Losing Half Your Revenue If One Customer Leaves..

I'm trying to fix your problem, but.

It'S just like, you'll never have to talk to me again.

Today we're in Virginia, and we're going.

To meet Ricardo from Limit Lawns.

You know, I put myself in this situation, so there's no one to blame but me.

Where half of his revenue got wiped out this year. He's just concerned about the fact that the revenue just dropped, like, by half.

Yeah, it's just.

It's scary right before spring rush because they lost a massive contract. They had 14 properties, and you just recently lost them.

You know, it's not just my livelihood. It's also my dad's livelihood.

Now I'm stressing all day, all night.

We've got to figure out how to increase revenue. Otherwise this business can be in big trouble. I would assume your dad could probably handle most of the work almost by himself right now.

Hey, dad, you're gonna work for me now. And it's like. Like really hope that, you know, you can come out here and maybe shed.

Some light on a path and help us out. So I really do hope we qualify and hope to see you soon as well.

Let's see if we can turn things around. If they're gonna play dirty, then all of a sudden pull the rug from you. Just call them now and try to get the decision making.

Good morning.

Great.

Dude, I love the look of the trucks and everything.

Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, we worked on it for a while.

Yeah. Is this your house then, or.

No. So this is our mechanic that helped us out with the trucks. Okay. He just lets us park here for a while because where we were at the outer storage facility, it just cost a little too much for now.

Cool. So the two trucks, the one trailer is kind of like the current setup. Then.

I started with $15,000. I bought my truck, I got all the equipment, and I just started last. Last spring.

Cool.

So this is your second year?

Yeah.

So year one was 150 grand. What did you do to kind of get things started off last year?

All throughout last year, I still had a job just to not pay myself anything from here and then just put everything back in. How many hours between both things?

Probably like 80. Before starting out, I consumed a lot of Mike's content. Like, this was, like, way before production got pretty good with you guys. This was back when he. It was just like his wall with the. With the whiteboard and stuff.

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. We only get 10 clients, to be honest. Like, that's what I built. Augusta Lawn Care on. You will be the leader to the culture that you create. Business to be had again. I'm Mike andes. Check out landscapebusinesshorse.com until next time. Be great because nothing else pays.

I stumbled on his content because I was trying.

In law's finances out and trying to get him to make a little more money. He had a landscaping business that he had been doing for a couple years. I was still in high school at the time and I wanted to get started, you know, making more money because I was working a job by then. There was times, I remember this like it was yesterday, dude. Like there were some times where I would wake up in the middle of the night and it's just like my parents were arguing and stuff because like there wasn't enough money and this and this and that. So like I started working as soon as I could. I would actually just at times go to the back, get on the phone with clients, trying to upsell them while at the job, take any estimates on the phone while at the job. I was working towards something better. I started working at 14, just trying to make any type of money at all just to afford myself. So they didn't have to afford me at all. I started out with him trying to just learn and stuff. I stayed with him for about a year or so. His finances were not good with the business, so I kind of just helped him on that side because I knew a little bit more. So that's how I started. I learned a lot from my father in law because his business is a little more established and he, he's been doing it for like 20 years or 30 years or something. So I helped him get his business back to being a little more profitable. After that I was just kind of like, well, if I can do that for him, I can probably do it for myself as well. Started to make a little more sense because back then I thought that it was very, very hard to start anything at all and you needed to know everything off the bat in order to start it.

It's common to overthink the amount of money or experience you're going to need to get started. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, it's going to be difficult. You're going to have to learn a lot of stuff. But sometimes just getting started is the best way to see and honestly, progress is better than perfection.

And then the more I consume and the more I learned, the more you learn, the more you earn. And I figured, hey, like, it's probably not that hard. It was Kind of scary at first. I made a lot of mistakes on the actual process of fulfilling the operations because I was still learning. I came in blind. I thought it was gonna be great. Now I'm stressing all day, all night. So it's like, you know, if I would have just known.

So I feel like it would just bring value to people to understand that business is not all sunshine and rainbows. I kind of thought to myself, like, dude, having a job is so easy. You just go work, come back, and then you're all good. It's so much easier, dude. So you go home, you don't have to worry about it. It's not on your mind 24 7. That's the thing about starting a business. No matter where you at, you're always thinking about it. My initial goal of coming into business at all was because I wanted to retire early. As you keep learning and as you experience stuff, you're kind of like, hey, like, I guess retiring doesn't really mean anything. Like, it's kind of like another dream that you get sold on. Like, work never really stops. Go from working without a purpose to working with a purpose. And that's really the difference between a job and work that you love doing.

You only become an entrepreneur if you cannot get a job. Like, if you. If you physically, like, would resent and hate every minute and it would just tear you apart. That's when you become an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, everyone's been like, everyone become an entrepreneur.

That's like 90% of them fail. Like, guess what? You don't fail on getting a job. You get a paycheck every two weeks.

Like, that's a really good way for, like, most people to follow. So last year you had a big contract. Is like a commercial good job, is a property manager at 14 properties, and you just recently lost them.

We had a commercial.

A fairly big commercial contract with 14 different locations. And this past month or so, they canceled on us pretty much last minute. I don't know if you can tell. There was one back there. It was a Kindercare center. Yep. So we had 14 of those.

Got it like a franchise or just like a regional branch, like a chain?

It was kind of weird. The Kindercare Centers did not contract us. They had another company that took care of all the subcontracting. So we got contracted through them in January. I had to call them and just pretty much to lock it in to make sure that we're both on the same page about renewing. They said, yeah, of course we have no problem. You Know you guys, services are great. We have no complaints. And then that company changed their management structure or whatever, and then they took all their operations internally, and so we just lost all 14 of them. @ that moment, my heart kind of dropped and I was like, wow. Like, what do you mean? Like, we were just getting ready to get started on mowing and stuff. I spent money on an additional truck. I spent money on marketing. And like, all of it was pretty much based on having that. That revenue. Getting those news was kind of like, sent me into panic.

Mode. So out of the 150,000 revenue last year, how much of that was made up from that.

Contract? 40 to.

50%. Probably got.

It. So when did that get.

Canceled? Like a month.

Ago. Working for commercial companies instead of residential customers is great because you get big contracts and there's a lot more revenue, grow a lot faster. However, it's also a little bit more risky for two reasons. One, that commercial customer is usually much more price sensitive and looking for the bottom bidder, they're going to go for the cheaper price. Also, if you have 30, 40, 50% of your revenue tied up in one massive commercial contract, if they don't renew their contract, you might be on the hook for all this trucks and equipment and employees that you got for this big business that you built, and all of a sudden it gets cut in.

Half. So what's your current plan then? Just like, kind of like get. Fill it up with residential to fix that. And are you getting any leads right now? Like, are they trickling.

In? Yeah, they're sl. Coming in. I'm looking to just kind of ramp up a little bit of the spending for the Facebook ads and the Google Ads they're taking care of by an.

Agency. How much are you spending on.

Them on just on them alone? Yeah.

1500. On the.

Agency?

Yeah. And then plus.

Marketing. Yeah, it's like, yeah, a couple thousand dollars, like two, three thousand.

Dollars. Basically three grand a month for them to run.

Facebook. So this. So this past month we didn't pay them. They told us not to pay them because last month there was basically nothing. So they were like, hey, you didn't get any leads, so, like, we're not going to make you.

Pay. Got.

It. Okay. How does that work? So they just don't make you.

Pay because you didn't get.

Leads. Turns out that the ad agency that he hired didn't actually charge him for the past couple months of running ads because they didn't get any leads. Which is great because they're obviously super.

Honest. Most People don't do.

That. However, they also didn't get us any.

Leads. My only concern with like paying agency is like literally if you're paying $2,000amarketing spend, fifteen hundred dollars for the agency, you, they have to perform at twice your level. Like your customer acquisition cost has to be half in order to make it worth it because you have the extra cost of the agency. And at $3,500 per month, we're currently spending out of say 75 or 80 grand a month revenue. We're like literally spending almost half our revenue right now just on ad agency and ad.

Spend. All right, we're at the.

Whiteboard. Let's explain this math. So let's assume right now that we are spending $2,000 on our marketing budget, all.

Right? And we're going to assume that.

We get 20 paying customers from all of those ads. Now if we have 20 customers.

And we paid $2,000 in marketing, that would mean that our customer acquisition costs.

Or the amount that we have to spend in order to get one new customer would be equal to.

$100. Now watch what happens when we add on an agency. Now they're going to tack on their extra 1500 dollars in extra fees.

And that's for the sake of them running and managing the ad.

Campaigns. Now let's assume that we get the same 20 customers and all of a sudden now our customer acquisition cost goes all the way up to $180. Almost double if we just ran the ads.

Ourselves. So the real question is, are they only going to produce the same.

20 customers or are they going to manage the ads better and potentially move this to say, 35 or 40 because they really have to get at least almost 40 customers in order to bring this customer acquisition cost down underneath what we would be spending otherwise if we.

Just ran the ads ourselves. I have a hard time thinking that because like $3,500 a month will get a full time person putting out door hangers. Doing door hangers like this is a great way to do two things. One, get started for very low customer acquisition cost. If you don't have a bunch of money to spend on Facebook ads or Google Ads or do fancy campaigns. This is free. Basically, you can get these printed off on Vistaprint very cheaply. It's a great way to get started, number.

One. And number two, this is a.

Great way to get great route density. Because even if you get, even if you get a lead every single day of the month, for example, you're spending $3,500 per month. So you're paying still $110, $115 per lead, not close customer. So your customer acquisition cost is likely still like $200. And so have you done door hangers before or.

Not? Yeah, we, yeah, we done door hangers. We just finished them last week. So today we'll be talking about print.

Marketing. Here we have some door hangers.

That we're doing for our marketing campaign. It's very simple. They have the service, a description of the service, the price already here, as well as for the moment, the weekly and bi weekly.

Price. And then all you got to do is just put the name, address.

And phone number in the bag, send us a.

Picture. All of our information is there. And this just makes it a.

Very simple quote so that, so that.

Way we don't have to come back because we're already.

Here. Out of a thousand that we put up 3, 4, 5, probably called back and.

Closed. Yeah, that's where it's like, okay, let's say there's a thousand that you put out. It probably took what, three days to put those.

Out? Not really took a.

Day. A day with all of you? Yeah, yeah, let's just say three people at the 200 per day. That's $600 in wages, probably another hundred dollars for the cost of the, the door hangers printing. So like, let's look at like six or seven hundred dollars. Now we're talking about seven hundred divided by say five customers. Now we're looking at like a hundred and twenty dollars customer acquisition cost. It's also your second spring rush. So like people have seen your, your trucks around, they've seen your brand. And usually your second spring rush is where you get like a ton more leads because now you actually have some brand.

Awareness. Generally your first year in business is tough because no one knows about you. You don't have a lot of Google reviews. Your website doesn't rank very well on Google, and you don't have a lot of trucks and equipment rolling around where people can see your brand. And so a lot of times that first year you do have to spend money on advertising to get every single new customer. You don't have referrals, you don't have people talking about you. But generally that second year is when now you've been doing business. You can ask customers for referrals, you get reviews, and you can rank well on Google. And now leads come to you without you having to spend money on.

Ads. When was the site built like last year or when was.

That? Yeah, so I built My own website before, starting last spring. And then in December, I went with.

The.

Just got done, like, probably a month or two ago. Yeah. Okay. And then how many Google reviews.

Do you have right now? We only have.

Five. Oh, we need to get that.

Higher. I.

Know. That's like, the number one thing you can do right now. Yeah, that's like. We went to a guy's place a month ago and he had zero reviews. And like, literally in one weekend, he got.

30.

What?

Really? And he immediately went to the first page of Google. So here's. Here's the deal. I'll make you this deal, okay? If you can get 30 Google reviews, when you do, let me know and I'll build the website for you, and then I'll give it to you for free for a year. For a year, yeah. And then based upon that, you'll know whether or not you want to keep using it or not. Because I believe this alone will double the business. I think if you get a website, you triple with the business. Like, it's the number one thing you can do, and it's completely free. So, for example, when I look this up, the top companies have 37, 14, and 18 Google reviews. That's why I know if you get 30, you almost immediately pop up here. Okay, so you were about to say why you wouldn't want to get it from your friends and family.

Though. Yes. I mean, like, me personally, for me, it feels like cheating in a way, in the game of business, kind of feels like cheating. You gotta use your.

Resource. They're not.

Lying.

Right. So, like, you say, hey, don't review and say, you did a job with me. Just review me as Ricardo, the owner. Right. But you've got to get enough volume. And if that feels bad to you, then it's a matter of, okay, how many customers in your.

Database. One hundred and something.

Probably. I'd just be calling every single one like, yo, I need some Google reviews, bro. And even if you do some stuff for free, like, for example, you could do a free corporation for anyone that does a review. Cost you in terms of cost of goods sold is probably like 20 bucks, because it takes so short, you could rent one for a day and just buzz through 20 people's lawns. But, like, that will do more for the business this spring than, like, any agency will do. So, like, if you feel bad about getting, like, the customer, like, friends and family, I get it. Yeah, you're a very honest man. More honest than most. But if you. If you say, hey, I'm gonna rent an aerator. I'm gonna be able to bust out a bunch of those and I'm gonna contact every single customer and just tell them, hey, I'm gonna give you a free aeration worth up to $99 per visit for free if you just fill this out. Yeah, I think you'll get 10 right.

Away. So if you're sitting at home and you're twiddling your thumbs and you don't have any work, this is a great opportunity because you don't necessarily need customers to give you money in order to be.

Paid. Say, how is that.

Possible? You can be paid with referrals. You can say, hey, Mr. Jones, I'm gonna do this free work for you. Can you give me a few people on the street that could potentially use my services? That's one way to get paid. Another way to get paid is get Google reviews. I'll do this work for discount if you give me a Google review. You don't necessarily need to be getting cash on those early.

Jobs. Let me get them out real.

Quick so they can go for it. Go for it. What's your.

Name?

Christian. Oh, cool. Good to meet you, man. Oh, yes, very.

Good. Nice to meet.

You. You as.

Well. It's kind of weird like saying that, right? It's usually the son going to work for the dad or helping out the dad. So it's like that whole onboarding process was kind of weird. Like I felt weirded out because it's like, hey dad, you're gonna work for me now. And it's like, like it didn't feel good saying that, right? So we just say like, hey, you're working with me, right? It's like I never want anybody to work for me, right? I want them to work with me just because I know how I felt when I was working at the job, working for the manager, working for this, for that. It just feels like, it's like devaluating. Almost like you're just another number or just another metric to look at. So you, dude, like, you gotta treat people like humans. Like as long as you treat people like humans, you'll make it out. Because at the end of the day, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't with his help because I could not do this by myself. There's no way I could do this by myself, you know, he had to work very bad jobs, you know, or not bad jobs, just low paying jobs, two or three at a time. Just trying to get us by that usual struggle story. And it sucks. That is the usual Struggle story, right? Like, it shouldn't be like that. He actually works pretty much overtime, like, every single week and doesn't really ask for more than what he already makes. So it's like that type of trust is very hard to get from a regular employee. Just watching all of that sacrifice growing up just made me feel like I know he's not going to be able to push through for much longer. So it's like I have to do something in order to make everything worth it. So it kind of leaves it up to me to figure out how I'm going to retire.

Everybody. So most of your leads currently come through the phone, then for phone.

And email, Most of them.

Really. Right now we're still paying, like, $110 per lead. And if we're closing, half of them still put you over $200 customer acquisition cost. And, like, hey, if you're able to retain customers for five years, it's not so bad. But, like, that's a lot. $200 customer acquisition cost can be a little bit pricey. And that doesn't include the cost of the elite of the agency. Now we're looking at a customer acquisition cost of, like, over.

$300. The thing about, like, the lowest point, like, that should be known. Like, I feel like maybe it doesn't apply for all people, but I feel like that's kind of selfish, right? Not being able to, I guess, put yourself out there. Because it's not just you. It's not just you. It's other people as well. Like, probably other people that struggle the same thing that I struggle with. So, like, why can't I put my little grain of salt and just put myself out there instead of them and just maybe they have the same problem? Did they find a solution watching this? You know, so it's kind of like, don't. Don't just think about yourself. Think about others. You're helping them out.

Too. What do you. What do you pay Christian per.

Hour? We pay him 17.

18. Because, like, my thought is if you're able to get, say, two leads a day and you pay him for eight hours. Eight hours times 17 bucks, that's $130 or whatever it is for wages if you're able to get two leads from that. Now all of a sudden, we actually are beating out Google and Facebook. I know it's not as fun, as sexy to do door hangers, but I just consistently keep seeing once you add an agency and you basically double the cost of a lead, door hangers can beat them out. If you Just pay someone to go do several hundred.

Of. When you're first getting a business started and getting it off the ground, it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of effort. And unfortunately for your first few years in business, you're not going to necessarily see the direct results of that hard work, but you're planting the seeds of what down the road will become an extremely profitable business. But it might take five or 10 years. The thing I've found with success, and business success specifically, is it's exponential. The first three, four, five years of business, you don't see a lot of results, but you got to put all this work and effort into it. And then it's only after 8, 9, 10 years you start to see the results and the fruits of your.

Labor. Yeah, I guess just actually doing it, you know, like, you can talk as much as you want, you can like get as many ideas as you want and like brainstorm as many ways of marketing as many ways of getting customers as much as you want. But like, nothing really matters unless you do it. And it's honestly just up to will, like, are you willing to do it or not? And I'm willing to do it, so it's gonna get.

Done. What I see is a lot of times is like, especially cause I know you went to acquisition.com, is like, okay, like I'm gonna get an agency and like start pumping money into ads and things like that. Like, I don't think if they were to talk to you one on one, they'd be saying to do that. And if they saw your budget and your size of business, right. I think they'd be saying the rule of 100. If you do a hundred of something every day, you'll likely get better at it and you'll likely be doing enough that you will be able to start seeing an outcome. And so when we have more time than we do have money, let's focus on something that takes more time and less money. And in that case, yes, it's less scalable, but it's something that we can replicate using labor instead of.

Money. When you're first getting started, don't worry about something not being scalable where you can grow the business really big. Don't worry about that. Door knocking doesn't seem scalable. Picking up the phone and calling random people, cold calling doesn't seem scalable. They've also built billion dollar businesses doing those two things. So just get started and don't worry about what am I gonna do when I'm a million dollar business. Just focus on getting a million dollar business. And how are you gonna do that? Get more customers? And how are you gonna get more customers? Email people and do the things that are not.

Scalable. We only have about 75 to 80 thousand dollars in annual revenue. We know that your dad alone could handle that. Like you could probably grow by 10, 15% and he still handle all the work. And so it's a matter of like let, let him just do the work because you know you want to provide for him and then all of your time and energy. Instead of paying Google, instead of paying the agency, just go 110% on. Like I'm doing direct call outs, I'm doing going into Facebook groups locally. I'm to going optimizing my Google page. Like what we can do in the next 24 hours will do more for the business than this agency will do. And so if we aren't picking the low hanging fruit, going after this is a.

Distraction. There's a direct correlation between the size of a business and the number of Google reviews that they get. Look in your local market, the people that are ranking at the top and have the biggest businesses also happen to have the most Google reviews. I think it's so impactful we actually build a tool in a few months we're giving access to all of you. It's called showcasereviews.com go check it out. It's not available yet. You have to get on the waiting list. But when it comes out, it's going to help you get more Google reviews and Facebook reviews and all other platforms because these reviews are free to get from customers and can drive massive business.

Results. Right now what's unique is you're going into your first cut again. You have more time than you do have money. I'd be trying to go with these people like I'm going to come mow your grass for free for the first service just so you get a taste of what it's like. The reason is because if you get there on the first service, they're not going to pull their mower out of their garage because every single homeowner does not winterize their mower. And so every single spring, if they're going to mow their grass, they have to get over this initial hump of like getting the mower to start and so they have to take it to the dealer. They got to get someone to fix it. They got to like, you know, flush out all the old gas, they got to change the oil, do the spark Plugs all this garbage. So if you can just get to the first service, like, man, that's really nice. Let's just get them to do this all the time and then you're over the hump. Once they get that mower to start, they've kind of committed, I guess.

Give them a free sample of our work, of our value. And after showing them there's, there's pretty much no reason to say no. I was thinking because the centers basically subcontract this company that some subcontracted us. Well, if I just go directly to the centers and I probably give.

Them like a pamphlet or.

Something. Hey, like you know, you know how we did last year? You know we did great last.

Year. They might have signed another.

Contract. Yeah, they probably.

Did. But if they're saying they're taking it quote unquote in house, that would mean that they're cutting out that person anyway. Everyone wants to take it in house until they do it. Like, oh snap, we have to manage employees. I just go straight to them. Do you know who that would be? Like the HOA or like the management director. I would just call anyone or like contact, like go on their website just like, okay, who do I contact if I wanted to like become a customer and be like, hey, I'm just wondering who I need to talk to about like property maintenance. And then basically like, hey, I know you guys used a contract with so and so they cut our contract out and said you're going in house. Do you want us to still do the lawn? I know everyone was happy and we can do it for probably cheaper than what you're paying them. Like if they're going to play dirty by like going around you and like saying you're going to sign the contract and then all of them pull the rug from you. That's like, okay, great. I will go directly to customer that's happy with our service and simply offer them the service. I just call them now. I try to get the decision maker just say this, we do the property maintenance on the properties. I was wondering who I can talk to about the property maintenance and see like who exactly that is. I'm trying to reach that correct.

Person. I'm actually going to contact the.

One that I know for a fact that love this.

Okay.

Good.

Morning.

Hi, what was your name again?

Hi, Suzy. How you doing? My name is Ricardo Vargas. I'm with Limit Lawns. We used to take care of your, your guys property for lawn care last.

Year. You and like another like Colombian.

Guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course. With the. With the blue trucks.

Oh, no, no, that was definitely not us. If you just saw them. No, that's not us. But yes. I was just trying to get in contact with, like, I guess, like, do you have, like, a manager on site or.

Something? I'm the manager here. I don't handle.

Like. Yeah.

I see. I see. Okay. Corporate. Okay. Is there any way.

So from. From what I. From what I can tell, just based off the communication that I had with that company, it seems like they might not want to renew with us for whatever reason, even though, like, all the.

Yeah.

It'S.

It's. It's. It's probably budget wise. I know. So I. Actually, I don't.

Thank.

You.

But. But then, like, I know. You know, like, between you and I. Yeah. They'll usually go.

Whoever. Yeah, that's kind of what I figured out. Yeah. With like, some of the work that we were supposed to do with you guys, like, they kind of never answered because of price, I'm pretty sure. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, do you know who makes that decision of contracting that subcontracting.

Company? I mean, I can ask.

Like, our facilities.

Guys. Okay, Facilities guys.

Yeah. But if you give me an email, I can send you those.

Guys.

Yes. And could I just have your email just so we can keep in.

Contact and I don't have to maybe.

Keep calling the office.

Number?

Okay. Yeah, yeah, perfect. If you could yet give me contact with those facility guys and then I'll talk to them. Either way, it might be just a win win for us all because I know that whatever you guys pay them, we can probably make that better and just do a better job overall as well. So it's gonna be a win win for everybody. And I will keep in contact and if you can just update me through email or this is office number. You can just call this as.

Well. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Susie. You have a good day. All right. Bye.

Bye. Good.

Stuff. Let's go. So now, like, recap that call with her and basically what you want to go for is the jugular, which is. Here's what we were getting paid. We're willing to do that. Same.

Price. So tell her the.

Price. Oh, yeah. Because that's the only contact we have right now. Don't rely on her emailing the facilities. Not going to happen. You're going to follow up and be like, this is what the contract was and we're willing to say at the same price, because I know that they're probably marking this up to all of you, we love doing service with you. We'd love to do directly with you instead of you having to go through this other provider. I just go for the jugger and do a follow up email of like, just to recap our call. I know you're going to talk to the facilities manager about us, but like here's the actual information and we'd love to do service with.

You. Yeah, that makes.

Sense. Let's go, dude. We can just like double the business. We got.

This. So people don't see that, they just see the success and then they're like, oh man. Business owners have it so easy, like just so much money they could do whatever they want, whenever they want. And it's, it's not like that at all. The bigger you get it, the same struggle stays just, it's a different form. Instead of physical, it's more mental, more emotional.

So it just, it makes you evolve, it forces you to.

Evolve.

Things have been picking up a lot. Been getting a lot more customers, a lot more work. Like these past couple weeks have just been a blur. Don't really even, don't even know what I'm where, where I'm.

At. Sometimes I'm just on the job.

Have to pause phone, job post, email, job.

Paused. It's a good problem to have, right? Being busy and.

Stuff. Sometimes I come home, I just crash. You know, my girl has to wake me up like, yo, go eat, go shower. I know it's just a season in the business and I love it. Honestly, it's better than that than to just not do anything at all. Just be hunting for work. So it's definitely picked up. We definitely almost doubled the clients from the last time that we spoke. So things are working out.

No, we did not get that contract back. It's kind of like, it's kind of what I expected. It's a whole corporate contract they have with that company and they, they.

Don'T do it based off of a location, they do it based off like the whole.

Network. But they did say that, you know, if anything shows up, they'll let me know. You know, they loved working with us, so whatever. We just decided to move on on a good note with them. But good thing is that we did immediately kind of replace all those 14 properties with a different HOA that we got signed. So everything worked out in the end.

Yes. Yeah, we're still, we're still signed on with them. My plan is to just keep them through the spring because leads from them have actually been picking up and I know Mike said that essentially the amount of leads that we should be getting from them should double, and they haven't doubled.

Yet. But they're on the way there.

Right? Like, we got, like, 25, almost 30 leads from them. And out of those three leads, we close, like, 24 of them. So, like, it's working out. And usually those leads are pretty much like cleanups. Like, big cleanups, big smold shops. So essentially, the customer acquisition cost gets paid out within that first job, and then we sign them on to recurring mowing. So it works out in the end. Like, you know, cost wise, we're keeping them on at the very least until spring is done. Once spring is done, I even told the guy, I was like, once spring is done, we'll revaluate where we at, and we'll see if we want to continue, and if not, then thank you for everything. We'll see you next year. Just upselling really helped out justify that acquisition cost.

My goal would be. It's not really a goal. It's kind of projected. Based off of what we're doing right now, I'm pretty sure we're gonna. That's 300,000. My original goal was 300,000 to double the revenue from last year. And it's gonna happen. We're probably gonna smash through it, honestly. So maybe, like, 350 would be a good goal to have. What really pushed us last year was again, those winter contracts or winter drops that we got from that contract that we lost that really pushed us through winter. So just trying to figure out what to do instead of that during those December, January, February months. And, yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking of right now.

It's still just me and my dad right now, but we do have a part timer, which at this point.

It'S really a full timer because we.

Have him on, like, pretty much every single day. It's not the guy that was with us that you guys met. It's not.

Daniel.

We. We cycled him out just because performance was just kind of dying down. And really, motivation was kind of for him. So I was like, you know, I really don't have the time or the energy to train you up and motivate you. Right. I need someone that just comes in ready. So we cycled them out, and we brought in a new person, which, you know, has no experience at all, but good attitude. Right now. It looks like a good work ethic. If I can just train him up to be like, 70 to 80% of what I am, then probably hire him Full time for the rest of the year.

Everything's good. You know, with more work, obviously, you know, we have a lot more money to play around with, so got to boost his pay up a little bit more. You know, he's feeling a little more comfortable. I'm still at the same. I've been since I started, so I'm not really seeing any money, but I'm fine with that. And, you know, it's, it's, it's good. I mean, I'm good, he's.

Good. We're.

Good. We're paying the guy pretty fairly. So, I mean, everything's positive right now. Just a lot of labor. Just a lot of work.

Like something that stuck with me, and it's like every single day it's just getting reviews, just getting as many, as many, as many reviews as I possibly can. I know he said, like, get.

30 reviews as fast as.

Possible. I think right now we're about to be at 20, and it's actually.

Harder than I thought it would.

Be. For some reason, every, like every client that we service or that we do work for, you know, they. They tell us personally, like, hey, like, this is amazing. You guys are the best, blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, great. I mean, if you feel that way, you know, the best way to.

Support us is with a.

Review. And then it's just like, go see, like, you know, it's just, hello, where are you? Like, can you give us that review? Like, you talk so greatly about us and, you know, it's just hunting down. Like, it's honestly easier to get paid from our customers than to get reviews from them is to pretty much put it in perspective. But, you know, the people that do the reviews, you know, we're eternally grateful for. And you're just kind of building out the system on how to actually follow up on these reviews and how to properly ad task and, you know, maybe on the spot or maybe just quicker response time. So kind of working that out, but definitely seeing the difference between having five reviews to the 20 that we have now.

This past week, I've been cycling just because of the amount of work we've had to do. It's just too tired. But every single week, putting up a couple hundred here and there. Mostly on Saturday mornings, just go out from like the moment I wake up until like the afternoon hit differing neighborhoods, Just bring a couple hundred. And it's still true. Maybe from like 100 to 150, 200. You either get like one or two customers. So that's kind of the benchmark that we go to if we need more.