Mowing Costs TOO MUCH!!! | What Your Landscaper is NOT Telling You
YouTube video by Mike Andes explaining six things landscapers typically don't tell customers about mowing services: customer interactions raising costs, scheduling inflexibility due to weather and staffing, mowing’s thin profit margins, differences between licensed companies and low-cost competitors, profit timing across seasons, and payment expectations (prompt payment required). The video includes practical recommendations for homeowners and brief plugs for Mike’s services and conference.
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It's Mike Andes, Augusta lawn care landscape businesscourse.com and today we're going to be talking about the six things what your landscaper is not telling you about the mowing service. Alright, so let's go ahead and jump into it. Number one is the fact that we as a landscaping company, as a lawn care service, we are going to charge you more and more if you talk to us every single time we come to your property. And if you call the office every single time after we've done service, we are going to have to charge you more. At the end of the day, time is money. And if you're going to stop the crew every single time they come to your property and talk to them for 15 minutes, we're going to have to charge you more. If you call every single time when they leave the property and call the office and chit chat, we're going to have to charge you more. It's not because we don't like you, it's not because we're mean. By the end of the day we're all operating a very, very thin margin and every single minute counts if we're going to run a profitable business. So what I recommend is give your expectations as the homeowner to your service provider. Make sure they know what you want, but don't bother them, don't always interrupt or stop them. And if you're just unhappy with their service, just cancel and move on to a different service instead of every single time complaining because the price will probably get raised on you due to the fact that your account is taking so long to service. Alright. The second thing that you need to know that your landscaper does know and when it comes to mowing service is that we can't really accommodate specific time and days. Why? Because of the weather. We work in an industry where rain can really, really put us back. It can double or triple the time it takes for us to complete our mowing jobs. And therefore we might have to push off several jobs a day or two. And if it's really, really pouring, we, we actually can't mow because the grass gets laid down and we can't even mow the grass. So we might have to move your job down around a little bit to accommodate the weather as well as scheduling. Especially as we get employees and we grow, there's going to be times where employees call out sick when employees don't show up. And especially times like this where it's really hard to keep good employees. It can be difficult sometimes if employees call up the job or. Or they do call out sick. And we need to make sure that we get all the jobs done, but we probably won't be able to accommodate the 3:31pm on a Friday afternoon. That's what I want you to show up. It's very unlikely we're going to be able to do that. And if you're asking that of your lawn care service, number one, expect that they're probably going to have to change that if they're growing down the road. It's very difficult the more people that you have on your team. And secondly, if they do accommodate it, expect that you're going to be paying a very, very premium price to ensure that they're coming at the same time, that the same day, the same crew, every single time. The third thing that your landscaper isn't telling you is that mowing is one of our lowest margin services, usually a lawn care service. We do mulching, we do bush trimming, we do property cleanups, leaf cleanup, landscaping, and mowing. Well, mowing is one of our lowest margin services. Why? Because we have a $10,000 mower on a $5,000 trailer hooked up to a $20,000 truck, and we're paying someone $20 an hour to come to your property. And. And we're only getting like 30 or $40. And so that is very, very thin margins. We don't make a killing on mowing. We actually make money on all the other services that we hope we can sell you in the form of adding color with some plants or potentially adding some mulch, cleaning out your gutters, trimming your bushes, cleaning up your leaves. That's where we can actually make some money, because we're on a project base where we stay on the property and we can make money for longer periods of time other than just being on your property for 10, 15, 20 minutes, where our margins are very, very slim. The fourth thing that your landscaper knows that you might not is the fact that when you compare our bid against the guy down the street that's offering to mow your lawn for $15 or $20, you're really comparing apples to oranges. Because we, as a landscaping company have insurance, we are typically bonded with the state and have a contractor's license, as well as the fact that we have to pay payroll taxes and a whole bunch of other taxes, and that is going to increase our cost. And. And so really, to compare it to the guy down the street who's uninsured, doesn't have a license, and is paying all of his guys, cash under the table is not really fair. You're not really comparing the same product. Now you might say, well, why would that care to me as a homeowner? Well, you should care because if someone gets hurt on your property and that company is not licensed or insured or bonded, there's a very good chance that your property insurance as a homeowner is going to come into play when it comes to that person trying to get their medical paid for. Well, if we don't have insurance as the contractor and as the landscaper, your insurance might be getting a phone call. If someone gets hurt on the job and we're operating around heavy equipment, we're operating things that could take off an arm, take off a finger. These are things that happen a lot of the time, unfortunately. And you want to make sure that the company that's on your property has insurance to cover those things. You want to make sure that they have workers compensation to cover those claims that might arise from an injury. You want to make sure they have professional liability and auto insurance to make sure that if they drive into something on your property, or potentially they damage your house, they back into your garage, that they have insurance that's actually going to cover those damages. The fifth thing, what your landscaper is not telling you is the fact that when it comes to mowing, we actually make most of our profits when the lawn is somewhat dormant during the spring rush or when the grass is growing extremely fast. We, we barely make money. Our goal is to be able to keep you on a weekly or bi weekly schedule to make sure that we are able to actually make a little bit of profit during the summer when maybe the grass goes a little bit dormant, or maybe depending on your climate, certain periods of time when maybe the grass isn't going crazy, but we still come, put the nice straight lines in, edge up that lawn, make it sure it's looking good. That's when we can actually make some money. Because the lawn will literally take 30, 40, 50% less time to get the service done. And that's when we can actually make some money. So if you want to be nice to your landscaper less, let us keep mowing throughout the year. Don't change the schedule on us. We'll have to take into account the fact that you're actually cutting out the period of time when we actually can make money on mowing and we'll need to eventually raise your price. The sixth thing that your landscaper probably won't tell you, but you should know, is the fact that if you do not pay your bill promptly, we will probably drop you as a client. The reason for that is because we are landscapers, we are not a bank. We can't hold your invoice for 1, 2, 3 months without it being paid. We, we really love when you put a credit card on file, you give us payment information and the moment that we have the invoice completed, we can charge the card and move on. If you do not pay your invoice and you're paying by check and it goes a month, two months, we're going to have to stop service. We cannot afford as small business owners to have your invoice being on the books for three, four months after we started mowing the lawn because guess what, the lawn gets mowed. But then we got to, we got to pay for the truck that day, we got to pay for the gas that day, we've got to pay for the employees wages that week. We can't afford to be able to float that cost for three, four, five months. So we don't want to be rude, we don't want to drop our customers, but if you don't pay promptly, there's a good chance we're going to eventually have to drop you. That was six things that your landscaper is probably not telling you about your mowing service. If you would like a professional landscaping service to take care of your property, check out Augusta Lawncare Services.com we have 50 locations around North America and we would love to be of service to you. If you are wanting to make money being a professional landscaper and mowing lawns, check out landscapebusinesscourse.com and look forward to seeing you there. I'm Mike Andes. We'll see you tomorrow. Are you looking to grow your lawn care landscaping business? If you are, I really recommend that you come meet some like minded business owners at Landscape Summit 2022. It's happening in January. Go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and we'll see.
