Marathon Q&A Call-In Show with Mike Andes
Mike Andes answers live questions from home-services business owners on door hangers, pricing strategies, fleet decisions, and hiring. Callers ask about scaling service areas, raising prices without losing customers, and when to hand off to a general manager.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the live stream. We have not done a call in show for quite some time so welcome and I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. I'm going to be sharing here on the screen the number to call in. So this is the number to call in today. If you call 361-733-3333, you'll be put on the call in show. You'll be getting priority and in terms of who comes on to ask questions, I can answer questions in the chat but I will give priority to everyone that is in the call queue. So today is December 26th. Today we have some very special announcements that I'll be going through and unwrapping these gifts throughout the livestream. But if you have a question, call this number right here just on your phone. Pick up 361-733-3333. Any questions about business, marketing, hiring, anything and everything to do with your home service company. I will be able to answer those. So I'm going to leave this up for a second. We're going to answer several calls and then I will open the first gift. There are three gifts that we are unwrapping today. Let's go ahead and get started. Make sure this thing is actually working. And we're going to start off with a local number, 360. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Can you hear me? Do we have. Yeah, I can hear you. How you doing?
Hey Mike, I, I wanted to ask you. So you said that you did the.
You started like you're testing out the door hangers for the instant, like the instant quote winter service door hangers. What, what type of response have you seen so far? Like just from doing it like with the, the franchisees are location.
Is that for mowing or what services are you talking about.
For winter service? Like the instant coil door hangers.
Yeah. So we haven't finished an entire season so I don't want to speak on it yet. We've seen much better results when we're able to do instant pricing drive traffic from online to the forms. So we've been testing a bunch with that and that's what we're going to be focusing on the actual door hangers. It's tough to in what a door hanger explain to someone that they actually can say like what you want to focus on is saving the money. Because if you just focus on the pain, the problem is with during winter is like they don't think they have a pain.
Yeah.
Nothing is growing and so it's really a matter of like trying to get most of your mowing customers convert to winter services. And then if you're going to actually try to sell, you know, people who have never done service before, you really got to pitch the savings like hey, you will save $500, you will save $1,000 by simply using us bi weekly instead of twice a year.
Okay, I got that.
Cool. Yeah, so like probably, probably by like early next spring once we've actually seen an entire season. And we're also doing a whole bunch of testing around the, the actual online instant pricing form. And how do we get. Because bottom line if you're doing a door hanger the the amount of people that need your services for winter services so much lower. And so how can we use online to kind of use as a filter to get as many people to the form as possible versus with door hangers like instant pricing for mowing, everyone needs their lawn mowed. So I can, it's way easy to instant pricing for that because everyone has an actual pain and so when they see the solution it's easy for them like yes, I will take it. Whereas with winter services I really need to convince them that is a cheaper option. It look makes their property look better year round, etc. So. All right, cool. We had some other callers in the queue. Again just as a reminder, welcome everyone to the Q and A call in show. If you've never been here before I, I take these calls directly from your phone. This is 361-733-3333 is the call in number. I'll answer your questions and throughout today I'm going to be having some gifts to unwrap and give all of you. So let's get started. Got one here from Wally. I'm old have two successful residential home service businesses debating whether to get into lawn care as our current client demographic seems to fit well tons of competition in here and in central New Jersey. But that does not mean there's still not opportunity for a well oiled machine. Like if there is a lot of competition it says that there is a lot of demand for the service. And so what I'm usually looking for is a growing population. I don't really look at the amount of competitors because the vast majority of them, 90% plus of them will not have a good website. So I can kill them there and then in terms of ranking and then there is the other, you know, small fraction of the, even the 10% that have a good website actually do professional service show up on time answer their phones 24, like answer their phones at all. And so it's really a matter of I look at the amount of competitors as like, oh, there's plenty of demand. I've just got to figure out how to carve a piece of that out. Bug out termite. I'm not a long guy here, but learn more about marketing side of things. Very similar to pest control. Yes, absolutely. Okay, cool. Let's go ahead and go to the phone. Next caller is from 985. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey, this is Cody Graber with Trinity Tree llc.
Hey Cody, how you doing?
Good. So the question I have for Mike is when would renting a vehicle, not leasing, when would renting a vehicle be better than purchasing a new vehicle? If it's short term, yeah.
How short term are we talking? Like a couple days or a week or two or a couple months?
What are you looking at, six months to a year?
Yeah. Like if, if for example, I had a contract that I knew was only going to last six to 12 months, I might consider renting a vehicle. I would bake it into the pricing of that contract knowing that at the end of that six to 12 months, I don't need the vehicle and I don't want it sitting on the books. The fixed expense for insurance I have to restore it for after that, et cetera, or have excess capacity in the business after that contract is completed. So the only time I would usually do it short term is if I know for a fact that I am not going to need that piece of equipment in the future. Otherwise, what I would recommend is grow to capacity, get enough money in the bank account so that you can expand once you get that piece of equipment using marketing to be able to fill it up and use it consistently. You could also look at it as like instead of renting a vehicle for 12 months, which is going to cost you an arm and a leg if you do that. If you're going to spend 12 months on renting a piece a truck, I would also set aside just some money. Hey, I, I know I'm going to need X amount in marketing to basically fill this truck up after this contract to ensure that I actually fully utilize this piece of equipment. But like right now, are you looking at a contract that's going to be like a 6 to 12 month stint, Cody.
So it's not a contract, it's month per month. Right now all my work vehicles are down and rather than spending 12,000 to fix old vehicles, just looking at something short Term, Yeah, to get the work done because I have bigger financial purchases that want to finance to help production go up within the true service.
Yeah, like if you're, if you're looking at a condo that's month to month renting might actually make sense because what you don't want to do is go buy or lease or get into debt for a truck and then literally two months into the contract they just drop you. And so renting in this case actually might make sense, especially assuming that this contract is lucrative enough to actually make sense of spending the extra. Probably, I would imagine 2, 3000, probably 1500, $2000 a month for renting the vehicle. Also keep in mind there is liability associated with the fact that you're renting a vehicle and if it gets damaged, you know, there is liability and there's insurance issues that could potentially rise to this. And if you damage it, like your insurance alone on a rental vehicle is especially, they know you're using it for commercial, could get extremely expensive. Like you might be able to go get a truck or a, you know, some sort of a vehicle for rental. But if you tell them that you're using it for commercial and you're using it for tree service immediately it's going to go up in terms of the liability insurance because they know what's going on. They know you're going to be around trees and heavy equipment, et cetera. And so I'd be careful about this because a lot of times if you don't disclose it and then you go, you, you rent the vehicle and then you go, it gets damaged, you know, tree chipper rolls into it, a tree falls on top of et cetera, you might actually be in a worse position then. So from a liability perspective, like I feel obligated to tell you to keep that in check. Next caller from 31 3. Welcome the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hi Mike, how are you? Thank you so much for the landscape business course coming out for free tomorrow. Can't wait to watch all those videos and everything. I've been watching every video you probably ever uploaded. I just had a few questions. So I got like a pretty extensive like marketing plan coming up for the spring I'm doing. I have like 10, 000 flyers I want to pass out and I was wondering, like, how long does it usually take to pass those out if I have like a electric scooter and everything? I know it sounds dumb, but I thought you were doing that too. Like how long can I estimate to pass all those out?
Yeah, it really Depends on the, the neighborhood. Because if you have a cookie cutter neighborhood, you could easily get a hundred plus out per hour. Now if you're, if you're not doing the electric scooter, if you're walking slower, etc, you might be more on that 50-60 per hour and they have longer driveways, etc, but easily you can do over 100 per hour. Especially if you're walking quickly, you're using an electric scooter. Like all those things add up. And ultimately, when it comes to door hangers, assuming you're not, assuming you're canvasing, just putting them out instead of knocking on the door and actually talking to people, you can dramatically increase your results by simply increasing the speed at which you put them out and so optimizing where you put them in your bag, how many you're holding. If you have like instant pricing ones, I'm gonna have like two different prices. I'm not gonna write a new one for every single job because I can just get so much more out if they're just two prices only, like small and large. And so I would say somewhere between the realm of 50 to 150, depending on the sense the centrality, like how localized all of the, the properties are, and then also just your setup in terms of speed, how you have everything packaged, et cetera.
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. And I, I had one more question. Like, I like two more questions. What? I feel like it'll be like about a 1 to 3% response rate. I know.
What, so 1 to 3%. Is that what you're kind of shooting for?
Yeah. For the response rate.
Yeah.
Like for mowing me.
Yeah. Like the only time I've ever seen 1 to 3% and like, especially in the higher end of that is in the dead heat of spring rush, like the most high demand time. If you get 1%, I'd be pretty thrilled. That means basically every hour you're getting a new lead that's really, really, really good. So I would not expect 2 or 3% unless you are literally in the one to two weeks where the grass is just taking like an absolute tear every three to four days. It probably needs cut. That's the only time I've ever seen where, where a 2 or 3% response rate comes up. If you can do 1%. Usually the math is so on your side because if you pay someone, let's just cut 25, 30 bucks an hour with commissions, et cetera, and taxes to put out door hangers, you're basically getting leads for 30 to 40 bucks. And that's. I would do that all day long. I would keep pumping money into that if you're trying to grow. But yeah, hope that answers your question.
Nice, nice. And also just one more. How big of a service area, like should I be shooting for? So like the city I'm in currently is like about 100,000 population, but the surrounding cities are probably like 60 to like 80. Like how big of a service area should I focus on? I'm just starting.
Yeah. Ultimately, when it comes to service area, the smaller the better. The fastest way to grow your business in terms of top line revenue is add more services and add more service area. And so because of that we always go after adding more services and adding more service area, we keep expanding how far we're willing to travel because. Because it's the easiest and fastest way to grow revenue. It's also the least profitable. Cause the further out you have to go, the more windshield time there is. The less your guys can make on pay for performance. The more gas and fuel you use, the more wear and tear in your vehicles. The list just keeps going on. Same thing with services. It's like, well, if I just add one more service, it's simple, it's easy. You know, we're already at the property. Yes, you're right. But again, that's another thing you need to train employees on. That's another sop you've got to create. That's another thing your office staff has got to be trained on. And you create more and more bottlenecks by adding more service area and more services in the business. And so the thing I'm always thinking about is how do I take a one mile radius or a two mile race and just boil the ocean? Because if I can take a one mile radius and I have 100,000 people, like you have plenty of opportunity to grow a big business. So the reason I say is because like we built to almost $1 million in annual revenue in Blaine, Washington. You can look it up B l a I n E. It's like six or seven thousand people population, but I was able to hit every single house for like 1000 bucks. With every door, direct mail, I was able to get in the local newspaper, full page, like $800. And so everyone knew who I was. Even though I had 1, 2 and 3 trucks when I was first getting started. For a few thousand dollars, I was just pummeling like facebook ads all the time. And so you're able to get way better penetration. I would rather boil the puddle than trying to Go after the ocean. And so even 100,000 people in my mind is too many to go after. I would be much more centralized and focus on, you know, 2,000, maybe 3,000 homes that you really want to go after. They're your ideal customer. Because if you get inside that market and you have door hangers and you have yard signs and you're knocking on the door and you're running Facebook ads in this small area, all of a sudden they start to see you everywhere. And you actually get the benefits of brand awareness instead of just direct response marketing. Brand awareness being that they think of you when they think of your service without you having. Having to see an ad. And it's only achieved by you constantly touching them. And the easiest way to touch someone more frequently is either A, spend way more in marketing or B, just go after a smaller market, a smaller area. And so this is why, like, in Blaine, everyone knew how I was. They thought I had like 10, 15 trucks. When reality, it was simply a function of like, I do not. I do not market outside of this small area. Let's go to the next caller. I might have accidentally set this up where only 10 people can get in here in the call queue. So be patient. The call queue. I will get to you. Next caller is from 951. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey, how's it going, brother? This is actually Joey with bug out, termite and pest control.
Hey, Joey, how you doing?
Pretty good. Awesome. Yeah, I've been following you for a little while and I really appreciate all the education and stuff you put out there, man. It really helps. Going into my second year and I am trying to three exit from what I did this year. And there's a couple things that I know would help me that I struggle with. And reviews is one thing. Like, I got 2020 this year. I wanted to get 100 like everybody else, obviously. And it's funny, is like, you get people that are like amazing customers or even return customers. And, you know, it's just one of those things, I'm horrible about it too, is actually leaving that person to review, you forget or whatever. And I'm like starting to wonder if I need to do an incentive thing for all of my reviews and how to go about doing that through Facebook, Google, that kind of thing.
Yeah. So there's a couple things you can do. One, you could do an incentive. I would be careful about saying, hey, if you give me a review, I will give you something. What I would probably recommend doing is like, you just can't ask for a five star review. What you want to do is like if you give me a review there's a benefit and then their review could be a one star and I still give them the benefit. I would also say what you can do is for example tap into something other than just an incentive like if you're like hey I'll give you a gift card or whatever it's like most people aren't going to go out of their way for that and usually their reviews aren't that great. What I would recommend doing for example is saying hey, for every review I get I'm going to be putting $50 towards a community outreach project. I'm going to put that money towards giving that away to the local area of overgrown lawns or a community project. Everyone that leaves a review we're putting that money all towards that and I'm going to match it on top of that. So $50 from you, $50 from me. You don't have to put anything in. I just need to review and that money will go towards something good that might work. You can do where it is a function of really just making sure from an automations perspective you have this set up so when a customer gets.
They'Re happy with their service or even if they just pay like an automatic payment to an invoice should just trigger off to them an email saying hey are you happy with or satisfied with the service? And what we do is we just have a picture of yes and no. They click on yes it goes directly to Google Reviews. If they click no it goes directly to leaving us feedback on a form. Now all of that to say like we're actually doing this exact same thing in Copilot we're in the rate us page if they do four stars or less on their feedback it just opens up a text box where they fill that in. If they click 5 stars it immediately will just go to Google Reviews. So I would just automate it number one and then number two is anytime you're doing a walkthrough I would literally have like we have it on our business cards in the back, a QR code and I would have it on your iPad or on your phone just like hey I'm really thankful. I really appreciate usually this like highest point of activation for review is after you've completed the service and they're happy you just finished the walkthrough they're super excited. Especially one time projects even you could do this on first time mo's if that's what you're doing or you're in pest control, right Joey?
Yeah, yeah.
So anytime there's like a pretty good transformation or you're doing a walkthrough of a property and there's been a big change, I just literally make sure it's super. Like it's part of your process to ask for a review and you could even just tie in like hey, in order to get. We actually come back to your property in one month, it's gonna be a free inspection. Assuming that you leave us a review and tell us how we did on your service. So something you could tie the incentive also just around a follow up service. A lot of times like we would look. You would look at that as probably customer service is like, hey, if there's a problem a month later I'll come back. I would tie that into the estimate or even in the walkthrough process like hey, if you leave us a review, we actually come back one month no matter what just to do an inspection and ensure the quality is still high.
Yeah, that's a really good. I actually really like the idea you had about making a go towards something because one issue we have is bed bug treatments for people that are low income because it is expensive. I'm actually one of the cheaper people to do it, but it's still really expensive for people to afford. That actually like that idea. I can try to promote that. And yeah, a lot of my customers are, you know, return customers and even still they forget to get on Google or leave me a review, I'll text it to them. It's in their, their email receipts. But I do like that idea. Maybe I can start pitching that more that it's gonna actually it will help people because I've been trying to figure that out as far as like some people have like GoFundMe and stuff for that same thing other other pest control companies. So that's a great idea. I should definitely, definitely going to attack that. And the only other quick question I was going to ask you was what do you think about storefront locations? Like how much, you know, is that traffic going to really bring in if I get a storefront office? Because there's a few spots here in my small town where I'm like, man, if I was there with a sign, how much more is that going to bring me in? On top of, I've actually adopted your instant door hanger quote thing too. So I'm going to. This can be a first year. I try those. But just wondering, you know, what a storefront really Bring in as far as, like, extra traffic.
Yeah, like a storefront for a home service business usually doesn't bring a lot of traffic. And what will bring the traffic in is the sign. And so what you can usually do is just negotiate with a business owner that has the property or the location you want to get a sign on their property. For example, if you went to a strip mall or a multifamily, like apartment complex and said, hey, I want to put a sign up next to the highway, I will do all of your pest control for free indefinitely. As long as that sign is there, you'll get just as much exposure from that sign as if you would go pay 1500, 2000, $3000 a month for a retail space. And trust me, you're walking traffic from that. You would be lucky to get one or two a week. Like, there's just hardly any traffic for home services when you have a physical space for services. If you're selling other products, like, if you were like, hey, what? We're going to open up a line of where we sell traps and bait and other pest control products. That becomes a conversation of probably getting several people in their day, and then you try to upsell them from the product into the service. That could make some sense. I could, I could see, I could get on track with that one. But in terms of actually having a storefront just for the sake of marketing, I think if you spend that 2, 3 grand on rent, then you have triple net, then you have utilities, then you have Internet, then you have the fact that you're going to have to have it manned, like you're going to have someone there. If you don't, then it's useless. So by the time you add all this up, you're literally probably talking about five to $7,000 a month in fixed expenses. And that doesn't probably include labor. Like, if you have someone there all the time, you're looking at 10, $15,000. And so now all of a sudden it's like, well, if you spent three, $400 a day on Facebook and Google leads or Google Ads, would you get more traffic and lead flow to your website? And the answer usually is yes. Next caller is 91 8. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey, how's it going, Mike? This is Walter from Walter's Lawn Service.
Hey, Walter, how you doing?
I had a question. I'm doing good. We went through the copilot where we kind of went through the whole year and one or three years. So I ended up removing some of our services like, like French drains and like fire pits and like we used to sub out sprinklers. But we do get a lot of. One of the things that we're not doing is fertilization weed control. We get a lot of phone calls. Even in December we had about a couple handfuls of just realization weed control. But we always pass those on. Do you think it'd be a good idea to offer that now that we got rid of some of the other things that were kind of taking up a lot of my time and it would be easier upsell to my current customers and future customers?
Yeah. The big question is the issue I have with adding more services is if the demand for that service is the same as your core service. So if you're doing landscaping and lawn care and that's your core thing, by adding fertilization weed control, which I'm a fan of, the problem with it is that the demand for that service is the exact same as when everyone else is calling for mowing and other landscaping services. The only time I personally want to add any service to my business is if I am filling in the off season. So if I am making sure that it's a demand curve that is outside of my core service because otherwise this is what's going to happen. You're just simply going to create more excess capacity throughout nine months out of the year because you're going to have to staff up for this extra boom of spring rush that happens already. And so you're already overstaffed, you're already over equipped in terms of trucks and equipment for the spring rush peak. By adding another service that has that exact same demand curve, you just make it, you just make it even that much more demand. And so I see most of the time when people do this, yes, it will increase revenue again. Adding more services will always increase more revenue. And it's easy to be like, well, people are asking for it, I should offer it. It's just like sitting there, free revenue. But by adding complexity to the business, you are going to have more trucks, more equipment, more insurance, higher levels of training required for your office staff, for your team out in the field, certifications, licensing, insurance, all this stuff starts to mount. And what you're doing is, all you're doing is compounding your spring rush to where you have to buy one more truck, you have to get one more employee and that's going to add to the excess capacity for 8, 9 months of the year when you're not in spring rush. And so I would personally Ask, like, do you think you can grow to your goal of 800,000 next year without fertilization, weed control? If the answer to that is yes, I would not add it now. What I would probably say is if down the road you're in profit mode and I know your situation more acutely, Walter, because of the onboarding copilot. So, like, I would say if you hit 800,000 without it now, it becomes a matter of, okay, I'm going to go into profit mode. I'm going to raise prices and all my mowing, all my recurring services, and then I'll add the fertilization, weed control and make it super profitable from day one. Because I don't need it to grow. I'm just going to add it as a supplementary service because I enjoy it, because customers are asking for it. And more importantly, the reason I sometimes give a green flag to this one is customers require you to do that in order to get their mowing. But I genuinely believe, like, you've grown the business so quickly, I would not. I don't think you're going to need this service to get to 800,000. And so adding it's just going to add more complexity and is ultimately a distraction from the core services.
Okay, perfect. Then I'm probably just going to try to hit my goal first and then see where I'm at and then see if that's a good option to add it in the future.
Awesome. You're the man. Take care, Walter. All right, next caller is coming in from 417. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Mike, can you hear me?
I can. How you doing?
Hey, good. This is Jesse Edwards in Springfield, Missouri.
Hey, Jesse, I saw you signed up for Bluetooth Summit. Let's go.
Yes. That's awesome.
We've really turned it around.
I saw that. Good job, man. You crashed it.
Thank you so much.
Yes, my question is we have, you know, we bought a lot of or all of our trucks have just been deals that I found over time. And I. I mean, like, they're just getting up there in miles. And the truck market, as you know, is used truck market is terrible now, but it is what it is. And I want to look at introducing.
You know, debt, like, as in truck payment. But it's like just like a scary thought. And I don't want my profits to go down. We're 24 profitable at the moment and from doing, like, research and asking other guys, you know, once you start getting closer to 1 million, we're right around 750 it's harder to stay profitable. But I'm trying this to just get it through my mind. Like, for one, I'm gonna have to have these payments, I'm gonna have to have trust. But I'm also looking at like doing the Isuzu route.
So I guess my question is, is like, how do I, how do I fit those payments into my, into my, like, you know, into my numbers and make it make sense so, and stay profitable.
So. So why not keep doing what you're doing? Because 24% is good. Is it just a matter of like, hey, you got older trucks, you now have the money. It's like, do I go upgrade the trucks, like, or are you trying to get more trucks? Is it more trucks or upgrading the trucks? Kind of the main question, really.
Upgrading them. They're, you know, we've been salting and plowing and then some of them are only two drives, two wheel drives. And it's like, it's really hard to, I mean, taking out your fleet can make a huge difference. I mean, I've thought about going your route, but it's like with where we live and the size of our account, it's really served us well to, you know, have a 20 foot trailer with two 60 inch mowers and a 36.
Totally.
So that our routes, we can always, you know, fit them in instead of driving to two sides of town twice.
Yep. Yeah. Like, ultimately what you're going to do the math on is like, okay, 20, 24. Looking at your P now, like, what, what? Like, I'm not asking the question. Just like I'd be looking at how much did I spend on repairing the trucks. Right? Because I would imagine on your fleet of several trucks, you're probably spending 15,000 on like, okay, this motor went out, this, this, you know, whatever cylinder, it just goes on. Right? So if you're paying 15, $20,000 a month now, it's a matter of, okay, a year. If you're paying that now all of a sudden becomes where you can spend two or three grand a month and basically break even. The thing is, you're taking on debt, so you're adding risk to the business. And so I think at 24% profit margin, at 750,000, how I'd be making sense of this is instead of trying to get to a million, I would personally be like, okay, I'm gonna raise prices. And by raising the price, I'm going to pay for these trucks, because if you raise prices on all of your mowing accounts by just even 15% you'd immediately be able to afford brand new trucks for the entire fleet on the payments. And so the leverage at 750,000 that you have with a price increase is so substantial. And so I think you're in a really good spot to raise prices. Like I saw you send the financials over the media team, they sent it over to me and like, like my first inclination. Yeah, now it's time to raise prices. And I, my immediate thought was like, I knew the trucks were older and like you will be able to afford for literally probably what, 30, probably 4 grand a month in payments. You'd have a brand new fleet of exactly what you want. If you raise prices by 15, a lot of. If you raise prices by 15%. This is how you make sense of this. If I do this price increase, I get new trucks. All of a sudden people want to raise price. Like I would do that. And then it also adds a lot of value to your brand. It add value to your existing customers. And you would you pitch the price increase based upon like all these additional things you're doing for the customer. And I genuinely believe less than 10% of people would leave.
Yeah.
And that's why you market to fill in who leads because you raise prices the most time those people come back and for the listeners, like who is listening, like I went from 480 to 750.
Yeah.
And I'm doing the same amount of customers. But it's. I raised, let's see, I mean probably 20 of my customers.
Yep.
And that's really the big change. But I had one other question. If it's allowed.
Go ahead.
It's about bas. I've got two and we're just starting out. And it's kind of you. You knew I had Holly, I had my brother trying to do it. I realized over time that I probably hired the. I could have hired the wrong people, but I didn't have the systems in place.
I guess my question is like, what I'm scared of is.
Like being the face. And you talked about that and it's like I've been really good about, you know, being the one on the. I did everything this year. But it's like how did that transition go for you? Whenever you were the one on the phone, the face, you were answering everything.
I guess it's creating the system. Right. And then the VA runs the system.
Yeah. Like anything you can do to simplify the. The business is going to allow a virtual assistant or an office person to operate much easier. And so I've always thought about in terms of creating systems. It's like I just, before I even think about creating a system, I wanna simplify it and standardize it. If I don't do that, I can't expect anyone to do the same job or even 80% of the job that I did. And so if it's like oh man, this is gonna take forever to create a system around it, then just cut it out. Especially when you're at 7:50. If you watch my recent content, I want to be growing around that 7, 750 marker and then just raising prices and optimizing. I don't want to buy more trucks, I don't want to hire more people. And so I can make a lot of sense over the next 24 months in this business by getting new trucks and hiring an office person and paying them well by simplifying the business and raising prices. So if I simplify the business that is cut services out that are requiring me to be there, they're requiring a lot of hand holding by an admin person. And you're always on the phone with these type of contracts or customers. I'll get rid of them. I'm going to raise prices to my existing customers so I can upgrade the trucks which also reduces the amount of admin. Because it's very difficult for an admin and office person to schedule and route when the trucks are constantly breaking down, they're inconsistent or they're not the same. Like by having five different types of trucks which I'm a fan of to get started and grow the business. Like just get what you can, get them used, you get out there and hustle. But as the business gets to profitability, if you can standardize the trucks and standardize the equipment and it makes it much easier to hand off to va. And so in my opinion this is a matter of okay, let's raise prices immediately, get more steady trucks. Cause the ones that currently are falling apart, let's get that squared away. We could easily pay for it with just a price increase. I also think that price increase would be enough also to pay for this admin person and paying them well like we have at the at our command center over the past few years. Increased pay base pay by more than 50%, added medical benefits, added 401k, added PTO in this the past four to five years and the quality of your candidate does go up and how long they stay with you goes up. And so like this year will be our first year going to spring rush where like 90 plus percent of our team in the office has been here for more than a year. They're not new employees. Like I don't even think we're going to be doing new training because everyone stayed. And so there's definitely benefits of paying people more and giving them the incentives and giving them the bonuses. And so especially when it comes to office and admin, if you have one or two people, if you, especially if you have one, they have so much inherent locked up knowledge of your business, it's scary. And so the only reason I would ever want to give someone the keys to my business, if I know those keys don't leave with them when they walk away. That's why I want standards, systems, procedures and simplification because I know if they walk out the door, I can quickly give those keys to someone else and they can pick up where they left off. And that is the I see over and over again at that $800,000 to $2 million marker, you have one all star in the office that juggles all the balls of admin. And as soon as they leave, no systems were created. And therefore when they leave, the business will really cut in half because now everything just falls back on the owner and they can't, they don't have the systems to give it off to someone else. It's a very dangerous thing. So there are three gifts up here on the screen. Number one, number two and number three. And in the spirit of the holiday season here at Christmas, we're going to be opening these up over the next little bit. But first let's get to the callers. We will come back to these questions or these presents and we will open up them one at a time and they will cost you nothing. But let's go ahead and go to the next caller which is from 8, 4, 7. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey, this is Pete. I have a landscaping business in northern Illinois and we do about five, we did about 550 this last year. This is my fourth year taking it like seriously. And basically I'm at the point where I'm trying to figure out like the, I guess, GM role for somebody to take off like my, some of the tasks off my plate. I do have like a full time admin person dealing with all like the paperwork and calls and invoices, but I'm kind of trying to figure out a, how to pay them and like what some of their tasks should be like the GM person. So, so I can just kind of focus on selling and growing the business.
All right, so next year, like 2025. What's your revenue target?
See, I think if we don't get this person, we'll be capped out at the same amount, like 550, 600,000 because I was working all spring rush for seven days a week for like three months.
Right.
But if we do get the, if we do get the person, I think we can get maybe 800,000, I think.
So this is, this is the part I want you to think about. And I'm not dissing this idea, I'll come back to it. But this is what I want you to think about is at 550 going to 800,000, that's $250,000 in additional revenue. Now if you said basically that's going to be unlocked by having this gm, keep in mind that GM is going to cost you. By the time you pay them like a base salary even and little of incentive and taxes, etcetera, you're looking at $75,000. And so what you want to be careful of here is you're going to pay $75,000 to unlock $250,000 worth of revenue. And, and so the profit of that $250,000 in revenue will likely be completely absorbed by the extra overhead of having this general manager. And so I would first off, just make sure that you're aware of that. Like it's not going to be a, this is not going to be a cash flowing year if you do this strategy. Because literally if you're, let's just say you're 20% profitable or 15% profitable even all of the profit of 250 is the 75,000 you're paying this general manager. And so the reason that is is because usually from 500,000 to 700,000 a business, unless it has been in profit mode and been raising prices consistently, cannot afford two overhead people. Because by the time you include your salary and his salary, all of a sudden we're at $150,000 in just overhead costs. And on a $600,000 business that is 25%. And so I would be very careful with adding this person if unless you have the cash reserves required to grow to the 750, but then you got to throw it into profit mode or grow to 1point million. Like I can just keep growing with this person. And so as long as that's like established then I can answer the question more about like what's their role. But like based on what I said, there is any response or like any follow up on that.
So I'm Kind of confused on like so if I understand like they're going to cost like roughly 75 grand. My kind of like main question about it would be like what task would I have them take over for me?
Yeah.
If I was going to focus mainly the sales aspect of it and then like if we could like, if, if I could just focus on sales, I don't know if I can grow that fast, you know, to a million five, you know. Yeah, but I mean we do have the capacity for, for it. I think this year we were like, so we did like 550 and we're, we took, took home about 100 profit after paying being the admin person. So.
We have that as like cash reserves. So I, I don't know if that would be enough to get it to go to you know, 1.5. We do have like four trucks and trailers and basically our main services are landscaping and then lawn maintenance. So I don't know like a good.
Strategy like assuming you have that much cash on hand, that's great. I think I would probably give you the green light to stay in growth mode. I would probably say go get that person and then I would grow that 750 this year. But then I would probably the next year throw it into profit mode, raise my prices the next year, maybe do 800 or 850 but be very profitable on it and then be in a good cash position to make that next big jump which is probably going to be hiring a full time office person. Now in terms of what they do, this is what I would personally do. This is what I did seven, eight years ago is like I wrote down every single thing I do in the business. Scheduling, answering the phone, answering the email, unlocking the gate in the morning, every little thing. And then I just literally put them in a three buckets. Sales, operations, admin. And so the eventual $1.5 million version of this business looks like you probably is doing sales, having an operations manager and then having someone in the office that is admin. And so I'm going to build around that. So right now what's going, what's going to look like if you're going to focus on sales is everything operationally. And admin is going to be handed off this general manager, operations manager, whatever you want to call it. I'd probably call them a general manager if they're doing admin and operations and you're doing sales. And so I would be basically everything that I put into those two buckets of operations. Admin would be their job description. These are the tasks you do every day, These are the tasks you do every week. These are the tasks you do every month. And you would already know what those are based upon. What do you currently do now for the business? And what I'd probably do is literally just have a on your notes app as you're going throughout your day, like, oh, I just opened up the gate, bup bup bup bup. That's probably going to be for the admin or operations person, depending on when they start in the morning. Okay, I locked up at the end of the day. Okay, who's the last person now? Is that the gm? Is that the admin person? Like I would just start creating the buckets of everything you do and then putting them in those three different buckets and then you realizing that the only things you're going to do as a salesperson are the things in the sales bucket. So follow up calls, going out and visiting customers, all of those aspects of sales. Even if you wanted to throw marketing in there, you could. That's how I would kind of delineate between the roles and then when I hire them I would have an exact checklist of everything they're responsible for. And it wouldn't be a guessing game of like I am I, should I be doing this? Should I not be doing this? It's like these are the three distinctions and categories of the business. Sales, operations, admin, I. E. Getting the work, doing the work and greasing the wheels for the work to get done. Next caller is coming in from 984. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey Mike, I hope you had a fantastic Christmas with the family yesterday.
Absolutely.
Okay, so I have a question for you.
I am looking at potentially my long term goal is I would like to get into the pest control industry. I have a couple of years experience with it but you know, the licensing and stuff will definitely take some time and it's going to take a while to build up a customer base for it. But I currently have a, a lawn care business. It's just a solo operator truck, me and a couple of helpers doing about 150 or so mowing and weed control. Fertilization is super profitable now when going into the winter. I've been trying the winter services and the leaf cleanups. However, I'm still losing money on that and I was thinking about completely cutting out like the wintertime work and dropping all my expenses down to practically nothing and just focusing on working on doing like the pest control licensing stuff in the wintertime and the weed control stuff, you can do that still through the wintertime here. So I was wondering if that's a viable plan or if I should strictly charge anything that's not mowing and we control fertilization an hourly rate.
I was just wondering what your thoughts on that would be.
Yeah, so I, I'm always very careful about thinking that another service is going to solve the business problems because yes, chemical application has a higher gross profit margin. There are also, there's more liability, there is a lot of competition and there are really good marketers in that as well. And so like I, I just want to, like, I'm not downing that. I like the pivot, you know, if that's something you're more passionate about, if you, if you want to be doing that more long term. But I would just put as a massive asterisk that thinking that you're going to switch services and going to fix all the problems, I would just be cautious over that. Even the fact that you have 150,000 in revenue, have a couple of helpers, like if they're part time, you're probably making decent. If you're, if they're basically working full time, you have three people out in the field, that's going to be a very low margin service. You, you probably have a lot of room to raise prices. And so I would personally not get into the weed control fertilization game unless you have a dialed in website. You have great marketing because there are great marketing companies in the fertilization weed control because of the high margins and because they can afford a much higher customer acquisition cost. And so I think it's more a matter of like, what do you want from the business? If you're like, I'm just more passionate about the pest control. I'm more passionate about that sort of thing. And I want long term that to be the business. Cool, go for it. But I'd be careful about thinking that it's going to solve all the problems of the business because there are issues, not issues, but there are challenges with that industry as well. There's challenges with that competition base and the people that are playing in that game are going to be much more sophisticated than Billy Bob and one helper that's doing lawns because he doesn't even have a website. And so I would just add caution around it. But is your question mostly like, should you pivot to fertilization or what's your kind of question? If you could summarize it.
Oh, so my question is, I'M I'm licensed in the weed control and fertilization already. Okay. I've been having a lot of customers requesting that work from me, and so I got licensed and I'm offering that now. It's really profitable and working out very well. But in the long term, I would like to bring back my structural pest control knowledge and get back into that as a completely different business. So I was thinking about using my lawn business as a bridge into the pest control industry, since I understand it's going to take a while to build up.
Yeah.
And stuff.
My question, my question on this is. Yeah, like my question. This is always the same. That is, if you're at $150,000 in annual revenue and you're starting to add other services that are profitable and you're going to switch to another, like structural pest control and think about doing a different, essentially a different business or different brand or like a branch of your current company. If you deployed that energy, time and money that you're going to spend on this new venture and you just put it into what you're currently doing, usually the returns are actually better. If you just focused on the current thing, like doing more and better instead of new usually pays off in Spades. And so 150,000 in revenue, I don't think you've addressed your total addressable market. I don't think you've tapped out your market for those services. And if you're adding services to them that are more profitable, like the spraying or the weed control or the pest control for them, instead of going to structural weed, structural pest control, I'd probably just keep doing what you're currently doing because there's way more total addressable market than $150,000 in your market. And so this is a slippery slope because what you can easily do, like I bet if you add structural pest control, you'd probably next year do 300 grand, right. You do 150. You probably 220,000 in your current business and like 80,000 in the new thing, because as you say, like, it's going to take a little bit of time to grow. I also believe you could do 300,000 if you spent all of that time and energy in the first one. And I think it'd be easy to find people, employees. Your marketing would be all on one thing. Your website would be on one thing. And so you can make it where you make the same amount of revenue, but simplified services and less services is going to eventually lead to much more scalable business. Because I'm mostly thinking about, as you grow this business, how do you pass it along to an employee? Not pass it along in terms of ownership, but how do you train an employee? Is it easy to get a third, fourth, fifth person once they go full time? And so instead of you creating this Frankenstein of $100,000 business here and $100,000 business here and$100,000 business here, just focus on one that does 300,000 and has employees and you can train them up easier. And so I'm not against the idea of doing structural pest control. Like, I think it's a great business. There's a lot of really good businesses. You could do concrete, you could do building decks, you could do fence staining, you could do Christmas lights, you could. There's so many services and almost always the grass will look greener on the other side. It's simpler, it's easier, it has better demand year round. And when you get into those markets, you start realizing, oh, look, there's different margins. The customer acquisition cost is very different. And so I like the idea of a supplementary service before you do a new one. And so if you're already doing mowing, etcetera, I like the idea of doing like the lawn weed control or fertilizer or pest control because it's serving your existing market. If you go to structural pest control, you have no crossover and you do create basically two different businesses. And so that's what I would be careful of. I'm not. Hopefully I didn't come across too negative, but that is the reason I almost always am pushing in that direction. Next call is coming in from four. Whoa. We got a lot of feedback. I don't know if I'm. Oh, there we go. Can you hear me? Okay? We got too much noise.
Can you get somewhere quieter?
Hey, Mike. Adam Mitchell, Mitchell Lawn Landscape down here in Joplin, Missouri.
I have a couple questions.
In regards.
To.
Growing a location to the point of handing it off to a gm.
Okay.
And then. And then starting a new location. We are, we.
Are at 37 profit right now. Let's go about 430,000 gross. I'm about.
Okay.
And.
We. I'm like an virtually like the octopus you talked about, except maybe a little more tangled up than that and everything.
Okay.
And I think that's how we were able to get to where we are now.
Right.
We. We have about probably $250,000 of mowing. And then we did landscaping, mostly upsell for those customers. I have two employees currently working full time.
We're still doing leaves and then we were. We were between two and five employees for the year. But I don't have a lot of. Don't have a lot of systems in place.
And I have a key employee who's moving on this next year who was like my second, a second me who was helping things run. And I just don't know.
At this stage. How do you get over the bridge from being mixed up in everything to having someone who can run at least the mowing side?
How do you get out of the field? Is mostly my.
Question. And then when, from that point, do you have the ability to start another location?
Yes. Like a general manager is going to be what everything hinges on in terms of the profitability and success of a location. So finding them, that's a different topic in terms of how do we actually build the business in a way where we can actually hand it off to a general manager. That's what we want to address here. Because everyone wants to work on their business instead of in the business. They don't want to work in the field. And I agree. This is how you grow the business, is how you are able to expand. This is how you're able to think of more of it as an investor in the business instead of that of an operator. I agree. That's what we should be doing. E myth says it all. The thing is, most businesses don't have enough systems to allow anyone else to be successful doing what you do. And so again, going back to like, what do you do every day? What makes the business 37% profitable is your juggling. And so either A, we need to reduce the number of balls, we need to reduce the number of things that we have to juggle every single day, simplify the business, etc. Or we need to make sure that the next octopus that comes along, I. E. The general manager, has extremely detailed SOP Standard operating procedures on how to juggle all the balls. There's only two ways to make this easier. Improve the, improve the, the effectiveness of training the next octopus, or B, reducing the number of balls the octopus has to balance. And so I always go to the easiest one first, which is going to be reduce the number of balls. And that's going to be simplify and standardize the business. So I'm going to look at when I get contacted from my crew throughout the day and they're in a panic and I need to jump into the business. What are those things? I guarantee you 20% of the services you offer are creating 80% of the amount of times you get Dragged back into the field. And so if you're gonna hand off something like mowing, usually a little more simplified, I'd do the same thing. Okay. On these mowing jobs, which customers do I need to get rid of? Is it the ones that are way outside my service area? Is it the ones that have a certain size property? Is it a certain one on a certain side of town? Is it people that don't have full service? Is it the ones that don't do the weed control? They're always complaining. I'd be always thinking about, what are the customers? What are the services that, if I cut out that 20%, would make the job way easier for someone to come in and become the octopus. And so, again, if you think about yourself as the octopus, you just reduce balls or you figure out how to train an octopus better. I can do both of those by removing balls. So I do that first. Then once I say, okay, I've reduced my service count, I've reduced the amount of issues that happen throughout the day. I've reduced the number of employees that I need. I've reduced the amount of services that I offer and therefore the amount of training required to get an employee to being profitable. Once you've done that, now I start figuring out how do I standardize everything inside the business and. And make an SOP for a general manager. So how does an estimate get responded to? How do you answer the phone? How does an email go out? What does an estimate look like? What's the template for it? Like, you just start thinking about all the things you do throughout the day. It would be super helpful for almost every one of us. Every single day that you operate as an owner, just keep track of all the things you're doing. Because the question is, how do I focus on the growing the business is you usually let go of many of those things. Now, I don't think everyone should do that. From day one, if you're doing 150, 200,000 in revenue, you. You are not going to start being on this delegation quest of, like, all the 30, 40 things you do in the business. Like, oh, I should, like, I should have someone else do my marketing. I should have someone else answer the phone. I should have someone else do my email. I should have someone else open up the gate in the morning. No, you're in grind Mode. You're at 150,000. It's you and one other employee. Stay there. You've got to be in the business right now at that stage of business. But if you're at that 700,000, 800,000, you're starting to go from manager to architect. We have to step away from the building and actually start to analyze it. If you're at that stage and it's now a function of what are all the things I'm doing in the business and how do I hand those things off. So if we look at 0 to 200,000 as this is labor mode, laborer, like your job as owner is laborer, then as we go from 200,000 to 800,000, that's the role of a manager. Now as you get up against that 800,000, that's when I generally believe you're ready for a second location. And I generally want to make sure you're very profitable at that stage because the big overhead expense of a general manager stepping in is going to cost the business and they're not going to be as good at, at balancing all the balls as you as the owner are. And so that's where the 800,000 steps into. Then as the role of the owner being architect, you're doing multiple locations, you're potentially scaling up a different service. You're doing other things that are not in the business, operations every single day. And so I always think about those three different characters. A laborer, a manager and an architect. And the architect, the main job of the architect is to hand off things to a manager. And that manager will only be successful if you have simplified the business and standardized it and the effectiveness of the labor hinges on the manager. And so it's a trickle down effect that if you don't get that jump correct, you'll just constantly be burning through GMs over and over and over again. And it is absolutely a skill to be able to become the architect and hand things off to a general manager. Next caller is coming in from three three zero. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey Mike, this is Kaden. I spoke with you through Instagram about a Blue Collar Summit.
Let's go. How's it going?
Good. I had a question mostly about Blue Collar Summit. I know that you wanted us to print out our profit and loss statement.
Yes.
I was just wondering what else we should bring with us to Summit.
Yeah, so this is a great segue. Let's go. So by the way, if anyone signs up today and everyone has signed up in the past, you're going to get one of these jerseys that are custom. You're going to be aware at Blue Collar Summit and you're going to take it home with you. So you're going to get one of these. We got to have them sign up though, because we got to make the order here. So you got to sign up today. It's kind of like the last notice. But in terms of what to bring, we do need a printed off version of your P and L. And so there's nothing really else you need if you wanted to. Is it Kayden? Right?
Yeah. Cool. Kayden. So if you wanted to bring your balance sheet, you can. But in terms of the workshop on Friday, we just need to print it off P and L. The reason is because there's not going to be any phones or laptops on the workshop for Friday. And you'll see why there. Don't stress. Everyone that says like, oh no, don't stress. I'm going to make sure you're taken care of. But like we're not going to allow it. It's going to be very focused. There's going to be a lot of engagement during the workshop. And I need a print off copy of a P and L. Now if you have a general manager, I'd make a couple copies so they can stay engaged. Because the whole workshop will actually be built on top of certain elements of your P and L. So just your P and L. To answer your question, really it's just your profit and loss statement for 2024. If you can bring that. I would say if you want to be an overachiever, probably bring like 2023 so that you could kind of compare and contrast if you wanted to and then you could bring a balance sheet. But do print those things off and that should be all you need. Anything else on that note?
Okay, that sounds good. Also right now we run all of our management basically through QuickBooks looking to split switch into Copilot. Would that probably be the best time to do it right now?
Yeah, like in terms of, you know, if you're in QuickBooks now, I think QuickBooks and copilots are very different functions. QuickBooks is gonna be fantastic for running payroll, for doing your bookkeeping, making sure you have your profit and loss. I mean your financial statements, your balance sheet, all of that for taxes. Copilot is much more of a field management service and marketing engine. So like you can't send out bulk tax to all of your customers from QuickBooks. You can't route and dispatch your jobs from QuickBooks. And so Copilot is usually in addition to QuickBooks and we actually it's coming out here pretty soon. We're doing a one way Sync now with QuickBooks. I think it's as of next week, which is much better than the two way sync and so it reduces any sort of error coming back from QuickBooks. All of that to say.
I would highly recommend getting both field management software of any sort and then QuickBooks in addition for the bookkeeping, payroll and your taxes, making sure your balance sheet and your profit loss statement is in order. I think I do look at them as separate. So now Kaden brought up a very good point. That is, it is time to sign up for Blue Collar Summit, folks. Now can you see this? One second, let me be sure. All right, this is the jersey. It's super cool. Everyone that signs up today and backwards, if you've already signed up, you're getting one of these bad boys. But you got to sign up today because we gotta make the order for the rest of them. We're getting hundreds of these. But if you are coming to Blue Collar Summit, you're gonna get one of these jerseys for every ticket. So go to bluecollarsummit.com and get your tickets today. That's actually one of the gifts today. So let me go ahead. Oh, I can't. We're gonna open up the first two gifts below. So this gift right here and this gift right here, we're gonna open up right now. So let's go ahead and open up the first gift. And the first gift is landscape business courses now free. Alright, so landscapebusinesscourse.com is something I've been working on for seven, eight years and it's usually $600. It's now 100% free. So if you're looking to start your lawn care business, you're looking to grow it past a million. It is like the full recipe. I looked Yesterday. There's like 50 plus hours of content and you actually get to see me kind of like morph in the way I think about business because I have the original videos still on there and then I added to them. And so there's a bunch of recordings from Landscape Summit from previous years. Tommy Mello, Corey Ballard, a whole bunch of really great speakers that have been on the stage. I have those recordings in there as well. It's completely free. So that was yesterday. That was my first Christmas present that I wanted to share with everyone. It's completely free and I hope it'll serve you well. Now, the only thing I ask, the only thing I ask is you do one of two things. One, I would love to be able to see you actually taking the course. So if you could take a picture Tag me on Instagram, I would love that. And I'll probably give more things away if I can get some feedback. So on Instagram if you tag me, I will probably just share your post. But it helps me know that people are actually watching it. Thousands of people yesterday signed up for landscape business course once it became free. Let's go. Our goal of changing level of professionalism in the industry hinges on the education of the industry. And so in the past I needed to charge for it because we have now a full out media team. I think there's like 6, 7, 8, 8 plus people full time bringing on another person here in February. So like it's become a huge operation. Like the cost of the media team is over a million dollars a year and so well over that mercy, it's like 1.5. And so by the time we have equipment and gear and we travel to the turnarounds like it's expensive. And so I needed to have the course revenue in the past to essentially make sure we can break even. And you can talk to the media team like they know our financials. We, we break even every year. We just keep investing every dollar back into making better content for everyone. And so now though, between Augusta and Copilot and lawn care web design and home service web design, I can pay for that separately and so we don't need the revenue. And yeah, like there's a significant like hundreds of thousands of dollars that like I'm not going to get now. I'm okay with that because there's other areas everyone supported me so much in and like this is my way of giving back a little bit. So the content's there for free. That's landscape business. Whoop. Landscape businesscourse.com. all right, go check it out. It lays out all the different modules. There's a ton of stuff in there. It's completely free. All right, let's go on to the very next gift. And that is. We've already mentioned it. I just didn't have. I couldn't share this one without sharing the first one. So we got.
Blue collar summit. So this is not just for greens green industry because I believe there's a lot of really good crossover between industries and home services and you can learn a lot from them. So for example, I got a roofer coming out that does like a $10 million business and he's going to talk about yard signs and how they use it in roofing, but we can use it in lawn care landscaping. And so John Taffer is going to be there from bar rescue. He's going to start off the conference with a keynote. But if you want one of these bad boy jerseys, you just got to sign up to blue collar summit today. All right. We gotta make a big order for the rest of everyone coming in and so you gotta sign up today. So. Blue collarsummit.com the hotel is almost full. So like if you're watching this in a few days you, it might actually be full. But there is a discounted, I think $70, $80 off per night if you book it through blue collarsummit.com so I know like we filled our room block already and I don't know how many more rooms there are in that room block that they give us the discount. So highly recommend you get it. Now we got like three more weeks until conference. It will be the best conference we have ever had and it won't even be close. I'm really looking forward to it. All right, now we got a third. A third gift right here. Third gift. I don't even remember what it is. Let me think. Oh yeah, the software demo. Okay, real quick. So coming out early 2025, we got a bunch of stuff coming to copilot and I wanted to show you one part of it which is the estimates on the customer portal. So let me actually share my screen and I'll show you what, show what we have had in the past with copilot and then I will show you what it's now going to look like early in 2025. Let me just remove this real quick. So this is a quick demo. I wanted to show of some of the work we've been doing at copilot CRM. Now 2024 was a, was not fun. It was a bug. We went into bug hell. We, we spent the entire year rebuilding the infrastructure in the back end of copilot. As we head into January, you're gonna start seeing some really cool stuff come out. I cannot wait. The team has been completely overhauled. There's just a phenomenal group of engineers now. And all the time and energy we spent on the backend to stabilize things will now be deployed to more front end things that people are gonna see. Now the very first thing you're going to see is this change to the customer portal. Cause it actually touches your customer. And when we're going through and making changes throughout the software, we aren't just thinking about like how do we make it look nice. We were thinking about how do we fundamentally rethink the way that this works. And this one page Like I know it's coming so like it's a little difficult to just share this one part, but there's so much more that's just around the corner in Q1 of 2025. And so here we go. This is coming out first thing throughout January, February in 2025. I want to show you. This is the old way that an estimate would look inside of Copilot CRM. This is the way it currently looks in. If you send this to a customer, it looks fine. You can request changes, accept or decline, et cetera. But this right here, boom. Is what the new version and the completely redesigned version of the customer portal is going to look like. Just for estimates. That's all I'm showing right now. So if I go back to all estimates, you can see it's like a nice little rollover. I click view, there's my estimate. This is now from the customer's perspective inside of the customer portal. Now the thing that I always wanted is that when a customer declines an estimate, I want to know why. And so in the past you click decline like, oh, you declined. Well now when you click decline, it's going to ask you for the reason for declining either pricing, scheduling or frequency, service or other. Now down the road there will likely be offers tied to this to where if they do pricing, you can immediately offer them a discount, etc. But for now at least you're going to get an email notifying why they declined the estimate. And that's super important for you to be able to, especially trying to optimize for growth, reach out for a discount or be like, oh, you just have a problem with our scheduling on Tuesdays. Great, we'll put you on Wednesdays, like that's not a big deal or we don't want to wait five weeks. Great, maybe actually charge you 10% more, but we'll rush the order and we'll get through next week. These are the type of things you many times if you get declined, you don't even follow up. Like I bet less than 3 or 4% of people when a customer declines an estimate, follows up and asks why. And so this will do that for you. Another thing is like really focusing on the request changes part right here where they can give details as to hey, can we change this, can we bring the budget down, etc. Just a much cleaner interface, the ability to be able to see this. And on the right hand side we'll tell them right up front that the credit card is required. So when they click here to pay the Deposit because in this part, the deposit is 50% down on a $500 job. They click this. Now it's a completely redesigned payment module that's going to allow them to pay with obviously credit card and US bank account, but also Cash App, Google Pay, WeChat, as well as we're gonna be getting in Apple pay here as well. And so just a much more streamlined, smooth, redesigned, well thought out system for collecting payment and getting that information on file to be able to charge them automatically in the future. So just it looks better. And all I can say is this is the tip of the iceberg. I know it's kind of coming down the pipe. I've seen a lot of the designs and it's not just redesigned. This is the first step of what you're gonna see in the front end. But what we're doing as we go through each page of Copilot is rethinking what should this actually be doing? How does it make you more money? Ultimately, what makes you more money is getting deposits. It is getting credit cards on file. It is making sure that when someone declines an option, you know why, so you can follow up with them. If you're in growth mode and you have enough, if you have fewer estimates, you want to be following up on every single one of those and making sure that we, we really emphasize request changes. So these are just very small. I know these seem minor. There's so much more coming under the pipe. But this is the first thing that's going to be coming out and I wanted to share that with all of you today. All right, let's go ahead. We're going to jump back into some calls, but those are the three gifts I wanted to hand out today. This is the call in show number right here. If you have any questions, let's go ahead and jump right into it. Next caller. It looks like they're a local to me. Three, six. Oh, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. Oh, looks like you called already today. How's it going?
Hey, my name is Fernando. I appreciate you taking my call. I work as a mobile mechanic, so I may I just have a few questions. Sorry, go ahead. My first question is I currently make about 7,000 to 10,000 in revenue as a single operator. And my two questions are I want to grow my business as close as I can to 100,000. So I'm thinking about renting out an office space so I can have a Google location. Just so when customers search up a mechanic, I can show up on Google Maps. If that makes sense. And my second question would be how can I.
Increase my prices to be competitive but not as expensive as shops events.
Yeah, totally. So first question, in terms of getting an address on Google, I do recommend doing whatever you can to get an actual address so that on the maps it shows you in your local area. Highly recommend. So I would not go spend $1,500 or $2,000 a month on rent just to get that. But if you can sublease from someone, if you can split a shop space or an office with someone to get a physical address, it does pay dividends in terms of how do you separate yourself and a bit more price competitive. I just make it like your marketing message needs to be. I would suggest focusing on the difference between you and a shop because like you know the benefits from a cost perspective as well as from a.
Customer service perspective why they would choose you over a shop. And I would just emphasize everything on that and I would address the pain point of like are you tired of getting two to three times like two 300% markup on your your parts? Are you tired of waiting a week or two weeks? Are you tired of having to tow your vehicles to the shop? Like address? Those pain points is really what I would be focused on like on your website because that's really why someone would choose you over a local shop. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah.
Very cool.
Okay, that makes sense. And one last question, if you don't mind.
Go ahead.
So when it comes to the office space, I was kind of debating on getting something where it's like a those virtual offices, I'm not sure if you heard of them where you just pay like $99 a month, something like that. Would that be more beneficial than having to spend like you mentioned, go on 5050 at an actual shop location.
Yeah, it's definitely not a bad thing. Most of the time you can get into a Regis or other, you know, co working space, get a real address and that make that your office. I've seen sometimes they get declined on Google and it takes a little more re verification. So I've seen it work and seen it not. But it's definitely a better bet spending 100 bucks a month than going out and spending 1500 to get an address. Be very careful. I would say about one thing and that is making sure that that address is in your service area because from a Google Maps perspective you just won't show up if you're literally 30, 40, 50 minutes drive outside or worse yet a different city name or zip code so whatever your city name or zip code is, I want that to match my address with my actual service area. Next caller is coming from 8:05. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Hey, Mike, how are you?
Good. How you doing?
Good. Also. So I actually run a pool service company in California, and I watch your turnaround that you did with the COCRU pools over here, and I was seeing that a major problem that we have is that our prices are way too low for what we offer. As far as chemicals and that stuff goes.
I'm thinking about raising my prices 30 to $35, which I think is a big jump. But.
Pretty much my question is I'm stuck in the owner operator mode right now, where I'm making 25% profit, but that's with me doing a lot of the work, a lot of the repairs. Do you think that price increase would allow me to hire an admin route manager, or is 30, $35 too much of an increase and I'll end up losing way too many customers? I just kind of want to know since you've done worked with a lot of companies before and doing all those kinds of things.
Yeah. So first question is, what was your rev. What's Your revenue in 2024?
Revenue is 300. About 300,000.
Cool. Yes. You're in a tough spot. It's one of those spots where it's like you kind of need an admin, but you can't really afford it yet. Okay. And then my next question is, you say you're going to raise it by $35. What's the current price for that same treatment?
Right now we're around 170 average.
Is that per hour or per customer per month?
That's per customer per month.
Got it. So you're basically going to try.
I mean, after. After our chemical costs, we're probably at like 20. No, we're probably like 40 an hour once we account for all our customers. Yeah.
Okay.
Which I think is low.
You're very low. So basically, we're trying to go from 170 to 210 or so to 205. Okay. Right now it's like 2024 was 300,000. What was 2023?
2023 was about the same. So we've been condensing our service route. We've just been focusing on more local customers. So we didn't do much of growth in revenue. We just kind of streamlined and got closer to where we have all our customers very close to us.
Got it. Yeah. So the challenging part is when you're not growing revenue, what that usually means is assuming you weren't cutting out customers like that is you have less, you don't have enough lead flow to replace customers if you lost them. That's a bit of a concern because usually if you grew last year by 20, 30, 40%, now all of a sudden, I know even if we raise prices and lost 10, 15% of customers, we will replace them within a matter of several months. And so what I would be thinking about first and foremost is if you just raised your prices the way you want on a portion of customers, you'll get confidence before you raise it on everyone. So like, because like right now you don't have a huge amount of leads pouring in that will replace these bad, the customers that will leave the lowest paying ones. And so my concern is that we raise the price on everyone, we lose 30% of our customers, which I actually don't think would be a bad deal because you're going to raise prices enough, you'd make more profit if that happened. However.
Cutting revenue by 30% would definitely set you back right now because you have no leads to replace the ones that are leaving. So right now I would actually focus first on how do I get the lead flow higher. And so like your website, I'd be dialing all the.
