How to Go From $100K to $1 Million in Annual Sales - Ep.24

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to landscape businesscourse.com podcast episode 24 today. And we're going to be talking about how to scale your business up to $1 million in revenue. It's kind of a big.

Land marker, I guess, in our industry to reach the marker of making a million dollars in revenue in one year. And so today that's what we're going to talk about. But more specifically, I'm gonna talk about the four things that you need to do to take your business from $100,000 in revenue each year to a million dollars in revenue each year. So a lot of times when we're talking about $100,000 in revenue, that's what someone can make if they're kind of a solo entrepreneur just kind of pushing mowers by themself, you know, doing all the business aspect of estimating and emailing and all of that themselves. They definitely haven't been in our course and figured out how to go from labor to office manager to CEO. And.

So that's really why I made the course. But what are the four things that you need to do to go from $100,000 per year to the million dollar marker? And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Real quickly though, a lot of you have been emailing me, asking me things like, can we see how you run your business as far as your software and your website and all of that. And I say the same thing every single time at just watch the webinar landscapebusinesscourse.com at the end of the webinar, when I did that live one that I recorded last week, I went into two people's websites and gave them live information. So you can kinda see what I think about when I'm looking at a landscapers business website. And then I also go to my website and show you some of the backend. And then I also go to Lawn Pro, which is our software system, and show you our numbers and then what exactly it looks like. So if that's kind of your question, you've been thinking about that, or even a couple of people have emailed me and I've responded back, just go to the webinar, listen to the webinar, it'll be good. So today though, we're talking about $100,000 going from that $100,000 per year to million dollar marker. Now, number one. So there's four things. Number one is hire good people. And the first thing really is just hire people in general because if you're gonna go from 100,000 to a million dollars in revenue in the landscaping business, you cannot do it by yourself. You've got to hire people. Number one, though, is hire good people. And in order to hire good people, you've got to have a system in place to attract good people. And you've heard it so many times here on the podcast, and if you' heard a gazillion times about creating systems and it is so important, and we're going to talk about number four of the four things today. But like, so you got to have a system in place to attract good people. And like, you have to realize that your number one asset is your people. It's not your equipment, it's not even your contracts or your website or if you have a storefront or all your trucks. Like, those are not your number one asset. Your number one asset is your people. And you've got to focus on your people. Okay? Hiring good people is so key and fundamental, and the value of your company is really wrapped up in your people and not your customers. A lot of times people are like, oh, we have great customer service. We serve our customers so well. And that's all good and fine, and you have great quality and all that. That's great. But what about your employee service? How are you treating your employees? How are you hiring, finding, retaining good people? That's number one. Number two, the second thing that you've got to do to go for $100,000 a year to a million dollars a year in revenue in the landscaping industry, number two, is turn good people into great people. So you say, well, I don't want just good people. I want great people. Well, guess what? If you're gonna hire great people, it's gonna cost you a lot, because great people are in high demand and there's a low supply of great people. So what you've got to do is turn good people into great people by having training, having a management style that implements growth and experiential learning, and have a system in place that when you get good people off the streets, you turn them into great people internally. So if you want to hire a great person, you might have to pay them 25 bucks an hour right off the get go. If they've had managed a crew for five or 10 years, if they've done sales, if they know the industry, if they've worked for one of your competitors for five or 10 years, you're gonna have to pay them big bucks. What's cheaper and really in the long run, Much more efficient and effective is getting a good person. Might be the guy just out of high school, just out of College, paying him 15 or $16 an hour and training him up internally and creating making a good person, a good employee, into a great employee. And if you're gonna do that, got to have a system in place to take the new recruit, to take the new hire, to take the kid just off, you know, out of high school and make him a good person. You've got to have the tutorials, you got to have the operation manuals. You've got to have the ways of training people for each individual position within your company. That's number two. Number three, we're talking about going from $100,000 in revenue, where I would say most of the landscaping and landscaping companies within the United States, most don't even hit the $100,000 marker in revenue each year because they stay as one guy in a truck. And they're happy to make $80,000. And then 50% of that is profit. So they make 40 grand and they're happy. And if that's all you want, great. All the best to you. Congratulations, you've achieved your goal. But I think a lot of people out there want to make a whole lot more, and they want to have freedom outside of just punching a time clock and working out in the field every day. That's how you're going to go from 100,000 to a million in revenue. Okay. Number three is sales trumps all. You've heard me say it before. You are a sales organization. Don't forget it. You are a sales organization that just happens to be selling landscaping and lawn care services. All right? A lot of times people focus so much on this, especially this time of year like we're going into 2017, it's January. People are creating their annual budgets and they're budgeting. And what budgeting does is it creates a rigid structure for the expenses. And people think about how much they're gonna spend on marketing, how much they're gonna spend on fuel, and how much they gonna have spent on capital expenditures for trucks and trailers and equipment. And they begin to focus on the expenses part of their business. When what they gotta do is focus on the top inch of their income statement. That's the top line revenue. Cause you're never gonna save your way into making a million dollars. You're never gonna go from 100,000 to a million dollars in annual revenue by saving more money or cutting expenses or cutting costs. You're gonna have to focus on Top line revenue. And if you're gonna focus on that, if you're gonna try to get that, increase that to a million dollars, you've got to focus on sales. You should spend 80% of your time on revenue generation, which is sales, and only 20% on conservation, which is budgeting, keeping expenses down. Far too often the business owner is wrapped up in how do we cut costs, how do we cut how much fuel we're using, how much, how do we cut, you know, do we need to buy a new truck? Because we got to cut down on our maintenance costs and those things are all fine and good. We got to get a 60 inch mower instead of a 32 inch mower because it's going to make us more efficient. Yes, those are all things that are important. That's all budgeting and conservation. What I would rather have you do is spend more of your time, like double the amount of time, because most people spend. Most business owners that I come in contact, whether it be from the course when they're starting or from the people who reach out to me from the podcast landscape business owners, I would say that they spend 20 to 25% of their time on sales and the rest of the time on conservation, budgeting, how to make things more efficient, how to curb cost, how to reduce how much work it takes to get jobs done. All of those things are necessary. And that's why I say spend 20% of your time on doing conservation, on doing budgeting, on curbing costs, but spend 80% of your time on creating more sales. Sales solves all your problems. If you're gonna, if you need a better person, if you say, well, I need better people but I can't afford them, guess what? Sales will fix that. I need more equipment, I need more trucks. Sales will fix that. Sales is not the end all, be all. I don't say spend 100% of your time on sales, I say spend 80% on sales because it'll take care of a lot of your other problems. If you have so much work and you have so many jobs lined up, you will be able to increase your price. That will take care a lot of your budgeting problems. Alright, so if you have enough sales, if you have enough leads being poured into your funnel and the stream of jobs is thick, if that is the case, you can increase your price, increase your net profit margin. That's all part of this. So sales trumps all. Keep the funnel full and you've got to be able to do sales. Alright, number four, we're talking about the four things that will take your business from $100,000 in revenue each year to, to a million dollars in revenue each year. Number four, most important, be systems centric, not personality centric. What I mean by that is too many times, landscaping business, lawn care businesses are built on the personalities of the owner or the manager or their first one or two employees. And that's all fine and good until something bad happens. And it's not until it's when something bad is going to happen. Whether you get hurt, your manager gets fired, he gets another job offer, he has to move out of town, his, his or her spouse, something happened to them, they have to stop working or you get injured, something happens, it's gonna happen at some point in time. And at that moment, at that moment when the personality is taken out of the business, far too often the business will fail and it will become crippled because it's been built on the foundation of a person instead of a system. If you listen to the E myth by Michael Gerber, you know what I'm talking about here. You've gotta create systems if you're in the course. This is what I talk about all day long in every single video about creating systems for your hir, for your estimating, for your billing process, for your scheduling. All of these things should have systems. If you don't have an operation manual, if you don't have a tutorial for your new hires, if you don't have a way of making a process and an outline for every function within your organization, you are at risk. You are putting your business in jeopardy. Because it takes one incident, one accident for you to get injured and the company will fall apart. That's the difference between a solopreneur, a small business, and a real company that's thriving and can grow, is one that is independent, that can grow independently of a person, whether that be the owner or your manager. You've got to be able to think of what would happen if I could not come to work tomorrow. If my manager, my main man, my go to guy, could not show up tomorrow. Would the business be able to run? Would the systems and procedures be able to onboard somebody that hasn't worked at our facility before, hire them with our operations manual, be able to train them, our tutorials, be able to guide them and get them on track without them dropping the balls of the business? Would your office manager, estimator, your laborers, your crew manager, be able to work the company and continue to go on without you or your key employees being around? Because if not, it will take one moment, it'll take an accident, it'll take one day a week for something to happen to you, to that person, to that personality that the foundation your business has been residing upon and your business will fall apart. If you want to create a business that's going to thrive, that's going to grow, that's going to scale up and become big, that's going to make hit the million dollar marker, you've got to have systems and procedures in place. So that's pretty much it for today, everyone. If you want to talk more about systems and procedures and all of that stuff, check out Landscape Business. Check out the webinar. It's about an hour and 45 minutes of video. You get it right away. You don't have to wait anymore for the live feed. You can just watch the recorded one from last week. It's very good. You get to see my website. If you're really into like getting number one on Google, you'll like that about we talk about SEO and tags and your, your footer code and all of that stuff. But like I can't say it enough like it's totally free. I don't like try to sell anything to you guys, like hardcore. Like I give you free an hour's worth of free content. That is great. So check it out. Landscape businesscourse.com that's it for today. Episode 24. This has been exciting. Thank you all so much for joining and listening and there's just a growing audience here and so I really appreciate that. Again, Mike and he's landscapebusinesscourse.com Episode 24 signing off.