Landscape Business Millionaire Tips! | Questions and Answers

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to landscape businesscourse.com if you haven't already, go to check out landscapebusinesscourse.com join the course today, join Proplus or join the conference. It's going to be next January 2020. Today I'm going to be answering your questions that were submitted on the Facebook page. If you haven't already, you've got to get on the Facebook page and more importantly, get on the Facebook group. So on the Facebook page I try to post on there once or twice a week, but then on the Facebook group every single day, members like yourself can ask questions, share experiences, give tips and encouragement. So go to landscape business course on Facebook and join the group and the page and I look forward to seeing you there. So this was a question yesterday that I posted just said ask me anything. Post me a question about your lawn care business below. And so I'm going to answer some of these questions. There were 75 comments. So I'm gonna try to get through some of them. I'm just gonna scroll. I haven't actually read them all. I'm just gonna scroll through and try to get to every single one if I can. I said I would get to every single one. So I don't know how long this video will go, but I'm gonna try to make them short and concise. Some of the answers might just be yes or no. We'll just see. But I'll try to get through all the questions since I did say I would. So let's go ahead and start. Now. TJ Smith asks, I need more customers. How do I make this happen? So as you all know, I've always talked about time versus money. So if you have time and not a lot of money, you should be going and knocking on. You could be going and talking to people. You should be maybe doing door hangers and you yourself delivering those door hangers because for 100 bucks you can get a couple thousand of these door hangers. So you have lots of time, no money. If you have lots of money and not a lot of time, then you should be doing other forms of marketing like pay per click, Facebook ads, Google AdWords. That draws a bigger, casts a wider net and you don't have to spend a lot of time actually prospecting. Jeffrey Lucas asked, what's the best way to mow? Do you mulch, bag or side discharge? So in our market, we have to bag most of our properties just because it's the standard. In our area, we have a Very wet grass. Just because we're in the Pacific Northwest. So we have to bag a lot. We do side discharge on large properties where the aesthetics of bag clippings is not as important. On small lawns, like we can't get away with it. And if we don't bag the kind of grass that we have here, the rye and the fescue, it gets wet and it sticks to stuff. So like the siding of houses, cars, things like that, it's very wet, it sticks and then it stains. So we have to bag our clippings in our market. Vernon Collins asks oh no, he check out some of the content. Okay, Kevin Fairburn says still doing a lot of hiring here. What key questions or things do you look for when you do an in person interview? So first of all, Kevin, you're in Pro plus. Go on the homepage and you can actually view some interviews that we did at the conference. I know you weren't there, but just go to the on Pro plus there's a tab that has all the links for the conference recordings. Watch the one on hiring. But some of the key takeaways I would or key questions that I am asking on that interview is more about the references. So for me, references are huge, huge deal. Like if the reference that they give me is not saying that they were the best employee ever or like they would hire them back in a second or they're really disappointed they're leaving. Like if there's any apprehension in that reference check or anything like that, then I'm very, very skeptical. So for me, the references are super important. Questions that I'm asking during that interview is when I call Mrs. Jones and let's assume Mrs. Jones is their job reference. When I call Mrs. Jones, what is she going to say about your work performance? Let them answer. When I call Mrs. Jones, what is going to be, what is she going to say about your attendance and your punctuality? And so what I'm framing up there is the fact that not if I call Mrs. Jones, but when I call Mrs. Jones and all of a sudden they realize that you're actually seriously going to call because a lot of people know that you're not going to call their job references. And so if you actually say when I call Mrs. Jones, they know that you're serious about calling and they're going to actually step back and take a really good self reflection. And I've actually had people say, well actually. And then they admit something that happened wrong during the separation with that prior business or their prior place of employment. And so I find it really important to ask the question when you're going, when, when I call your reference name, what will they say about X? And then just keep going down a few different of the items that you care about. For instance, me, it's usually overall job performance and quality of work. It's punctuality and then it is how they work with a team. And so those are usually the three things that I ask a job reference. And so that's kind of the biggest thing is for us now is what is the reference saying? And if they're not a job reference, even if it's like a school reference or they've done like odd jobs for somebody before, I'm looking for the same thing. I'm looking for like a raving review. If it's not a raving review or there's any apprehension or they have anything negative to say, there's just no way that we're going to hire that person. Now other questions during the interview process.

I'm really trying to get to know what their goals are, what their future goals are. Like where do they want to be in five years, 10 years.

How do we play into that? Do they want to be with us for five years? Or is this just something that's seasonal? They're doing between jobs or before they move or after school, just to make some money. So wanting to get really in alignment with what they want and then making sure that that hiring decision has that in mind. So if I'm just looking for a laborer, I'm okay with them just working the season. But if I'm looking for like someone that's going to become a project manager and lead and all of that, they're like, I don't want this person just to be around for one year. So asking the questions of what they want out of their career, what's next for them, what's like their long term goal? That's what I usually ask them. What's the end game for them? And so just trying to ask those questions is important as well. Tree Wells asks, I need improvement on blueprints and diagrams. Where can I go to accomplish this? So I'm not sure tree exactly what you're asking. I don't know if that means to do with like drawings, like 3D renderings for landscape design. If so, I'm not the professional on that one. We've never used one that I really liked, so I can't really recommend any. To be perfectly honest with you. We don't do a whole lot of design work. In terms of the drawings, we will usually sub that out or just have the client go to a designer, come back to us with plans, and then we'll install it. So we haven't really gotten into the actual 3D designs and all that drawings and things like that. If you're talking about blueprints and diagrams in terms of contracts and templates and things like that, that's on landscapebusinesscourse.com Junior Gonzalez asks I was thinking about going at it myself. How should I start or promote? Should I give cuts? Free cuts? Cheap and power washing? I was thinking about doing both. So, Junior, this is a good question. A lot of people try to do this when they're starting out because it's the best way to stay busy. And this is something that, again, I know a lot of people trash talk free cuts, And I am 100% on that, on that boat. And I'm going to tell you not to do that. But again, it goes back to the fact that how much time do you have versus how much money do you have? Like, if you're sitting at home twiddling your thumbs, I'd rather you go out and cut lawns for free, because you're going to actually hone your craft, get more skill. If you haven't done it a lot and you're going to be out possibly getting people to see you, people to give you, you can.