Live Q&A with Home Service Millionaire!

Hello everyone, it's Mike Andes. I hope you're doing amazing on this beautiful Friday evening. Today we are doing the call in show. I try to do these at least once a month. If you have a question and would like to ask anything about anything about business, personal life, whatever you want to talk about today we're going to take some calls. The number here is 361-733-3333. Give me a call. I am going to prioritize those in the call queue and as always at the end of the call we always, always, we almost always have to let people off of the queue and block it. So if you have a question, call in now because I don't have a lot of time and the call queue always fills up that I have to drop everyone. So if you have a question, give me a call, 361-733-3333. And we're going to answer those questions live. Now. We are headed into this spring rush. It is a matter of days, maybe weeks before the vast majority of home service business owners will be in the throws of the busiest time of the year. And so I want to ask answer any questions you might have that I could potentially help you with while we're waiting. Oh, we're not waiting anymore. We have the first caller very quick on the draw coming in from 8:6:5. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on and being first.

Hey Mike, how are you today?

Good, how you doing?

Good. Good. So my main question tonight is the fact that trying to figure out the whole website issue and I'd like to go with your guys services. I'm just trying to figure out when is a good time to begin with the website.

And so right now what's your total annual revenue? Like what's your projected revenue for this year?

Projected Right now if I don't pick up any clients in spring would probably be somewhere around 90,000 but I'm hoping to do 350.

Okay. So really it just comes down to your confidence level and that's like a huge range, right? That's like a 4x difference. So really it's the matter like I don't recommend using lawn care web design or home service web design for anyone that's doing less than 200,000 annually because then the math just doesn't make sense. And so you could, if you're going to be doing closer than 90,000, I would say go get Weebly, you know, Squarespace, use WordPress and build a site your own. If you start putting numbers up of like 40, $50,000 a month. It'd make a lot of sense to go get a professionally design website that's going to be faster on like the load time, mobile, responsive, etc. But outside of just knowing which service to use, is there a specific question about the website you have?

No, like I'm just trying to figure out as a capital standpoint if it makes sense, as in leads and stuff like that. Because I know spring rush is coming and not lying to you, I had zero work until.

Thursday this week and then I had 10 estimates to do from Thursday to Friday. Just completed or not Thursday, sorry, Wednesday just completed two jobs the past few days that were big money items.

Let's go.

Yeah, it came out of nowhere and I'm, I'm really looking to invest the money into a website and I'd like to go with your guys's services just because I feel like I'd have a better return on the money. As in just a basic website to start. Go ahead and start getting some organic leads.

Yeah, yeah. It really just comes down to what you have, what your spend is for marketing. Right. Like if someone was coming to me and saying, hey, I'm trying to do over 200,000 in annual revenue this year, I'd be telling them, invest in a website. It's the number one place for all you want to be driving all of your web traffic there, all of your leads there. Like if you're doing Facebook ads and you're doing YouTube ads or you're doing door hangers, you're doing flyers, guess what they're going to do the first thing, they're going to go look you up online. So if you want to have a higher perceived value and be able to charge a higher price to customers, make sure your website looks great. It's like the storefront of your business. People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making sure their storefront looks good. In retail, us as home service business owners, our storefront is our website and you drive all traffic through that. And as we get more and more digital over the past few years, it's only increased. People are looking up, looking you up first online. And so if you're not ranking well on Google, if you don't have Google reviews, if you're not showing up on the first page, you're just non existent. And so the players that are spending money on their organic traffic coming to their website from ranking well on Google, they get leads for free. Ultimately, if you're just getting started, you're going to be paying for every single lead that comes in through the door because they don't know who you are. You have no customer, no. You have no brand awareness. People aren't calling you, not seeing your trucks, they're not getting referrals. There's not enough traffic. So what do you do? You pay for every single lead, you pay for every single click. The goal is that you get to the point where you're able to upsell existing customers and get referrals and traffic from Google for free. So eventually you don't have to be spending money on marketing and that's when you become profitable. That typically takes three to five years at least to actually get that kind of brand penetration and brand awareness. But it's a whole lot more easy. It's a whole lot easier if you have a great website because you'll be getting leads for free from Google from simply just ranking well. And so I have a whole bunch of videos about websites and how to optimize them more. And like whether it be the pictures or the brand side of things or the SEO, search engine optimization, there's like tons of videos. And so whether or not you use lawn care web design or home service web design, I don't really care. Just have a website then if you have plenty of money in terms of marketing, like if you're going to have a marketing spend of over $5,000, spend money on the website. Like that's just, it's just an easy no brainer because it's, it's going to forever bring you in more leads. The problem with spending money on an ad today for like a door hanger or for a Facebook ad or a YouTube ad or Google Ad is it's gone tomorrow. Once it's been used, once that someone's clicked, it's done. I don't ever get like a, any sort of residual benefit from that click. Whereas when it comes to a website, once I've spent that money on that website, I get to be able to get leads every month. It's like recurring and it grows and it compounds. And so the biggest thing too is even if you don't look at, from a lead acquisition perspective, you look at it simply a value proposition to the customer, that is a customer willing to spend an extra $10 per hour on your labor. If you have a good looking website, I can guarantee you the answer to that is yes. Oh, there's no way. I guarantee if you're charging $75 an hour right now and you made a great looking website, had great reviews and highlighted all your services and had your crew and your trucks and showed your brand really, really well compared to not having a website. I guarantee you you'd be able to charge that extra $10 per hour. The question is, are you doing enough in revenue? Are you have, do you have enough billable hours to actually make that $10 per hour difference enough to spend money on a larger, nice looking, nicer looking website? That's the question. And so if you're smaller, that's why I say just go build something and focus on your Google listing. Like your Google listing, if you're doing under $200,000 is the money pit like that is where you want to spend all of your time on. It doesn't cost you any money. And you're going to spend, get reviews and put pictures up and optimize it. Make sure all your services are dialed in. After you've done that and you have 30, 40, 50 reviews, then go spending, spend money on a website. All right, I apologize. The call queue is full. Next caller is coming in from 7:5:7. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.

Hey man, how are you?

Good. How you doing?

I'm good. So I just had two quick questions. One the first being when do you recommend I do like everdoor direct mail marketing campaigns because like I don't, I have a limited amount of money and I don't want to like blow through it all extremely quick. But I also don't want to wait too long and get not very good results. So what, what do you recommend?

What service are you going to be highlighting in the every door direct mail?

Well it's multiple. It's mowing, hedge trimming like most installs. But I guess I'm more focused on mowing. But that's not really like the highlighted thing. It's just like I have bullet points of like four different services.

Okay. So first off, I would try to reconsider that if. Have you already got the like door hangers? Like are the every door. Like have you already printed everything off?

Yeah, I have.

Okay, so let's not talk about that. I was going to talk more about the fact that like going more targeted and like highlighting an offer is probably going to be better than just a generic like here's all the services we offer. However, let's. We've crossed that bridge already. So now the question is when do we put them out? And so like so let's just say instead of me, do you mind telling me how much money you're going to spend on marketing this spring rush?

Yeah. So I don't really have a very specific, specific number as of now, but probably around like 2,000.

Okay. So in my opinion, $2,000 is not going to be best spent on every door direct mail because you're probably going to be able to print and distribute somewhere in the neighborhood of like 7 to 10,000 pieces of mail. By the time you do every door direct mail, I think you're going to have a better shot of spending that $2,000 doing, you know, individual doors like door knocking and door hangers and then Google Ads and Google local services. Because if you spend five to ten bucks per day on Google Ads, you'll probably get a lead or two a day, just depending. Like it's very, very broad. You might get a lead or two a day depending on how you know how. Let's just call it a couple a week even. I think that's going to do better than your every door direct mail. The problem I have with every door direct mail is a one shot thing. And you don't have enough money to test this a bunch. Like you don't have the money to test like two weeks before the spring rush, when spring rush starts two weeks after. Like if you're going to do one shot with every door direct mail, you want to be in like the middle of spring rush because you don't have the money to be like, okay, I'm going to warm people up, I'm going to hit them five or six times. You just don't have the money for it. So I would, I would say I'd be going after something that takes more of your time and less of your money, which is going to come in the form of probably more one on one, like door hangers or knocking on doors, where it's going to be like boots on the ground. Because I'm going to assume you don't have a massive crew and you don't have tons of work. So if you don't, you have more time than you do money. So just do the things that take more time. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, so you recommend doing it like mid to late April probably, if you're.

Going to do it. Yes, I would. Because you need to be like the middle of spring rush if you're going to kind of a one shot. Let's hope everything works. Bet everything on that. Or maybe even one or like, you know, split up and do two or three mailings. You want to be in the middle of spring rush. That's where you have the best bang for your Buck, if you had more money, like, if you would have said, hey, I have ten grand, then I would have said, okay, let's do a couple. Like, a little premature, but we're warming up that audience. But if I was you, I would do door knocking, and I would use that postcard or flyer, whatever you've printed off, as basically the literature to give to a customer when you knock on their door. And I think you would go a lot further in terms of number of leads, distributing five to 10,000 pieces of mail, door knocking, and giving it to the customer than you would if you just mailed them all out, crossed your fingers, and hoped that that day that they was delivered, the weather was good, the grass was growing, and people were thinking about the service. But does that help a little? Go to your second question. Go ahead.

Yeah, so the second question, I'm not 100% sure from. @ this point, just from based off your other answer, but so my dad has helped me with taxes, like last year and then the year prior. This is really only my third year in business, and I did about 40,000, 45,000 in revenue last year. So my dad was like, I'm getting to the point where I might need to hire some, like, accountant or something like that, because I'm getting to the point where he doesn't. He can't really keep track of it anymore. So I was just wondering what your recommendation would be on. Like, what to do with that. Like, in a term, like, how do I go about hiring someone? Or, like, do you even recommend that? Or should I just figure out myself? Like, I really don't even.

Know. Yeah, so, like, I'm not going to recommend using home service. CPA, that's my firm. Don't recommend it at 40,000 a year in revenue because you're going to spend a thousand bucks getting your tax return done. And you did 40,000. Like, literally 2, 3% of your revenue is going out getting your tax return done. Don't do that. Just do TurboTax. You're smart enough, you're small enough to be able to get this really, really simply as a Schedule C on your personal tax return, Right. Are you doing your tax return or are you doing your tax. Are you running the revenue through your dad's tax.

Return?

It's.

Me. Okay, so if you're doing your own, then, yeah, just do it through TurboTax. You're small enough business, it's not going to be a lot, and you don't have a complicated business structure that's going to need a CPA. So I just do TurboTax and like literally Brad, he's the CPA at Home Service CPA that, you know, I work with. You know, he worked at TurboTax and he would probably tell you the same thing. At 40,000 in annual revenue, just go do it yourself. Do your, you know, set several hours aside, learn, you know, if you don't understand something, look it up on YouTube and I just guarantee you that like it's not worth spending a thousand or $2,000 for a CPA to do your taxes at that size of business. Does it make.

Sense? Okay, yeah, makes sense. So then at what point do you think it's worth hiring.

Someone? I think when you start running, you want to start having payroll. Like so once you have multiple employees, once you're buying equipment pretty frequently, they're going to be able to give you a lot of advice in terms of when you should, how you should depreciate that when you start having a lot of profit. So when you start making more than like 30, 40,000 a year in profit, then it starts to make more sense to get a CPA involved because they're going to really help you, you know, figure out which tax brackets you can get into. They're going to be able to guide you in terms of when to buy equipment, how you should be depreciating it, whether you should buy it in December or January, all that fun stuff. And usually I see it start making sense when once you pass the 6 figure in annual revenue and you have multiple employees. Next caller's coming in from 403. Welcome the show. Thanks for coming.

On.

Hey, how's it.

Going? Good, how you.

Doing?

I can't complain. I figured I'd just keep a quick question, I guess. What point do you think it's worthwhile getting into a shop? Like, is there a revenue point, is there a size point of equipment? Employees? Especially, like for guys like we run out of a house with two car garage, big yard, it's hard to justify sometimes moving into a shop other than the professional appearance, I guess, per.

Se. Yeah, like how many employees do you have right.

Now.

Through the busy season? So from like May to end of October, we typically run with about four employees. Through the winter time we just run with two. They're both on just salary. We keep everything down to concrete for all of our residential customers. So they're happy with.

That. And are you during, like, are you running.

When it comes to the shop space? What's your revenue like annually going to be projected for this Year versus what you think that rent space is. Rented space is going to cost you for the.

Shop.

Like, we can run. We. We get about 250 per truck and trailer. So two guys run in each truck and trailer. And, like, we're just running off of a corner lot kind of right now in a residential neighborhood. Neighbors are fine with it and everything like that, but I think moving into a shop, it wouldn't really build our revenue at all, I think. I think it would typically just be for the presentation of the company. I don't know if that. If it seems a little bit posh to say that, but I guess that's kind of where I'm at with it. But the only reason why I've never bought one or released one is I just didn't see it building the revenue in any sense. Just the overall curb appeal, I guess, of the company. But I was wondering if there was a point in which you think that it's worthwhile regardless of revenue or anything like.

That. Usually once you start getting four employees, for example, it's actually going to come as a form of necessity because what's going to happen is your HOA or like, the city limits and like, requirements are going to say, hey, you can't run a business out of this area. It's residential. So a lot of times you'll be kind of forced your hand to eventually move into a commercial space or shop space, et cetera. The second reason, in terms of, like, is it going to improve revenue? You're 100% right. It won't. And it'll actually hurt the business from a cash flow perspective, because now you have this cost that you right now don't have to pay for. And so really, though, what the biggest benefit of a shop space is is when it comes to a team member, like an employee. And it's just weird showing up your boss's house, especially like a residential neighborhood. You're parking down the street. Like, it's just weird. No, they're coming out, their kids are coming out in their pajamas. They're finishing up breakfast and then coming out to their garage. It's just not a great environment for most team members, don't want to be there. And I just don't see a lot of team members staying a long time and building their. Their career with a business that's operating from the personal house. Now, if you had five acres and you had a shop space next to your house, you had some. Some separation, et cetera. Totally awesome. Let's go. So at 250,000 in annual revenue if you know, per truck. So I'm getting a guess like you know, 5, 600,000 a year. You know, you can start to afford to get the shop space and then it's a matter of if I have better employees, will I be able to charge my customers an extra $5 per hour? Right. So if I'm charging 70 per hour, would my, would my customers be willing to pay an extra 70? Pay $75 per hour for great employees? If the answer to that is yes, then go get the shop space. Because having the shop space will allow you to get the better employees. You'll retain them longer, you'll be able to train them better, etc, and so it just simply a matter of yes, it'll add to your cost 100%. That money is going to come out of what you would otherwise spend on, like marketing, for example. However, having that shop space is going to be a great tool to retain talent. It's going to be somewhat decent like you talked about, for a brand or for the image sake. But really no one drives by a lot of these spaces that were kind of on the city limits or outside of the space. It's rare that you're like next to a highway. In that case, then you can look at it as more of a marketing expense. But really it's not going to improve the image of the business even as much as internally to your team. It'll improve the image of the business. And having nicer trucks and having better equipment and having nicer shop space. Absolutely. The team cares about that, not so much the customer. So as the business grows, you have to start just looking as overhead expense part of doing business. And if you're going to go past four employees, you're probably going to need a shop space. So if you have like five, six, seven employees now, you're going to start probably getting reported. You're going to be forced to go get the shop space. Anyways, Next caller is coming in from 5:4:0. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.

Check, check, 12540. Welcome to the show. You might be on.

Mute. Oh, hey.

Hello. There you go. How's it.

Going? Hello. Hey. I'm good. I just want to let you know that I am that gutter business that called in last. Last.

Month.

Cool.

And you told me to fix the website and put that thing on the first page right there where.

People can enter their information and we did that.

Immediately.

Awesome. So that helped out a little.

Bit. Good for.

You. Yep. So my qu. Yeah, so my Question is, where do you, what do you recommend?

Like, where would you recommend finding like some sort of business mentor or do you offer that service yourself? Or am I just gonna have to call and see your show every month and talk to you that.

Way?

Yeah, like in terms of business mentorship, like, you know, I didn't really have a mentor in terms of business locally or even like in my family or anything like that. I don't think this day and age you really need one. You can, there's so much that you can do vicariously because of the Internet, whether it be myself or other, you know, business owners and listening and podcasts and audiobooks, etc. And so it's not to say that you don't need a mentor, it's to say that the fact that now gaining mentorship is the easiest ever. Now if you want direct access to someone, it's simply a matter of money. Like you're going to spend a bunch of money. Like I do have coaching calls, one on one. It's gobs of money, right. And I pay for someone that I also get coaching from. Gobs of money. And so I don't think that's required though. Like I only got a coach in the past six to eight months. And so I think, you know, my first 10 years I didn't have a one on one with anyone, but I listened to books, I watched videos on YouTube, I, I know I would go down the rabbit hole figuring out Facebook ads and how to do tracking and Google Ads and how it actually works and really, really figuring things out on your yourself is actually going to do a lot for you and you'll learn a lot too. And so I would really just focus on that. Once you start building like a 10, you know, 10 million plus dollar business, it starts to make a lot of sense to spend like a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars a year, which is only like 1% of revenue, on getting access to someone that could unlock like another 10 million. Right. But until that point, I think most business owners, especially up until like 2 or 3 million, it's like, you know, it needs to be done based upon listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, watching videos and then just observing. The biggest thing you can do is observe. Like if I go to events, I'm not really interested. What's being said is observing what people do. Go.

Ahead. Yeah, so yeah, I do all the things you just said for sure. I, I read, watch YouTube videos and all that. I basically just teach myself. But the thing is, is like when you Need a specific question answered about a specific situation. And you know, it's, it's hard to find that, that exact thing that you need answered, you know, through a YouTube video or this or.

That. Give me an example, give me an.

Example. Kind of where I guess where I was thinking like, like for example, if I, you know, if I have like a specific question and I wanted to contact someone, somebody and just, you know, ask them, like.

I mean, this is kind of a question I had for you. You could probably find this on the Internet. But like, like how to prepare, you know, for slow time after you get super busy in the spring rush.

You know, just like little questions like that that come to your mind that it might not be as easy as to find on YouTube or something like that where you would want to talk to somebody that's experienced it before. For I guess is where I was kind of going with.

That. Yeah. Like, I think to your point, like a lot of this can be found on the Internet, you know, a little bit of searching and it'll save you a lot of money than trying to find someone that knows that very, very specific answer. For example, if I thought what you were going to say is like what type of gutter do I use in this scenario? In which case I'd be like, I don't know, you would have to find then someone in your industry. Right. And so that's usually when courses or like finding someone that is. Has a big business in your industry and paying for their course or have access to them somehow they're. That's super beneficial. The second thing I would say is for example, the point about spring rush and booking into the slower season. Absolutely. There's content on that. Right. Like I made three videos about that that are coming over the next couple of weeks on the channel about specifically that. And that is like during the spring rush. Here's the type of job I'm going to focus on all the other nine months of the year. Here's what I'm. Here's the service I'm going to be focused on. And then during those nine months I'm going to focus on upselling my existing customers instead of trying to go after new customers because my customer acquisition cost is so much higher those that time of the year. So a lot of this can be learned and this is the bigger thing when it comes to home services because everyone watching this is mostly in home services. You can learn from different industries inside home services and apply 95% of what other people are doing to our industry. So if you're in gutters. I guarantee you 95% of what I talk about lawn care will translate. I guarantee that 95% of U.S. lawn care will apply to window cleaning and, and H vac. There's so much overlap. There's always little small things that are different about specific industries, but there's so much overlap. And the reason for that is because really all we all do is sell one thing and that's labor. We sell hours. We, we. Our goal is to take $20 per hour labor and make that worth $100 to the customer. That's like our whole business. And so that's why I got, you know, the, the upcoming conference that we're having in January 2025 is going to be for all home services. There's nowhere to like sign up yet. It's not fully announced, but we're gonna have it. And the reason is because I just believe listening to someone else in a different home and service industry, most of it can be applied to your business. Next caller is coming in from 8, 6, 4. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On.

Hello. I had two questions for.

You. Go for.

It. The first question, the first question, a little bit backstory. I'm a homeschooled 16 year old and I have 24 active customers that I have to take care of. And this summer and spring, I was wondering, I'm really torn in between the decision of should I grow, grab an employee and let him work while I'm doing school, or should I just lay back and deal with what I.

Have? Got it. And what's your goal for the business? But are you trying to grow it once you get out of school? Are you just trying to make money on the side while you're in school? What's sort of the long term vision that you have.

Currently?

Well, I plan on growing it as big as I can after.

School. Okay. And then do you have anyone that you already know would be able to be your employee while you're working in.

School?

No. No, I don't got.

It. And then right now, what's your hourly rate that you're charging customers approximately? Do you kind of have. Know what that number.

Is?

About 80. About $80 an.

Hour. Okay, cool. So right now, your monthly revenue, what does that look.

Like?

Shoot, I don't even know. I know that we did about 34,000 last.

Year. Good for you. Good for.

You. I do know.

That. All right. Really just becomes a question of can you find someone that's willing to work part time? Right. Because I would Imagine unless this year you 5 or 6x, like you literally get to 100, 150 customers. Unless you do that, you're probably looking for someone part time. And so the question is, can you find someone that can work part time while you're in school? And if you're going to do that, you're going to pay them pretty good because they're first off they're not going to be able to be school age, they're going to have to be older than you. And secondly, you're not going to be able to be reactive when they have problems throughout the day. They're going to have to figure things out on their own. So they're going to need some level of experience or just like life experience because they're going to basically have to do things when things go wrong, they're going to have to figure it out. And so I would just say have a certain benchmark, like how many customers do you think you can serve without having to hire someone and you manage them. So if you do a few each evening and then on the weekends, like do you think you can get to maybe 30, 35 customers and then you're kind of tapped.

Out?

I mean, I think I could do 40 actually because it's me and my brother that are doing this, but I plan on going to.

Business. Got it. So in this case, this would be my recommendation. You got two more years of school. I would recommend personally, and this is not the right, right advice for everyone, but like I just get to 40 customers and raise your prices to make sure that if you get starting 4, 2, 4, raise your prices on everybody, like you will make more profit. I believe in the next couple years. If you just did that because you're not going to get insurance, worry about payroll, all these other headaches that's going to come along with getting one employee and reducing your, you're going to reduce your, your net profit margins massively. Whereas right now, like it's you and your brother, you're making a bunch of money. Get to 40 customers. When it starts getting above that, just raise your prices more and more and more until you're charging like 100 bucks an hour. You're gonna come out of school, you're gonna be making good money and then go higher, right? And get like focus right now on school, making good profits on the jobs that you do have and then just live life as a 16 year old. When you come out of 18, 19, you graduate now, you literally have a business that's super profitable. You have 40 50. Like, you have solid route to build on top of. I just do that because I think you'll make just as much money, if not more money, if you just focus on making those current 40 lawns really, really profitable versus trying to get to 80 or 90 or 100. But you got all this extra overhead caused by having a new employee. Does that make.

Sense?

Yep.

Yep. All right, man. Best of luck to.

You. And the.

Second. Oh, snap, I just dropped you. I am so sorry. Call back in and I'll get you back on. Until then, next caller 774. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate.

It.

Hi. How you doing.

Mike? Good, man. How you.

Doing? Good, good. I. I was watching your videos. I start watching and I start calling you, and I'm on a company, a small company for.

2019.

Okay. And the revenue I make that day.

150,000.

Okay. And then, you know, continue like, 140. And last year, I get, like.

80,000.

Okay. But my question is this one, How I can get more customers? Because I use company like Angie, you know, like. Like. Like you do like an Internet. You know, you Pay like, a $2,000. But that company, they don't. You know, they send a lot of phone numbers to someone. They.

Don'T.

Yeah. You know, like, you can get, like, maybe three or four customers. What do you recommend to me to get.

Like.

Like, I don't want to spend too much money. Like, to do, like, a.

Marketing.

Yep. To get more.

Customers. So just to clarify, 2019, you did 150,000 annual revenue. Last year, 2023, you did 80,000 in revenue, so about half. Is that.

Right?

Yeah. Now, have you. Do you have a website and, like, a Google listing for.

Online.

Yes, I have a.

Website. Okay, and what's that website's.

Name?

It is Marlborough Landscape Design Inc.

Marlboro.

Landscape. And what's your.

City?

That's in. That's in Marlboro.

Massachusetts.

Okay, let's see here.

Okay, let's see.

Here.

Yeah, it's called Marlboro landscape dot.

Com. Like, what's the actual.

URL?

I. I will use Marlboro landscape dot.

Com. Okay. There we go. Right here.

Yeah, it's from Marlboro landscape dot com. Okay, Pulling it up. I'm spelling Marlboro wrong. All right, One second.

Here.

Yeah, it's a landscape. Yeah, I use landscape for.

Marlboro. Marlboro Landscaping. Let's see if I can get this right.

Nope, spelled it wrong again. One second. M A R L B O, R O Landscaping dot.

Com.

Yeah. Marlboro Landscape dot.

Com. Oh, landscape.

Okay. Yeah, landscape. Yeah.

Landscape. Okay, cool. All right, I got you, I got you. I got you. All right, now I'm looking at your website. Cool. All right. Pretty good. Pretty good. All right. All right. And then on your Google listing, what is your.

How many Google reviews do you have right.

Now?

Reviews?

Yes.

I don't know. I don't check in right now. I don't know. Have I. Maybe I. I have someone like over there. Like maybe couple ones, maybe five or.

Four. Okay. Yeah. So like right now when I look at. Share this, when I look at your area of Marlboro, Massachusetts, I am getting.

Other companies like Kadesh landscaping, the Vernon company, Vega Landscaping, they have 27 reviews. 27 reviews. 13 reviews. Which tells me if you get like 30 or so Google reviews, you will probably be in the first page of Google. And furthermore, that's just in the Google listing part and like on the map. So like, I would really focus on making sure you have an address on your Google listing. Making sure you have at least 30 Google reviews. That'd be the first thing. Then it's just a matter of like, you're not ranking on the first page of Google for the website. So there's over the course of time, landscape, Marlboro. Like, I don't their second page.

So I'm just trying to find. Okay, cool, I don't see you here. So I just really, really encourage you to focus on the Google listing. Like get as many reviews as possible. Because what I believe has happened over the past few years and the reason you've declined in revenue is all of your customers have gone online. Like all, all the leads that used to get because of referrals, people seeing your truck, you do a great job. People talk their neighbors less now than ever before. And I don't think that trend is going to continue, like, switch around. I think people are going to talk to each other less and so they will go more online, they'll go more digital. And so you need to be there. Right. And so your website looks decent enough. Right. Like I could, you know, pick apart like, hey, I'd rather see your crew and your truck on the front cover instead of just a random lawn. I could pick into those things. But more importantly, you're not even being seen right now. The website isn't even being seen because you don't have the Google reviews and you're not ranking on Google. And so like I would like if just to give you like, I know it sounds really basic, but get 30 Google reviews quickly. Family, friends, Past customers, send them all a text message and be like, I'd really appreciate if you'd send. Give me a Google review. Here's the link. That would be the number one thing I could say. And that really matches up to the fact that you've had a decline in leads over the past three years, because everyone's moved online the past few years. And in the past, they might have only gone to their neighbor and diced them who mowed their grass. Now they go online, and that's where they get their referrals from. Next call is coming in from 438. Welcome the show. Thank you for coming.

On.

Hey, Mike, how are.

You? Good. How you.

Doing?

Pretty good, Pretty good, thanks. I was just calling in regarding my landscaping and lawn care company.

We are located in Montreal, so we have kind of, compared to other cities, I think we have a pretty lower price we can charge compared to other guys. I was wondering, do you think it's worth pursuing while we're already heavily involved in lawn care, do you think it's worth pursuing that even further? Or do you think it's wiser to maybe use that as kind of like a stepping stone to other projects.

That are maybe higher? Higher revenue, higher.

Profit? Okay, so right now, are you kind of maxed out? Like, do you have a ton of excess labor? Like, could you grow by 30% without buying more trucks and.

Equipment? Yeah, we.

Know we'd have to buy more equipment for.

Sure. Got it. And so really, like, right now you're saying what you're. What we're currently believing is the fact that we can't raise prices just because the market, like, we would lose too many.

Customers.

Yes, absolutely. It's. It's. The prices are pretty low here, and they're fairly competitive. So, you know, raising prices won't do too.

Much. When was the last time we did raise.

Prices?

I raise them every.

Year. Okay. And what percentage do you raise them each year?

Usually.

So we've done a couple purchases of client lists. So each client stat, I guess, kind of increases at a different percentage, but generally we try and keep up with inflation or a little bit.

Above. Okay, all right. And then, sorry, but I find.

We are getting priced out. Obviously, there's some that are fine with our price increase, but I'm finding it that I. I speak to my competitors. It's kind of a friendly market, and I do find that there is a threshold that people just aren't willing to pay more.

Than. And what.

You'Re. So I think we're kind of starting to get priced.

Out. What's your close.

Ratio?

40.

50. Okay. Yeah. Like, so in my opinion, in my opinion, the close ratio is the determining factors to whether or not, you know, your prices are too high. And so if, if you're hitting up against capacity, I. E. You in order to double or grow the business, you'd have to buy more trucks and equipment. I would keep raising prices until, like.

If you're at capacity, you need to make more room in order to be able to grow. Like, I don't want you to go buy more trucks and equipment and just expand capacity. I'd rather you push down on demand by raising the price. And so. Yes, go.

Ahead. I guess my question was more like, should I, should I maybe shift into. Yes, obviously our lawn mowings. I think it accounts for about 65% of our revenue. But my question is, do you think I should shift more to maybe adjacent services where there is maybe a higher profit margin? Or I can, I can increase my prices a little more without having to, you know, do the economy, the scale thing with the grass, where, you know, it takes so much effort for not incredibly high.

Return. Yeah, like, honestly, like, I hear this from everyone, that the reason I push back so hard on this, because I hear people in every industry say the exact same thing, and that is like, I'm price competitive. I can't raise my prices anymore. I should go do offer a different service. And we always think the next service is going to fix the problem. Now, do I believe having more services and selling more to the same customer is a good idea? Yes, because if I can have one customer and sell them three different things instead of one, I can triple their value per year, which means I can also spend more money on marketing and it makes more sense. And so I'm a big fan of having multiple services. But the idea that you're going to switch services and it's going to fix the business is like the most common problem that people have in our, in all industries. Like, there are people that, in the services that you currently are thinking of switching into that think that they should switch to different services because there's pros and cons of every single service. So for the guy that does chemical applications, yes, they might have a higher quote, unquote margin. However, they might, like I was talking to a really successful chemical company the other day, but they might get $300 per customer per year on average, sometimes less. And that's really difficult because if I have to spend 150 to acquire a customer or in your Case if you purchased a client list, it's really difficult to make sense of $300 per year. You got to keep them for like 5 years to make 1500 bucks. Whereas with like lawnmower it's lower margin 100%. However, I'm able to get like $2000 per customer by just having like a, a spring cleanup, a fall cleanup and some.

Mowing. And so yeah, and that's what we really focus on. You know, like we don't do any applications. We really try and stick to the bread and butter and the recurring services for sure they're just, you know, I, I guess it's more of a thought or yeah kind of answered it but just maybe expanding it to fertilizer or aeration. Yeah, like I'm more add on. Yeah.

Totally. I think, I think the answer is and is is in the add ons. Right. Like if. Because every dollar you make from an existing customer is more profitable than going and getting a new dollar from a new customer. And so if I was you, instead of doing like we're going to go into chemical applications and we're going to like really expand that side of the business, what I would do is say, okay, we're going to offer these couple chemical applications and I'm going to upsell them via one click estimate email or send text message to my existing customers during the slow season. And I'm going to try to fill my schedule with work that otherwise I wouldn't be getting during the spring rush. And I'm going to upsell my existing customers into this other service. But the idea that we're going to switch services is something that like I just really see people jumping into a different service because like oh, it's more profitable, they need to jump into it. Like oh my word, I need five times as many customers just to make the same amount of revenue. Now all of a sudden my overhead structure doesn't work. I've got to let like I don't have enough work for all these trucks and employees and all the rest of it. So I'm a bigger fan of trying to upsell your existing customers and having adjacent services that you can upsell them to. Big fan. And I just, I always see people thinking that switching services and in changing area is some are going to fix their business when the vast majority of us just need to hit capacity and raise prices. Like it is boggling to me just how often that is the answer. And it's like, well, I want to grow. And grow is like, well if you're Going to grow. You're increasing supply. You're increasing the supply. And when you increase supply, your price either goes down or you absorb more demand. If you look at a price supply and demand curve, when there's lots of demand and exceeds supply, I. E. You have way more customers than you can serve, you can increase supply, I. E. Buy more trucks and hire more people, or keep the same supply but raise prices, therefore bringing demand back down. But you'll still stay busy. That's why I'm such a big fan of, like, determine how many customers you can serve, determine how many budget hours you can complete each week. And once you hit that, then raise prices if you want to be more profitable. But until you do that, you can't really judge your industry or your service. Mix like that is when you can really determine whether or not it's profitable is once you hit capacity and raise prices. And in my opinion, until you have taken a year and said, we're not buying trucks, we're not buying equipment, we're not hiring any more people, we're simply going to hit the capacity. Number of budget hours, number of trucks, number of employees that we have, we're going to hit that, and then we're going to raise prices. And if we hit it again, we're going to raise prices again. And once you've done that for a solid year, then you can really distinguish whether or not that service is profitable. I just see this a lot of the time, so I just. That'd be my word of caution. Next caller is coming in from 618. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming.

On.

Hey, Mike, how are.

You? Fantastic. How are.

You?

Pretty good, yeah. I'm Jeffrey with untamed edges. I'm in copilot. You've probably seen me a few times. You kind of answered my question with the last guy. I'm just looking for someone to talk me into raising prices because I'm deathly afraid of.

It. Okay, let. I can convince you very quickly. Here we go. So right now, how many trucks do you.

Have?

Oh, we have.

Two. Okay, we got two trucks. How many employees we.

Got.

Three. Okay, we got.

Three. So four. Four, including.

Myself. Let's go ahead and go with four. Great. And so I'm going to assume that you have two guys in each of the trucks. That's kind of what you're rolling with right.

Now?

Yeah, got.

It. All right. And do you use budget hours in your.

Business?

So we're switching to P4P this year, and that's kind of. Kind of like Where I'm confused because, you know, a lot of our loans are underpriced. So it's.

Like. Got.

It. You know, probably, I think probably 40, 30 to 40% of our loans are probably underpriced. So it's hard to, you know, convince like, your guys that they're going to be making, you know, extra money whenever 100. It's hard to even make the P for P on that job.

Yep. If your pricing's way off, P4P doesn't do a lot because the guys won't make enough money. Right. And if they're not making enough money on P for free, there's a good chance you're not making enough money either. Right. And so let's go ahead and break this down. So we got two trucks, four employees. We don't have budget hours right now. Because if we had budget hours, I'd be saying we have a capacity, about 140 budget hours per week. And we can work with that. We don't have that luxury. So let's work with this instead. How many mowing customers do you currently serve each.

Week?

We have about 140, 130, 140 a.

Week. Okay. And right now, without having to get more trucks, more equipment or employees, and assume you guys work like 40 hours a regular week, how many customers do you think you can get to without having to either work overtime or have to get more trucks and.

Equipment?

How many customers can we get to, like.

Currently? Yeah. Do you think, like, if you got 160 customers, do you think you'd still be able get done in a 40.

Hour? No, no, we go into overtime, like with what we have now, it's just too.

Much. Got it. Okay. So let's just assume 140 is basically your limit because like right now you're saying you're already pushing that.

Envelope.

Yes. Got it. So then this is really easy. All right, great. Fantastic. So what you're going to do, because you don't do budget hours and you haven't been tracking likely your track time on the job for like all of last year. So we don't have.

Data. No, we.

Haven'T. Right. So fine, that's great. We're still going to raise prices. Here's what you're going to do. First off, you're going to talk to you and your crew and you're going to sit down, go through all your customer base. You could probably do this yourself because you're on the properties a lot. And that is like, which of these customers, like, what Third what? The one third of them that you said, like, they're way underpriced. Which ones are those? And just raise them by like a solid 30 to 40%. So if they're, if they're. And that sounds like a lot, but if they're, if you're charging them 40 bucks a cut, that's like 12 bucks, 13 bucks. Right. So it's not a ton. And. But that 20 to 30% is going directly into your pocket. And guess what? If you lose them, you don't care because you're going into spring rush and you're going to be going way over. You're already at your limit. Like you. In order to get more customers, you have to lose some customers. And so we're going to do two things. Number one, all new customers are going to be charged a higher price. So what's your minimum for mowing right.

Now?

49. Great. So let's go ahead and move that to 60 bucks. Okay. And I'm assuming you're in more a rural area, larger property.

Sizes.

No, we actually aren't. We have a lot of quarter acre lots. It's a pretty populated, wealthier area.

Actually. Okay, well, quarter acre lots in my area is kind of big.

So. All.

Right. You're not like.

Post. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, much larger. Okay, got it. So let's just say. Okay, our minimum 50 is not too bad. But what we're going to do is we're going to do two things. Number one, we're going to raise all the prices on every job you know is just way under bid. Right? Way under bid. You could probably list off 20 of them to me right now. There's the customers names. We have to raise price. Oh, yeah, what I also want to do Those on all 140of these raise prices by a flat dollar amount. And the reason I say flat dollar amounts because we don't have the data right now to compare budget hours versus actual hours. Right next year after going through copilot and you have all the budget hours in there, which I would. You know, that's a different conversation to get budget hours figured out. But like once you've done that, then you would run a report like which ones have budget hours of X and Y versus how long it actually took and all the ones that were taking way too long. I'm going to raise prices on them. But for now I just want to do a flat price increase. I'm not looking at which jobs need to be raised prices on. I am simply looking at the fact that I can only take 140 customers. And I have hit that limit. And I will have to say no to new customers or I will raise prices until I go down from 1:40 to 1:20. And losing 20 customers to you is going to seem like a big deal, But I promise you, in the next four to eight weeks, you'll get all of those 20 new customers back because you're going into spring rush and you're going to charge a higher price to them. Okay, so new customers are getting a higher price, but you're going to. You're going to have to raise prices on existing customers in order to be able to make room for new customers, which you're inevitably going to get because you're going into spring rush. And so if on 140 customers, like, I want you to raise prices by at least $10 a cut.

@ least. Okay, so instead of a percentage, you're saying do it, do a.

Dollar amount. Well, here's the thing. The reason I'm saying a dollar amount because I want you to do it. I just see consistently simplicity in this case is going to be the best. So what I would probably do if I was you is anything under $60 per hour per cut is going to get $10 price increase. So they're getting charged 50 bucks a cut right now they're going to 60. Anything above $60 per cut currently give them a 15 price increase. So if they're currently getting charged 70 a cut now, they're going to be 85.

And then what you're going to do. Have you started mowing yet.

Or not?

We will in.

A week. Great. So tomorrow you're going to do all of this and you're going to send them all an email. Say next week we start our mowing season. Here's your pricing for the upcoming 2024 mowing season. If you have any questions, let us know. We look forward to seeing you and serving you at your property this upcoming year. That's it. No explanation long about the economy and inflation, all this garbage.

All.

Right. Yeah. I guarantee you if you do this, you will probably lose 10 to 15 customers. Probably less, to be honest with you. But we actually need to because you can't take any more customers. But here's what's really cool. If we average, if you're over $100 per cut, I want you to be charging $20 more. So if we can average an extra like 12 bucks a cut and we mow someone's lawn like three or four times a week, that means we're making an extra like $40 per customer. $40 times 140. We're making an extra $5,500 in straight profit by doing this price increase.

I also have a tends to believe that if you raise these prices you'll then be able to do pay for performance because now your prices will be at a high enough margin to where you can get pay your guys on P4P and they're incentivized because there's enough meat on the bone. I'm going to go through these next callers as quickly as I can. Next caller is coming from four six nine. Welcome to the show. Thanks for.

Coming on.

Hey Mike, I had a couple questions. So my first question is when setting up my pricing for mowing services, I wanted to know if I should be basing that pricing off of like a two man crew or like a one.

Man crew. We always personally do it based upon one man crew just because we use that the most. Right. I just simply use whatever you use the most. And then also from like a budget hour perspective, we calculate budgeted hours based upon how long it'll take one person. There's going to be a little bit more waste in there if I have two or three or four. But we always do it based.

Upon one.

Okay. Yeah. Because usually like from spring to summer we do two man cruise and then whenever it's kind of slows down it usually goes down to like a one.

Man crew.

Got it. During that kind.

Of photo. Whichever, whichever on average you use the most, that's probably the one I would use as kind of the benchmark in terms of, you know, how long.

Things take.

Okay, cool. And then we do winter services as well. So we offer actually two prices. So we offer a weekly and a bi weekly price. They're different. So when switching to winter services, obviously in the winter, should I drop my pricing like those bi weeklies down to the weekly pricing.

Whenever that the winter services.

Actually start? Our goal is to keep the same prices as their mowing services. Right. So we just keep it simple. Right. Like the challenging part with doing this is there are going to be properties that have a massive lawn and hardly any landscaping. They're the ones that usually are the ones that are kind of paying a premium because their lawn takes a long time to mow. But maintaining everything else during the winter doesn't take long. We rarely are able to keep those ones during winter services but just so much easier to tell customers your price is going to be the exact same on the exact same schedules. We've always done for mowing. Like that's just an easy way to sell it so you don't have to have another barrier. And then in your estimates for mowing you can just say there's a year round service and during the winter we do other winter services. Right. So I would just recommend sticking to the same pricing, the same schedule. And the, the big debate is well if they're on weekly mowing and I'm switching them to bi weekly winter services, do I charge the same price as their weekly mowing? I would say yes, simply so that their invoice stays the same and that per visit price doesn't change. Next caller is coming in from Australia from a 6:1 number. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

What's up? What can I do.

For you? Sorry, hi, I'm, I'm looking to start P4P and my routing company. Okay. In Australia and I was running, you've obviously got Augusta on over here and how did you go about setting up and who'd you speak to? Yeah, like the Australian dollars and stuff because obviously it'd be different to the.

U.S. yeah. So the big difference with Australia when it comes to pay for performance is you guys have a very, very high base pay that is required by the government and so but you also have a very high per hour labor rate that you can charge like you over there charge 100 to $200 per man hour but you also, your base pays sometimes 25, $30 per hour. And so as long as in my opinion, as long as you're charging the customer at least four times more than what you're charging, you're paying your employees on base pay, P4P will work. And really for something like roofing, it just comes down to the matter of a can you do a job in budget hours or at least break the job down into labor revenue because ultimately they get a percentage of the labor revenue. And so what of that seems complicated or do you have a question on.

That? Specifically.

If I was going to do Mary Grade on like I'm the vapor, I've got my vapor price for the me per meter to give to the boys for the psp. I was running like the law part of it and attack is it different to the American because obviously we're in Australia and who did you speak to to find out and.

Comment questions? Yeah. So I give the answer the same as I would in the US and that is essentially talk to your labor department. And so we have not seen this be an issue in this in the Australian market or the European markets that are using it in terms of legally. But because I'm not in your, you know, country every single day, I just say, go talk to your labor department, say, hey, here's my compensation plan. I am guaranteeing they pay this much per hour and if they work really hard and they do really good job, I'm going to give them bonuses. And is that legal? Right? That's basically what you're doing. Just make sure you don't pitch it to employees like applicants as like you're making all this money. Like you got to say, this is your base pay, this is what I'm guaranteeing you. And based upon performance, you can make more money as on, as bonuses on top of that. That's how you want to pitch it. And so talk to your local labor department. But in Australia, you charge a lot more per hour. You also have to pay more per hour. And the bottom line is you're using like per meter pricing for roofing. You're simply going to say, okay, if I'm charging, let's just call it $200 per square per square meter. Great. I'm giving one third of that now to my team members, which means I'm going to be giving $66 in P4P wages to my team out of every, for every cubic or every square meter. Now all of a sudden 10 meters, $660 in wages is going to be dispersed. And again, you can use the software, p4psoftware.com. Go there and go to the training tab and you can. It'll literally show you how to do this without the software. The software just saves you a little bit of time to make sure that the projects are calculated correctly on a daily basis, etc. All right, a couple more callers. Next one's coming in from 4, 3, 5. Welcome to the show. Thank you for.

Coming on.

Hi, this is Dallin Davis from Cedar.

City, Utah. How's.

It going?

Going good, man. Hey, so I'm an employee here at Augusta and I have a couple questions on regarding.

The P4P. Cool, go.

For it.

So, and when I go looking at it from my perspective, my base pay is always averaging higher than my pay for performance. And to me that shouldn't make sense from what I got pulled in my onboarding packet is that I should be making more money on my P4P but instead I'm having 8 hour days where my base pay is 1:55,81 or whatever for the day and my pay for performance is.

Only 67.82.

Got it. Like, and that, and that's a regular thing. But I've been busting out my jobs in the allotted times and the decimal and the broken down decimal hours. So I'm just like, is there something that I, I'm.

Doing wrong? First off, let me commend you for the way you phrase that question. Like you're first looking inward and trying to understand before you go out and judge the system. So kudos to you for calling in and like, actually trying to understand this. And I'm going to answer you. And I would also say go talk to your owner because they will break this down even better for you because they'll actually take your paycheck from, say, yesterday and show you on the dispatch board what jobs were completed and how this all breaks down. But let me try to answer my head.

Go ahead. So, so the guy that franchise out of Augusta owns one up in Cedar and one down in.

St. George.

Yeah, Brent. And I'm working out of the one in St. George and yeah, Brett. Yeah. But he, he's the manager down here who, he has training, isn't trained on the P4P all.

The way. Yeah, he just.

Got started. I, I. And I don't want to blame him because he's a really good guy. Brett and Tim are both amazing people and I don't want to, you know, they're my management, so I just want to make sure it's not me doing something wrong and they're doing it right on their end. And I just need to be, be more performance and more, you.

Know, efficient. Yeah, again, like fantastic mentality. Right. So my first thing is, is the locate because I know Brent started two locations. Is the one you're starting. Is it the brand new one? Like, is it.

Brand new? Yes, got it. The one in St.

George. Correct. The one in St. George. How many do you knew approximately how many mowing customers they have.

Right now?

We, man, I want to say we got from the. I've handed out at least, at least a thousand door hangers and we've gotten, I know I've went to personally 10 houses that I know that I've put door hangers on and done. So we have about probably about 80 mo.

Accounts now. Okay, so, so this is the challenge with the new locations. And what was your name again? Sorry?

Dallin Salon.

Yes.

Dallin Davis. Okay, got it. So when, when we have a new location, it is usually the first year until we get over 100 accounts. It's tough to make P4P like above base pay. Mostly due the fact that there's just not great route density, which means you're driving a lot. It also means you're like, what you just said you're doing door hangers. Well, when you're doing door hangers, there's not revenue being produced. So it's hard to make P4P if no revenue is being produced. Right. And so if I was in your shoes, I'd be like, okay, we need to get more jobs in a specific area so that when I stop my truck, I knock out three or four lawns instead of just one. Because that's when you can make a lot of money on P4P because there's no drive time. And so what's killing you right now on P4P is that you're driving, let's just call it 10 miles in a route to get done all of your jobs in the day down the road. And I would, I would venture to believe at their, their first location in Cedar.

Rapid or.

Cedar City. Cedar City. I bet that they probably travel two miles or three miles for that same crew to do their whole. All their jobs for the day. Which means you're driving probably 20 of your day is just loading up a truck and driving around. So even if you kick butt on budget hours, like on the job, like, hey, it says 0.75 budget hours and I did in 0.6, great. But if that takes you another 20 minutes to get to the next job and then 10 minutes to get the next job after that, it doesn't matter about budget hours in the job because you're still only able to complete, let's just call it five or six budget hours in the day out of an eight or nine hour day that you've clocked in. So this is the number I want you to calculate for yourself. This is the number I want you to calculate.

All.

Right? Okay. Take all the budget hours you complete in a day on a route and add them up. Okay. So you're gonna say like, okay, 0.75, 0.5, 0.6 budget hours for all.

These modes. Would my co pilot app do that for me.

Though too? Your P4P app will. Are you in P4P in the.

App yet?

Yeah, I'm in P4P.

& Co pilot. Cool. So Brent probably hasn't connected the two yet, but probably in a week or two he probably will because we're adding a little more functionality. And when he does that, you're actually going to see before the day starts, you're going to see how much Revenue you're going to produce. And as you complete the jobs in copilot, you will see them getting completed in P4P and see like a thermometer of how much revenue you're making. So when that happens, it'll make a lot less sense. That is cool feature.

But. But here. Yeah, that.

Is way cool. I want to give you, I want to give you what you can do now. And what you're going to do is add up those budget hours for the day. So you got 0.75, you got 0.5, you got 0.6, all those. Right. Let's say that it adds up to six budgeted hours. Okay. Then what I want you to do is divide that number by how many hours you clocked for the day. Right. Let's say you complete six budget hours for the day, but you had 10 clocked hours. Like you work from 7am to 5pm so now we got six budgeted hours and we have 10 clocked hours. Do you.

Follow so far?

Yes, I'm following. I'm writing.

This down too. Cool. So what I want you to do, budget hours or BH divided by clock dowers. And so in this case it'd be 6 divided by 10. And if you do 6 divided by 10, it comes comes up to.

0.6.

Or 60%. Yeah. That's what we call the efficiency score. And that's what you're seeing on your report. On a daily basis you'll get that percentage like efficiency score. That's how that number is being calculated. Now this is what I.

Will.

Tell you. Okay. If you're able to consistently be above 70 to 80 efficiency score, you will make a.

Bonus.

On P4P.

Okay. And the reason right now it's tough to hit above that number is because you have a lot of drive time due to the fact that your jobs are very spread out. So because they're allowing you to do door hangers, what I would recommend is do your very best to get a lot of jobs in one spot because when you come around and do those lawns have to do much drive time and you can have like a 90% efficiency score because you can actually knock all the jobs out without all the extra.

Space in between.

Okay. So so long density area is what.

I'm looking for. You got it. And Brent knows that and that's why like we try to focus on smaller areas for marketing probably compared to his first location because the second, his first one with Augusta. And so he's trying to do that and he knows like it's tough for you to make above, above base pay. So this is what I would do if I was you. If you did what you just did and called in and like tried to understand P4P use that. Go to the owner, go to Brent, be like, hey, I learned this. Like, can I do the door hangers in this specific neighborhood? Can I? Like if I was you, every single time you do a, a new a lawn, I'd be doing the two or three neighbors around that property with a door hanger. And ask Brent if you can do.

An instant quote.

I do that. Yeah. Like ask me does he allow you to do instant quotes.

Or not yet? Yes, I have the door hangers that have the instant quote on them. And he's, he has given me the micro, the Google Earth lookouts of the yard.

To judge prices. Yep. Fantastic. So I would just say your goal should be route density so you don't have to drive time because that's what's probably killing you. And you want as many jobs as possible in a given area. And then what you want to do is go ask your manager, whether it be the GM or Brent, and say, hey look, how can I be more efficient? And what they're probably going to point to, I'm just going to guess is yes, the drive time, but also in the morning, for example, from the time you clock in the time you are actually the blades are turning on the job. For some people that's an hour and a half or more, which means they clock in at 7 o' clock and it's 8:30 by the time they actually are making money. And on P4P until the blades are turning, you're not making money. And so what I would recommend is start timing yourself. From the moment you clock in at the job, at the office to the time you're on the job, like actually making money. Because I'm P4P. You're making money if the business is making money, which means we want to get to that first job as fast as possible. And so track that and track budget hours divided by clock hours. And I think you'll, if you just track it for a week or two, you'll start to see, oh, that lined up that report yesterday. I did make above base pay. I did make a bonus. And you'll start to get better and better at knowing exactly what that number is. Does that all make a little.

Bit of sense? Okay. Yes, absolutely, man. Thank you so much. Dude. I, I've, I'm honestly about to go in and brag to everybody. I know that I got to speak on the.

Phone to you. No, kudos to you for your mentality and I appreciate you being a part of augustination.

Brother. Take care. Thank you so much.

Man. Thank you. You got. Bye. Very cool. All right, we're going to wrap it up there. Thank you all for being here. I hope you have a fantastic weekend and we look forward to another one of these hopefully next several weeks. But I appreciate everyone calling in, being so awesome. That was a great call at the end. I love talking to the frontline team members at Augusta. Let's go. Brent out in Cedar City is fantastic. He just joined Augusta. He has two locations and really appreciate him. And obviously it reflects in the team members and their ability to learn. Take care, everyone. Have a fantastic weekend.