I sprayed all the clients trees with ROUNDUP!

Today I'm going to be telling a true story about a customer I literally called out of the white pages in order to get them as a customer. And then I ruined their landscaping and had to call one of my competitors.

To come fix the problem that I made.

This is no joke. This is not made up. This is literally happened eight or nine years ago when I first started Augusta Lawn Care. Now Augusta Lawn Care now has almost 100 locations around North America. But the very first one started about nine years ago. And to get customers, I was doing everything under the sun, guerrilla marketing. And one of the ways was was literally calling out of the phone book.

Now I realized very quickly that people.

Would pick up the phone much more often and talk to the individual on the phone. If it was a little girl talking on the phone instead of me as.

A guy, you say that's horrible. Well, that's just to happen. All right, so what I ended up doing, I hired my sister for $10 per hour to call people out of the white pages. And here's what the script sounded like.

Hey, Mr. Jones. Yes, my name is.

I'm not gonna give my sister's name.

My name is Michael's sister. And we're gonna be in your area tomorrow and we'd love to give you a quote for your mowing services.

And the script basically was going through.

The white pages page after page after page.

$10 per hour.

Hey, for a 15 year old, that was pretty good money.

And I would give her $10 an hour and then I would give her a certain amount per lead that she.

Set up an appointment.

And I literally got customers. Now do I think that's the best way, the best use of your time?

Probably not, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And we were just getting started.

So I went and did the estimate for this person. And I still to this day remember the customer.

It's in Ferndale, Washington. The name of the customer's name is.

His name is Brad on Patriot Lane in Fernd.

And get this, here's the kicker. He's a customer to this day. But let's just go back eight, nine.

Years ago, I show up as property, give him the quote, we sell the job. Now, at this time of my lawn care landscaping business, I was like most newbies and I was like, I can do everything for you.

I can do your gutters, I can do your pressure washing, I can trim your bushes, I can spray your fertilizer.

I can take care of the bugs in your lawn. Like, I can do everything.

I can figure the fungus I can do everything. And for you and your lawn care, if it's outside, I can do it. And that was my motto.

And that's where most people when they're.

First getting started, like, hey, if I.

Just get revenue, whatever I can. Obviously, as you grow the company, you simplify services. You gotta really focus in your niche, get really profitable things that you're really good at.

But I was young, I was naive, I did not know what I was doing. So what did I do?

Oh, yeah, I can absolutely spray your trees and plants and bushes for the bugs, aphids. Aphids that are in the butt, in the trees. I can absolutely do that, no problem.

And I was like, you know what? This is gonna be easy money. I think I charged $120.

$120. I'm going to spray all of your.

Bushes and all of your plants.

There was probably about 50 bushes and trees and plants on this property, everywhere from ten foot, really nice hedge in the backyard to like some really nice hydrangeas and rhododendrons and boxwoods.

Like the whole thing, right? At least 50 plants.

If you had to replace all these plants, probably at least $10,000.

That's just like for starter plants.

If you wanted to get like the.

Full mature ones, you're talking more really nice landscape, nice house. The house is probably worth 6, $700,000. Okay, so Michael comes along, he's going to spray all the bushes.

Mich never sprayed bushes before. Michael is not licensed for spraying.

We don't do any spraying now whatsoever with chemicals.

But back then I can do it all.

So what did I do?

I took my little 5 gallon steel SG1,120, I pump it all up and I'd spray way up in the trees. And I sprayed every single tree just till it was dripping wet. Wanted to get rid of the aphids.

And what did I do?

I just bought one of those little mixtures and it was for bugs.

And it was like from True Value. You just throw it in there, get.

The right concentration, you go spray it. One little problem, because I just gotten.

Started and I only had a little bit of equipment.

I only had one sprayer. What was the problem with that? Well, the fact of the matter is I usually would use that sprayer to spray chemicals like Roundup.

Again, we don't spray any Roundup anymore. Not at all. However, back then I did.

Here's the problem. If you don't clean out your Roundup and the sprayer and then you throw some other chemicals in there Guess what? There's still glyphosate. There's still the active ingredient of Roundup, which is glyphosate, in the stinking container, the sprayer tank. And so I literally throw in the chemicals, throw in the water, do the.

Mixture, probably 4 gallons, and then just spraying everything, right? Great.

Next week, I come back and I'm mowing the grass.

Nothing really looked so bad.

But week after week, as I kept.

Mowing the lawn, I noticed all these bushes started to die, and they started getting, like, holes inside of the plant.

And at first I just told the customer, like, yeah, man, those aphids are horrible.

You might have to do it again.

Might have to spray them again.

After a little while, though, I started to realize and see what I put two and two together. I remembered, okay, if I had the.

Roundup in there before, and even though there might have just been a little bit of Roundup at the bottom, but.

Like, there was enough inside that tank, I hadn't washed it out. I was dumb. And everyone for their comments saying, you're stupid, you're so dumb. Yeah, you're right. I was. I didn't know what I was doing. Okay?

I just got started, literally the first.

Couple months of my business, that was not good. And I came to the realization that it was my fault. And I knew that I could just tell the customer that it was the bugs and they would believe me. And so I had this moral dilemma. Do I tell them that I think I sprayed your trees and it killed.

Them, or do I just say, look.

I think the bugs are taking over and it's kind of beyond my control? It was very difficult at the time because when you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars potentially being having an.

Issue here, I was going to be.

In for some big trouble.

I did have insurance, but I was not insured for spraying chemicals, so I.

Would not have been. I would not have been good. So I decided to talk to the customer, and I was just honest with them. I said, hey, look, I've never done this before. And you all knew that. Like I told you, I had not sprayed before, but I just told you what I was doing. I was going to mix what was in in from True Value. I showed you the chemicals, but what I forgot was that I used that same tank, literally a few days before, and there's still some Roundup at the bottom. I probably have killed all these trees, and they were, like, completely dead. Yet this is just a few weeks in. They're just dying.

Holes were all throughout all the leaves. But it was very obvious now that.

Wasn'T just some of the plants that had aphids. It was like everything was dying.

It was not good. And so I told them. I was just really honest with them. I said, look, I am going to try my absolute best to make this right. And I ended up hiring wait for trugreen to come spray for the next year. They came like 10 or 12 times and sprayed every single tree on that house 12 times. And they did everything from oils to different types of chemicals to actually fixing the bug issue, to fertilizers. And I'm not a huge fan of trugreen.

They've come to me in the past. They've tried to report us. Really, really shady stuff.

But the moment in time, I didn't know anyone else to call. I paid a lot of money, way too much money, But I covered that cost. And I remember, you know, basically setting up the customer profile with Trugreen. Like, yeah, I'm a landscaper, and I.

Tried doing this and it messed up.

And now I'm paying you for the next year to come fix my mistake.

And there's a couple plants that did.

Die completely, and I basically paid for them by free services and then paid for the new plants to be showed up at their property, and then they installed them. But we made it right, and that was a very hard decision. But I remember, like, not being able to sleep one night because of this moral dilemma. I'm like, you know what? I have to do what's right, and I don't care what happens to the business I have to do. It's right here because I know I did this. There's no going back on it. And sure enough, this customer has stayed.

With us now for almost nine years.

As a mowing customer, we've raised their.

Price, like, two or three times at least. And they're a great customer to this day.

So if, Brad, you're watching this, thank you. Thank you for putting up with my.

Immature stupidity when I was first getting.

My business off the ground.

Since then, we focus on only the things that we're good at. The services that we know we can produce really efficiently, and we're really good at them, and we can create a profit.

And I know what I'm doing. And we're insured for.

We don't do any chemicals whatsoever.

No roundup, nothing in the trees.

We don't ever use a sprayer.

We figured it out. I learned from my mistakes, but it.

Was definitely some humble pie talking to the customer.

And then hiring a competitor like TruGreen that has now become somewhat of an enemy of mine, that I think about it. But we live and learn. So if you have made a mistake like that in the past, comment below. If you have messed up a customer's.

Property, if you've had to eat some.

Humble pie, let me know in the comments below. And check this video out here where the mistakes only get worse.

I have no idea what video that's.

Going to be, by the way. Steven. No idea whatsoever.