Mike Andes, who runs 150+ lawn care locations, explains how to stay profitable when seasonal work dries up. Stack one-time jobs like leaf cleanup and Christmas lights to fund spring growth. By November, your leaf-season income should tell you if you can run full-time year-round.
One of the most difficult parts about having a home service business is the fact that we have seasonal revenue during the winter or your off season revenue collapses, leads dry up, you're really struggling your close ratio.
Now we have a different conversation of do we have to do this part time next year?
My name is Mike Andes, I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 150 locations around the world and today I'm talking about how you can fix this problem in your home service business to make sure you have steady cash flow and and you don't have what I call Q4 collapse where all of your revenue just drops off at the end of the year.
Off seasons will keep you poor.
This is from a call in show where a business owner called in asking about how to fix this problem in their off season.
I'm just wondering, going into winter, do you think I should focus on lights or just get the business practice here and there when I can and just get ready for spring rush?
Yeah. So I, if I was you, I'd be focusing on increasing your contact database and getting as many leads as possible on any service. Now from here on out, knowing your market is it's not going to be mowing. You're going to get some mowing customers simply because the name of your business and people not being able to find their provider, they don't show up or whatever. What you're going to go after though is the thing that actually will get customers right now, which is projects and especially as we go into fall. So if you're starting in August, September, October, November, all you're thinking about is property cleanups and leaves and that's the current pain that the customer is going through. Just get as many of those as possible. Use instant pricing on the door hangers, et cetera. Get as many of them as possible because your goal is not necessarily to get the one time job. So I would stack the money aside for next spring to then be able to attack the recurring side of the business where we know that's the long term vision of the company anyways. The next thing is your ability to sell will determine whether or not next spring you get to 40,000amonth or 10,000amonth. That's just the bottom line. I've seen people leave training within 90 days. They're doing 90 plus thousand a month in revenue. From zero to that. I've also seen people take years to get to 20 or 30,000amonth in revenue. And there's only thing that one thing that was different, those two People I'm thinking about, they were an hour away from each other. And so it wasn't their market, it was simply who was able to sell. And so it is a matter of your ability to sell and your ability to grind and the ability to increase your close ratio. The difference between the exponential change of going from 30% close ratio to 80 close ratio in your first 12 to 24 months compounds massively. And so the determining factor of whether or not you can do that by you simply selling better, following up better calling people, having a good rapport with customers when you're meeting them in person is the differentiator between you being part time next year doing maybe 10, 12,000amonth and struggling between the job and that balancing act versus blowing the doors off and going to 40,000. What's the advantage you have is you're in July here. You're going to have seven, eight months before spring rush for your website to be ranking. I'd be focused on getting as many Google reviews as possible because doing that is going to set you up for a much better spring rush.
So you really think it's a play by ear during spring rush and when I start getting crazy, then leave the.
Job personally on your coaching calls, you'll probably know the answer to this by November based upon how you do in the leaf season. If you're able to get to 10, 20,000amonth in revenue just by doing leaves and no recurring work, I have a better answer for you. You're going to get to 40 or 50 next SP, but if you're like 2, 3, 4000 and it's really, you're really struggling on getting estimates priced correctly, you're really struggling your close ratio. Now we have a different conversation of do we have to do this part time next year?
Our second caller has a small heating and air conditioning business and during the summer they're super busy with installing air conditioning units. However, during the fall and the winter things really slow down and they have a hard time trying to stay busy. They're wondering should they increase advertising and increase their jobs or should they just lie low and somehow get through the off season? Let's see what the solution is.
I'm hearing that you're getting into Christmas light and I don't have any like professional experience in that. Would you recommend like trying to find a job with another large company to learn to rope and try and float my business like through that and my regular like expenses through that other job? Or would you like recommend doing like a hybrid or would you recommend Just like any kind of resources to learn that side of things.
Yeah, like I think that in chapter nine of the book talks all about this, it gives you a few different options in terms of getting another job. Like the nice thing about home services is there's a lot of other industries that are completely opposite in terms of us in terms of their demand curve. Like retail, Q4 is their biggest time of the year for us. Most home services Q4 is our worst. It's Q4 collapse when everything drops off and then Q1 and 2 is literally just trying to get back to zero in terms of profitability and getting another job option. Second option, which I'm a bigger fan of, I talk about in the book, is creating season specific offers for season specific services, figuring out a way to be able to get customers to buy more services from you in the wintertime. And so if you're doing landscaping, can you do Christmas lights? If you're doing landscaping, can you do snow removal? If you're painting houses outside and then all of a sudden it's winter, can you do interior remodels inside of the house? This sort of creativity is what allows you to get rid of off seasons, because off seasons will keep you poor.
When it comes to any home service business. And having any sort of seasonal demand with your services, it can cause a lot of stress and eventually lead to burnout. Watch this video here where I talk about how to deal with burnout and how to change your mindset around stress.
