"Mastercuts: Scaling Past $1M" - ZERO TURN Ep. 2

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes with Landscape business course. And this is episode two of zero Turn the video series. And we are going to go to Oxford, Mississippi today. We're going to visit a company called mastercuts. Oxford, Mississippi, is a little college town really centering around the University of Mississippi. And we're going to go to mastercuts where there is multiple owners involved. They have several different issues in terms of high turnover, a poor culture, and poor receivables in terms of their finances. And so we're gonna work through those problems, see what they can do to improve. And the goal here is to get them to the next level. And for them, it's getting past that million dollar in revenue. Each year they've got past $500,000. They're almost at three quarters of a million. But how do they take that next step? How do they retain profitability as they grow and and create a team that is sustainable as they continue to scale up? Come along for the ride as we go to Oxford, Mississippi and mastercuts. I'm Mike. Good to meet you. Cass Huntington.

Huntington. That's Chris.

Chris, crew lead. Awesome. Good to meet you, Mike. Chris, how's it going, man?

You had a good flight?

Well, yeah, Short night, but we got in and then our rental car place, they'd already closed. Yeah. So we were able to get someone else to get something for us. Oh, yeah? Yep. Good.

Glad to have you guys here.

Oh, my pleasure, man. It's been fun.

Give me hunting. Have you met Braden?

Cool place. Where's Clay? Clayton? Braden. Awesome. Hi, Riley. That must be his training, Scott. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. All right.

You did a podcast recently about if you had $100,000, you wouldn't build a shop first.

Right.

And I understand that. We hit a lick. We did a big install job during our first year of being open. So we opened. We started May, and in December, we did about $115,000 job. We had a margin on like 40%. We did really well. Morning, Milton. And so we had some money and we used that to get this started. We hadn't hit another lick like that since we got some stuff on the horizon right now. We just signed. You'll go by the job. Just this week we signed up. $115,000 job, residential, front yard. Cool. Really big job. We've got two paver patio jobs that are in the works, but not signed yet. But we feel good about them. We know they're not working with anybody else, so. But we hadn't talked numbers with them yet. But they know this stuff and they, they. They've got the stroke to do it. So anyway, you're hoping that kind of.

Covers some of the.

Because it's probably twice our biggest. Oh, this is. This building certainly cost twice as much as I wanted it to. No doubt. This thing has been a money suck. And I just. Right now we're in this limbo spot where all this money is going into this. I'm ready to get this done, get this thing sealed and get it running correctly. And then our finances. I think our biggest problem right now is going to be my number one question we talk about is we are having a terrible time with collections, with receivables so bad. Last month to start the month we had. We had over $90,000 out.

Yeah.

And we had next to nothing in our account.

Yeah.

And the stress level is so high, you know, and Payroll is. Is 8 to $10,000 right now a week. And you need that money. We've got some in. We're, you know, we were, we were doing better, but I bet we're still. I'll look it up later. I bet we're still at 70,000 and we're getting toward beginning of next month.

So most 30 rolling or like you like 90, 120 people rolling back to.

Mostly not. We're usually getting them by 60. You're asking days old by 60. Some are older than that, but most of them are by 60. And it just puts us such a strain, residential or commercial mostly, that are.

Like late 50, 50. And.

Well, and we don't let those big commercial stuff. You know, obviously if somebody has. Owes $10,000, I'm gonna call them the day it's due and say, I really need this. But for the guy that was 50, we're not doing the same. So we. And that's part of Huntington's. In week two or three of his career with us. And that's going to be one thing that he monitors every single day. We just. We've got to finalize. We've talked some. We've drafted letters. We just got to figure out a plan that works and kind of stick to it. The biggest part, the biggest. The reason I am so confident in this business and willing to put a lot of money into it.

Because Chris Blackwell can sell. He was in stocks and mines and stuff before this, but he's a country boy and he kind of knows hard work and he knows machinery, but he can sell. So our problem, we have no problem getting and finding work. And we're getting the work done right Our only problem, real big problem right now is getting paid for that work. So that's okay. That's kind of it.

After meeting Chris and Cass at the shop in the morning, all the team members were coming in and they were gonna have their weekly team meeting. So we went ahead and joined them for that. And then I wanted to go out into the field with Chris and do an estimate. And then also meet Riley, who has been the office manager at mastercuts for quite some time now.

Alright guys, some of y' all know Mike and his crew here today. This is the guys. He'll be walking around, coming to follow you guys, seeing how we operate at mastercuss Day, internally and outside as well. So he'll be with us, managers and owners inside, going through some books and marketing, helping us. And he'll come out and give input on what we're doing, you know, out in the field and also just see how we operate. So today when he does show up, don't get skittered, don't get worried, just cut grass, do like you're doing or do whatever you are schedule to. If he does come ask you questions, just talk to him like a normal person. Don't be afraid of the camera. We are short handed today. Burgess is gone, family vacation, which was scheduled months ago. CB had lost in the family. Dalvin had an incident with his mother last night. I take her to the emergency room and Jay is, I guess sick today. So we're having to move people around. Part of it, you know what you got to do. That's why y' all are here. So, you know, basically just get the job done and move on. Like it's a typical day.

Anything cash you got.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, remember it's gonna be somewhere around 100 degrees today and you're running shorthanded, so it's gonna be hot. Don't overheat yourselves. You know, be safe. If you do get overheated, take a break. If you throw up, you know, you gotta go home for the day. So just keep that in mind.

And the only other thing, and Chris talks about this every other day, but just always remember that, you know, 90% of the people in the world can cut grass, but there's only 10% that sort of do it right. We want to make sure we're in that 10%. The edges are done, everything's blown off correctly. Those little things is what really makes a difference.

So. And you know, you know who's the boss, right? Who can tell me who the boss is? The customer that's right. We're not your boss. They write the checks. They write the checks to us. We write the checks to you. So just keep in mind you're always either being watched by us, a current customer, and also a future customer. Every day you're interviewing for your next job. And so I think that we are absolutely the same. That's why everybody has a uniform, khaki pants, hat. We want to look professional every day when we're riding around. Whether you're in the truck or you're out working, you're getting watched, you're sort of interviewing for your next job, you know, and for those of you who are kind of on the, you know, the lower level of our organizational structure, if you're, you know, running mowers and weed eaters, whatever. Well, we're watching you, and we're paying attention to what you do. So you're sort of interviewing for your next job to move up with the company. So just make sure and hit. Make sure you do that extra 10%, you know, because we know there are folks we talk all the time about the other companies in town who don't do that extra 10%. I really think there's one, maybe two that really. That really hit that other two besides us, that hits that 10%. So make sure and get the 10%, Chris.

Guys, you got it. 10%. Perfection. I love it. Keep everything clean.

It's gonna be a long day. Y' all make sure and hydrate.

Yes.

For short end. And we got a lot of stuff.

To do, but again, like Cass said, stay hydrated, but don't take dumb breaks. Please go to the truck, get your water, go back to work. You know the rule. All right, let's go, guys.

All right, guys.

See you at the gas station. Go get ass up.

I say fast at a pretty steady rate, but some of our competitors around.

Here have been in the business since the 90s.

Yeah.

And what I found from our standpoint of.

How we grew so fast.

Customer service.

Yeah.

It's unbelievable. Just that's why we pride ourselves. We don't really have the. We're growing our team. More experience.

Right.

You know, getting more experience as, you know, as the days gone. But our back office was Huntington, Raleigh. She was the key just answering the phones.

Yep.

Yeah, that's the same.

I mean, it's a differentiator between the.

Guys we pass there.

And Samoan, right? Yeah. They don't have anyone to pick up a phone. They call next, the next day back. Right. Emails are 24, 48 hours yeah.

So we try to. I mean, one of the things we. We pride on Huntington's learned. But we stayed on Raleigh forever and it took a while to understand it, but 8 o'. Clock, I mean, the thing rings. Phone rings on Saturdays. Yeah, we pick it up. Sundays, we pick it up.

How do you have that set up now? Does it go directly to his cell phone?

No, he has the work phone.

Okay. So I don't think that number, when.

The truck goes, goes to that phone.

Gotcha.

I. I don't know. That's something we were talking about later on. The business thing, I've never really had.

Yep. Go for it. One issue.

I don't know how the office phone would kind of work.

Yep.

I'm sure.

I know in your podcast or your videos, you have people actually have hard lines or somebody sitting in there.

Right.

Answering the phones.

Me, I guess, when the office is. I've just never. The hard phone kind of went away.

Yep.

In my standpoint.

Totally. Yep.

What are your thoughts on that? I mean.

Yeah, like. Well, the problem with ours, like, our cell service, where we're at both our shops, are pathetic. Yeah. And then what we do is we. When people call, they're just calling like a number that basically goes to our Internet. Like, we use phone booth. You can use Google Voice, whatever. And that splits it to whoever it.

Needs to go to.

I got you. So, like, for instance, if someone wanted to do like an estimate or a delivery or whatever, something like that, they're going to call a certain office, like, press one, press two, that sort of thing. But the thing is, like, if you have great cell service and like, if he has a phone on him, it's great to just route that to them.

Sorry about that.

That's fine. No, like, it's great to be able to route it straight to them, right? Yeah. Like, if he's able to get most of them. And then like, if he doesn't pick up, it just goes this voice message and then he gets called up.

So I have, like a bunch of questions about the efficiency of running that office. Even though I'm kind of leaving, I'm sure it would be so help, Huntington. One of them is like, how do you.

Like. Okay, so, Chris, I would make the schedule. I talk to all the customers and everything. And there would be times that I put stuff on his schedule. And then for whatever reason, just. He just, like, doesn't do it. Like, he gets caught up with another job and then I don't know about it until, like the next day. And so I Tell him like, if it's on your schedule, just do it. And he's like, it's not that easy. Like some job might get backed up. And I'm like, well, then you need to call and tell me that. So like, how do you guys stay communicating?

Yeah, like, that's what I've already noticed. So, like, we use an app called WhatsApp. So we have multiple groups of different individuals. It's similar, like group imessage almost. Yeah. But it's a little more structured. You can see when people get messages, you can send voice notes.

Yeah.

So like you're constant communication.

Yeah.

You can set up for crews. We have like, I have one with. For the office. I have one for the managers. I have one for the whole team. And so for instance, like this morning, like corresponding, like where everyone's at.

Yeah.

Even like, oh, I'm going to be late to this appointment. And then just letting you know. And then you can like call them or like if you've made notes that, hey, they're only going to be home from 2 to 3 at 4pm, you know, if you go at 5, they're not even gonna be there. Yeah, it's super valuable.

We like. So I learned very quickly, he'll call me all day long. I'll call him with my questions all day long. So we learned pretty quickly that if I'm not writing it down as he's telling me this or seeing it as a message, then I'm likely gonna forget about it. And so, yeah, we do call each other all the time and like send text messages, maybe specific group messages.

Voice notes are like the best thing in the world.

Yeah.

Because you can be doing while you're driving. It's super fast instead of texting and you have a note, like a transcript of it so he can rattle off like a whole bunch in a minute. And then you can like email that to a customer or like go back and listen to stuff over again.

But I think, like, I really feel like Chris is an amazing salesperson.

He is.

And he needs to focus on that.

Yeah. He used to be a financial advisor before the stor. And he was, I would say, one of the number like top five in the south.

Yeah.

It was doing like huge clients. This was before I knew him. He. When we first met, he was at the very end of that. And so he. That's what Cass always says. Like he could sell you on anything.

Right.

So he was good at that. And like he'll. When he comes up with his numbers for different jobs, Cass is like, there's no way they're gonna accept that. Like, you need to, like, make it less expensive. And sure enough, they always. He can convince anybody they need anything.

How does it work right now? Like, with the estimates? Like, so she goes out, talks to the client. Does he send back to you and you make the estimate, or how does that work right now?

So I'll put it on a schedule. Like, this person called. Here's all their information, and they want this kind of work or this kind of job done. Or they don't really know what they want, but they know they need something. And so I set it up for him. Sometimes the customers are like, I don't really care when you go. Or sometimes they want to meet him. Yeah. And so I set it up based on that. And then he'll go, do you set.

Up time frames for him to be there?

Only if they have a set time. He wants to do it where he has quotes only on certain days between certain times.

Right.

I haven't quite done that, just because if I see an open spot and, like, I can kind of tell when his schedule's too full.

Right.

But if I see an open spot, I'm gonna put it in there.

Yeah, but do you schedule his day by hours, like, where he's gonna be at and stuff?

Not really.

Okay.

I think that's partly because I have a hard time knowing how long certain jobs take. Yeah.

But.

So he'll go and he'll do the quote. And typically, what we expect is he goes to do the quote, then he'll give me that information, and then I'll type it up, and I've got, like, templates. I've got. If it's just, like, a maintenance contract or if it's a job.

Yeah.

If it's a specific job like drainage or something, he'll sit down with me because I don't know the ins and outs of it, but if it's just maintenance, I can do that.

Yep.

And so he'll sit down with me, or I'll just type it up, and then I'll send it out to customer. And so our goal is to have a quote back to them within, like, 48 hours. But lately he's been so backed up that we. These quotes keep getting backed up, and I had to constantly stay on him.

And.

And I'm like, you have a lot of quotes that we have to get done, and so he'll do them all at once. But it's like, they should have been done last week, really.

Okay. So what is holding him up, do you think? Like as far as on a day to day besides like quotes and stuff, but that's what we need to focus on. But like other stuff, like it's just like, like for instance, he was like fixing a sprinkler this morning. Stuff like is it little piddly stuff?

Usually, yeah. Or he, he's kind of pessimistic, like if something can go wrong, it will. And so he just stresses and like we've had trucks break down and then he's all concerned about that and he's like, I'm at this job, I don't have time to focus on this. Like, I gotta get this done. So I think he's trying to prioritize, but it's like, well, he's. For me, I don't know.

I don't.

I'm not as lenient, but I'm like, you still have to go do this. Like you can just put this off for two weeks or you know, whatever it is.

After being out in the field, seeing the crews at work out mowing yards and following around with Chris and Riley, I wanted to sit down with some of the management team and the owners from Mastercuts and go over some of the preliminary things I saw as issues or things they had been struggling with and see if there was a way that we could create systems, get Kris out of the field and into the sales role and really start focusing on the culture of Mastercuts.

Why do you think it's the turnover is the way it is?

What do you mean? Employees.

Employees.

We've got to hire better. Yeah, we've got to screen better because we have so much work right now. It's just like taking what we can get and if they don't work out, they don't want to hire. It's the complete wrong way to do it. We just don't have.

I feel like we're so backed up.

That we don't have the time to.

Really do the necessary screening to hire them before.

Yeah, like you're going to discourage the people that are good by having the big turnover and they're going to leave.

By having that many people coming through. The A players get discouraged fast because even if they see the growth of potential of the company, they don't start to see traction of people staying and creating a team. And then what happens is the people who do come on don't get trained well because everyone's expecting them to possibly leave even if they do have great potential. And so what ends up happening we treat everyone like they're gonna leave. And most of them do. And so the, you know, the mentality is, hey, don't put too much into them in case they don't work out. But then we can't expect them to put anything into the company, right? They aren't gonna show their value and like, how much they love the company if we can't, like, invest in them. You have to have a team that you trust. And so, like, that's step one, right? Like, honestly, when I was at team meeting this morning, there was no connection, like between you and Cas and the guys. There's none. It was employer, employee, 100%, right? Which is great. 20, 30 years ago, right? When people like showed up to a job and worked 20 years there the rest of their life or 30 years or whatever, right? Now people have options. The labor market, they have options, right? And so you have to create that connection. You have to give them purpose and meaning. To show up to work, first day is orientation and it's talking about the vision of the company, right? And so still, even with our company, first day, four to six hours is with me personally. Like, this phone goes off and I'm with them 100%. I take them out for lunch, I drill them with what we're about. I talk about, you know, my history, why I started the company, the big picture. I want to know about their family. I want to know about what they went to school for. I want to know about their dreams, their aspirations. And like the entire time you're the same way you take notes about a client is when I'm doing that first day, like, I'm never gonna have that again with them. Never, right? Unless they are with us for a long time, become a manager of some sort. Like, I'm never gonna have a four to six hour one on one with them during that time. It's like, mental note, what's their goals? Where do they want to be in five years? What can I do to get them there? Like, we just hired someone last week. I knew his little baby was going for surgery Monday. So, like, we're gone by. I gave him a call like, hey, what's up? So like that connection is what's gonna keep them, in my opinion. I feel like that's what's gonna keep them around is that connection. And if we don't have like that investment, you're gonna strike out sometimes. Like, you're gonna like have a four to six hour and we've done this, like, and then you fire them. Two days later, it happens. But the amount of people that are gonna be pretty good that you could turn into great one day that will leave because you don't invest in them on the upfront is what you're losing out on. Right. Our actions are going to speak 100 times louder than our words. And so if we don't really prove it to them, we can't expect them to give back to us. If I can't give them 100%, I cannot expect them to give me 100%. And so I think they buy into that. I think they buy into us as owners first and then the business. Right. And so when you're doing the hiring process, if it's too easy to get in, they're knowing in their mind, they're like, okay, they obviously don't value me enough or an employee enough to spend the time to get to know me, you know, interview me, look into my history, do a drug test. Like, that screening process is actually like a way of not just screening out the bad people. It's telling the good people that you actually care, you know? Yeah. And that the people that have got on the team have came through the same process and they're of your caliber. Like, you're gonna screen out the C players, but the people who are great, they're gonna actually enjoy the fact they have, like, multiple interviews. And it's not easy to get in. Right. And it's not like the next day you're on the crew, Right. To have that process is valuable for them. The thing is too, like, you can either be very policy driven or completely cultural driven. And you want to go cultural. Like, if you just make policy, like, very clear, like what strike 1, 2, 3 is when you get fired, what's allowed, what's not. You can be that or you have that in your handbook, but we never look at it like, we never have people late to work. Never. It never, ever, ever happens. And it's because we're cultural driven. Right. They know why they're trying to work. They will feel bad. Everyone else will make that them feel bad if they show up to work late. Like, so.

Trying to make that is super important. Like, I couldn't be here and you probably couldn't go. Like, if you couldn't depend on people showing up to work. Right. You got to be full time in sales. Like, that's how this company grows. That's how you. That's how you go. Like, right now, you will kind of stall out and you'll see growth, but not like you have until you're a full time sales. Right. And I don't mean full time. Like you can't do anything else. But like that should be the number one goal of the company. Right? Yeah. As far as getting you out of fixing the sprinkler head, running a plant here, doing that. Right. You know, and, and, and so, but in order for that to happen, you have to have a team that you trust. And that's what's not there right now. You don't trust them. Them to manage a job or trust them to like talk to a customer and carry, you know, resolve an issue, you know. And so when you're carrying all those things, eventually you start dropping them. Right. And you'll. You're fine now. Like if you're going to double it, you have to start being able to hand those things off. Yeah, it's got to be.

Yeah. I mean, like I said, Burgess is the role. I wish you could have been here because he'd have been sitting right here with us.

Yeah.

He is the guy we're trying to mold into that.

Yeah. And, and I think too, like even, you know, you probably heard me say it before, like becoming system independent instead of personality dependent because like if he leaves tomorrow, you got a problem.

Yeah.

You know, if, you know, she's out of the business and then he gets sick, you're in trouble. But how do you, can you create the systems that like someone else can hop into their role or there's a backup or how do you do that?

I mean.

Yeah.

People care for that.

That right now. Yeah. So that has been one of our biggest fears.

How do, if we do train Burgess to get to that point and he is that guy and then all of a sudden somebody over here comes in office and $10 more or he just. I don't want to do this anymore.

Just leaves.

Yeah. Now how, how do you prepare for that? He's trained every other person here.

He keeps training below.

If you have a, if you have a paver installation, you're cycling people through on that job with him. He's the project manager. He's going to be community the customer. He came with the office. But like there's been six people install that paver patio with him through the process of a week or two weeks. Right. So that if he gets hit by a bus, they can go still do the paver install the next week. Right. There's a lack, there's a dip in efficiency when you do that by having like everyone trained on one thing and you have to kind of recognize that it's better to have an install crew that does the same thing all the time. They just do installs. They eventually have a paver group. Right. That's all they do is pavers. Pavers, pavers. But the problem is if you have one person that that's all leaning on and you know something happens to them, you're in trouble. Right. And if it's irrigation or whatever it is, and then you have to start thinking about yourself. You know, if you got hit by a bus, what is the thing that's gonna like, bottleneck the company? And if it's irrigation, if no one else has had the irrigation, you're toast. Right. And then that's when you really can start to scale the business. When you step back and say, okay, everything's gonna run itself by like, operationally now I can work on the business and start working on like, sales. And like we were talking today, like, there's times when we're a week behind on getting to a bid because we just are so busy. Yeah, right. And we're just fighting fires and we're just trying to get stuff done. But like, if you're gonna go from like 70, 80,000amonth now, if you want to get over 100, 200, like that's where it's at, is you gotta be like the 24 hours of like a call. Yes. He'll be there at 2pm this evening or this afternoon. You get their estimate sent to them by 4 o'. Clock. They're accepting that evening.

Sorry, what?

Receivables.

Oh, just a reminder that your invoice is due in three days if you've already sent it. Payment in disregard.

I have, yeah.

Like.

There'S a balance. Like at first we go really soft and then we go hard by stopping service. Like you can threaten them all at once, but when you stop service now, they either they're either gonna complain and get it out of their system or they're going to pay up. Right. And if they're happy and they've just been not getting to it, they'll pay up. Now if there's a complaint, you don't want that to come out four more months later and you lose all that money anyways. Right. So usually I think it's most important is actually on the invoice, how you word it. So I don't know if you heard on the podcast, but like, we changed our verbiage to basically changing to 15 days and then, but we didn't say, like, make sure it's due in 15 days or whatever, or like anything about overdue payment stuff, we change it to basically saying like, hey, we'd really appreciate if you paid us with this invoice within 15 days so we can pay our employees and our suppliers and make sure we keep our quality up for you, like, kind of thing like that, Right?

Because that's what I've always thought about, like these people understand, like we gotta pay our people, right? Well, make, make your customers part of the team too, right? So like even in like newsletters, via email, whatever, like show them the new team members. Show them like stuff you've done. Show them the goals of the company. Like that should make them part of like, I want mastercuts to win, right? Then they go to that bat and they'll share your name, referrals and stuff. And then when you do hiccup or make a mistake, they'll be much more accommodating, right? And then also they'll pay their bill like that because they want the guy, like if they start making relationships with, you know, Joe and Bill, who mow their lawn, they want them to get paid. They might not know you and care about Master Cuts even, but they want them to get paid. They're cool dudes, right? So make sure like your payment pays those guys, right? And then usually like after 30 days of being overdue, then you start like, hey.

Again, we're pretty soft. We're like, you probably missed this and we know you're busy just making sure you know that this is overdue when it hits 60 days. Hey, we're gonna stop service next week if this isn't paid. That didn't get their attention. We are going to stop service. We still haven't paid. Going to collections after 90 days.

So you do still sell the collection after 90.

If you don't see it after 90, there's a really good chance you've never seen that money. No, I mean like anything over 3,000. Now we got 50%.

Not bad out there. They show the, that they're committed.

So they're committed and you can schedule, right. We know they're going, that's non refundable. Yeah. Once they're on the schedule, we, we say how we sell it. It's a way for us to follow up. Say, hey, you know, I'm following up with you because we're booking out. We just need the 50% to get you on the schedule. Right. That 50% doesn't do anything but get them on the schedule. It also pays for materials, labor and everything else. Right. So you go into the job again from a sake of, the sake of collections. All your expenses are paid, right. Instead of going in doing a bunch of two, three thousand dollars worth of cost. Yeah. You don't want to become a bank, right?

Yeah.

Basically turn it into a finance company.

Right. And so you don't want to get so big you lose out on the personalization because they're buying because of you. Right. They're buying because of, you know, how great you are and your knowledge and all that. So you want to keep that, but then automate it. Create systems, whether it be how to estimate, how to schedule, how to automate the follow up process instead of just keeping the notes. Right. Like, oh, I sent estimate so until three days ago. Right.

And so automation is like how you get from here to like.

A service autopilot is a big, it's an investment, like you're gonna pay. You know, Lawn Pro is like 250 bucks one time, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The course members get spoiled. So like it's, it's like nothing. Right.

That did change the way we were doing things, right. We were doing it off a spreadsheet.

You will save so much time by having service autopilot. Right now you have like Excel spreadsheets, you have Lawn Pro, you have cookbooks, you have timesheets, T sheets, and you're switching to something else. Like it's all there, right? So like on service autopilot, this is what it looks like for the guys. So when they show up to work each day.

They clock in from here. And it's also integrated with the jobs they're doing. They clock in and out of each job so that you can see every minute, like track every single minute. You know which jobs are doing really good, which jobs are not doing good. Right. Like right now you just got on paper, you don't know how long they're at one job. Like she was saying, sometimes crews take like eight hours at job and then another crew can do it in like four hours. Right. So on here I'm gonna go to my Monday schedule when I get back, which is gonna be nuts. Probably 24th. So 24th it's loading.

So if I wanted to clock in, I'd click my face, which I'll do in a second here. So come on.

So these are all my jobs for the day right there, right. This is exactly what they see on mowing route. So if I want to clock in like I'm clocking for the day, I'm officially clocked in. That is Marked it on my timesheet. I'm ready to go. I'm gonna go to my first job. Cool. I got my notes. I can make comments to the office, which they'll see right away. And I can also take. Yeah, no. So, like, you take pictures if something gets damaged. I have an estimated time, so they know how long that job should take. It's really important because some people will take five hours, some take two. But hey, the expected you should be done by three hours. Having them something to kind of timeline themselves up against. I can click here and click map opens up the GPS and automatically will take them there. So again, you can put someone. Yeah, so it'll do it right now. So it's taking me to Bellingham, which is 20,000 hours away, but it takes me right there. Right. So it's again, just trying to minimize how much they're talking to you and all the, like, back and forth the office, like that sort of thing. And then when they get to this job, they click start job, and it's right away tracking, tracking time. And then you'll be able to have a report at the end of the month saying, okay, this is how much time it should have taken. Charging our hourly rate. This is how much time it did take. Okay? 20% of our customers are way, like, behind. Like, we're like, this is what we just did. We just raised prices on 15% of our mowing clients because we looked at all the charts for the whole year and said, what are like the least performing dollars per man hour based upon the clock in times don't clock in. So they even did that when they.

Pulled to a yard.

Every single job.

What's cool is this. So like, when I click start and then I click stop, this one's gonna disappear. Then it goes the next one. So they just have to look at the next job. Start, stop, start, stop. And.

What does he see? He's gonna see a lot more on the desktop version, right? He's gonna see what's called the dispatch board, where he's gonna see all their jobs and then any notes that they have put on there. So you can immediately email the customer or talk to the customer. It's all immediate. And he can actually put a job comment back to them. Like, they literally. They'll get a notification and then. But more, what's the best thing about it is you put the price per mo, for instance, into their service. When you create the visits for the whole year as they're marked complete, it makes an invoice, and at the end of the month you just click send.

And so there is no event, however.

Never. 1500 different emails.

Service, autopilot.

Yeah. So it's basically.

It's only 80amonth, but then there's all the add ons. So every single employee that gets a new profile that it's like 10 bucks a month. You know, if you do Maps Pro, which you start using the square footage thing, it's like 50 bucks a month. So all these little things, we pay 700 bucks a month for our software for them. So we have a bunch of people, we have office people, they charge more for all that.

Worth every single penny. It's probably worth two employees.

It saves time tremendously just by what you just showed. Because them calling me and having to check notes or.

Well, we'll think about like what you pay on QuickBooks. Think about what you pay for T sheets. Think about like all of that. But the time, man, cool. Is save you so much time.

So like, I think you're great. Like, dude, you have all the potential. Like everything you need because you can do sales. Like that's the most. That's 90% of the lawn care owners I talk to, they don't have that. But they have everything else, right? You have everything you need to like make it big. Like 2 million easy. Like, don't ever think you need another partner to do it. You know, I'm not saying cast or sue. I'm just saying don't bring someone else in because you think you need help somewhere. Like you have all the skills you need. And that's not common for landscaper, landscape business owners. And like I told Josh within 10 minutes of meeting you, like, he's a rock star. He's really good. I enjoy it.

I wake up every day.

Yeah.

And it's super rewarding when you can be pumped up about it and not have the stress when you go away from it because you need that time to think about like that video thing came when I walked away from this for like 3 hours. I was like, I'm really stressed out. I just need three hours. And they say, okay, we'll cancel all your appointments. And I went de stressed. I was thinking about the business the whole time. I came up with the video thing right. Implement next day. And it's like, oh my word. Our conversion ratio went by 30%. So like you got to have that time to work on the business. Right. And so if there, if the other partners are all about like growing and scaling, say look, look, in order for this to happen, I've got to be selling. That's what I'm good at, and that's how the company's gonna grow. That's what 90% of lawn care business owners can't do, is sell. They don't know how to connect with the customer. They don't know enough to like, sell someone on a project, get the money down, sell them on the property, look them in the eye like they can.

After lunch, I wanted to see exactly how Cass and Chris did their estimates. So we went out to one of their jobs. One of the prospects had called and asked for a job to be completed. And this particular client was wanting a patio area in their backyard, about maybe a thousand square feet worth of landscaping and some paver patio areas. So we went ahead, went inside their house. Cass and Chris were talking to her, explaining what the project would look like, how the job would roll, and exactly what the ramifications and specifications she wanted done on the job. And so the reason I did this exercise with them is I then wanted to compare how I do estimates versus the way that mastercuts has done estimates and see what the efficiency in terms of time getting that estimate back to the customer was. But also seeing how did I want to see if there was a system behind the way they came up with their number. How did they. Did they do any measuring? Did they come up with a system for the number of hours or the amount of material they would need to complete this job and get a number that they could stand behind and then present to the customer in a professional manner?

We could do that for 7815.

20 grand.

Yeah. And we would, we would, we would make. I could do the exact number, but we would make about $3,000 in that. Wow.

How many people?

Two people. Oh, shit.

That's six.

Well, this is the thing. So this is the thing. Look at, look at your plan. Yeah. Like, you got six people going through a three and a half, less than three and a half feet. Right. So, like, you're not gonna be able to move material through that that fast. You can only do like two people. Three people max. That small of a space. You can't really.

Can I ask how much you're paying your two skilled. That's somewhat skilled.

They're gonna be between 20 and 25 bucks an hour.

That's what you're paying.

Yeah. So here, let me show you. Let me walk me through how you're. You're thinking about it first went through.

I said it was going to take us about a week.

Okay. 60 hours.

So at $40aman, 7.

200. Whoa, stop, stop, stop. So you got labor for 60 hours. 60 man hours or 60. It's gonna take you total hours.

That's where I messed up.

You got it.

2400. Hold on now. That's where I messed up.

This is cheating.

No, I mean, look at the book, Stuart. My Excel sheet over here. I don't have my computer. Y' all won't build my office.

So that brought down about five grand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

11,000. Cool.

469.

Cool. All right, so you got. You got 60 hours, and you got four men, so a total of 240 hours. And he times that by, what, 40. No, no.

60 hours total. Okay, so actually, it'd be per man.

But so are you gonna have six men on the job? Yeah. So you think one day you'll knock it out?

No. A week. So 40 hours.

But see your chart? You're charging for 60 hours. Like, what you had before is actually correct. That's what I thought. Yeah. So it was. It was 19,000. Because. Because you got 60 hours times four or times six.

That's right.

So 360 times your labor rate.

That's correct.

Okay, so then that is 19 is correct. Okay, cool. So then you got labor for that. You had. You had 60 hours budgeted, and you had six people there the whole 60 hours. So basically a whole week.

So then continue down.

Then I had to rent the mini eggs. $355 a day for two days. Excavation, dirt, the pavers. That was our cost.

Yep.

Thousand in materials.

Where's the 480? 487. Yeah. So it's for what you. What's the actual cost?

From Belgard, when I looked up earlier, it's 418.

Cool. So you're just charging 70 cents. Okay.

Then the rock I estimated that I would need, this is where I may be up 36 yards.

Whoa.

Okay. 36 yards at 50 bucks a piece. Okay. Okay.

And then the landscaping, all the plants and stuff.

1250. Okay.

Oh, for the walking path on both sides.

Cool.

And then this 30% here is what we always. I just mark it up 30%.

What was your labor rate?

$40.

Okay. Okay, cool. All right, so let me walk you through mine. And then, so basically, this is what I would create for the office.

Yeah.

And so this stuff down here is, like. I wouldn't usually, but this is the exact verbiage that I would have done that for that estimate. You can take a seat. Pull that across.

So this is what I would send to the office. And this is the exact verbiage that's going to go on the estimate as well as on the job work order. Because this is not only for the client, this exact verbiage is what is going to be used by the crew manager. He will be able to install this entire job if I show this for five minutes. Really? Yeah. So we got our plan here. So when I'm numbering this off, I want the the client to be able to read this like a book, like the job is happening. Alright. Number one, clear all pine straw and debris and haul it up. Cool. Next we got to excavate the soil for the paver base. Next we actually got to install the pavers. I'm going to assume it's Belgard grade Dublin cobble with a grand and savile and sand base. I'm going to install 58 minus gravel pathway and pine straw on the beds. Like did you include pine straw?

I did not include pine straw.

Include install plants according to specification of master plan. Cost of plants not including this estimate. Wholesale cost of plants will be added. The final invoice. It's the cost of the plants themselves, not the installation is. Number seven, amend the soil around plants with two yards of compost. So in my mind I'm building the job. I'm like okay, so they're gonna do this and they're gonna do this and then I start doing costs. So what we do for our office manager, our office people is they know everything within double parentheses is costs. So I'm like okay, I'm gonna need pavers 1125. So we assume 250 square feet. Because there's going to be cuts and overages and things like that at 450 a piece. So like we're probably over by 200 bucks. Yeah. Save ourselves on delivery, whatever. Right. $100 for pine straw. I have no idea what pine straw cost. Five yards of 58 minus will easily do those pathways as well as 2 to 3 inches of compacted gravel underneath the bottom base. And then two yards of sand will probably use a yard and a half. But I'm just going to do 2 yards, 2 yards of compost for around the the plants. We probably use a yard. 96 hours is six days at two guys on the job the whole time and eight hours a day. So 16 times six. Right. Day one. This is how then I think about it to get that hourly. This is how I think about. Okay. I literally start walking through this in my mind. Okay. The first day is gonna take a Day of excavation. The next day we're gonna do base prep. That's gonna be like the gravel and the sand. The next day we are going to next two days we're gonna install the pavers. And the next day after that we're install the plants, the gravel and the pine straw. Two guys. This is easy. This is like, if I really wanted this job, we could cut that a day off of that. We get that down to 80. So if you get that job, you would make an absolute killing. That or she orders some foreign plant that cost $5,000 and you're really toast. Yeah, right. So that's why, like, the reason I put this all the time, the cost of the plants is not included in the estimate is because then you could have taken this, said, hey, yes, think about this. Yes, talk to your kids, but here's the price. And the next call that you get from her is either a yes or a no on the whole project. You don't have to get a yes from her. Then you make an estimate and spend two days, you're getting an estimate, right? Then you have to go back and sell her on the project again. You know, so what? So like yesterday when we left that appointment, if you're able to give her this, obviously in a nice estimate form, but basically the office can copy and paste this and put this number in that line item. Budget. Exactly. Yeah. And then. Well, I would give that. If you were going here, I'd give it to a person and then say, hey, it's gonna be in your email tomorrow. And then basically say, we have a spot. When I go to a job and I'm already have plans, I wanna have a date scheduled for the job. So I said, we have you on the schedule for, you know, you could say on September 29th, but we're gonna leave that reserved, obviously. Talk to your kids, we'll leave it on the schedule, but we'll contact you a few days in advance just to make sure you're ready to go for it. And if you're not, that's totally fine. That way, in her mind, like, they're scheduled, they're coming, this is the price. Because if she's thinking that this whole project is gonna cost 7 to 10 grand and you come in at 19, you wasted a couple days of making an estimate. Right. Whereas this, it's not the most accurate. Like, I didn't even worry about going through the plant list and everything, but it's going to give her a rough estimate and I'm not gonna lose my shirt because the plants. Right. Like, I measured a whole day to plant them. Yeah, right. So the wholesale cost. So they feel good about that because they feel like they're saving money. So you can tell them, hey, you.

Put that on there.

Oh, yeah, we try. We. I'll give them a receipt if they want.

For the plants.

Yeah.

You don't even mark the plants.

But like, the main thing is that you have that there's seven steps just like that. Yeah. Because when you go to her, she knows that you know exactly the process of the job. She can read it from 1 to 7 and know exactly what's happening. And then you've remembered things like amending the soil, the plants are coming. I just walk through the whole job.

Now we do like the last one we broke down exactly the steps. We're going to do like the wall.

Jobs that way pretty well.

Now step one is this.

We're going to come in here and do this. We're going to do this. This is going to be the next step. They get kind of a breakdown.

Yeah. If I need an estimate, speed is going to beat accuracy every time in this game. If you're doing an estimate of a big install, not so much a maintenance on a developer because they're going to wait for three quotes, but most residential, if they have the money and they want to do it, if you're fast, like. So for instance, she is.

She's.

She's ready. Yeah.

She needs to talk to her, you know.

Right.

Her kids. But we've been. I'm almost embarrassed to say now, we've been dealing with her for a month now because we go out there and talk to her, then we get the landscape architect to come in and it's a week for him to get the plans back.

And you want to control the speed of the transaction. Right. That's the goal, like, of doing it so fast. You want to control the speed because if you put it in the customer's corner court, they're just gonna wait until, like, it. Until like, literally they wake up. One more like, oh, I should do that. Yeah. So you want to control the speed of the whole thing. So, like when we get a phone call, we're trying to get an estimate within an estimated there. Within 12 hours. And so that happens. And we always try to meet them. And within 24 hours of them calling us, we want an estimate in their inbox. Yeah.

And so after the 12 hours you already. In the next 12 hours, you're doing the estimate.

And then the 24 hours after that, we Want to have a yes or no. And if they're like, we need to think about it, fine, great. We'll follow up with you next, next week and we have you on the schedule for this date and then we'll. But we'll follow up with the next week to make sure everything is good to go. Like you want to control the speed. And if you, if it takes you two weeks to get there for the bid, they're expecting it to be another two, three weeks till they get the plans and another two, three weeks to get an estimate. Two or three weeks to get on the schedule and then the job takes two or three weeks. Right.

Which puts you much closer to this.

Just isn't worth it or just not do it yet.

Right. And right now it works because like right now you've only done several of them. And so it's like it's new and you take a lot of time in the prep process. But when you have 20 estimates a day, which it'll get to as you grow the company, you have to be able to pump stuff out like this.

We're good at pumping out, mowing.

I feel like the last few weeks we haven't because.

Well, I haven't had time to go.

Because you, you're having to be on the job too much.

I can walk up to. I can go up to Stuart Yard and tell someone what I'm gonna like. Exactly what I would charge you for.

Yeah.

You know, on cutting, cutting, installation, we're getting there.

Yeah.

But a lot of these people want these plans.

Right.

Like they don't. Some people will take the hand drawn thing or just. It's kind of hard to sell them sometimes they want to see it.

Yeah. To visualize.

Like Mark, I mean, he wanted these plans. I kept telling him we could do this without plans, but he wanted to see plans.

Yeah. As long as they're willing to pay for it. Right. I just say that once you have the plans, there should be a price tag right to it. Right.

Basically we can hand Burges the plans and the plants are there. I show up, direct him in the direction we want to do. Yeah. I leave.

Yeah.

I mean he did the whole Clery thing by himself.

Like do you think you could get everyone to be that way though? I think he could, yeah. If we, if we did everything he talked about yesterday.

Guess if they don't talk to.

Because like all the, like this is a little more technical but like planting trees, planting sod, like all that stuff, they need one time to be shown how to do that. Yeah. And then after that it's all about like, do they have the work ethic to just do it exactly right. And communicate with the office and communicate with the customer. Like, that stuff can be taught super, super easily. It's the work ethic part of things. Right. And like, are they bought into the team? And do you know how that kind of rolls?

And that's something we have never done. The only thing we've ever done is with supervisors. Like we talked about once a month we have steak dinners over your house and we talk about, like we were.

Talking about yesterday, like really trying to get buy in from the guys, the.

Whole crew, the whole team. Not just.

I was thinking earlier what the culture you have and the culture we have, like, in the business is completely different too.

It can be changed. It can be changed. But like, you were just starting to recognize for like, I just showed Josh, we a magazine wrote about our company, the culture and stuff like that and interviewed all the employees. But it like, it pays dividends. And like, at first it's a lagging indicator. Like, at first you're like, why are we paying extra money on this? Why are we doing all this? Take extra time to train people, to talk to them, to care about them. But like, there's no one that works for me right now that I would say, like, I wouldn't trust them to do that job. Not a single person. Even the ones that have been there a few weeks, I just need to check in on them. There's the ones who have been here more than six months. Like Aaron, he's managing the job while I'm gone. Has never seen the job before I got there. I just did a video for him and he's gonna see it and do the entire job. Which is bigger? It's about this size, actually. The ones over on Semi Amishore, it's about that size. And he's been here seven months. He'll do it, no problem, right? Yeah. And if he has questions or stuff, he'll. He'll like, figure it out. And I'm okay. Like, I'm okay with that. And I know it's not gonna be perfect.

Wow.

And so he'll communicate the office, who has never seen the job, and they'll figure it out. Right. But like, to be perfectly honest, like I was telling him yesterday, like at the team meeting yesterday, there's no connection.

Yeah, it wasn't.

There's no connection between employees and you guys, like, there's none. And so you'll get work out of them as Long as they need a paycheck. Yeah. Right. And if they don't need a paycheck, they won't show up to work. And that's what problem you're having.

Yeah.

And, and I think the big, the big part too is when the A players are seeing a big turnover. If they get discouraged. Like the worst thing you can do to a team player is to have Bs and Cs coming through the company. They'll get tired of it and they'll leave. Like even like that. That team meeting yesterday, what you said was perfect. It was awesome. Like I would say that in a heartbeat about the 10%.

They just weren't feeling, there was no connection, their head was down.

I see that a lot too.

And, and one of the biggest indicators for a landscape coming at first is like, did people show up for work? Right. And the problem is this is like, well, do I discipline? Like fire them for not showing up? Well, all of a sudden I have no crew because I need work done and I'll just put up with the behavior because I need the work done. And then there's, well, do I just fire people or do I get like anger and make rules? And that's not the way to do it. Like you have the rules in place to protect you legally. Like we have a 34 book, 30 page handbook. And you can see on the course, just go to the downloads, 34 pages and it's there. And I've never looked at it, but like everyone knows it's there and it'll protect us legally if I need to fire someone. But like if someone's late to work, they're gonna get, they're gonna razz that person like crazy.

Like the crew.

The crew. Oh yeah. And they will know when they show up because everyone else has been there 20, 30 minutes before loading up the trucks ready to roll out the door if they're five minutes late. Hear about it.

So when they show up 20, 30 minutes early, they're clocking in and starting loading up truck.

Oh yeah, yeah. The moment they come there.

So you're fine with people showing up at. If you're leaving at 7:30, if they get there, you know, 6:45 and start. As long as they start working.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And they know. And they know too. Like I, there was a team meeting when I was gone. The team got together and there was four or five of them that spoke at the team meeting. And they're on top of each other about talking too much in the office after Work. I never say that, but they'll say it to each other.

Wow.

Like, sticking around and sticking around, just bullshit.

Yep. Yep. And they're saying, hey, if you're here and someone else pulls in, you better be helping that person. I didn't tell them to say that. I didn't give them an agenda for that meeting. Right. And it's not one person. It's not my project managers. I got people who have worked there, like, two, three weeks saying stuff. Right. Like, I really challenge you guys to not talk at your team meetings. Have other people do it. But, like, when someone get hired, 100% trust and commitment to them, like, as if they're the greatest person in the whole world. They've worked for you 10 years. Let them mess that up. Right. Don't you be the one, like, standing back. Be like, you're gonna earn trust. Like, who are we as owners? Like, you're doing this with Joffrey.

He just made a bad. This is one of the guys who got small. And I don't think he'd have done it if he wasn't offered by somebody else. But it's the whole. That whole peer pressure thing. Yeah, you were. You were really pouring time into him. And we were as a whole. And he knew nothing, but he wanted to learn. And he was, you know, gung ho. I feel like he'd have run through a. Sometimes he didn't have a car, so sometimes he wouldn't show up. That's, I guess, a whole nother thing. But, you know, I think. I mean, we. I. We sent him on a weekend to pull weeds all day. And he was the sort of the leader of two other people. And I checked in on them. They didn't know when I was coming by. Checked in on a couple times, and it was in the rain once, and they were. Every time I went over there, they were bent over pulling weeds out of this commercial of Kind Complex.

So we've done a little bit of. But we have never. We haven't ever taken time to. I'm terrible at it. I'll be the first one to tell you. Because I show up. All I think about is, we got to go. We gotta get this done, you know? But that's job for the same guy who sat there and just talked 30 minutes about BS and, I mean, he bought in because I want. I want to learn that skid steer. I want to be able to drive that truck. I want that to be my crew.

Someone's either in or they're not. Right?

Yeah.

Like, it's totally binary as far as if someone's like, in it for the long haul and ready to commit or they're not. Right. And if these. If they go and smoke on the job and they know it's policy, they're not dead. Like, they might want to learn the thing to, like, make some more money or whatever, but, like.

Or have some status.

Right. Like, there's gotta be. You know, it's like, it's so powerful when you get to that place. Cause, like, the number one thing we were talking about yesterday is the number one thing for this company to grow is for him to build these sales full time. Right. But in order for that to happen, he has to trust the guys, and that's just not there. Like, we don't trust him to do the work correctly. We don't trust them to be, like, not smoking. We don't trust them to.

I trust them.

We trust.

I trust them.

Now, on the mowing side, basically, we're able to get them mowing and with Burgess, but even with like the four.

Someone takes half a day, Someone else takes a full day, right?

Yeah.

Or mowing. Right. So, like, do they, like, they can.

They should I trust them to be able to get the job done. Do they do it as fast as I wanted to get done? Probably not.

Yeah.

You know, but again, they're not the owner, so they don't see the vision and all that. But again, if we opened the books and told them, like, maybe they would step it up. Like, hey, you know, guys, let's knock this out, get to the next job. So maybe make the company more money and then we would get these things. Yeah, like you were talking about.

Yeah. So what happens to.

I mean, tell me why you don't want to share notes.

This is what he explained.

I thought it was a great idea, something we even talked about. He said one of your one things you just want to do is put. Take some of the profits or some of the money or whatever in the pickle jar. However you described it, to build a putting ring, you know, for the guys. We also said the same thing about doing it up front. And the guys always talk about how cool that is, how cool we put.

A tee box back here, you get.

To the par three. Well, if we open the numbers and say, look, until we can get this right, or here, you know, if we want this, this green out here, we need to step our game up, bring overtime down, say, put more money into the bank account to pay for this. And then when we have the capital, such Then when you'll see the dream come true, that means we're on gold, right?

Yeah. Like. Like, I don't look at our timesheets hardly at all. Like, the office takes care of that. But when I do, I know there's people clocking out before they hit overtime because they know it's gonna cost us more. That's crazy. And so that's someone who's bought. And I don't tell them. I don't thank them necessarily. You just kind of keep that in the back of your mind, like, okay, yep, they're in. Like, they're. They know what's going on here. And so our guys are driven to hit over top. Right, Right. So, like, common.

Yeah.

I mean, it's really around here.

So, I mean, what do you think would happen with the day?

Why don't you want to share numbers? Well, just tell us. I can't even understand why.

I mean, I see the benefit of it. I don't know.

It's just something.

I've never been in a place that does, you know, so I'm just never.

That's why you got to be different. Like, that's how you're gonna attract great talent. If you do everything like everyone else in this labor market, they're gonna go to the oil, they're gonna go get a trade, they're gonna do something else.

Right.

And then how much do you pay? How much do you pay? Do you think it would be different?

I mean.

We want a franchise and stuff. I don't know that we want. I don't know that our goals or what your goals are, but, I mean, I know. I mean, seriously, long term. And a big reason we wanted to bring Stuart on is because in five, 10, whatever years, we want to have an office, sort of. I think we want olive branch, Tupelo, maybe regional, not necessarily nationwide.

I don't feel like we can do that now because we don't have the perfect model yet. You know, we're just. We're not there yet, but we want to get there.

But I feel like we also want to make money. I mean, we. I want to be paid for the time I'm putting in here too, but I mean. And I don't think I know I'm not. I doubt he is. There's a point where we can say, like, how much different would it have been for you on the front end if you knew you didn't want to go nationwide and you would show them that I'm making, you know, whatever it sounds like you don't think they would care that you were making $100,000 a year or something like that?

Well, if I was, even if I was pulling money out of the company, if I was pulling money out of the company, I would tell them. And I like, there's nothing ashamed about that. That's the name of the game. Like it's a scorecard, right? I would just make sure that, like if I was pulling a lot more out of company, I would have to raise, I would raise compensation big time. And I'd offer full time healthcare benefits.

Like everything, which you don't know.

Which I don't like. Not full coverage. No.

Do you split it or something?

No, we just do an accident policy right now. And then over the winter we're adding like gym. Is that what we do? We have, yeah, we do like gym. And we're gonna start working like paid time off and life insurance. So that's what we're working on now. But like, if I was taking money out, the reason this is the thing though, if I was taking money out, they would expect the way that I am to be looking a lot harder at compensation. And when they do ask it, like at off sites, I ask them to challenge me with stuff and they'll like, say, hey, why aren't we getting this? Or like, why is this happening? They'll challenge everything within the company. And I want that because if I'm gonna be, I'm gonna let them attack me. Attack, like, challenge me. I can challenge them. Why didn't you show up yesterday? And they'll know that they could do the same thing to me if I, if I let down something, right? So like at the off site, it's a vulnerable position to be in. Be like, hey, ask anything. Like, they can ask me whatever they want, right? And they'll challenge me like, hey, why, why don't we get paid for holidays when we're off? And so you have to explain, look, but when I can go back to the dollar and say, hey, this is where the money's going. We're building up a cash reserve this year. So we kept the profit in the bank account because now we have a bunch of families depending on this company and we need to have that. Oh, okay. And then, oh, by the way, every single winter when you, when you have your review, we're looking at what can we afford for you and how can you get to that next spot, right? And so like last winter, the big thing that we did, because every year we figured work on the compensation plan together last year the big thing was we changed the model to when they start there at 15, they're guaranteed to go to 18 after one year, guaranteed to go to 20 after two years. And if they do great and amazing, they'll get there within five, six months maybe. But they're guaranteed after one year, 18 after two years, 20. That was the big thing last year. This coming winter will be the benefit thing.

How does what you're paying compare to.

What you're doing higher? Yeah, we're about three to four dollars higher.

But, like.

But you can afford it.

Yep. And I know the people that are on staff that could probably get 30, 40 somewhere else. And we've lost one person this year, dude. He finished his degree and got became an electrician, but he still came to, like, an event we had as a team the next several weeks ago. Right. So they are so bought in. Right. I'll let you read this. Actually, this is good. This is a message from one of our project managers. He's worked with us for a year, and then he just got engaged, so he needed to finish up one more quarter, one more semester of school at Chicago. And so he knew that if he, like, just waited until after he got married, he'd never get done. So, like, dude, just get it done now. So he left. Right. Like, at our busiest season. Right when coming into the fall. I'm, like, sick. But he went and left. Well, he texted me this morning.

Lee Park. So he's at school right now, and he just said, hi, Mike. I just wanted to say thanks for all you have taught me. I am helping co run our intramurals at school. By no means anything overly stressful, but I have implemented so many things that you have taught me and shown me how to do better. Students have already told us how much smoother intramurals is being run this year. I even have the refs doing the above and beyond challenge, which is a challenge to do at our shop. I'm so excited to come back to Augusta a better leader and better learner. Hope you guys are killing it. So, like, that's what we're trying to build. Right?

And, like, you can do it. It just takes a lot of, like, vulnerability and being open with the guys. And, like, I would let them just tear into you because I think they're bottling up. I know what they're thinking right now. I know. And, like, I would be really open and honest about the financial side, because I as an employee, if I knew he was making 200 bucks and I'm making 400 bucks a week. I'm like sick. He works harder than I do. Right. And then all the pressure, like be open with how much you owe in this place. Right? Like there's no, like what is it gonna knock your pride? Because your employee knows that the company has a bunch of debt. Like it doesn't matter, it doesn't change. It doesn't. Yeah. Like so they would buy in 100% more if you just shared that. But the buy in from the employees solves all the problems. Because once that's solved, he can trust him on a job. He can go get more sales, right. And then he can grow the company way more efficient. Right. But like I know for right now this is how, that's how they think about you guys. Yeah. Like even the yesterday when we pulled up to him, like personally I never ever tried to drive up on the guys, park the truck and get out. Like if we pull up in an air conditioned vehicle and they're sweating like crazy, like I almost got out yesterday because I just can't even handle it right. And then like we have to put ourselves in their shoes and cuz like if they think you're making a bunch of money and you roll up on them like we did yesterday, I would not want to work for someone like that. Even if you're a great guy. Just the impression of like someone pulling up and being like, hey, you smell like work. I'd be like, yeah, and you don't. I'm out, right?

Yeah.

And it's not like that. You have way more stress than anyone working here and you don't make as much money. Right. But if they don't see that, the impression in there, like they have a completely different thing in their mind. Because then when you say you gotta give 10%, you know, be the 10% they know you are because you're committed 110%. Right. But like I look at the financials of the company and like I run it through a thing that I have when I get financials from a company and like rank it on vulnerability and you're like an eight on my little thing I made myself. Which is fine. It just means you got to scale fast to recoup a lot of the debt stuff. Right. Like the debt stuff is, is like I would be freaking out my brains. Like the debt with, with the fact that there's not much in the bank, right? That balance. And then we talked about receivables yesterday. That's a big thing too. That's just an ongoing issue that you got to Cut down on. And that helps with cash flow. But, like, your ratio of debt to, like, how much in the bank? Like, who I would not be sleeping. Like, I can even handle it. Like, that's part of why this year, I got our offset. We explained how much money we're putting aside in keeping the bank account a lot higher. Because I can't handle the fact that I have a bunch of people working with me with kids, and we might not. I couldn't pay them for three months without something happened to the company. Like, vulnerability. When I talk about that, it's like, literally, could three people leave tomorrow and you still be operating? Or, like, could someone get. Like, could Chris get sick for three months and the company still run? Like, that's vulnerability, right? And if you can't, as you grow, you're able to put people in positions where they can cover for other people, and you're less people dependent, more systems dependent. But, like.

From a financial standpoint, like, I would be scared out of my mind, right? And when you're stressed like that. Oh, I know. And when you're stressed like that, you can't think about the company from a point of view of, like, creating systems. And it's not selfish to be like, I need an hour. I just need to walk away and think about the business from a holistic standpoint, right? But you can't when you're, like, fighting fires. But you got to. You got to. If you can't trust the other people around you to do it, right? And I really look at this company, I think Chris is the driving force, right? Like, you got your business. He has. He's just a silent partner, really. And so, like, he's the driving force, but that's vulnerability up to the max. Because if he goes sick, we're toast, right? Like, he's gonna make the estimate. He's gonna make the sale. He's gonna lead every single project that we're doing right now, right? Like, he has to be protected. Like, literally. Like, and if the guys know that, they'll protect them. Like, the guys, they know that if I'm, like, out shoveling or, like, doing something on the job, that's a waste of. Of my time. Like, not that I don't want. I don't want to be out there sometimes, right? And we tell them that, but I don't think they believe that. Well, whether or not they believe it, it's the fact that they might. They don't think he needs to. They think, well, he should. He should have to, too. They don't know why. They don't know why. Like, what's the point of him not working? He's just gonna go in his truck and like, go to lunch and just like bum around. But if they know, like, where the company's going and how we need to get there. So we talked at our offset, like, I cannot be doing estimates next year, right. So I've trained one person. That's Lee, unfortunately. So now I gotta train Ben because Lee will come back and I need two estimators, then I can really. Yeah, right. And so they know that they'll be. They'll buy into that and Ben will get trained and then they'll know. Okay, if Mike's doing estimate, that is not a good thing. We need to figure out, like, why is that happening? Yeah, because they know I need to be doing something else. It's like a football team. We were talking the other day, like, the coach is on the sidelines. Defensive linemen can't be like, hey, the wide receivers go a bunch of wusses, but the wide receivers are like, you guys are a bunch of fat, lazy idiots. Right? Everyone has their position on the team. And so it's wrong. Like, the cheerleader has their place too. Right. We all have the same objective, to get the ball down the court. But like, whether you're the coach on the sidelines calling the shots or you're the quarterback calling the calls, and like you are, you know, the project manager making stuff happen. It doesn't make like, we shouldn't. We're all trying to get the same place. And so what happens though is the guys on, on the field are like, the coach knows nothing. What he's talking about. I was in the gym lifting 300 pounds and he's over there. He's 60 year olds. He's washed up, right? Like, that team's never gonna win. You gotta respect the position of what they're doing. And it's wrong for the coach to get on the field and start trying to play because he'd get ran over real fast. And then the quarterback, the project manager is gonna get hit, right? So like one person in that team falls apart or is in the wrong spot and things fall apart, right? And so, like, I see, I see you as a great coaching team and like that, like long term, as a company grows, like a great coaching team and. But you got to figure out how to make your team play, right? Because right now you're bopping in and out on every single timeout. Yeah. You know, and so like the Financial stuff I'm not too worried about because you're growing so fast and you'll eventually hit a point where it's like, okay, now we're good. But like, you won't get the. You won't grow much more without changing stuff like from the teams. Now you're just gonna keep cycling through guys and you'll never be able to confidently project growth when you don't know you have a labor rate. Right. Because at the end of the day, we sell time. So if you don't have guys, you don't make money. And so.

Like, that will fix itself though, if you fix the culture thing. Cause those guys will go talk to everyone at that shop and they'll say, hey, our company, you gotta come work for us. Like, when an A player from another company leaves because he's tired of working for the guy, he'll come and talk to your guys. And they're like, our guys are great. They're committed. They have a great. Some of that.

We're getting people coming from other.

From other.

Companies.

Now if someone's late to work, they're not bought in. True, but.

And the ones who have come from other companies are generally not late.

Generally not.

Clay's not late to work and he brings three guys. Yeah, he picks them up on his way in.

Yeah.

And Scott's not late, you know, and both of those guys came from other companies.

Burgess is here all the time. Yeah, it's the guys that still. But it's the guys that we hadn't had the one on one and haven't told the future.

They.

They're here for a paycheck. Yeah, they're here for a paycheck.

I would really, I'd really put you guys to be. Make it an environment where they feel they can come and say something negative about you.

Right. Like they can literally in a team meeting be like, hey, Cas, why weren't you here yesterday? What were you doing? Like, they should be. Feel comfortable to do that. Right. Because then you'll feel comfortable asking them the same question.

I think like, the first thing we ought to do, seriously, is host a dinner. We pay for it, but we do, like Stuart said, do a power of some sort, put it all out on the table and basically find out who's over time. Not mold them, but, you know, see who wants to buy in, see that this is a future for them.

Thank you so much for watching episode two of Zero Turn. I hope that what we were talking about with Master Cuts, you're able to take some of those things, take some of those systems, those procedures, and really learn from them. One of the greatest ways for you to build your business is learning from other business owners what not to do and what to do when they are successful. So I hope you enjoy this. I hope there's something you can take away and implement in your lawn care business. We just released a book coming off of this whole video series. It's called Zero Turn how to Build a Successful Lawn Care Business. You can buy it on Amazon. The paperback edition is now available and I look forward to meeting you. Whether it be at a conference on the course, or answering your questions@landscapebusinesscourse.com make sure you check out the podcast and I look forward to hearing from you.