Increased Their Close Ratio & Profits

In late 2023, we started our official lawn care business, operating out of a 1996 Nissan and no uniforms and an unprofessional image. Then everything pretty much changed when we discovered Copilot and its founder Mike. We jumped into the software and we were only able to finish the first four months with 44,000 in revenue, with half coming from a rewarding experience volunteering our time helping out our church with a bush trimming and leaf cleanup project, embodying Mike's principle that you have more time than you have money. So we got off our ass and started doing stuff for free. Our brand of trucks caught the eye of the church leadership, leading to more opportunities for a bus trimming and massive leaf cleanup project. At the start of the 2024 spring rush, we adopted features that helped us look more presentable and more professional to our clients, setting us apart from the competition. The most impactful of these features were the card on file requirement, deposit prior to accepting an estimate, and the email sent history page. Initially, it was very hard having to email or call clients with a message like hey Mike, thanks for accepting the estimate. We now need your credit card information and by the way, there's additional card processing fees. However, when we implemented the card on file feature, new clients were automatically prompted to add their card information before even accepting the estimate. This made the process look more standard and professional, similar to paying for services like Canva or Netflix, which both require a credit card before you even subscribe. In the terms section of our Copilot estimates, we also provide the percentage processing fee so clients can see how much it is for paying with card or ach and this alleviates any concerns or whatever down the road. Before we started using the deposit feature on Copilot, securing projects over $1,000 involved some pretty awkward conversations. It went something like this, hey Mike, thanks for accepting your estimate. We now need $300 up front and we'll also need your card that will keep on file. And no, unfortunately we can't accept the check. And on top of that there's extra card processing fees. This right here added a layer of friction to the sales process and we lost a whole bunch of projects because of that specific reason. However, with the deposit feature, clients can automatically see how much they have to pay before they even accept the estimate. This change eliminated those awkward conversations, allowing us to secure more jobs when we needed them the Most. Using these two features, we've nearly 10x our revenue surpassing 400,000, coming from 44,000. With the profit we accumulated, we've invested in two additional trucks, and we have nearly three months of our average monthly revenue in cash reserves. Even after purchasing all new tools and equipment to help us crush $800,000 in revenue this year. 2025 copilot was also key to our success in receiving over 300 plus reviews in our first full year. The email history page allowed me to check if clients saw the email that we sent them requesting for a review. If I saw that a client viewed the email but didn't leave a review, I would call them and say something like hey Mike, I hope I'm not in trouble. One thing about us is that we want our clients to be completely satisfied to the point where they are encouraged to leave us a review. And since I didn't hear from you after our visit, I want to make sure we are in trouble. Clients usually responded reassuringly, giving me the chance to share our commitment to their satisfaction because I'll literally be out there this Saturday morning pulling leads or fixing anything that we may have missed. They would appreciate this call and then explain why they hadn't left a review. This opened the door for me to ask for the review again and send them a prepared template using Copilot. This approach helped us get over 300 plus 5 star Google reviews and outpace our competitors, some of whom have been in business for 10 plus 20 plus years. Let's go. Even though we face a a lot of personal struggles this year that I don't even want to get into, we have overcome all of those hurdles and one of my biggest hurdles was being very shy and overthinking before any conversation with any stranger. After sending just under 800 estimates through CO pilot allowing me to speak with hundreds of people, I have learned to feel more natural when talking to people in person and have built the confidence to the point where my hands they aren't in my pockets anymore or I'm not doing the hands on crotch pose as if I'm guarding myself from a free kick wall, which both indicated nervousness. Whenever I was at an in person estimate one year ago, my 16 year old self wouldn't even think of participating in this MVP award. Being seen in front of 4, 500 other business minded people would have that would have been an anxiety nightmare for me. By the way, I don't feel like we deserve the trip to Italy just yet. We need to put our head down like Mike Andes preaches and just keep grinding it out. If we win the MVP award, we'll take the trip to Italy just because we have to. But we'll conserve as much funds from the $10,000 and dump that into marketing. So next year we can create another video and explain how that decision impacted our business. We also want to give credits to Roman Real Media. They filmed and edited this video.