I Earned $320 in 26 Minutes Mowing Lawns in a Simulator (Business Q&A)

My blades aren't engaged. Are you serious?

How do I turn them on again? What is it, Z? You gotta be kidding me.

I was going around in circles being like, why is this not cutting? Okay, great. Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes here. Landscapebusinesscourse.com Today we're doing something very different. We're going to be playing the lawn mowing simulator. This is a new program. It costs 30 bucks. You gotta have a PC. I usually am using a Mac, so it's a little bit different. But while we're mowing lawns virtually, today, I'm going to be answering questions about your lawn care business. So instead of you just watching me and my head and my mouth just yak behind a microphone, now you get to watch me mow lawns and make money virtually. So we'll see how that turns out. Let's go ahead and jump into it. I have played this game for all of approximately, oh, I would say about five minutes, maybe six minutes. So I'm gonna be really bad at the game. I'll probably mess a bunch of stuff up, probably won't hit the time limits. I'm very bad at what the keyboard controls are because they have random letters for what things do, like getting on a mower, turning it on, et cetera. So we're gonna jump into it though, and hopefully, regardless of whether or not you enjoy watching me mow lawns virtually, you get some content out of your business and how to make money in the real world. Because guess what, me making $100 on this game is gonna do absolutely nothing for my career or my business. Whereas I take some of the information we hear today and some of These Q&As and you can start your lawn care, your landscaping business and make some real money. Alright, let's jump into it. Of course, I'm an amateur. As you can see, I have absolutely no experience here. Let's see here. This one has 17% fuel. So this challenge here looks like you gotta do it really quickly. There's only enough fuel, 17% to actually get the job done. So this is challenge type is a fuel limit you can see here. So this one going to do a time limit. So 28 minutes. Let's see if we can do this one, see if we can't get it done in time and make some money. So we got to cut 99% of it. It needs to be between 2 and 2 and 3, 8 inches in terms of cut height.

Recommended time cut is 26 minutes. This is just a general cut. They're paying me £330. It's like 450 bucks. So let's see here. Go ahead and confirm the contract and let's go ahead, get started. Cool. So we're going to get started and I'll answer just. I'm going to start from the questions that came in first because there's like over 100 questions. So let me go ahead and just start from the bottom and we'll work our way through. First question is, other than sales and mindset, what would your what made your company grow? I'd say it's definitely the team. Right. So last week I made the video about the two things that actually move the needle for your business are going to be sales and marketing as well as hir and so when I say hiring, I mean building a team out, training that team. And then as it really begins to grow and take off, it's going to come down to whether or not you're able to trust that team to take things off your plate and delegate. So apparently the lawn mowing simulator needs to also work on hiring. Ah, here we go. So this is the lawn. Very cool. Front garden, old nook cottage. Jump into it. Should you stick with one or two services such as mowing and maintenance or should you offer multiple services when you're first starting out? So in my opinion, you should start with one service and get really good at it. I truly believe everyone's always talking about the riches are in the niches and you can look at any one service in your business and there is someone that has built a 10 million 15 million dollar business whether it be doing treatments, whether it be mowing lawns, whether it be trimming some bushes and they focus on just that thing, that aeration and seeding and fertil franchisee that's starting up a second location. And literally all they're going to do is treatments, core aeration and overseeding. Ah. And hopefully they don't because now they're not going to miss corners like I just did. See. But yeah, I would start with one service.

The simplest way to grow is adding more services and adding more geographical area that you serve. But those are also the two things that are going to keep you from having a profitable business the most. So the path of least resistance for growth is going to come in the form of adding services and just expanding how far away you're willing to serve in terms of geographical area and different towns and cities. But those are also the two ways to dramatically decrease your profits. So you can basically grow yourself into unprofitability and that's a lot of times when people say, oh, I grew like a million dollars my first year, it's like, great. Did you do that with five services or one service? Because I'd much rather have a business that has 500,000 in revenue but serves just one mowing. Just example, just mowing or one service and does that all in a five mile radius. I'd much rather have that than a company that does 10 different services, does a million dollars in revenue and services people 15, 20 mile. In a 15 or 20 mile radius, that secondary company is going to have a lot of chaos because of all different services. They're going to have a much lower profit structure because of the amount of overhead and they're going to be much less profitable. All right, we almost got this perimeter. I do a horrible job on the turns. I always am messing up on these turns. Let's try to get this a little closer. See, what's interesting is this game, they don't have a weed whacker because otherwise you have to do that really technically first. So if you're watching this lawn simulator, you need to get it to where you have a weed whacker and edger first. Because if we're going to do it right, we got to do that technically before we start mowing the lawn. Now this case. Oh, this is cool. See in the bottom right hand corner has this.

It shows how much bagging, how much, how many clippings are in the bag. That's kind of cool. Dean King says, dumb one, but how do you handle bathroom breaks for landscaping crews that are supposed to be at projects all day, plus, where do they go? Yeah, so for landscaping projects where we're going to be at the project all day long, we don't usually take like a man. See, I'm getting off, getting way off here. I got to back up, get along the edge. Can't leave that much grass hanging out. We typically will not get a porta potty. That being said, we don't do like two, three, four week projects. The biggest projects we try to focus on is like a week long. And so it's rarely worth our time to send a porta potty there. That being said, we don't have to worry too much because on P4P, the crew isn't trying to waste a bunch of time by going to the gas station 50 times in a day. We trust them that, hey, if you need to go to the bathroom, just go to the bathroom and just be as efficient as possible. Maybe do it when you need to fuel up the trucks or when you need to pick up equipment or you need to pick up some material. Do the gas station stop, the bathroom stop then. And not just randomly when you feel like it. And don't do it 10 times in a day. Like, come on, control yourself. So we typically don't worry about like a Porta Potty. We just allow them to, we leave it up to them to leave when they want to use the bathroom. Next question. Will says, when you market online, what ads do you use? Facebook, Google, et cetera. How effective are they? Since I'd imagine the click through rate would be slight, I can imagine simpler marketing being more effective. Like branded cars and maybe a billboard with an extremely simple and rememberable design. Yeah. So it's all about the fact it's all a matter of time versus money. When you first get started. If you're just getting started, maybe out of school or you're young, or you're just getting the company off the ground, your money is probably the limiting factor to your growth because you just don't have much of it. Now what you do have at that time is probably time, you have a lot of time on your hands and therefore what you're going to want to do is do marketing activities that require time and not much money. That's going to come in the form of knocking on doors, it's going to come in the form of doing door hangers, it's going to come in the form of going on to Facebook groups or, or Craigslist and trying to get jobs there next door groups, local community groups, your church, trying to get referrals. Now as you grow the business, you're going to have less time on your hands and you have more money. And when that happens, that's when you're going to be wanting to try to spend money on Google and Facebook and Nextdoor and YouTube and you know, there's 100 different platforms, you know, potentially Yelp or HomeAdvisor if that's something that works well in your market, which I don't usually recommend long term, but it's definitely something that you can do to get leads. And again, the reason you would do that is because now as your business grows, you have less time on your hands and you have more money on your hands. So it's really a time versus money equation. And that might make. Wow, I'm gonna get dizzy here just looking at this thing. When you market online, what ad types do you use? Oh, we just did that one. Kyle, how Should I go about hiring next year? I'm not too sure about the amount of work. So should I start them off part time and progress them to full time? I know I need at least one employee. And how do you trust employees? So it's not like this is your first employee. So if at all possible, if you're looking for your first employee, it really is ideal if you know them, if you're struggling with trusting people. Because the nice thing about knowing people, typically you can trust them more. Family people you've worked with in the past, past co workers, and you're like, you know their work ethic. You're not going to be second guessing them or doubting their integrity. And that's important. I feel it's important for the employee that you can trust them. They don't feel like you're watching over their shoulder all the time and you don't feel like you need to watch over their shoulder because you do trust them. So I'm not a big fan long term of hiring friends and family as a long term strategy as the business grows. But definitely your first employee might be a good option. If trust is something that you are struggling with when it comes to employing people. And in terms of finding people, how should you go about hiring? Yeah, so you know, I'd be looking at first and foremost your inner circle, your friends, family, people in your local community, people you know you trust from church or school or you've worked for in the past. Those would be my first spots. If you're just getting started. I am doing a horrible job of mowing this lawn. I'm just saying, see, look in the bottom right. See, my throttle is going crazy because this grass is pretty thick. I'm taking like a good 2 inches off of it. And this entire time I'm going full throttle. So let's see. I'm just trying to get around this bed though, give myself a little bit more leeway to get this straightened up on this line. Okay, back up, back it up. We got to get a nice straight line going here. The controls are too touchy for left and right. It might be just though, because this is like the first mower at the amateur level and you've got to unlock. You got to do more lawns to unlock bigger mowers. But see, like when I go right, I'm too far to the right. I'm not being straight and I go left. It goes way off to the left. Okay, next question.

Question. Should I raise prices next year by increments of 2 to 3? Dollars a year. Whoops, we just messed up the lawn. Okay, so this is a price question. Should I raise it for two or three dollars a year in increments, or should I raise prices in blocks of $5 one year and then maintain that price for a couple years after that? Yeah, I recommend doing it and just pulling the Bandai. If someone's gonna leave over a $5 price increase, they're gonna leave over a two or three dollar price increase. They just are. So if you're gonna do price increases, make sure it's something that's meaningful and not where you're gonna have to raise it every six months. Right? Like don't do a dollar this month, then dollar next a month. Every single time you raise price, that is gonna be some level of friction that's causing the relationship with the customer. So therefore, I want to minimize that friction by doing it less often. So if you're gonna raise your prices and I'd rather you do it by five or ten dollars now instead of doing it two dollars one year, then two dollars six months later, and then a dollar the next month, like every single time you send that price increase letter, anyone that's going to leave over $10 price increase is going to leave over a $5 increase. So you might as well just pull the bandaid off and get the profit margin that you need to get the price up to where they need to be at. Next question. I am 15 years old and serving 8 yards. I want to get a couple, get more yards. What's the best way? The best way is going to be talk to the neighbors of your existing customers. Because at the age of 15, you have one thing in your arsenal that most people don't. Your unique selling proposition is the fact that you are young, that you are 15 and you've got to just own that. I think a lot of times I was guilty of the same thing when I was younger. I was 11, 12 getting started mowing lawns. I want to act like the big guys. Well, the thing is, all those big guys look the same. They have the corporate looking, marketing. Everything looks super flashy and shiny. Your usp, your unique selling proposition, is the fact that when you come to the door, they think you're cute. That's literally your unique selling proposition. And so definitely lean into that and don't shy away from that. It's okay to be young. It's okay to not know everything about the business. It's not okay to do what I just did there and run over a bunch of daisies with a mower. But if you can mow straighter lines than I'm mowing here on the simulator, then you should be fine to be able to go up to people's houses, knock on their door, give them a door hanger, say, hey, I mow your neighbor's lawn. Would I be able to mow your lawn for $25 each time I come every single week for your neighbor, I can do it at the same exact time so they look similar and you're going to get a really good close ratio. So that's what I would do. Go knock on the neighbors, get good route density and lean into the thing that makes you unique. And it doesn't matter if it's your age, if it's whatever. You've got to realize that everyone has some sort of unique selling proposition. Whether that be your age or your mowers, or the fact that you bag clippings and no one else does in your market, or, or whether it be the fact that you use bigger mowers and get it done faster and therefore you're cheaper. There's all sorts of unique selling propositions. It could even be the fact that you do estimates faster than anyone else and you get it back to people within 24 hours instead of two weeks. You just gotta lean into your unique selling proposition and try not to be everything to everybody. And if you're young, or if you think what is potentially a handicap, like you're just getting started and you don't have big equipment, lean into that. Realize that there's gonna be a segment of the market that wants only small equipment so they don't get a bunch of ruts in their lawn. And, and you don't get some guy like me driving around on this mower, skipping all these spots and making, you know, skid marks on their lawn with this big mower. So there's definitely something to be said about leaning into what you think is a handicap or something that is negative. Lean into that and definitely make sure that you are not hiding from what is your unique selling proposition. And for you, your age is going to be that. Okay, I'm kind of getting bored. Like as much as I love mowing lawns and we're doing a great job, I just want to point that out. Let's go over to the other side of the lawn and see what's over there. How fast do you think you can scale? While still in high school, I currently service 40 weekly bi weekly lawns over a three day period with two helpers. I want next year to break the hundred weekly client mark. Do you think that is possible while maintaining school? Yeah, it's a really tough one. Right. So we have one of our franchisees who's 16 and he's grown his business a lot. This year he got up to 40,000amonth in revenue. But there was definitely. It says, I'm kind of at the wrong height. How did I do that? I must have pushed the wrong button. All right, back to the question. I think it is possible. Just realize it's going to be pretty stressful and that's to come with the territory if you're in school all day long and then trying to do the lawns in the afternoons, the weekends, et cetera. But if you're going to scale up to 100 lawns weekly, you're probably going to need to have an employee working while you're in school. And so whether you have a job or you're in school and you have people out mowing lawns, it's pretty stressful because you can't get to them. There's a sense of being somewhat out of control because you can't get to them very quickly if they have a problem. So if they're in the middle of a route, their tire pops, their truck goes down, whatever it might be, you can't get to them immediately now. And that can be pretty stressful. So keep in mind that might bring your marks down in school. So you're going to have to balance out what your priorities are. And if school is a big priority to you and you want to go, go to engineering school or medicine or law. You might want to think twice about trying to get a distraction like having a business because it is extremely distracting. It's actually the reason why, like when I was in my MBA class, it was extremely hard to get to class by 6:00pm we'd start six. My. What? My, my blades aren't engaged. Are you serious?

How do I turn them on again? And what is it? Z? You got to be kidding me. I was doing, I was wondering, I was going around in circles being like, why is this not cutting? Okay, great. So now we're mowing the grass. We're not just like laying the blades of grass down the ground? I forget. Oh yeah. Like when I go to my MBA classes at night, it'd be from 6 till 10pm for lectures, right? But I would be struggling to get there by 6 o' clock and I would come in, I'd be dirty and I'd be sweaty and I was distracted. And I'd have estimates I was working on while I was listening to lectures about marketing and about leadership and about, you know, corporate finance. And that's not fun, that's not good. It affected my marks. It made it really hard to pass classes. So you've got to really balance out what you're going to do with your business with what are your long term goals and if school is a big priority to you. Motor is overloaded. Your vehicle's motor load is displayed in the bottom right of the screen. If you overload it by driving too fast and cutting too much grass at once, you will suffer engine damage and your cut quality will be affected. Cutting when overloaded will leave blades of grass uncut and have to be cut again. And on vehicles with collectors or mulchers or recycled, Chris. Grass piles up, piles will be left. Okay. Doing such a bad job. Ah, goodness. All right, let's keep trying. Next question.

How do you price a yard? Like, what's the metric? Something to use over and over. I'm trying to keep the prices semi consistent. Yeah. So one way to do this, and the most common answer is going to be someone would say, well, you should just do it by the square footage. The problem with that is a lawn like this one that I'm at right now, relatively straightforward, but let's just say it is, I don't know, it's probably 6,7000 square feet. This lawn that I'm mowing right now.

If it was right next to the lawn or right next to the road and there was no fenced area, there was no flower beds to mow circles around, there was no arbors and plants, like it was just a square block rectangle of lawn. It would take me a whole lot less time than then this lawn is going to take me. This lawn will take me 25 minutes at least. Where am I at right now? I'm at seven minutes so far, right? Yeah. Time is seven minutes and 12 seconds. Let's go. And I'm already at 38%. I'm doing an amazing job. I just want to point that out. I am doing an incredible job on this lawn. But if this lawn was like for example, we're doing so well on time. Let's turn off the blades. Blades on, engaged. Great. Let's raise up the deck so we don't want to damage stuff because we're responsible. Let's go. Drive over here. Let's go. Ah, now we're talking. Yeah. Look at this good looking guy working for Augusta Lawn Care. Let's go. I don't really like the Stiga. Stiga. I don't even know how to say that. Let's go see here. But, like, if, for example, there was not this gate, right? Because potentially, hey, I'm great. I'm really happy this person opened this gate up. But if they didn't and I had to come through here, that'd be a problem that could potentially lead to longer time because I'm waiting on them just to open up the gate. Oh, there's these. This is where I bag clippings. Let's go. Okay, so I bet I pull up to this thing. Yeah, look at them. Cool. Okay, now how do I unbag the clippings? Do I push f.

Reverse the vehicle towards. Ah, there we go. So I got to back up. I don't want to hit the car.

Boom. Well, reverse the vehicle towards the grass bag to empty the. I am. I am. Like, how much closer do you want me to get? No, other way. Other way, Other way. Back it up. Let's go. Hold F to empty the bag. See, this is why bagging is so horrible. I've burnt an entire minute just bagging these clippings and empty it out. Yeah, we have to bag clipping the Pacific Northwest. It's pretty horrible. Okay, great. We are back on track because what we're planning to do is drive. That is quite the car. It's interesting how they have, like a 1960s or 1950s car, and then behind it they have a Porsche. Road here. Let's see if I can get around my trailer. Okay, I got to go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Okay. Cause see, look at. There was no fence here, and I didn't have to back my trailer in. I got to go slow here. Mercy. Oh, my goodness. I can't go out on the road.

See, this is what happens. And so what I'm saying here is just by going by square footage isn't necessarily going to be a correct price on this job. You can end a contract early by returning your trailer and still earn money and rp. Oh, we might do that. Like, say, for example, this gate. I got to open this thing up.

Or bash through it like I am now.

My vehicle condition, the bottom left is not doing very well. I'm going to bash this gate in. But see.

The problem is this costs time. And so if this 6,000 square foot lawn, for example, was right next to the front of the road without a gate, without this long stretch, without me having to back a trailer in, without the gate into the lawn without the flower beds to mow around, without all of that stuff, I would be much more efficient. So to go just based upon square footage, in my opinion, is not the most accurate. It is going to be by the hours. Now, it might be a great spot to start off with a square footage as, like, a benchmark, but remember, there's going to be a bunch of variables. So if you're just getting started and you only have like 10, 15 lawns, you might want to think twice about just doing off the square footage. You might want to actually go to the property, check it out, see about ditches, see about. Okay, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to this gate. See, these are the type of things that is going to take longer on the same amount of property size in terms of square footage. But see, if this lawn was right next to the front gate or the front road, I wouldn't have this issue. And potentially I might have to use a push mower in the backyard if I can't get the lawnmower through here, which I just did. Let's go.

So, yeah, I would definitely say you want to do it based upon budgeted hours, and you can use square footage as a benchmark at first, but realize there's going to be other variables like gates and slope if there's, you know, a steep incline, things like that that are going to definitely affect the time to cut the lawn. All right, next question.

Let's see here. Have you ever found it necessary or required to know various grass species and then their needs or have knowledge of weeds to answer customers questions or requests? This is a great question. I don't think it's necessary. Okay, we're going to do a little bit of damage. Sorry. Let's see if we can't drive through this. Is there a fence on this other side? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, let's back up, back up. Let's see if we can't mow over these flowers. Let's turn on the throttle. Very good. There's the throttle engaged. And let's put the deck way down. Let's put it down to, like, 1/2, 2 inches. Yeah, now we're talking. We're going to basically mulch this thing. All right, let's go over these.

Flowers here. So, for example, I. I want to say these are cowbells, but I know I'm wrong, and so I don't know. Flowers up. Penalty fine incurred. We were running over flowers. Flowers destroyed, Bush destroyed. Oh, yeah. Now we're going to town. Let's go see. Let's take them out. See this, this client doesn't even know what they want. Little they know I am doing them a service, getting all of these. I'm going to re landscape their project. Trying to upsell them on a little bit of landscaping work. Yeah, let's go see. Look at that. Getting all those flowers out. They really deserve. I really deserve more money than $100, $100 million. And I'm basically re landscaping this project. Let's go. Okay, let's try to get some of these now. I don't like these flowers. I don't care if they like the flowers or not. We're going to take them out. So I don't know the names of those flowers, for example. And it's not necessary if you're sticking to simple services. Now if you are going to be in horticulture, if you're going to do plant maintenance, if you're going to do turf treatments, a bunch of turf treatments. The different types of grass. I know enough to sell and I know enough on the simple surfaces. So I know fescue. I know what types of, you know, what ph will do to the soil, what type of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium is needed for simple types of fertilization. I do not know all thousand different types of insects and how to treat them and the different types of soil and the different types of seed and their planting side. I don't know all that stuff. I don't think you do need to know that to get started and I don't think you need that if you're going to be focused on simple services. Ground damage, you have managed to damage the ground and destroy some of the grass. Ground damage is caused by turning a vehicle at full lock for extended periods of time. Ground damage will earn you penalties and fines. Some locations finding higher amounts than others. All right, well, I don't think we're very welcome, we're welcome at this property anymore. So what I'm going to do because we basically we were doing this type of Great. We're at 41% progress. Only 10 minutes in. It was saying it was going to take us 27 minutes, I think to mow this property. So let's call it a day and go back to the trailer and see if we can't get another job because this one's kind of getting boring. But let's see here. Questions, questions, questions. Next one is.

But yeah, basically the answer to that one is in terms of knowledge to get started, focus on simpler services. If you're not really confident on a lot of those other things. But if you want to get into more specific services like hardscaping, construction, horticulture, lawn treatments, you better be prepared to do a little bit of learning and know what you're talking about. But when it comes to mowing, weeding, mulch installation, bush trimming, which bush trimming, you do need to know something like how to trim the bushes. You know when you cut a rows, where to cut it, don't cut off the buds like what time of year you do need to know more, right? So the more services you add, you're adding the knowledge that's required in order to be efficient and profitable in the jobs. And therefore that's why we like the simple services, because it's easier to find labors instead of requiring those services. Skilled labor positions. Next question. What are the most important tasks of an operations manager? So for us, an operations manager is really going to be the person that really directly reports to the owner. And so I am going to want them to do hiring, marketing and really they are going to be the ones that makes the final call, or at least I should say the recommendations to me of what we should be buying in the business. So if we should be acquiring more equipment, if we should be hiring more people, if we should be marketing to fill the schedule, if people need hiring or firing, they're going to do all of that. I am going to exit this contract because we are going to move on to a different job. Because I don't like this job. I want a different job. I have fired this customer. Now if only I can get out of here. How do I get out of this project? It's showing me my beautiful work. Now this is a work of art. This is incredible. High quality $100. Definitely worth it. Look at the beautiful. This is incredible. Just fantastic. I would hire these people in a heartbeat. Alright, let's go ahead and get another job. While we're at it. Let's see here. Next question is just starting out. How do you go from one guy with a mower to having employees you trust to do the job right? I would say focus on sales, getting enough work to actually hire those people and then making sure you have the margin. How much money did I earn? I earned 86 bucks. What did I lose?

I got $129 as a reward. 129 pounds. I don't know why I was using pounds. I'm sure there's a setting I could change. But hey, we got 129 pounds. And we got penalized 40 bucks because hey, we had a little bit of fun. But hey, we got $937 in the bank. Now let's go, go to the next job. We just keep moving along. Let's go. Okay, so we. I get it. I got this little stiga. Styga. Whatever it's called maintenance. Oh, I gotta fix stuff. I gotta repair a bunch of stuff. Oh, it's cuz I damaged it. Repairs at 84%. I don't know, a full repair. No, no, let's go back. Let's get another job here. Let's see what we got. Okay, this is another house. Let's go here. 70£345. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. I got a little gazebo action happen. Okay, So I got 26 minutes, I got four minutes to check the grounds for stuff that needs to be picked up. Oh, it's overgrown. It's seven and a half. It's almost eight inches tall. This is an overgrown mow in my opinion. So yeah, it better be $345. Okay, we got a 43 inch deck. We're moving with this bad boy. Cool. You must assign an employee. I don't know how to assign an employee. How do I do that? Employee. Oh yeah. Let's go. Okay, we got the vehicle. Yep, we got the employee. Let's go. Here we are. All right, starting the next contract.

Let's see here. The next question is, will Landscape Summit 2022 be available on Zoom? It will not be available on Zoom, but if you buy one ticket, you will get the recording afterwards and they'll probably within a week after the summit. So the only reason we're doing that is because it's pretty stressful to do a live stream and keep it up and make sure that people are happy on the stream and that there's not technical difficulties. We literally need two or three people just watching the stream. So instead of doing that, we will record it all and then we will make it available within a week or two for everyone that purchases one ticket. So even if you don't make it in person, you can buy one ticket and get the recording a week or two after. All right, we're rolling this project. Next question, what is the best schedule to use when both doing lawn care and small landscaping services? I want to leave room for the rain days and have a target of weekly bi weekly mows with upsell of the customers, but will still want to accept services for one time. Customers currently I work 8am till 12:30 Monday through Friday with two full time jobs. I am switching to one job, 3pm to 12pm and during the day starting a lawn care business. Okay, this is a very long question. Okay. And same. Okay. Okay, cool. So in terms of the answer to the question, directly scheduling. Okay, if I can just find my trailer. Here it is. Whoa. See this is a little bit touchy. I have to say. It's a little bit touchy Just trying to. Okay, so we need to fill up the. Whoa. We gotta sharpen the blades. Okay, so let's change the cutting blades. Hold down Q. So we're changing the cutting blade. Let's see what this looks like. Oh, it just did it. See that's kind of cheating. You know, you just push a button and it fills up the gas and it changes the oil. Change the blades out, it would have been cool like if it popped up, the blades come off and it sharpened. Alright, let's hop on the vehicle. Let's get going here. I'm not going to do a ground check. That's overrated. Okay, hold Z to start the engine. All right, we're getting that going. Now we got to mow this thing at like 4 inches. I think I saw right. I forget. Okay, well we're just going to figure it out. But it's an overgrown mow, so let's raise it up a bit. Oh, can I not do that? Oh, this is the highest it can be is 3 1/2 highest cut deck. The deck can go as height. Deck is height for the cut is three and a half inches. Let's go ahead and turn on the blades. How do I do that again? Yeah, throttle. Let's go throttle this bad boy up. There we go. And let's turn on the blades. Okay, next question. So in terms of scheduling, I would say a great place to start if you have another job is just start on the weekends. Now if you actually have a full time mowing business, it's a really good idea to look at your territory, the area that you serve, and ask yourself, you know, left from left to right. Like if I start on the left side of my territory, can I mow there on Mondays and then on Wednesdays I mow in the middle of my territory and then Fridays I mow on the right hand side of my territory. I kind of move in a sequential manner. That way as lawns come on, as new properties are added to your schedule, you can just put them on the correct day and then you can throw in those one time jobs. That you want to go after those landscape projects, mulch installs, cleanups, etc. You can just throw those on Tuesdays and Thursdays and potentially, if you really are backed up on Saturdays. So that's how I would start in terms of figuring out your time and which days to do what on. And then that way it's not a matter of. Well, I gotta check my schedule. It should really. You're cutting at the wrong height. Well, what height am I supposed to cut at? Three? Okay, I'll go down. Let's go down to three. Let's go two and a quarter. See if it's happier at that level because, see, the grass is overgrown. Like I'm telling you, I'm going to have to double past this thing. Otherwise my engine's gonna overheat here because I'm cutting at the wrong height. I can't go any higher. But then if I go lower, I'm gonna get bogged down telling you. This property at 7, 8 inches, you should be double cutting this, like, double passing this, not trying to cut it at 2 inches when it's 8 inches tall. It's just ludicrous. And then ideally. Okay, I'm not even listening to the warning anymore. I'm sorry. What I am going to do, I'm going to take a little peek around this property. So turn off blades. Let's go for a little hike here. So this is a nice, small property. I like this property. So what would I charge for this lawn? That's the question. So let's go check it out. You know what? Let's hop off this mower. Forget the mower. Get off the mower. Bring the throttle down. If we have to. Yep. Bring the throttle down. Very good. Now let's hop off the mower. Hop off the mower. I know. It means if I get off, it's f. Right. You know what? Maybe I have to go to the trailer. Let's go to the trailer. Let's hop off. Okay, now I gotta throttle this thing back up. Okay, we'll just drive the mower around, then. That's the way you're gonna be. Let's throttle back up and we'll drive around. Let's see how much I would charge for this property. So really nice neighborhood here. You're gonna have a lot of edging, right? So a lot of edging. A lot of round, you know, circular beds, which creates a lot longer to mow and edge. You got some flagstone patio here, which is always a pain to edge if they don't have a hard edge. Like, if this isn't concrete, like, this look like gravel. I don't like that. That's hard to blow off. It's hard to edge against the gravel area. But it looks like this is all of the lawn area, am I right? It's pretty small. See if there's a gate. Nope. Looks like this gates closed. Well, we can change that. Or maybe we can't. Let's try to drive into it. But I would probably charge somewhere in the neighborhood like $60 per cut on this one. At least. At least. Like, because this would probably in reality, like, it's going to tell me 26 minutes. But if this property was in reality, this is going to take you probably at least 40 minutes if you're by yourself. So I'd be willing to charge 60 bucks at least, I think for this one. Like, even more. Like, this is probably a good 8,000, 9,000 square feet of lawn. And more importantly, it's all this edging. Like, look at all this perimeter, right? And I got these small gates too. So, like, getting bigger. A bigger mower here is not gonna be fun. Let's see what the driveway looks like. In reality, I'd be charging at least 60 to $70 per cut on a weekly basis. But this lawn right now is 8 inches tall in some of these spots. So I'd be looking at like 350 would probably be pretty accurate because I'm gonna fill an entire trailer. Like those two, you know, tarp things, those bins for debris. I'd fill up probably four or five of those at least.

Just mowing this lawn that's overgrown. So this, this, this would take me probably three hours, three, four hours. If I'm bagging all of this and I have to cut it down to two and a half inches, I have to cut it twice, so. All right, cool. We got some good questions. We're going to make another video next week and answer the rest of these. But hopefully something was said that was helpful. If you like me just mowing lawns and answering random questions, let me know because, you know, maybe you like watching this sort of thing. Maybe this is really annoying to you. Like, Michael, just give it up. You're horrible at this lawn simulator game. I agree. But do you like me? Do you like watching this, or do you just like watching in the podcast? Well, maybe we'll mix it up. Maybe we'll do a little bit of both sometimes. Thanks for the questions. We'll be back next week. Try to do it one more time. And see if you guys like it. We'll see you tomorrow.