Millionaire Landscape Contractor Share Tips for Starting a Lawn Care Business

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape business course. And today we're going to be talking to Zachary Trigger, who's actually out in Maryland and is looking to start his business. This is gonna be kind of a longer episode. This is a part of something you can actually get in on. If you would like a one on one consulting call. It's $299, 45 minutes, we do a zoom call. We can do all sorts of fun stuff together. And in this case, Zachary is getting started in his business. He's gonna tell you a little bit more about what he's up to. He's been in the Marines 16 years, so thank you for his service to our country. And now he's looking to give back, which I think is incredible, and creating.

Jobs to do that. And as small business owners, that's one.

Of the things we forget is that we are actually a very important part of our economy and our community and our country when we create jobs for our local area. So we're gonna go ahead and jump into this one. He has not started his business yet, so this is a great one if you're getting started. If you know someone that's new in the business, gonna be talking a lot about website stu branding, about pricing, about equipment setup. So just an all around, really great episode. If you want to book a call with me, one on one in the links of the description below, just use that to book the one on one consulting call. Also, before we jump into the show, also a reminder to sign up for Landscape Summit 2021, just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. Do make sure you sign up because we're going to sell out. And not based upon the size of the room. It's gonna be based upon the fact that they're not gonna allow us to have so many people there due to social distancing. So I'm pretty confident we can get 200 people there if they allow us to go like they allow our restrictions there. But we're already over halfway to that number. So we're well over what we had last year in terms of people at the conference. And that doesn't include the franchisees who are all coming the day before for our own kind of a seminar. So anyways, make sure you sign up. That's all I want to say is.

Like, it could literally.

I'm going to be meeting with the hotel, seeing if we can kind of stretch it anymore, but there's a chance that they keep us restricted down to 150. And literally, we have to cut the registration off here pretty soon, so I don't know if that's gonna be the case. I'm trying to expand how much space we have and what they're gonna allow us to do, but make sure. If you're wanting to come to the conference, book it now. Like, if you know you're coming, just book it now. Book your hotel, because the hotel rooms are going to be all gone if we get even 150 people there, let.

Alone 200 or 250.

So make sure you do that. Look forward to seeing you there without any further delay. Let's go ahead and jump into this.

Zoom call with Zachary Trigger.

All right, can you hear me now?

Yep, now I can.

All right, here we go. It's been a bit since I've used Zoom, so I've been a lot of Ms. Teams. So can you see me clearly or is the light, like, jacking you up any?

Nope, that's perfect. All right, I can see you just fine. Yep.

So how you been after getting back from your long trip?

Good. We're recovering. You're recovering. Lots of calls just booked up from last week, but it's. It's good. It's good. Yeah. Nice. I actually.

I messed up my days. For whatever reason, I thought it was last Monday. So, like, I'm on here. I'm like. I'm thinking, like, man, that's gonna be tough for him to join a meeting while. And then I'm like, I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here. I'm like, let me go back and check and make sure. Because all I did was click, like, your first available date.

Right.

And I went back. Oh, it's the 19th.

No worries.

I totally forgot last Monday was, you know, even a federal holiday, so I'm. So I got back from 10 days in Utah prior to that, so.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Yeah. So.

So I'm assuming you got a chance to kind of read, like, what I put in.

I guess, the conference call notes.

So you mean kind of start kind of about me seeing a little bit better handle on that.

Yeah. So you graduated, you got your degree. That's pretty cool. In the business side of things. When did you graduate then? What year was that?

Actually? May. So.

Yeah. So I guess, like, I'm born and raised in Maryland my whole life. Grew up in Pasadena, Maryland, which is Anne Arundel county between Baltimore and Annapolis. I think. You got a franchise starting in Howard County.

Exactly. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Family wise, I was married last June.

Obviously. Dating several years prior to that. And I guess financially because I think that's probably, you know, it's very important. The only debt I have is, is my home and then like short term debt, you know, obviously put bill my bills go through my credit cards and I pay it off at the end of the month. So I really don't have any debt. I got about $70,000 in cash.

30 of it I've allocated to starting this business and the other 40 is actually for a rental property that we've been trying to acquire. But like as you know the market is just incredibly inflated. So that's just kind of sitting there while we're still looking. But we're not, you know, if the numbers don't work, the numbers don't work, you know and we're looking for our ROI and cash flow and everything. So.

And we're constantly re evaluating that because of the market changing so much. But anyway.

So basically kind of where I'm at career wise is.

As my prior careers you can see they're very.

I wasn't sitting at a cubicle, we'll put it that way.

Yep.

And that's where, that's where I'm at now. And I can do the work but I don't enjoy the work. And also as I stated in like kind of my why like I'm very grateful, you know and maybe this is not a common theme as much in this time we'll say this current time like I'm very grateful for what this country's done for me personally in terms of the Marine Corps and the GI Bill. Like I'm still in school. I went back to school.

Right.

I'm in school right now getting an undergrad certificate in digital marketing and then a second one in human resources. So like that's a huge benefit. And I feel like even though I've served for 16 years, I'm going to serve at least for four more until I'm eligible for retirement.

I feel calling to give back and by providing, you know, good jobs for individuals in the community, obviously I'm not going to give 10, you know, be able to provide 10,000 jobs. But if I can, you know, have a small to medium sized company that supports my family and I can support other families, you know, I think that would really give me satisfaction, you know, in life.

But anyway that's kind of where I'm at on that. And I really only have like some four and I kind of covered them in the email like four main questions that I like to get your input on and I guess we can dive into that. Unless you got anything.

That's awesome. That's a lot of good information. So that way when you ask the questions, I have contact. That's awesome. Yeah, let's jump into it.

Well, did you get a chance to kind of look at my area in terms of.

Yeah, I know it pretty good. I know it pretty good there because before Howard county there was someone interested not too far away from you. So I've looked at that area a little bit. What exactly are you on the north side? Like what side? I'm sorry, I'm just pulling up a map right now of Forest Hill.

Yeah, here, I'll pull up my map. So we're kind of like talking the same.

Hold on here.

So where I actually live is. I live. If you're looking at a map, I'm closer to Jarrettsville.

Yep.

To the west. So you got Forest Hill, North Bel Air and you got West, West Jarrettsville Road. That's kind of running from like the center of town, we'll call it.

Yep.

So I live that a bit in between Forest Hill and Jarrettsville, but you know, post wise.

Forest Hill. But yeah, I'll be looking to operate in the Forest Hill and North Bel Air areas. Okay.

And.

The comp. And some of my questions are going to center on this. Like there's a lot of. And this is not to be derogatory or anything like that, but a lot of Chucks in a truck. We'll say guys just, you know, not branded. I, I don't know if they're insured or not. You know, I'm saying like I've. And I've had these guys service my long time time when I've, you know, been out of town.

But barely any web presence whatsoever. You know, Google business listing, but websites like there's some ground ground guys are in actual Bel Air and they say this area is part of their territory. But truthfully, unless they had some serious route density up here, I don't know how it would be profitable for them for the time that it takes to travel from where their location is to this area.

But anyway, I guess I'll dive in to my first question. So along the lines of the branding the business, I was thinking about going all electric. And what are your thoughts on all electric with its high cost to start up compared to gas? And do you think the customer actually cares enough that this will be enough market differentiator from everybody else out there?

Yeah, I don't feel based on the data we get, I don't feel like yet the customers care enough, or I should say enough of the customers care.

Because, you know, they're not willing to pay more for it. That's basically what we've found. Like, hey, it's kind of a nice thing. It's quieter, things like that. But we have not seen someone willing to say, I would spend $40amo instead of 30 because it's electric. Right. That being said, I don't feel it's a whole lot more expensive now. It's starting to become more and more mainstream commercial services. A lot more guys are using them out in the field. Especially the hand, you know, the hand tools. Right. Like trimmers, blowers, stuff like that. The mower is the part that's going to get more expensive, especially if you're going to get a zero turn. Right. Those get expensive. Charging is a lot harder. So for example, like we were over in Sandwich, Massachusetts and they have the, their, their trimmers and stuff are electric and they just got like, from hardware freight, like $100 little tiny generator. I think it's like a 1500, you know, watts or whatever and it charges them all up all day. They can literally let it run throughout the day while it's on the truck. Right. It just, just sips on the gas. Whereas a, you know, when you're talking about a mower, you know, especially a zero turn mower, that thing going. This is my biggest, my biggest concern is that mower going dead in the middle of a day. Right? Yeah. And if you're doing large properties where you're going to need a zero turn and it's taking an hour per lawn to mow most of those, Most of those, you know, mowers will maybe last three to five hours depending on the conditions. Right? Yeah. And those are considerably expensive. You're paying a hefty price tag for those.

Yeah. So the brand I was looking at is Mean Green. And you know, they advertise, you know, you can get seven to eight hours with a certain battery package out of their mowers. But like on the hand equipment, no matter what, I think I'll go electric just because that way I'm not dealing with two different types of fuel, having to worry about the mixtures. Plus I think it's, the equipment's easier on the operator compared to gas. You know, the noise, the smell, the vibration. Yeah, A lot lighter, everything else.

So.

But yeah, my biggest thing was, was the mowers because like a.

Stalker 48 from Mean Green, you're talking like almost $25,000 where you can get a comparable 48 inch standard for half the price, if not less, you know. Okay, okay.

Because honestly, if you're looking at 25,000, like, do you have to bag clippings in your area?

No, no, Nobody bags club.

So really, for $25,000, you're really looking at three times the price. Right? Because a standard 48, for example, you know, you can get those for eight grand pretty easily. Right? So that's the hard part, you know, and whether or not someone's willing to pay more for it, I haven't seen that yet. The thing is, it's how you market it, right? And you know, from your digital marketing background, you know this, like, if your brand was around that, that could become your differentiating factor, right? And especially if you have the mower, which most people don't, a lot of the guys are going to the electric and stuff. But if your brand is around sustainability, environmentalism, you know, the quiet, even if you name your something like, like, literally, like, I know there's a horrible example, considering where we're at geopolitically, but like quiet little Indians, like something weird and quirky that is like keeping quiet. That's the thing you want to focus on. It's small. But there's people who build their brand around closing gates, right? And that's, that's literally their focus is because they have a lot of fences and people are tired of their lawn care guy keeping the gate open. So if your thing was like quietness or environmentalism around green and eco stuff and the name of your company actually revolved around that, that starts to get pretty interesting.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying with that, with the, with the, you know, branding with an environmental name. But at the same time, like, my naming, my thought train behind it was to kind of use an already recognized brand name in another industry and apply it to my business. So, for example, like Enterprise Landscape and Longcast Services, like Enterprise is nationally known name. Like, yes, it's not in the lawn care industry. But look at like how many, like Paramount. How many Paramount roofing companies or Paramount, you know, constructions do you see? But Paramount is known for, you know, the movie industry, but it's a known name. Like, I mean, you think I'm tracking along the right lines there or do you? Because I just see as like something small and quirky maybe good for one area. But I don't think it's like, for example, you with Augusta, it's a nationally known, like, golf course, obviously, and it's already a Nationally known name.

Yep.

Is that the reason behind your.

Right. What it's going to come down to is what your target market is. Right. Like my idea, what I just said, is going to be residential focused. Right. If you're trying to go after commercial, definitely that's not the way you want to go. Right. In terms of, you know, using a quirky kind of name that's catchy, but like enterprise, if you're going to use enterprise, that is going to be considered commercial, like in the mind of a customer right away. Right. Depending on your logo. Like that. But it's the naming of it speaks commercial to most people. Right. And that's what. When you look at the biggest companies in the landscape industry, that's the type of names they have, but they're traditionally going after commercial. So just becomes what you want to target in terms of the naming. And then whether or not promise you this, a commercial client not willing to pay a dollar more to have electricity. Right now, the residential market, I do feel like there's a sub segment of people that are willing and they see value in that.

Just something to consider. I don't think there's any right or wrong naming conventions. And, and I think you can definitely brand enterprise, for example, towards a residential. But traditionally, like, even when you think about like packaging on SAS products and things, enterprise is considered for like big businesses. Right?

Yeah, yeah.

Just, just that's the first thing that popped in my mind.

Okay.

Okay.

Something else I wanted to go off of that question.

I don't know, I'm sure why you.

Think, why you're thinking about, like, even when I looked online though too, like, you're right in terms of people not really penetrating that area super well with online, like, there's a little bit of Bel Air, but like out towards where you're at, like, there's not much in terms of people online knowing what they're doing. Even in Bel Air, like, let's be honest, there's not too many great ones. There's. There's a few. Yeah. Like, it's definitely open. And for you, with your kind of experience in your digital marketing, you know, using your brand, using the website, stuff like that, you're going to be able to, you know, do really well online.

Yeah. Oh, this is what it was with the electric thing. So I was actually doing for this business marketing course or I just got done.

One of it was like a marketing plan. You had to come up with a marketing plan for a business. So actually I chose your business. Right. To use as my, like, Case study, everything else. And when I was doing the SWOT analysis, like one of the.

Oh, this will be fun.

Like, let me, let me, let me pull it off because I don't want to, I don't want misspeak here.

I'm not gonna be able to share it, but I can talk to it.

Hold on.

Here we go.

See, I don't know the SWOT analysis like this going back to the electric thing, but I think I've kind of made my decision already. Talking to you, like, under threats, like.

The threat of environmental regulation. Right. So on the municipal, state and federal level, I mean, if you look at like the.

State of California, the governor just had an executive order basically outlawing.

Gas powered vehicles. Yeah. 2035. So, like, part of my SWOT analysis was like, you know, that's a threat. Not just obviously to any lawn care business, but to the industry as a whole, you know. But like, there's some municipalities not in Maryland that I know of, some in Florida, I guess, because they're more of a retirement kind of area with like, noise regulations and everything like that. So, like, I had that as a threat, but.

I mean, what are your thoughts on that at all? Because I don't want to get to a point where, like, I'm. I mean, Christ, it'd be years down the road. But I had it as like a threat for you, because if you're, you know, all in gas and then your local regulations change and now you got to switch over to Electric within 365 days, you know, you know, it's obviously a threat because you may or may not have the capital already allocated for that. You know, I don't know. That was just kind of the thought process of it with the SWOT analysis.

Yeah. Like, my, my opinion on this is, like, if regulations were to change, for example, with California saying, hey, 2035, they're giving 15 years. Right? Yeah. The bottom line, let's say they give us five years to switch, you know, regulation. Most of our mowers and our. Definitely our hand equipment don't last five years. Right. So in terms of like today's best decision in terms of the life expectancy of that piece of equipment right now for us, I see it being the gas. However, I'm very aware that that's where we're going. Right. I'm just happy to join in five years when the cost of entry is lower. Right. And until the customer is willing to pay more for it, I don't want to foot the bill, basically.

And I know that Some owners, they have a moral like issue with doing gas operating. That's why they do it. Right. I still can't justify spending $25,000 on a zero turn mower that could still have issues in terms of like a damage. And now I'm 25,000 out instead of say seven or eight grand. Right. So that's the thing I truly believe we would have, like you said, at least a year or two to switch over. And at that point we just as equipment dies off, you just replace it with the stuff that's currently necessary. And if that happens, the cost will go dramatically down because all of the big manufacturers will focus on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll jump on board. All right, so kind of moving on to what you're talking about, the web presence in my local area. So what are your thoughts on me, like with starting out, using a service like lawn care web design to build and run the website in relation to the cost? So for example, you gave, you had a video a couple weeks ago about software and CRMs, right? And you gave very specific, well, not very simple, but price points, you know, at this large, you know, $400,000 or more, that's when you want to go with a service autopilot compared to any of the other softwares. So do you think from starting out, day one, it'd be better for me to like build my own website on Squarespace or go with, like I said, lawn care website, Because I also look at it, it's obviously a marketing cost also.

Yeah, I look at the answer to that question for CRM and for the website strictly comes down to what's your plan for the business? Right. In terms of how big do you want to grow and how quickly you want to do it. If you want to get to, you know, say 500,000 a year in revenue in two years, you better make sure you have a CRM and software and a website from day one. If you want to get to 500,000 in six, five, six, seven years, you can do a little bit slower, start a little bit cheaper. You know, start with Lawn Pro, start with your own kind of website and slowly build to that. It's going to strictly come down to how quickly you want to ramp to that spot.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm just looking at like the funds that I have available and I can increase those funds by the time, like actually starting probably in the spring next year. But, you know, that's a, you know, what $7200 cost per year. I think if I'm doing My math, right. So okay, for service autopilot, the wet. Like the. No, no, no, like the web design.

I see the value in the web design in terms of getting me for SOE and.

You know, getting, getting my product and services out there. And like I'm tracking on what you would you in one of your videos what you said about the CRM. Like I would start out with like Lawn Pro and then obviously as build a business, you know, you know, switch to CRMs.

But I mean I'm just trying to decide is it worth the cost? Because I would like to build fast. Like I said starting out, it's just gonna be me while I'm still working a full time job. But I need to, I wanna ramp it up quickly as possible to get an employee and then eventually by year two, me be strictly in the business.

Yeah, this is the thing too is like there's a cost of transferring that you have to take into account, right? So for example, somebody like, oh, like for the first year I'll do Lawn Pro, then I'll switch to Service Autopilot. There's a cost of switching which is like you lose data, you lose history of the customers, you lose all their payment information. Like there's a cost to that and the bigger you get, the greater that is. Right? So for our franchisees, when they first start, we start them on service autopilot, even though they might only do do 10, 15,000amonth that first year. Because I know in year two or year three, when they're making 30, 40,000amonth in revenue or more for them to now switch, they're losing a bunch of customer data. And if you look at say $200 more per month for say service autopilot over Lawn Pro, just for example $200 a month, that is $2,400 a year. Let's say three years go by that $7,500 that you've spent extra to use Service autopilot instead of Lawn Pro. Let's assume there's no advantage from a sales perspective of using the different. Just from a strictly number standpoint, you're basically paying $7,500 not to have to switch to the new software. And that seems like a lot of money. However, when you start looking at having set, you know, let's say 200 customers on the schedule and 2,000 emails in your database and losing all of that data, their credit cards that are on file, all the rest of it. And now it starts to become maybe I should just done this from day one, right? And that's not taking into account like automations and the increase in efficiency of having the better software even when you're smaller.

So.

And I don't know if you know the number offhand. So what is the general cost for one of your franchises that are, say that are doing $10,000 a month for the first year? Because I know they're. Obviously when you add more employees into the system, the costs go up. I mean do you, do you know that number?

Yeah, yeah. For Service autopilot they're 249amonth. If you want the best package. Right. Includes all your, all your automations. If you do a step down than that. I think, I think don't quote me on this one because I'm not sure. I think it's 90 bucks, but I could be wrong. It could be 120 or 90. It's like half the cost. But in my opinion, if you're gonna use Service autopilot, do the biggest package. If you're not gonna use Service autopilot, don't do it at all. There's other comparable products that I feel are cheaper that don't have the automations that are just, just as good and are cheaper. Right. And so that's kind of my, my $0.02 on that one.

Okay.

Okay.

And then with Lawn Care web design.

Like in my instance I don't have any media, any photos or anything like that. So I guess you guys supply like, I guess stock photos and things like that and then obviously the site's built to the way I would want it.

Yeah, like most like if you see on the site the ones that we have up on there, most of those they literally came with a logo and a name. That's, that's all they came with us. Most people don't have the pictures and the video so we kind of have to get creative in terms of what images to use. Make sure, making sure it's like relevant to their, their market and things like that. So don't worry about that too much. But what's cool is if you know you can always add videos and pictures down the road as you have uniforms, you get more crew members, you do different types of jobs, you can just send them in and literally usually within a day or two they have them up. You.

Okay?

Yeah. And like if I was you like looking at say long term web designer, building your own.

So I guess you kind of already answered my.

It's all jumbled here. Sorry. There's a big lapse now on zoom all of a sudden. Go ahead Yeah, I was having a.

Lapse with you for a little bit. You know, you got to finish your thought.

Oh, I was just going to say like what you had kind of mentioned there in terms of like looking at the marketing expense the, for the website is completely right. And whether this is the bottom line. Right. So like 12 months, for example, with long care web design, that's $4,800. You got to ask yourself, okay, if I built on my own and spent say 300 bucks, would the $4,500 do better if I went and spent on like say Facebook ads or Google Ads? That's the question you want to ask yourself, right? Because you can go get a URL, get started for a couple hundred bucks a year, really, and just host it yourself. And with your skills of web design and stuff, you'd probably figure out a pretty good looking website. Right. And so it's just really a matter of would those dollars be spent otherwise? Because at the end of the day we're looking at customer acquisition costs, right. And if our customer acquisition costs, say $100, we need to make sure that that website generates, in the case of long hair web design, at least 48 new leads, one a week, basically in order to make sure it's worth that money. Right. And so that's, that's how I would be looking at. Is exactly. You said looking at the marketing cost and then balancing that against customer acquisition cost to see if there's roi.

Okay, well, I mean there's also the opportunity cost if I got to sit and be, and be scrolling around with a website.

On my own. So. Okay, yeah, I mean my next question was like, you know, one of my biggest fears is the back end of the business in regarding to handling customer requests and follow up. Like I have a thought out how the process would work and put it on paper. I'm just not sure the implementation of the process in the first year or two when growing the business. So I'm guessing thinking now from what you said, like having that having service Autopilot is going to be greatly beneficial with.

Handling the customer acquisition process, taking them through.

You know, the bid purchase and then, you know, keeping having touches with them throughout the, throughout the year. Offering other services.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Like in terms of automation, like Lawn Pro does have some automations, it's just not as customizable like things like you're talking about, like timing wise, certain things that, you know, we really value. But I'm not gonna lie to you, Service Autopilot is not like you Just like turn it on immediately, know how to use it. It's not easy. Right. And honestly like that's the one thing I have against them big time is like there's their, the user interface isn't great in my opinion. It's. There's too many stack like layers on it. So like when franchisees come to us for example, we don't let them in service autopilot until we set it up for them because it is just otherwise just so incredibly overwhelming and, and there's people who making a lot of money basically on just setting people service autopilot up honestly and setting up their automations and things like that. I feel though that asterisks with your skill level and your business acumen you'd be able to figure it out. Right. I just get really unhappy when people are literally spending 5, 6, $700 a month for someone else to run their automations and build their service on top of the software cost. And I don't feel like it's necessary. I feel like they can do a better job just tutorials, training. It is a complex software, right. It's built for companies that are running multiple millions of dollars in revenue. So there's lots of layers and complexity and a lot of it you don't need. That's the bottom line. They're trying to serve variety of industries and variety of size of businesses. So for as a newbie to get in there and start trying to use like cost matrixes and like master routes and master schedules like it can get very overwhelming. And so if you do go that route I just say three words, simple, simple, simple. When it comes to service autopilot and use it for its functionality of automations but keep things simple if it requires you to start. You know like people get into this whole like measuring linear feet of a bed to determine the edging costs and then they do the square foot, the lawn and they, they're taking like averages of how much edging and like my goodness, do the estimate in 30 seconds or don't have to go there in person. Don't spend an hour doing a mowing estimate. Right. Like you said opportunity cost. Right. So that's what, that's the rabbit trail of service autopilot some people get locked up into if they're very OCD about certain things. But I feel like with your business experience you'd be able to figure out a lot of things like automation stuff yourself.

Yeah, that's all I would say you'd be able to figure it out.

Okay.

Just kind of back to the, the mower. And like I know how you run your two corporate locations with, you know, trailer setups, which is, I'm definitely.

Going that route. Like I got ramp rack not that far from me here in Maryland. I think you're starting to offer that to your franchisees. I guess so with the average lot size in my area going from 3,900 square foot to several acres. But my target market would be half acre or less. I'm trying to pair the right piece of. Right piece of equipment to that size lot. And my thoughts are like a 36 inch standard. It's kind of allow access to gates because we're probably in the, in.

The subdivisions that we have around here, you're about 50% of them are going to have gates. So I don't want to, you know, go and shut out half, 50% of my market. Not, you know, I'm saying be able to get in the gates with a larger mower.

What are, I mean, thoughts? Comments?

Yeah, like if we were in a market where like actually today, later today, Josh is uploading a video. I do a review of our ramp rack and I talk a little bit about this and that is if we did not have to bag clippings, which in our market like literally we're like one of the one in a hundred that has to actually bag clippings. Right. But we have to. Right. So we, if we didn't have to, we would do 36 inches stand on mowers in the back of the, of the beds using a ramp rack. Like that's, that's the setup. Right. And just for all the reasons you mentioned. But this is my thing is if you say, for example, you're considering a real mean green mower, 25 grand, that 25 grand should cover your truck, a zero turn, the ramp rack, the whole setup. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's what I'd be encouraging to do. Right. In terms of literally being able to do twice as many setups for the cost of, you know, if you went out and bought, you know, the battery operated zero turn and then, you know, in five years, once you ran those 36 inches into the ground, you turn around, sell those and then maybe you upgrade at that time when from a cash perspective, your business is going to be a better place. Yeah.

A buddy of mine that I served with, his background is finance. You know, his thing was, you know, what happens if it. You crash and burn. Right. And now you got this twenty five thousand dollar mower that you have a limited Market that you can dump it on, you know, where you know, any 36 inch standard I'm going to be able to dump pretty easily if I, if I had to, you know. And I thought that was a very, very valid point. And he kind of spoke to what you were saying. You know, start with you know, the, the gas power and if you see the market change, then go to go to the electric.

So like if you spent $12,000 on a truck, for example, the 12,000 and let's say we spent 8,000 on a 36 inch zero turn and then you got 3K for your ramp rack, then you got let's say 4K for other tools and miscellaneous stuff on that truck, you're looking at $27,000. Yeah, yeah, right. So that's a very scalable model for 100 grand to have four trucks and trucks setups going. That's awesome. Yeah.

I was gonna say.

I guess I was gonna go the truck, the truck route. But I've heard you in the past talk about, you know, go out and buying a four or five thousand dollar truck. Where I live, you're very hard to find a four or $5,000 truck that's, that's safe, that's not a rust bucket. Like I have an, an 85F150 that I use around the house here. But like part of me.

I gave you 12 grand on the budget. Come on now. Yeah, yeah.

But I'm trying to, I'm trying to work this within $30,000. So with the, with the website and.

Everything.

But.

And painting the truck branding and everything like that. Because like I said, other than the, the ground guys franchise around here, like it's either a white truck with a couple decals on it or it's somebody's personal vehicle with nothing on it.

You can do better than the grounds guys. Come on now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I'm just saying they're the only thing that's branded and yeah, like I've lived this area for the last five years and I've never seen one of their trucks, believe it or not.

Yeah, yeah.

In my local area, I've seen them in Bel Air.

But.

So going to. And I don't know how much time we have left.

Go ahead.

Okay. So going in with.

With services and do you guys charge fees at all in terms of you come to a backyard and there's 6,000 kids toys in the backyard.

Do you charge a penalty fee?

We wouldn't on the first time. We'd basically email them like, hey, this needs to be cleaned up, otherwise there's going to be a fee. But then after that. Yes. And honestly, we usually would just drop them because traditionally, especially when it comes to employees, they are not super thrilled about spending 30 minutes cleaning up after someone and then 10 minutes to mow the lawn and they end up breaking things. When you start moving stuff around, it's not like, it's traditionally not like lawn furniture. It's a lot of times like their bike and then it's like the trampoline and it just becomes more and more stuff and that can break. And now you're just opening yourself up for liability. Right. So we traditionally say, hey, look, it's got to be cleaned off and in service autopilot, we have an automation that basically when.

When they are dispatched, they get an email that says, hey, just a reminder, we're coming tomorrow. And that's their indication. Like, hey, we told you we're coming. You need to have everything cleaned off on. And most people understand that.

Yeah. All right, so you don't. So you're saying you just drop them. You don't necessarily don't have a fee.

I would stay away from it, honestly. Let's say you charge 10 or 15 bucks, but you break one thing a year, you're wiping all that money out. Right. And they are going to expect you, if you break something to fix it.

So what about dog waste then? Same thing.

We don't put our guys through it. It's horrible. Like, to mow lawns when they haven't picked up is horrible. So we, we, we, we have an automation that tells them again the day before we, when we dispatch says, hey, we're coming tomorrow, you make sure your dog droppings are picked up. And then we put a tag on their profile. And then every time they're dispatched mowing it sends them that email. Now if they like, literally, we have a pretty short leash on it. Two times we're gonna let them go because if they don't pick up after the droppings because it's horrible for the guys, they get splattered with that stuff and they have to work all day long. Like, we just don't want to put them through it. So we give them a warning. We say, hey, it's got to be cleaned up. We're going to give you an email the day before every time we come. And if you still can't pick up after, we're just going to have to let you go. And I think if I remember correctly, we let one person go ever that's been that way.

Okay, well, the reason I was going that way with especially the dog waste and the fees with associated with it, because there's some other people out there that do charge a fee if, you know, whatever they run through it or it's excessive, you know, whatever that means. But in terms of also offering it as a service. So already on the property to cut the grass, they have a dog, you know, and offering that as a service before, you know, we go walk the yard, clean it up, and then go ahead and mow the grass. I mean, because they're franchises built around dog waste, you know.

Right.

So.

So there's two things I would say about it. Number one is like, there's a reason why franchises are built just for that, right? It's a different, totally different business. And so it's the same way, like when we talk about on the podcast, like diversification of services, you could offer 20 other services while you're on the property. Right. The question is, you constantly are adding more complex complexity of the business. You got to make sure the guys have bags, you got to make sure that they have the scoopers. You got to make sure you dispose of it correctly. Like, all of that starts coming into play. You got a mask, like all that stuff, and then switch switching on the other side of things. Most guys don't mowing guys do not want to deal with it. That's not the type of person that usually wants to do. Like we've tried doing handyman services, for example, in the winter to keep our guys busy. Guess what? Guys who working outside in the model time do not want to be inside talking to a customer over their shoulder the entire time where they're thinking around with something. Right. And so, you know, that's the thing too. It's like your workforce, your labor force, as well as the complexity of the business. That's why I would traditionally push you away from that direction if you're going to scale the business.

Okay. If you're going to be property and you know, like when you see so and so in the route that you're going to throw in bags and the pooper scooper, like, you'll probably make extra little money and, you know, a small percentage of customers are going to need that service too, right. You're probably maybe talking about 5 to 10% max. That would take you up on that. Then it becomes a question of like, okay, if I'm making 500,000 a year in mowing and I'm making $4,000 a year in pooping, scooping, you Know, that's the question.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with, you know, as you stated before about simplified services. So the lawn care, the spring and fall cleanups, mulch.

Like, I don't know if I want to move into the. Like, you guys are in the hardscape side, correct?

And landscape went away from it big time. Like, big, big time. Massively. Like just what you mentioned, we focus on lawn care, mowing, property cleanups, and then small landscape jobs like mulch installation. That's like 95% of what we do.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, just the liability with a retaining wall, you know, and the engineering that goes into it if it's over 4 foot, and then if there's a driveway there, like, it's not that. Like, it's not that I'm scared to do that work. It's just that I don't know if it's. If it's worth it. You know, I rather specialize in kind of what we mentioned, the lawn care, the cleanups, the mulch, and then is leaf removal. I mean, I know, like, there's fall cleanups, but do you classify that as leaf removal and, like, cleaning up the beds, or is that a separate service for you? Because we're around here, like, and in Howard county, like, we have some areas that get some serious leaves, you know, and.

Yeah, so for most. Most markets, we, like, for example, the franchise, we send out our monthly email, and it's for leaf cleanup only. However, we try to do that. So that way we can send another email the next month. Basically talking about trimming bushes, pulling weeds, et cetera. But yeah, when I say property cleanups, I kind of am rounding all of that into the same group. Like fall cleanups, spring cleanups, trimming bushes, pulling weeds, just kind of like the manual labor around, keeping the place looking nice.

Yeah. How are your franchisees doing their setups for, like, leaf cleanup? Are they running a dump trailer with like a billy goat and obviously backpack blowers or a walk behind blower?

Yeah. It just depends on, like you said, how many much of leaves is a big deal in their market. For example, in Tennessee and in Mississippi, they have the whole leaf back, the whole nine yards. Right. Because they're dealing with two months worth of massive leaf falling. Whereas in our market, usually we have it for like a week or two, but then the wind is taking a lot of it away, and we're just gonna do a general cleanup, kind of get those few leaves out of the beds while we're weeding and trimming. The bushes. So we focus more on fall cleanups. We don't get the big leaf vaccine system. We do have dump trailers, but we don't rarely use those for leaf cleanups. Where when you're talking about like oak trees and things like that down in Mississippi, Memphis, they swear by it. Like they get two of them at certain times a year with the big, you know, 12 or 18 inch, you know, suction hoses, because they do that literally for two and three months out of the year. So it really just becomes. It's the same thing as like with the equipment or even the website. It's just like opportunity costs. Like, I'm against buying a leaf vac for us. When we're going to use it for two weeks out of the year. I'd rather rent it. Right. Whereas if I'm going to use it for two or three months out of the year and that's a huge revenue bang, like it is over for them. And in your area, it's the same way. That's when I might consider getting a leaf back. I would rent it though, especially your first year, see how you like it. See what if it's worth it from a number standpoint. And then when it becomes like, I'm going to use this every day for three months, that's when you go buy it. And not at that point. I mean, like, even if you're using every week for three months, I would go buy one.

Yeah. Okay. What are, what are the average up at your Bellingham location? What are the average size lots that you guys are mowing?

Yeah, ours range like our average is around 7,000. But like, you know, I'd say the bulk of our, our mowing jobs are between 4,500 and 9,000 square feet. Like that's the majority of them. And so we do all those with the 30 inch, basically. And obviously we have some outliers. We have ones that are, you know, an acre, two acres, and then we have ones that are, you know, 1500 square feet.

Okay. And they're obviously, they're pushing those.

Yeah, we put, we push everything in. Next year we will have all our zero turns gone again. If we had not didn't have to pay clippings, we would get the 36 inch stand ons.

Okay, okay. Because I'm just wondering because I know what you have said, like your average cost or the average prices for those size lots. So like the prices here are all over the place. Like my neighbor up the street, he's got an acre, acre and a quarter. He has companies called Chesapeake Landscaping, their primary landscaping, but he's paying like $80 an acre. A neighbor across the street is paying like $55 an acre. So I'm having trouble with pricing, you know.

Yeah. So I highly recommend getting away from the acre and the square foot thing, especially when you're getting started. Right. That is great in my mind for if you're trying to sell over the phone. But like, I guarantee the guy $5 an acre. Probably not going to scale. His business. Can almost guarantee it. Yeah. The numbers won't work there. What's better? Metric, especially when you're getting started and you're not familiar with, you know, cost matrixes and stuff. Just think about how long it's going to take. Hours. Right. Charge by the hour, Know what your hourly rate is. And then when you're going to a job site, it's like, how long is this going to take? Right. Because a 2,000 square foot lawn. Yeah. If it's right next to the curb and I pull my truck up against it, it could take me less than five minutes. But if that 2,000 square foot is at the bottom of stairs in someone's backyard and it's surrounded by water, like a water feature that I can't edge against, that's going to take me 30 minutes to mow. Right. And so just strictly going by square footage or acreage, especially when you're getting started and you're not just. You're not trying to sell 100 jobs a day, I would highly recommend doing it out by an hourly basis because that 1 acre could be $55 if it's wide open right next to the curb. No bagging, no edging. Just. Just knock it out. The $80 an acre might literally be the exact same. Could be the same provider, just different price due to the fact that there's more edging, that it's harder access to get his trailer in there, things like that. And so that's how I would recommend playing your pricing game from the get go. That's how we've. We always still continue to operate at Augusta, is having an hourly rate and we have budgeted hours. And that's how you can implement P4P down the road, using that. Because if you're charging by the acre, guess what? You're giving your guys a percentage of revenue. They could care less what you're charging per acre. They only care about how much they're making when they're on that job. Right. And that's by the hour. Go ahead.

But you also, though, with that being said, you also have, I'm assuming, a minimum charge.

Yes, we do. We have. $32 weekly. Is our minimum.

Okay. Because. Yeah, like I said, let, you know, going. Because I've looked at the, you know, the. By the man hour and I'm like, all right, if off shooting for $60aman hour in some of these lots, I'm like, well, it's going to take 15 minutes to cut.

Well, you know, just do your minimum. Yep. Because you gotta, you gotta bake in the fact of admin cost. Right. Like to number one, set them up on estimate the, you know, calling back and then just the cost of like send invoices in a month. Right. There's got to be that baked in. Yeah.

And your guy, you guys, you physically.

Walk every property in terms of the estimate for mowing. Yeah, we drive by. Yes, we do. And we've done it over the phone and we have the systems in place to do it over the phone. The thing is, there's two reasons why we don't still, and that is when we go to a property, we can easily upsell them on five other services based upon seeing their property. Like, oh, like, yeah, your grass is overgrown, but we also can do a leaf cleanup, cleaning out your gutters, pressure, like a whole bunch of other stuff. Right. And the secondary thing is if you're going to do something over the phone, you can't see the tallness of the grass and they're going to lie to you in your face and tell you that they mowed it last week, you're going to show up, it's 2ft long and yet you've quoted them $40 and it's going to take you 4 hours. If your guys are on P4P, they're going to shoot you, not the customer. And so that's why we doing that.

And then estimate fee and you do like a initial cut fee. So you get there and say all the edges are overgrown. You're obviously going to spend a lot more time. So you say, hey, this is our initial cut fee and going forward it's going to be X amount of dollars per week.

Exactly. And when you're first getting started, if you're out mowing and things and you're trying to get customers, maybe you let that go. Like, for example, you know it's going to take 15 extra minutes because a little bit overgrown, the edges aren't established. Maybe you let that slide. But when you're on P4P, like said, down the road with employees, they will hold you Accountable to not giving them enough time on that first cut. And so, yeah, we do do the initial mows if they're overgrown or the edges need to be established. And just very important that on your estimate you make it clear to the customer why it's going to cost more. Right. It's overgrown. You got to establish the edges. Like it should be pretty straightforward. But that's another advantage of showing up in person. You get the extra 15 or $20 in that initial cut because unless they've literally mowed the grass in the past few days and the lawn has been perfectly edged for, you know, maintained, we're charging an initial fee that's higher.

Yeah, I guess last question here, because it looks like we're running out of time or we're over time. So a lot of the. Not a lot, but a couple neighborhoods in my area and this, these are the higher end neighborhoods. We'll say, you know, average price of $450,000, home costs and above have like no door to door solicitation, no like flyers and everything like that. Have you had to tackle anything like that in your market? Because I know you don't do a lot of door hangers or flyers.

Correct.

You do. You rely mainly on Facebook marketing.

And other content. Have you had to deal with anything like that? Or do you have any of your franchises that have. Because I still think, you know, when you cut a Property, doing like a 5 or 7 around is worth it. I mean, what are your thoughts?

Yeah. So are they gated communities like hoas?

Well, they're not gated, but you'll drive into the community and it'll have, you know, a sign. Hey, no. What do you call it?

Source.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, like so, like soliciting. Okay. This is an open interpretation. My mind soliciting is knocking the door. I would do a door hanger.

So for example, we have hoas and.

A lot of gated community communities locally. One second, let me just make sure I don't have another call. One second. Yep, we're good. We're good. So the.

We have a lot of gated community locally. Right. And so for the night, like the five and nine arounds, for example, I would just do it. You're not trying to like do the whole neighbor. You're not canvassing, so you're not actually going from door to door to door. You're literally just doing the neighbors. I would make your door hanger reflect that. I would say, hey, we were mowing next door. We're servicing your neighbor's property. And we wanted to ask you if you'd like us to serve you. Like, I would directly say that so that they know you're not canvassing. Right. I feel like we haven't had a huge amount of issue with that. And then the second thing I would say is you'd rather ask for forgiveness, honestly, when it comes to like doing five around.

Yeah. I mean, but this couple of these signs basically says we will sue you.

On the side.

Yeah. They're going to call you. Right. And you're just going to be like, oh, I'm really sorry. I. I had to knock on your door, for example. Right. But like, who? Like the soliciting part is you asking for a sale, doing a door hanger. You're not interrupting them. I would feel like that's okay. Again, I lean towards ask for, you know, forgive me instead of permission, but forgiveness before asking. Yeah, yeah. Like I would say no target more than using digital use next door, every door direct mail if you need to in those markets, in those neighborhoods. And that's what we've always done primarily is if we're going to try to hit that whole neighborhood, we're going to use every door direct mail. And then if we're going to be trying to hit them, you know, next door is a great one for that. Or even really targeted Facebook ads.

Okay. Okay.

All right.

Well, I think that's, that's about it. I'm going to try to make it out in January.

Cool.

To. To the conference. So still, I'm still looking into it.

And when you think of starting like officially, like next spring, is that kind of what you're thinking?

Yeah, well, we can go into that if you got a couple more minutes. So, like, literally tomorrow I'm gonna start the business filings. I already got a CPA.

Set up, so that's advised me. And then I'll be. He's not accepting new business right now, but come January one he is because he's swamp with PPP and everything else.

But.

But I'm switching over to him January 1st for my personal and then some other things.

But yeah, I was thinking about hitting it hard in the spring, but at the same time, I mean, I could technically be started here in a couple weeks. And we do have. Snow's not a ton of work, but it's when it's, when it, when it is here, it's usually good, you know, because I've cloud in the past before for a buddy on county contracts and you know, it's very, very lucrative.

So.

But I Was leaning more towards the side of get everything set up, website, back end, CRM, everything, and then hit it hard at the end of February for like starting into the spring cleanups.

Yeah, like, honestly, I would prioritize your website regardless of you do long care web design or not. Like, get it up as soon as possible because you'll take a few months to get there. And a lot of times you know people there, but they get it set up in February and it's not really ranking to like July and August. Right. So I would do that. But in terms of like your budget and things like getting started, the thing is, you got to buy the truck no matter what. Right? Like, you got to paint it, you got to get all that stuff set up. You could do that right away. What I would do though is like for example, the $8,000 mower, that's a really good chance you can it at a 0% down financing. And I would do that. So that way you have that money for marketing. Right. That would be my, like if you do, say a $12,000 truck, $3,000 for your ramp rack, $4,000 for other miscellaneous random equipment, then you got, you know, a good 10 grand still remaining to be able to, you know, you're going to finance, say the mower, you know, you still got ten grand to go out and finance, focus on marketing and have a little bit of backup. Right. And so if you're saying I'm going to spend say three grand in March and April and May, like three grand piece in those months, that's going to ramp you up pretty good. Right. That'll probably get you to the point of you being full time with someone else. Really? Kind of like what Mount Vernon is doing. Right. Like, that's probably what you could get to with that kind of money. I just would not spend your cash on the $8,000 mower because it's going to put you in a bad spot in terms of having money to market next spring. That's the one time I recommend financing is when it's going to take out of your startup capital which would otherwise be spent on marketing.

So, I mean, I can allocate more money towards business. I mean, me and my wife, we save roughly $5,000 a month we put away. So, like, it's just a conversation with her. Say, hey, look. And she's 100% behind it because she knows I'm kind of unhappy where I'm at with work work. So it's just a conversation I have to have. Say, hey, look, instead of Allocating this money to rental properties right now. Let's put it towards the business so we can get. Because that's, you know, another thing behind the business is obviously, it's an asset, and then I can hopefully put more money towards acquiring rental properties.

Right.

You know, when the business gets large enough. So.

Yep. Hey, I'm in the same boat right now.

Yeah. So you just bought those. Those three duplexes, or is it three triplexes?

Yeah, three duplexes. And then we just closed on another one last week. But I'm kind of out right now from the market. Our area is nuts. Like. Like, from the time that I purchased them to the time the appraisal happened, they had all gone up, like, 10%.

Go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah, the whole thing was screwing up there. You're heavy. Your. Your guys are doing property cleanups on those locations.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, when. When we come in, the first thing, we have Augusta come in and, like, transform the landscaping. Just simplify it too, right? Like, reduce the amount of maintenance that's required. Stuff like that.

Wow. Nice lag. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's bad. It's getting bad.

So the. The market's obviously done the same thing in your area. Just going through the roof.

Totally crazy. Yeah, because, like, see, people are moving out of Seattle, right? So, like, in your area, for example, people probably moving out of Baltimore, moving up north there. Right. So it tapping in from Seattle up towards where. Where we're at an hour and a half north. Right.

So, yeah, I mentioned. I was talking about that project that was one of. One of the opportunities was urban flight.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was in your strengths category. Yeah. Opportunities. Yeah, it's true. Like, Bel Air will grow, like, a lot because of. People don't need to be in Baltimore downtown anymore. Right.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I moved at.

City a while ago, but. And you would think, like, somebody's putting a skyscraper there.

Right.

Sorry, man. The lag is super bad. My apologies. I think it might be on my end.

Okay, well, hey, man, thanks for talking to me, and definitely.

Help set me straight. And I look forward to seeing you hopefully in January.

All right, Zachary, thanks so much, brother. Hey, stay in touch. Let me know, like, if there's something comes up or, like equipment or truck stuff or you're getting set up. Let me know if there's a question or if you're building your own site or let me know. I can take a look at it. Otherwise, Tori, over. You know, our team here with longer web design, they'd be happy to Help you out, but just keep me in the loop. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you.

Is there. I mean, is there an email that I can reach out to you with? Is the one that came through with this? Is that the Mike Andes or.

No, for the team, we have this specific one. It's on the website. I think it's infoloncarewebdesign.com and they'll reach out and do a call with you and everything. And honestly, like, he's gonna be really good at kind of like, you know, he might point you in the direction of you doing it yourself. They don't really try to sell you a whole lot. They just kind of tell you, hey, this is what we offer, and he'll give you some good ideas even if we don't build it for you, because he's just super smart.

I was talking about a reference to you.

Oh, what do you mean? Sorry?

You said if I wanted to reach out, how was the best way? Through the calendar.

Oh, through info. Oh, you mean. Oh, just email me. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to reach out to me, just email me. That's usually the best.

And which email is that? That's one of those questions.

Just the franchise at augustalongerservices.com or landscape. Okay. Course gmail.com. either one. Okay. Okay, cool.

I didn't know how much you, you know, are actually looking at those, if you're having somebody with your staff or not, so.

But I read them. Eventually, I'll get to them. Eventually.

Yeah.

All right, Zachary. Hey, I appreciate it, brother. We'll stay in touch.

All right, we'll see. We'll see in January.

All right. Later, brother. Bye. Bye.