How to Go FULL TIME in Your Service Business! (Mike Andes Coaching)

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and today we're going to be doing a short consulting call with a part time business owner. He's been doing his lawn care business on the side. He had as many as about 20 customers, but it's actually been dwindling down to five. He's gone through some surgeries, disabled, and so there's a lot of obstacles. However, he's wondering how he can take the business full time and not just do it on a part time basis.

This has to work for me. I'm all in and I'm 100%.

There's actually a time when you can read too many books, watch too many of my videos, go to too many conferences and get too much information and not actually, actually execute on what's going to double, triple, quadruple the size of the business when you're smaller. I hope it's a good listen. Let's go and roll the tape.

Oh, man. How you doing, man? It's finally, definitely a pleasure to meet you, Mike. Man, thank you for taking out the time out your day to talk to me. And I really, man, I'm nervous as heck. I ain't even gonna lie.

You're good, you're good. I do have, I do have a hard stop. But. So just like, let's just dig right into your questions.

Yeah.

And let's. As much value as I can give here in the next 15 minutes.

Yeah, man. So, you know, as you already know, a little bit of my backstory, you know, with how I got into lawn care, you know, I wasn't supposed to do it. It became a passion for me and little by little, like my own yard became a canvas to the point where I had cars stopping and asking me. And then that's how I developed my customers along the way, you know, this year, you know, I started to like run a business without me realizing I was running a business, doing it on the side. And it was, the thing was I love it. I fell in love with what, what, with what I was doing. And so I think I'm at a point right now where I was able to make money this year on a part time basis. And I, what I did was I didn't pay myself. I don't care about paying myself. I, what I, what I got from it, I already paid myself. And that was the being outside in nature and loving what I'm doing and so, and being able to support my family and my kids, that's all that, that matters to me. So I didn't pay myself, but What I did was I took the money, and I'm kind of taking your advice and all the books that I read from you, Paul Jameson, and a lot of entrepreneurs like ourselves, and just I want to make sure that wherever I am, because I'm not rich and I was broke, if I tell you my story, like, we, you know, we all have a backstory, and I just want to know, like, what. What would you do in my position? Like, as far as, like, where to invest the money, like, where to first start at, like, you know, where to put the money at to try to win. Because this has to work for me. I'm all in, and I'm 100 in as far as my family agreeing to what I'm doing, the time I invested, you know, with just collaborations and just being so involved, man. And. And I love it. I love it. That's why I'm doing it, because I've never found the ever in my life. And it took for me to get injured and go through what I went through in order to find what I really love to do. So that's my question. You might not put the money, like, as far as with marketing, like, how would you strategize it? I kind of have an idea, but I would love to hear from you.

Yeah. So right now, how much money are we talking about? Is it a matter of, like, future profits where I put that money? Or is it a matter of I have X amount and I don't know where to put it?

So right now I have, like, seven to eight grand. I had about. I had about, like, it was like 19. And what I did was I'm trying to buy everything. Like, I developed that money this year and I'm trying to, like, and I did it part time. That's why I'm proud of myself. That was part time with me putting a stipulation on myself and like. Like, because I had to watch my son, you know, I know, you know, I'm disabled and stuff, and I'm doing it, you know, so you, you know, with that being said, I did it part time, and I. I felt like I've done so well. Like, I want to go, like, full in and, like, be able to grow the business enough to where if one day I want to pass it on and my son wants to take it to the next level, you know, I want to be able to provide that for them.

Yes. Like, in any business, there's only really four constraints. You've had liquidity, you have leads, you have labor, or you have leadership. Right now you don't need leadership. You don't have general managers, you don't have laborers in terms of employees yet. And so really, it's a matter of you either have a cash problem or you have a leads problem. Liquidity. And so I'd say at 6, $7,000, you're close on liquidity. But it sounds like to me, the growth of the business happens when you get more leads. And so unlocking how do we get more leads is the problem. And, you know, I don't think this is a matter of having enough money to go spend money on Facebook ads and Google Ads and doing a big campaign or getting an agency, et cetera. This is a matter of I need a website and I need to be able go to door to door and knock on do doors and talk to people and get in front of people. And it's like right now, how many customers do you have on a recurring basis right now?

Yep. So before I had all my surgeries during COVID I had 15. I had 15 to 20. And that was by choice because I was only taking in what I could do. Then I fell into a medical issue where I had to have like another six surgeries. Like literally like a year and a half ago to about like two years ago was in a wheelchair, all that stuff. And moving forward right now, I just kept five. So I got five. I had one that dropped, and I kind of want to drop one just because he's a pain. Like, he don't like paying sometimes he likes like dictating. And I know, you know, again, you know, that some now I'll deal with next year, but I think next year I'm raising the prices on him just because it's a lot of work for his property. But yeah, so I know I put the stipulation on myself because.

I couldn't take on anymore because as you know, I was doing it in the minivan and I brought a trailer. I was doing it in the Millie in the minivan with all this equipment. And honestly, I think I broke the last minivan we had. I didn't tell my wife, but I think I broke it doing snow removal, hugging the, you know, pulling the thing. We blew the engine, and that's why we had to get into another family vehicle. But thankfully it was paid off already. So that. That help.

You know, that. That the vehicle would pay.

The good news, you double the business if you get five more customers. And so this is. This is the numbers. This is a numbers game. And I genuinely believe the best place to Go. Here is door knocking or door hangers, okay? And so if you have instant price door hangers, for example, for mowing or property cleanups, and you're going from door to door and there's a price on there. Excellent. Better yet, if you knock on the door and talk to the person, you have a great story, you have great personality, great eye contact, you can sell. And so the differ between 5 and 10 customers would double your business. The difference between 5 and 10 customers is likely less than a week's worth of knocking on doors and doing door hangers could potentially be even a day or two. And so this is not a matter of where do I put the money. This is a matter of where do I put my time? Because at five customers, you have more time than you have money. And so I would, I would encourage. When it comes to leads is now the bottleneck. We know we need more customers. We will not build this business on five customers. If leads is the problem, how am I getting at leads? Well, I'm either going to expend time or I'm going to expend money. I have more time available right now because I only have five customers, then I do have money, six or seven thousand dollars. And so the immediate solution here is go spend time, don't spend the money, spend time. So the question of where do I spend the money? It's actually a matter of how do I go get more leads and do I do it with money or do it with a time? And at that amount of money and the number of customers you have, I would focus on doing things that take time. I'd also be like, okay, every day I'm going to post in local Facebook groups. I am going, you know, I'm going to do one a day. I'm going to choose my top 10 or 15 local neighborhoods. I'm not going to be pitchy, you're not going to salesy. I'm not going to call me now. Just share before and after pictures and I share a picture of my, my truck. I'm going to be more local minded and focused. That's where my focus would be. That and doing door hangers like I genuinely believe you could. Literally very possible. We see all the time inside Augusta people getting three, four, five customers a day from doing door hangers.

Right, Right. Yeah. No, and I, that's how I plan on attacking the market. And I'm so eager. I can't wait to like the snow till all this passes because I'm so eager to get out there early, early Winter, like, like, I'm talking like early, I mean late winter, early spring. Like, I'm gonna go out there very hard. I'm gonna, I wanna spend money in that and door hangers and postcards and kind of use like the strategies so I can grow at least get like my goal is to get 36. I want to have 36. If I make it to more, fine. But this year I'm also purchasing the truck because like, I can't continue to do it. So I, we, we, me and my wife, we talked about it. I gotta purchase a truck, which I'm going to do when I get back from, probably from your, your blue collar summit. It just doesn't make sense business wise to like purchase a truck when I'm not really like out there 100. So I'm just holding off on that. I can always get that. Not concern. But the only difference that's going to be different this year going into 2025 is that I'm going in full time. Like I'm putting that time that you just said. So I, I just, I was. Because I, this is my first time ever, like doing anything with booking and I'm, I'm learning the numbers. That's why I want to go to the blue collar summit. Because you guys talk about how you got to know your numbers. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to read or it doesn't matter if you don't know how to do certain things. But you definitely got to know the basics of the numbers of, you know, what you're doing. So that's, that's where I want to, I want to learn and pick up and develop more in that area so I could become a better business operator. And the goal is to make enough money. It's going to hurt me, but I want to join Augusta. That's my goal. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to reach it. And I know I'm going to get there with God's help. And you know, lawn care has been, you know, endless opportunities. And I know this year I kind of had to focus more on like, you know, playing around with social media a little bit more than, more so than being out there with the customers. But that wasn't, that was more of a health decision because.

I had to watch my kid and you know, I was still getting over the surgeries and all that stuff. So I had to take it easy, like real, real big, like. So going into this year, now that I can be out There and go door to door. I want to hit strategically, Fairfield, Milford, Bridgeport, like in the areas that I want to work in and just target just those areas. I've even went as far as calling the billboard ad on the highway. I don't know if I should pull the trigger for the spring for. I know he was telling me, maybe I can get up for like 1500 or 1200 for a whole month. Man, I just want to grow. And, and, and I'm inspired by you guys. I watch a lot of videos. I try to read a lot. One thing that I've grown in 2024 is picking up a book. Mike is just picking up a book and being able to, to read and trying to educate myself in the, the area that I love to do the most, you know?

Yeah. Realizing the bottleneck is super important because like, even, even new information like podcasts, books, videos, et cetera, that's helpful, but really it's a matter of identifying the constraint and then attacking it. And you only need more information or education once you hit a new constraint that you don't have the resources or information to be able to overcome. And right now I genuinely believe the difference between you having five customers and 50 customers is, is the only thing required is one skill, and that is knocking on doors and doing door hangers. And so any other information outside that, like, literally, if I was you, I would stop watching my videos, I would stop watching podcasts, I stopped watching videos because we know what is the next step of the business once you have 50 customers. Now you need an employee, now you need to learn management skills. Then there needs to be another unlock of education or like training yourself. But until then, execution is required, not more information.

Got you. I, I totally, I definitely agree. I couldn't agree with you. I, I agree with you 100%, Mike. And that's exactly what I'm focused on doing. And, and I'm going to take your advice on doing that because I think sometimes we do get caught up into a lot of the videos and stuff and we kind of condemn ourselves. One of the things you mentioned in the video this morning was how, you know, it's a little nerve wracking to put up all this money. And I told you in the beginning, you know, I was poor growing up, so I treasure every little dollar that I get. And I'm so careful because I was poor.

I.

There were times I didn't know where certain things was coming. And I appreciate the blessings that God has given me, you know, my home, to be able to sustain My family, and I'm just trying to protect it, man. And. And I just want to build something and just so I can feel good. It's more for myself than anybody else, and I'm gonna do it, and I know I'm gonna get there step by step. And I was afraid, just so you know, I was afraid to spend the money to go to the blue collar summit. My wife just, like, shook me and said, let me tell you something. If you want to grow, you talk about it all the time on your podcast. Don't be a hypocrite. She told me, if you want to grow, you got to spe. You put out a video the other day. I put out hundreds of thousands of dollars in seminars and entrepreneurs and. And you just got to do it. I've already regained my money back, and so I'm going off of that faith. I'll have that much faith, even though I'm not. I don't have the money and the capital to back, but I'm going off of faith, bro, and I'm going to make this happen. And I'm prepared for some failures because I know along the way there's going to be some failures. It's not going to be easy, but I'm in it for the long haul, man. And I appreciate your time, man. Thank you.

My pleasure, brother. You wish you all the best. I can't wait to see in January.

Yeah, man, you too, man. I'm fired up, man. Hey, real quick, is there any way I do a hosted show right every Tuesday night at 7pm Eastern time? I will either. I will either alter it if you can. If you can't. I still love you, my brother. I would love to just have you on for like, one minute.

How about this? I'll. I'll get the recording of this. The media team will chop it up, and you'll. I'll give it to you as a link and then you can share that.

You the man.

You the man.

I appreciate you, man. I can't wait to meet you.

Okay, you can have a good one, brother.

God bless, man.

Take care.

You too.

Bye. Bye.