you're ready to hire an employee and whether or not your business is profitable enough to be able to afford them. The first sniff test is be like, okay, if I did all this revenue for the day and I took off 33% or a third of it, because employees are not gonna be as efficient as you. If they earned two thirds as much as I made today, would I be able to afford their wages? And I go, great. I'm paying them $20 an hour. With taxes and everything. It's $25 an hour. So then take that $25 per hour, multiply it by how many hours you worked for the day. Let's call it 8. That's $200 in wages that I'm gonna be spending. If I didn't make $200 today in revenue, we got a problem. In fact, if I didn't make $300, because I know they're not gonna be as efficient as me, I buy at least a third. So that third is your buffer of the efficiency between you and the employee. And. And then I want to make sure that I can actually afford all their wages. So many of the times people hire a bunch of employees, they don't pass the sniff test. And then what happens is they actually lose money because it costs more in wages than the revenue produced by the employees. Now, if you're like, well, I did not pass the sniff test, good news, there's a way to be able to get out of it. You got to raise your prices. And when am I going to raise my prices? When I fill the capacity, I will raise my prices, which means when you want to start hiring employees because you're overloaded with work. If you, instead of doing that, raise your prices till you can pass the sniff test. Hit capacity, as many clients as you possibly can. You're booked out, Lots of jobs are pouring in. Great. Raise your prices by 15, 20, 30%. And then what's gonna happen? Less leads are gonna come in, less jobs will be accepted because you've raised your prices. And now, though, because of those higher prices, you'll be able to pass the sniff test. And that's when you can hire employees. The fifth secret to making as much money as possible when you're a solo operator is focus on being a great laborer. And a lot of times when I say that people are like, that's demeaning. I should be working on my business, not in it. I agree with you, but not when you're a solo operator. If you're trying to make as much money as possible while being a solo operator, you thinking about acquisitions and multiple locations and general managers and systems and procedures is not going to make you more money. It's going to distract you from doing what makes you money, which is the work itself. And to do the work better, be a great laborer. Watch videos about how to be more efficient, how to optimize your time throughout the day so you can spend more time doing the work. I Don't need you going to conferences about leadership. You have no employees. Just focus on being a great laborer in order to maximize the amount of profit that you make at this stage. I happen to believe if you become really profitable at this stage and you're able to raise prices high enough, you'll be able to then get the employees and be able to afford the leadership training required to be a great boss. But right now, two, to maximize your profit, be a great leader. Try not to get your head in the clouds too much. A lot of times, really, people have idolized the thought of working on the business, and it's like demeaning to work in the business. Flash, like, news alert. Until I cross 10 million in revenue, most of my day was spent working in the business. And so the thought that you're gonna be at 0 to 100,000 as a solo operator and working on the business is absolutely ludicrous. Put your head down, become a great labor and make more money. Now you. You'll make that money and turn it into a larger business that then you can focus on other skills. A lot of times, what happens when you're trying to figure out all these secrets and you're a solo operator is you get stressed out and burnt out. I made a video here talking to a couple other business owners that are going through the exact same thing, and I give you the strategies to overcome that burnout.