I Was Doing Live Q&A... and then Copper Creek Cuts Came (starts at 31:10)

Happy Friday, everybody. We're gonna go live here for next 20, 30 minutes. Answer any questions I can for everyone that command center in Friday afternoon. Everything's kind of getting wrapped up, but if anyone wants to hop on here and have some questions and answers, go ahead and do that. We have been busy here at command center. We just wanted to hop on here. Let's see here. Cool.

Tell us if you're just hopping on get. Go ahead and tell us where you're from and what your revenue goal is for 2021. What's up, Michael Johnson. Welcome.

Paradise Landscapes. What's up?

What's good? If you guys have any questions, feel free to go in to start firing away. And I'll just get through as many as I can here in the next a little bit. Ariaga Lawn Maintenance. Welcome, brother.

For some of you guys, you haven't started your mowing season. OkC $200,000. Ohio. Lorraine. Lorraine, Ohio. I don't even know what it is, actually. Some of my family's from Ohio. They're actually up in town this weekend. West Des Moines, Iowa.

Sup, Emmanuel? What's up?

Okay, let's go through here. Paradise Landscapes. 50K. Just starting out. Ariaga, 2200 K this year. Cool. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for hopping on. Feel free. Just type your questions in. Try to get through some of these. I got a call here at 5pm our time, but I got a little bit of time before that. Okay. Not too far from Cleveland. Very cool.

Filled up my spring cleanups before because of your help with Facebook advertising. Awesome. Very good. It is the time to do spring cleanups early in the spring rush. Get them out of the way so you can focus on mowing, getting recurring maintenance throughout the rest of spring rush.

Good work there.

Cool.

Welcome, everybody. Cool. So yeah, if you guys have any questions, go ahead and post them below and stick around here. I'll try to get some more in depth stuff today because I don't really have a topic. So if you have anything you want to go over in terms of marketing, hiring. I know right now, like the biggest thing for most of us if we're trying to expand and grow is going to be finding good people. And trying to hire and find them right is just very difficult. I keep saying it, but it's just very true. It's very difficult to find people when their alternative is to sit at home and play Xbox and make three or four hundred bucks a week. And so definitely very competitive in the labor market right now. And the same way we go after customers, we almost do the same thing to go after employees right now and whether it be finding them from other employers, other lines of work, industries. You know, I was talking with someone the other day, like a big reason why you want to.

Simplify your services is not so much just because of profitability and efficiency and reducing the sales process and all that. It's also because you don't have to have, you don't have to find people that have experience in the landscaping industry. I think that's the thing I've learned even the past couple months as the labor markets have become incredibly difficult, is can we simplify services enough to where you can take someone from Walmart or Taco Bell that's worked for five years and just wants to make some more money and. But you don't have to require them to have two or three years of lawn care, landscaping experience to actually make them a profitable employee. Luis, what revenue should I bring? A serious helper, solar operator, as of now, 35 plus properties. Luis, what I would do if I was you, I'd keep bringing on properties for mowing and then use projects as a way to book your schedule out. So say, for example, if you are able to get those 35 properties done and mowed in say three days, I would then, you know, reserve those days on your schedule. May it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then, you know that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days that you can schedule projects. And as soon as you have, you know, four days worth of projects that would fill up two weeks, I'd go hire somebody. If you want to grow, if that's your goal, if you want to just you stay solo and maximize profit, I would raise your price at that point because you obviously have a lot of demand. I just hired a great team leader, had a few good choices. Good job, Steve. Congrats. What should my goal in revenue be this year, in your opinion? I had $94,000 gross, 68k net all by myself last season. This year I am having two employees. What would be a good reasonable number based upon your projection from last year? I don't think you're going to be able to do 300,000. Like you can't take 94 and multiply that by three just because your employees are typically not quite as efficient as you, But I think 250 is definitely doable. Very, very doable at that. You're not going to again, you're not going to triple your profits either. You're not going to make 240,000 or 200,000 in profits. You're probably gonna do more like 120, right? So, like, as you're gonna grow from here, you're not with employees, your overhead's gonna increase. You're gonna probably need some shop space, another truck and trailer, et cetera, more equipment. And so that's going to definitely bring your profit margin down. But again, scalability is not all about just making the money. It's about building a business that works for you. And that means you don't have to come to work every single day. And you know, your health is not the determining factor of whether or not work gets done and whether or not the business continues going forward. And that's, that's the part that's more interesting. I'd much rather make $50,000 a year on a business that had systems people in place, scalable. I had great team members that knew how to use the systems. I'd much rather have that business than a hundred thousand dollars per year business in profit that I had to go there every single day, work 15 hours a day. And if I didn't, everything stopped. I would much rather have a $50,000 business. And in terms of valuation, we try to sell that company. The company that can run without the owner and that isn't a job for the new owner is going to be valued a much higher valuation metric. Steve today was doing all estimates while the team was out doing molten sales. Very cool. Dylan Martin. What author or business leader do you look up to the most and why? I don't know about that. Give me one second, though. Let me show you guys a book. I put a post on my stories a couple days ago. This is a really good book, especially if you have a company that has, I'd say like a million or more in revenue or even like 700,000 revenue if you have kind of like a number two in your company at all. Let me just get it here. Audible. I'd really, really recommend this book. If you have a business where you have like a number two in command, an operations manager, someone that is kind of a key person for you, really recommend this. This helped me a lot in terms of knowing what the visionary and the integrator and their roles in the business and how important it is.

That back there is Liz. She's talking to Lonnie, and she's probably what would be considered my integrator from that book. And, and so realizing their roles are really important, in my opinion. But in terms of business leader, there's a lot of them. I don't really hunker down on one necessarily. Hey Mike, we are doing way better now. I have someone starting on Monday and another person starting next week. Thank you so much for the motivation and support. You got it, Dean. Congrats, brother. What are your thoughts on raising hourly rates? I charge $50 an hour and had it at $15 an hour for base pay. Okay, this is a question I think you had talked to me earlier about, Dean. I think I sent you a voice note, had it at $15 per hour because that's ideal, but couldn't get any people. So now my hourly rate is at 15 is at $18 an hour. Yeah. So Dean had sent me a note and I had responded back. What he's basically saying is here he was charging the customer 60 bucks an hour and had his base pay for P4P at $15 an hour. And that's a good ratio, that 25%. However, he is finding it's very difficult to find anyone that wanted to work for the $15 an hour. Plus, you know, obviously P4P. They could make 15, 20, $20 an hour. But again, that hourly rate on P4P is what an entry level employee is looking at because that's what they've been trained to do. No matter how much you convince them of P4P and the opportunity to make more money per hour, et cetera, they're going to think about that dollar per hour rate. That's what's going to attract them. So that's why that number needs to be pretty competitive in your market, just to attract people. And then they figure out P4P and the benefits of that later on, honestly, in my opinion. So Dean kind of had to bite the bullet, pay $18 an hour and then what that means need to raise his rates to at least 66, $67 per hour to his customer down the road. But for now, because of the pinch he needed for employees, I kind of gave the nod for for now, just giving the $18 basically attract good employees. Instead of hiring and training new employees, I decided to hire other lawn care pros and sub the workout to them. That's one way to do it. Brian Connor. Awesome book. I finally popped the question today and my integrator said yes. That's awesome. It's basically, basically like that proposal. Hey, will you be my integrator? I do. I accept. Hey Mike, do you have any GM quality employees looking to relocate to this beautiful southern Oregon? Yes, I do. Andy, on our next call, make sure you talk to me. It's about 30 or 40. I have kind of like As a backlist, I don't know if they're all quality, but I'd say about four or five of them are really good. I have in the wings. How would you get your business from small, like me, to a big business? I think first thing and first and foremost is start not just thinking bigger, but really starting to educate yourself as an owner that has bigger potentials and bigger objectives. Instead of looking at content about mowing and how to mow straight lines and what type of mower by, you should be focused on marketing. You should focus on leadership. The thing that's going to take you from small business to big business is leadership. I always tell our franchisees, the ones that usually get to 4 or 500,000 revenue the fastest are the people who can sell really good. The people that go past $500,000 and in past a million. They're the people who are great leaders. And so if you want to start going from a small business to a big business, in my opinion, you got to work on one of those two things, depending on how big you are. Now, if you're really wanting to grow, it comes down to leadership. 110%, developing people, getting great people like this over here. That's Rachel. She's a great, incredible person. That's Liz and that's Lonnie. We're wrapping up Friday, and so they're doing kind of a recon on some stuff. We got some more great people over here. You can't see them behind the wall there. There's more. But anyways, Echo man center here. But yeah, you got to start thinking more about your leadership abilities and really focusing on honing those skills instead of just like how to mow grass better. It doesn't. It does not move the mowing grass better. That will not make you a big business. Being a leader and inspiring other people and getting them to the next level in their career, that will make you a big business. Let's talk shop about you selling me one of those 30 X's, X mark 30s like you have in the thumbnail. All the dealers around me are sold out. Oh, my goodness, that is so true. Same thing with Honda mowers. You can't get these things, those things anywhere right now. When Covid came, like, a lot of their plants got shut down for between 30 and 90 days. That set everyone back. Then all the truckers, they all got blocked up because there was so much stuff that was backlogged. So, yeah, people are so far behind right now, it's horrible. How do you go about Creating and documented systems for future employees. It really depends on the different position. So for example, if you're out in the field, honestly, we really like having more of an approach of hands on and having a scalable system. Like the first day they're going to learn something very simple like weed, whacker and blower and it's going to slowly scale up, like push mower, zero turn, you know, then we're going to show them how to drive the truck. Then we're going to show how to drive the truck with a trailer. Like that kind of building process for that system and out in the field works well. Whereas somewhere like in the office where we do a lot of screen recordings and we try to teach them that way. So in my opinion, like the way that they're going to be working is the way you want to be training them and that's usually the best way that they're going to learn. So thank you everyone for hitting the like button. We have a high like ratio today. Steve, Mike, I think you have filled the void since lawn care Millionaire. I. I'm really disappointed Jonathan doesn't hop on more and shares the community. Honestly, it was a great channel. I think almost all of us learned from him when we were first getting started and I really wish he was on the. On the channel more. Have a good weekend. Have a good trip.

See here? Yeah. Nothing new. So most YouTubers are just a commercial for products. So thanks for taking on the business side of things for us. Yeah, you got it, brother. Javen. I started my business when I was 14 with my two brothers. I graduated college in May and we hope to really start growing this year. Any advice for growing a business when you share it with someone else? Yeah. Be really clear what roles you're going to fill. And if you're all out in the field, like if you guys are all mowing kind of together, doing estimates together, etc.

Just be really clear. Excuse me? Be really clear. Sorry. That's why I blowing your ears drums out. Be really clear on what the expectations for each person is. Whether it be hours in a week that everyone should be working, Whether it be different positions. Like someone's gonna do the estimate, someone's gonna do the invoicing, Someone else can answer the phone. Be really clear about what each person expected to do in be considered that they are fulfilling their role in the partnership in general. Any partnership needs to have that.

We are. I am. You can get both of these mowers.

Okay. If I am $85 an hour mowing what should, what would I be, what would be an hour to plant plants because I'm wasting at a lower price when I could be mowing. Oh, I see what you're saying. So if you're, if you're charging $85 per hour, you're asking, why would I charge less than that? If like plant plants or do landscape jobs? The reason for that is because if you are planting plants, your truck stops, and for straight eight hours you can work. Whereas with mowing, you're start, starting, stopping, starting, stopping, in and out of the truck, there's windshield time, a lot more windshield time. Whereas if I'm just parking my truck and stopping, I can make more revenue in less time because I'm not. There's no windshield time, there's no unloading clippings in our market. Dropping the trailer, all of that stops. And every single time a truck stops and a route is stopped on like a 20 stop route, every single stop is waste. Getting in and out of the truck, waste. Putting the trimmer rack in and out, in and out 50 times in a day is a waste. Taking the blower rack off, filling up the gas cans 20 times, that's all waste. And so when you are able to go to a project like planting, you actually might charge less per hour. And we do this in our market, we charge less per hour on landscaping than we do for mowing. Because when it comes to mowing, you're going to have an innate 20 to 30% inefficiency if you're doing residential mowing because you have all these stops in date. Now, if you're doing commercial, you're traditionally not going to have as much waste in terms of percentage, but you're also usually going to be charging a lower rate per hour because the commercial is going to be a lower dollar cost per hour to the customer.

Emmanuel, if you have a good friend that does weed control and fertilizer, I do the mowing and maintenance part in my company and we send each other work. Do you think that's a good relationship? I do, I do. I'm not a huge fan of subcontracting, to be perfectly honest. Or should I just do weed and fertilizer? My company, in terms of keeping a good relationship, that's tough because now you're bringing the whole aspect of whether or not you're going to ruin that relationship by adding one of their services. And so that's, that's a whole different, you know, conversation altogether. But in terms of that relationship, if it's working, just keep doing it right? If you're happy that they're growing their business and you don't have any interest in getting certified and getting tanks and, you know, learning all about fertilizers and all the rest of it, then I would just keep doing what you're doing, you know, simplify your service and focus on what your core competencies are. Jerome Harden, Should I buy a backup use 60 inch mower or invest the money in advertising? Personally, I would say invest the money in advertising. Unless all of your properties needed a 60 inch mower. And for example, the reason I say this too is if you develop a good relationship with your dealer, a lot of times they'll let you take a mower out for a day, which means if your mowers, bigger mowers break down, they'll probably let you take another one out for a day or two. I would much rather my backup mowers be push mowers, especially if they're going to sit there all the time. Like you've got to think about asset utilization. I want to be using every piece of equipment, every truck, every trailer, every single day, as much as possible. If I've purchased it, I made the capital expenditure and it's on the balance sheet. I want to use it as much as possible in terms of hours per day. And so I don't like buying backup big, big mowers. Now, if all of your properties require 60 inch mowers, then maybe that's, that's something you can do. But if you can get away with a day or two without one when something goes down, or maybe get one from your supplier or your, your dealer for backup, I would recommend that even if you can rent one for a day or two, it's better than having $10,000 sitting and only being used, what, once a month. And then when you need it, it's been if the battery's dead or something's wrong with it because it hasn't been used enough. So. George. Hi, Mike, this is George from Utah. This is my second year on business and I'm wondering if I should offer fertilization and how to figure out a square foot price for it in this area. George? Yeah, so there's lots of different ways to figure out price per square foot for fertilization and it's one service where it doesn't. It definitely makes sense to use square footage. However.

You'Re really, at the end of the day going to still be looking at what are your costs in terms of material which is going to, in this case be the Fertilizers, the product and labor. Right. So that's still how you're going to be calculating things, but in terms of that per square foot price, what you need to know is what are your costs and then what is the markup that you want to have on that? And it's a very high markup on fertilizer. But look at your materials. Say, for example, if it takes you 3,000 square feet, track the time it takes. Let's say it takes 30 minutes. Okay, so now you're looking at what is a hundred. 100 square feet a minute? Yeah, 100 square feet a minute in that case. And so, okay, if I can do 100 square feet a minute, and now it's just a function of time for my labor. If I gotta charge, you know, pay someone 30 an hour to be there. If they're a spray tech, just run all the numbers. You know, keep running the numbers, and eventually you'll be able to come up with something really strong. Let me just make sure I'm on the right microphone here. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Okay, you are cool. All right. Bought Zero turn and read the whole book. Man, what can I say? Such good book with good advice within. It really opened my eyes. Just bought the E Myth that was referenced as well. Yeah, e myth is 10 times better than my book, let me tell you that. A lot of my book was. Was inspired by the E Myth, honestly. And I do not think the Zero turn book was that great. It was kind of a fun little book. But I'm hoping I can get a better one here next couple years if I get some time. Are you a landscaper? Some would say so. If running only two locations, how would you handle the need of a phone number for clients to call? There's a 1.5 hour between both locations I'm running. Lorraine, Cleveland, My boys in Youngstown. How would you handle the need of a phone number for clients to call if it's an hour and a half away? I'd probably have separate phone numbers. Honestly, just because otherwise it doesn't look local. And we really do still see a lot of value even for all our franchisees. They have local numbers just to make sure that people actually have that hometown feel. And when they call us, they. They do believe we are local. So I would get two separate phone numbers. And in terms of, okay, you're using your phone number.

Definitely do not recommend doing that. Try to get something like Grasshopper, Google voice. There's like a hundred different voip v O I p just look up voip phone number you can get on your app, on your phone, whatever. And please do not use your cell phone. I can't overemphasize enough. If you want to scale your business, you need to get away from texting and calling the customer. If you don't have your own office, don't get a calling service. If you are going to call from your phone, make sure it's very clear that you are the estimator, you are not the owner. It's all very important to make sure that you can scale the business without you being locked into every single project, every single job, etc. So Mark, do you have any examples of your follow up emails to help with.