MUST-HAVE Tips to Growing Your Lawn Care Business - Live Consulting Call w/ Mike Andes

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course. Today we're going to be talking to a landscaper that is young, in his senior year of high school and has grown a business to this year probably do a little over 120,000 in annual revenue. So a really great episode. If you're trying to start your business or just getting it to a couple employees, we're going to go over. This is a consulting call and you can actually book your own consulting call similar to the one I have today with Dean and down in the description below. So look in the description of the podcast or YouTube video on your way down like it and subscribe. But on your way down there you can see there's a link that you can actually book a call with me and have an in depth conversation like I have with Dean today. So Dean is one of the first few that booked last week when we started this program. But basically it's $299 and you get 45 minutes of Zoom call. I record it and send it back to you. And Dean was so nice to accept me sharing his call with everybody so you can learn. So thank you for that, Dean. So without any further delay, let's go ahead and just jump right into it. But a big thank you to everyone that has booked these calls. I take a couple a week and it's really allowing us to continue to grow the channel, get lights and all the rest of it, have Josh making the video. So really appreciate it and I hope that this message can reach more and more landscapers. So without any further delay, let's go to Dean King out in Pennsylvania.

There he is. How you doing, man?

Holy smokes. I am talking to V. Mike Andes. That's awesome. Can you hear me? Okay, I can.

Yep. Yep. I spent this morning looking at your website and things.

Perfect. I kind of. I kind of borrowed your whole website and just changed all the content.

But I love it. I love it. The PC on the truck the way. That is awesome, man.

Yeah, I like when you pink version.

Of the Augusta trucks.

Yeah. So that was one of the questions I had. Just somewhere to start. Is you like the pink or don't like the pink? I just started the pink this year. I had green last year.

Yeah. Honestly, I love it. From a marketing standpoint. Honestly, the hardest part and the reason why I wouldn't switch to the green or switch to the pink now is simply because a lot of guys will not want to wear pink or drive a pink truck. But from a marketing Standpoint, if I was restarting a pink or purple truck, the thing is, the bottom line is people remember it more.

Yeah.

Like, if you had three pink trucks in your market, people would say, oh, I see you all over the place.

Yeah.

And whereas if you have like 20 white trucks, it just kind of blends in.

Yeah.

So I love it. You might just, you might have the occasional employee that dragged their feet a bit, but if you do it from the beginning, it'd be fine. It'd be fine.

All right.

That's my only thing. Cause even our guys at the beginning, they were like dragging their feet over having Max mascot the dog and everything. But eventually they got. They got it like, okay, people are recognizing the dog. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint. But the pink would be a hard one for us to switch to now.

Yeah, definitely. Just. I was just thinking from the start, like, it might be. It might be cool.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. So I had a bunch of questions. Some of it was like, just business wise and just like my stuff, like my situation. And then like, what do you think I should do after that? And then I had a bunch of general questions. Which ones you want to start with?

Jump right in. Let's go.

All right, we can start with the business stuff. So I have, and this is just kind of a me monologue, but I have 55. I've got 55 weekly lawns. And with the lawns, I'm doing about right now 55aman hour overall. So including drive time, I'm going to get that up to around hopefully like 75 next year. There's just a couple that are dragging it down.

And so when you say 55 met per minute, you mean including drive time?

Yeah, like including, including drive time. Everything. We're doing about 55 an hour on properties. I have a really tight route, so it's about 60 on properties.

62.

And then I fill in with landscaping jobs around that. And that's just 60 bucks a man hour. And I usually hit around 55 on that too. Just because the estimating. I always feel I got to get better at it just in overall, because. Yeah, kind of background on me also tangent. But I started, I really started this like last year, kind of the end of. The end of three summers ago, I guess. And I'm 17, I'm still in high school. I just got done class. I finished early and I was like, hey, I gotta go, I got a meeting. But so I started like three summers ago to make money with like this John Deere Mower. Last year I got a 60 inch Z and I had a small truck and just an open trailer I got. And now. And then I'm just. So that you know the background on that. And now I'm doing. I just kind of ramped it up. And this year's the first year I'm really like going all into it. But I have. So the equipment I own is. I own a. An open trailer. I have a 2019, 6 GNC and a 20, 2030 Exmoor I bought this year. And then all the couple trimmers, all that kind of stuff, blowers and they're all on equipment defender racks. And then the stuff that I have that I don't, that I don't own outright is the F250. And I have a dump trailer.

I don't know.

I don't think the dump trail's on the website yet, but. And the dump trailer I have about as far as the finances go on that I have about 15k in the bank. And then I owe 15 on the truck and 7 on the trailer. And the truck's worth about 25 and the trailer is worth about 8. And those are the. 8 and 25 are the low numbers I get for them.

And the question I had the biggest one on the finances is.

I really don't care about the equipment. I just got that because.

I was, I got. I mean, I still love him, but like Peter and Gertz, I'm in the Go gang, everything like that. Because I was the first person I found that had groups and stuff like that. And he pushed. He does a lot of hardscaping, so it makes a lot of sense for him. But he was pushing all like the. Get that, get that kind of stuff. But for me, like, I don't need it. I don't really need a diesel. Two, it's diesel. I need a diesel 250 and the mechanics, great. But it's expensive, like all that stuff you talk about. So I was thinking should I sell the. Sell the truck and buy one or two cheaper likes like the trucks you talk about. You think I should keep it and just keep making the payments on it. It's there like 300 bucks a month plus insurance on that. And then the dump trail is another 300 or something like that.

Got it?

Yeah.

So like.

How much is it worth right now? The truck?

Like how the trucks were like for 25, I paid 17. I got a stupid good deal on it. So yeah, it's worth like 25 30.

Well, if you got for 17 and you think you could sell it for 25 30? I would sell it. Okay. Because you're going to leave that deal with 10 to $12,000 cash and go get, you know, either one truck and own it outright or two get another two trucks and be in the same amount of debt basically.

Right? Yeah, it could be even less that.

Honestly, because I imagine you don't even use the F250 diesel to its full extent. Like you could probably get away like because you mostly do mowing, right?

Like yeah, yeah. The dump trailer was basically. And this year another thing is I did it probably this far, probably about 90 in revenue because my QuickBooks, I just started QuickBooks like literally two weeks ago and finally got service autopilot figured out. Which by the way, you're 100% right. When you said do it in the winter, I wasn't following you at that point. And holy smokes. This season I just. Oh my God, that was a headache. But yeah, I did a. I basically was running like four or five guys in the spring and just, just got a crazy amount of mulch like you said like, like you said we would. The delayed spring cleanup and it was insane for me. So that's where most of the revenue came in. And that's why I got the dump trailer. Because I was doing a ton of mulch and like if I didn't estimate it right and I had it delivered, I'd have to like either make it super thick or not have enough and have to get more. So that's why I got it. But now I'm not using, I'm not really using it probably once a week, like probably two or three dumps a week.

So the 90,000 in revenue, that is year to date or is that going to be for.

That's year to date.

That's year to day, year to date. So you think you'll be like what, 1:30 this year?

Yeah, hopefully. Depending I'm going to try and make, make us the most out of winter. So if I can make the most out of winner, we'll probably be at like 1:30.

Okay, cool. And then when you said you had four to five guys in the spring, I'm assuming those are like part time guys for those big jobs like molten stalls or those consistent workers.

So they were, they were full time guys in the spring and basically I didn't do any P4P anything like that and they just didn't work out in the end. After I basically after I got those big jobs done, I kind of just let them go because they weren't great anyway. And they were just. It's my fault. But long story short, they weren't good employees. And so then it was just me and two guys. And then towards the end of the year, I was just doing. Just doing mowing all summer. And it was me and one guy, a college kid who. Who works great and everything like that. And I did, like, a hybrid piece for piece. So I would just be like, hey, if we get this done by this time, you get a bonus and run off that, because that's a later topic. But yeah, so I didn't do so in August.

So in August, like, you had basically one employee in yourself. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And what'd you do in revenue last month?

I can pull it up. The last one, I think it was like 12. Yeah, it was like 12 or 13.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

All right.

Good information. Yeah. In terms of the truck, I would say if, you know, you can get away with not having a diesel truck, and especially if you're only doing a dump a week, like, you're hardly using the dump trailer. I wouldn't have a diesel. Right. Like, as, you know, like, not only is it more expensive to operate because of maintenance, but, like, you could go get two trucks for the price of that one. As long as that's the. The direction that you want to take the business is more simple services.

Right.

If you want to go more towards Tigran stuff, like, yeah, he's doing hardscaping stuff. You want that diesel. But I'd say, especially if that truck. If you're not underwater on it, you could get 10, 15 grand in equity. I'd sell it like that. Just me, though. Like, that's my recommendation.

That's what I was thinking, too. I just wanted to see if you had any input on that. Awesome. And, yeah, as far as the rest of this year, I'm thinking just to try. And I'm trying to hire a bunch more people till the end of the year. Probably trying to hire one or two more guys just for fall cleanups and stuff. Cause I'm already getting calls and, like, I'm booking out, but, like, I'm at the point. I'm like, if I don't hire somebody in a week or two, like, I'm just. I won't be able to complete the cleanups, which is, I think, a better spot to be in than having guys not having work. So. But yeah, as far as employees, can I ask you a couple questions about those?

For sure. Go for it.

Awesome. So do you do anything other than Craigslist to find new hires. I just watched the 2020 course a couple days ago. The 2020 summit.

We don't. In our. Every market's a little different, like in terms of where potential hires are looking. And we don't ever have a problem of like not having enough people applying.

Right.

So, you know, in. If I did, I'd probably go like Facebook, indeed, et cetera. But in our market, Craigslist is pretty strong. And because we do get a lot of leads, like even this morning, two people came in to the office and asked to work. Right. So we get quite a few people wanting to work for us. But I imagine that if I didn't have that problem or that issue, that I'd probably be using. Indeed. And on Facebook, and really, especially when you're as small as you are your first few employees, a lot of it has to do with connect, like friend of a friend kind of a thing. You just don't want your number one employee and your number two employee to be like, best buds. Because that hardly ever works out. Like, if they know them or they work with them in the past, that can sometimes be a good referral source.

Okay, awesome. And how did you. For Augusta, how did you go about, like. Cause you're young also. You're like, what, 25, I think. Right. So how did, how did you manage when you were a lot younger too? Like, I'm 17. How do you manage guys who are 30? Like, I have a couple guys who are 30, even into their 40s applying and like, I just, I don't know how to go about managing them. Like just from a.

Don't, don't think about it. Don't think about it. Right. Like, it just is societal norms that force us to think about that stuff. If you are professional and you act like a 40 year old and you're super mature, like, they shouldn't question and if they have an issue with the days, won't accept the job offer. Right.

Yeah.

But you know, I was in the same position until last year. I was the youngest person working at any of my companies. So, like, it's, it's just something that you're going to deal with. But if you're mature and like when they are interviewing with you, they think you're 25, 26, you'll be fine. And then when they find out that you're really young, as long as you carry yourself in a different manner, it shouldn't ever be an issue. But don't let like, societal norms like, oh, you got to work for people older than you. Like, that's a bunch of hoopla. If you can just act and be super mature. Like, if you, if you have financials and you show them, you know, that you have open book management and you know what you're doing, that speaks volumes to someone even if they're older than you. Yeah.

And I already have the. I mean, it's only one guy now, but I have the total open book with him and I talk to him about that kind of stuff and he understands it and I want to do. That's another one of the ones on employees I have is. So how would you implement P4P with just one guy? Because I'm working with him. So I skew it super hard just because I just work faster.

Yeah. So that's gonna be a part of it. Right. Like, if you're going to work with them, what I would say is, especially if you're gonna sell the diesel truck and get two more trucks, I would say try. If you can get an employee that can go work by themselves. Right. Because I. Then ideally it's very easy for P4P because like, even if you are with them, the thing is you do work fast and you will skew it, but you're also gonna, like, take an occasional call or an occasional email, and so that will skew it in the other direction.

Right.

So as long as you communicate with them and like, let them know, like, look, if I'm. If I have to be on a phone call or do an estimate, like three hours, I'm gonna give you extra P4P. But then also them knowing that, hey, like, when I'm working, I'm kicking butt. Usually they'll understand that. That being said, like down in Mount Vernon where the same situation, you got a manager and an employee, they have two trucks, right. And so they. They're pretty much never working together unless it's on a project. And so that keeps P4P really simple. But definitely run yourself as if you were an employee if you are working with them on the truck.

Okay, awesome. Yeah.

Other stuff for employees. This is one that one of my guys wanted me to ask you just because I asked him. I was like, yeah, you want me to ask this guy? He's a total beast at landscape at business. Right. So he wanted to know, how did you. How do you, like, walk the edge between having, like, firing somebody for being late and like, being super cutthroat about, like, hey, P4P, it's all about money and walking the edge between like being a caring employer. And I know in the course I was listening to it about like how like Liz for the snow plowing and stuff like that, like stayed to the last guy got home. But how do I do that as a smaller level and just show them I really do care about them. Like I want to have one of the, I want to have the best landscape business to work for in the area. Like that's kind of the goal.

And yeah, like that's the hard part is like, you know, the fine balance between caring and understanding and realizing people are human versus having a, you know, systems, procedures and like a hard line. Right. And so in terms like being late, for example, we never had a massive problem compared to most landscaping companies with being late. However, what we did recently is institute a profit sharing program and basically if they're late one time in a quarter, they half their profit sharing goes bye bye.

Right.

So all of a sudden being late two minutes is going to cost them 300 bucks. Right? That will move someone's butt in the morning.

Right.

And so the goal is to try to create the systems to best align with what you want. And so that they, it's not you telling them, hey, be on time, it's simply the system, like, okay, you don't have to be here early or like on time, but you're going to lose money. That being said, if someone's not money motivated, then the question is, okay, well then what do you do? A lot of times those people are not going to be super well at P4P either. Right. But when it comes to like that fine lineup, for example, someone shows up two minutes late because their mother was, you know, went to cardiac arrest, like we're gonna like just wait that.

Right.

And so it's just that aspect of using systems and procedures, but then having an element of just a human heart and realizing that people are, you know, there's human and so, but there's that fine balance and you just got to make sure that the system has some sort of like for example, on P4P, did you get the two page document, like the front and back?

Yeah.

Yes. Like on the very bottom you can see it says like any gray areas are basically decided by Liz and Lee. And that's because there are going to be the occasional time it's like, hey, we're going to give more money to so and so because of X, Y and Z. And that's not really in the system. But, but there's that human element that we have to account for and that's what I'd say is like 95% systems. But then realize that people are humans and you're going to have to adjust things sometimes.

Okay, awesome, that is super helpful.

But in terms of like tardies, I would really encourage trying to make it where it is an incentive based for them to show up and it's something for them to lose. Like, hey, we want to do profit sharing. And I didn't want them to feel like, oh, like you just get it at the end of each quarter. I wanted them to feel like they earned it and. And if they show up every single day on time, they earn it. If they show up one time late, it's docked. Right. So that's what I would kind of implement something like that. Even if you implement right directly into your P4P program where like literally you could do there's a dollar deduction when they're late, like a $5 deduction if you're late. Stuff like that you can do. And as long as you're taking off the performance dollars.

Not the base pay, just not the base pay. Okay, awesome. And then.

Okay, here's that. Here's kind of a deeper level question just from one of the recent things you said is so you said when you're stepping out of business completely and you're doing upload management stuff and the guys see like, oh, hey, Mike's like, not Mike, but like the business is making all this money and he's reallocating it to the franchise or whatever he's doing. And you said you're gonna raise the P4P percentage so that they make more money in the end of the day. But how would that affect like your. Because that would lower your profit margin, make you less nimble. Are you worried about that or will it be like, what's the thought on that?

Yeah, so that was the original plan because we thought we were going to really, really ramp up to like, you know, five million dollar company locally, like really go for it. We're probably going to stick around 2 million. And so what we ended up doing, we still want to give them more. So what we did is we just raised the prices. So that's going to increase our profitability. But also by giving them a percentage of revenue, they're also getting a raise. Right. That's basically what we've moved to. And we've raised our prices on landscaping as well as mowing in October. That's when they raised their locally.

Awesome.

Okay, cool. And then yeah, as far as here, I just have some billing questions. So what do you guys ever mess up credit card pay? Like when you're charging cards? Because I did like I have a couple cards on file just to test it out and like I messed up one of them and like I felt so bad. Like I gave. Of course I just voided and give it back to him. But like, like he lost all trust. Like even I gave him money back, he was okay. Just like destroy my information. Like, I'll just pay you by check. So like what do you guys do with that?

Yeah, you know. So did he give you. Did he fill out a form for you or did you fill out his credit card information? Information.

I don't have the forms on service autopilot and my. All the stuff is finally just getting set up. So it was just like a. He just called and I, I manually in there.

Yeah. That's a tough one.

Right?

Like, so we try to never ever do that. We try to make it where if they, if they're like, hey, we're going to pay by card. We say, hey, we're going to send you a form. And then they fill out and it's all encrypted. That way they know we never see it and we literally cannot. Like if someone calls and says, hey, what's my card on file? We have no idea. Besides just last four of the. Of the card. So that's probably the better way to do it. That being said, you know, at your size, Dean, little stuff like that in service, all parts. What I don't like is people get like ingrained like buried in those little details, like, oh, I should have forms. And like, like you're at 12, 13 revenue. Like this is a marketing game. If you're gonna scale.

Yeah.

And it's an efficiency game for profitability.

Right.

So I wouldn't too much about like, I wouldn't say, oh, you need to forms tomorrow. Like that's not gonna change your business. Right. But I would say like if you're down the road, if you're wanting to put cards on file, definitely do it where you send them a form. Or you can do it based upon an automation. Like for example, Augusta, when someone signs up for. For mowing and we put them on. When we put them on the schedule for mowing, that triggers an automation that sends them a auto pay form and basically says like it kind of sells them on the idea. It's like, hey, one of the things our customers love most about Augusta is that they don't have to think about billing every month. It just gets taken off their Card, click this link, fill out your information, and you won't have to worry about it again. And so that's all done in an automation and then you can also do it based upon just a form being emailed to them. But again, stuff like that, we're talking.

Like, yeah, so don't worry about it.

No.

Okay, cool. And then that was another kind of thing that, that you said. That that surprised me just because I listened like when I. Before I. Before you started posting a lot of content and I kind of started watching a lot of your stuff. I watched all like Jonathan Patosnik's videos from like whenever, like eight years ago on YouTube and stuff. And he talked he his, I mean, maybe service autopilot thing, but he was huge into the charge cards and was like, you need to charge cards weekly. And like, I talked to one of his, got like one of the managers for service autopilot and he was like, yeah, he actually said he might charge cards daily, like if he could go back and do it again. And you and I then I heard you be like, yeah, we do monthly just because the summer months. But like, we don't. I don't have a huge issue with the grass, like not growing in the summer. So, like, what is your, what are your thoughts on that for me? And like, would you like. For the cash flow perspective on it?

Yeah, from a cash flow perspective, absolutely. It's the best thing to charge. Like literally every day you come and mow, right. I'm still a proponent of like, again, in our market, we do have those slowing months, right? So like, that's why we do it. Because if we charge every single week or like every time we came, we would absolutely lose 20 to 25% more of our mowing customers throughout June, July, August and September. By doing it monthly, we maybe have 10% decrease, right? So that's why we do it. And we don't have a cash flow problem right now. We have plenty of money in the bank. If I could restart over again, maybe I would do it. Because those first couple of years were tough on cash flow. And I don't think it's a bad idea. The problem is this.

It means that every single week you do have to deal with issues, right? Every single time you invoice, it's like a little red flag, like telling your customer, hey, any complaints, let us know. And so that's the other thing is it's a lot more admin time because literally four times a month you got to get payment, which means four times, many times you're going to have declined cards, bounce checks, you know, billing information wrong. So, like, it's absolutely the best for cash flow. Just realize there's going to be more admin time and you're going to be reminding your customers every week that, you know, you want to know about their complaints. Like, if you make an error on week one of a customer, you've mowed for five years, but you bill them at the end of the month and you had three services that were really good after that, you're never going to hear about the issue. But if you bill them every single week, that's basically every single time they're going to let you know how you did, you know. And so, however, that means that if I was to restart, I'd probably give it a shot, you know, I'd see what, what it looks like and see if the admin time is overwhelming or not. I think if you got like, with service all part now, they do have where the credit cards get automatically updated and I think you pay like 35 cents. So that would help too with not having so much of an issue with that.

So, yeah, I'd be interested to see how it works. I know in our market that's the main reason we don't, is because we do that.

Lol.

If you don't, if you're really interested to try, try to run that model.

Yeah, I'd love to try that. And I guess I should have started with this, but, like, my goals for the company are to get to, like, somewhere in the range of City Turf, like, because I don't know if I want to go that far into, like, that specific of services. But I kind of want to go some kind of hybrid model between what you're doing at Augusta and City Turf and maybe open satellite locations someday.

And.

But I got super, like, I got super pumped yesterday because I finished the day three of the summit from 2020, and I looked up and I just called the two biggest landscaping companies in my area, and they're paying way under what I'm looking to pay now and way under what my guys will get for P4P. And they're smaller than I thought they were, but just the logo trucks, I thought they way more. So I just got super excited. And they outlined these, these like, terrible roofs from employees. And, like, I would just. It made me excited because I do, like, I can, like, I can have guys who, like, love the work in the same way you do. Right. And I just finally kind of caught that vision yesterday, and I was like, wow. Like, I can finally have these guys who are, like, just pumped to come into work every day, like, want to work hard, and they'll just make. They'll make a ton of money and the business will do whatever I don't. I don't take any money out of it. Like, the business will do what it'll do. And I just, I like the game of business. Like, I. I'm just a huge subscriber that, like, so I'm just. I got really pumped from that. So I think if, just from where I'm trying to go, it might be better to do. To try, at least try out the daily or weekly, just as. From a. From a cash flow perspective, trying to grow bigger, faster.

Yep. That's very cool.

Awesome. So, and then here's the same thing that relates to that is so right now, the. My customers are paying monthly with checks, cash, or Venmo. Venmo. Because when I started the business, I just, I had a bunch of customers there, so I just kind of transferred it up. And now I hate Venmo because I have to manually log the transactions. But. And right now, my customers aren't paying sales tax, and I'm taking the hit on all of them, which is just. Which is a 6%. And so I'm in PA. So 6% hit on everything. And so I want to switch to, like, daily or weekly billing, and then I want to have a bunch of cards on file, so it makes it easier to do the daily weekly billing and have them pay tax instead of me. So how would you go about implementing that, like, for next year? Because I don't. I don't know if I should do it all at once or if I should chunk it out over time or what your thoughts are.

Yep. So I would recommend doing it all at one time just for the sake of you not having to remember, adding tags, all that garbage to try to remember. I would do it at the beginning of next spring. So whenever you're going to make a big change from an operational standpoint, billing standpoint, you want to do at the beginning of the year. Because then what you can do is like, hey, we're starting your service next week, and here's the things that have changed. Here's your prices, you know, again, great time to just let them know by the way it's changed, because 90% of them won't even email you back, and you'll just roll with it. And then, then you say, hey, look, we gotta start charging sales tax. That'll now be added on all your invoices and look, you know, you don't have to even explain it. Just like look, from now on we're charging, there's gonna be a 6% sales tax based upon us being licensed and registered, you know, licensed and insured with the state, all the rest of it and just sell it as a positive. If someone, you know, big issue of like look, we really stepped up our game in terms of professionalism. We're registered with the state, we got licensing and we got insurance and stuff and so we have to now charge sales taxes by the law. Like if you don't want to obey by that like go find someone else, you know. Yeah but it's a great time to do at the beginning of the year because you can reset prices, you can let them know when starting and you can tell them about stuff like sales tax and then the Venmo thing, hey we won't be accepting Venmo anymore. Ideally you have a link right there that says click here to put your credit card info. Yeah or just say we will be accepting credit cards and you can pay directly from the invoice using a credit card.

Yeah, next year I want to do, I just didn't do the service autopilot automation package this year just because I don't have the rep, I don't have the revenue supported. It doesn't make sense. I mean you want to, you would recommend Long Pro but I was like after even switching that to just to service autopilot 50 customers like I can't imagine what you guys went through. I mean I need to do it in the winter but it's just a lot of stuff so I figured I'd start with them but so I'm just going to do forms next year and if I have that I can just like you guys do just make a form in there for that.

Yeah, I would pay for Automations honestly. Like I know it's expensive but at the end of day, 200 bucks like in your of your time you're going to, if you save three or four hours in a month it's going to save you. Right. So that will allow you to get those credit cards on file. It'll allow you to like that's one more job close per month. Right. Based upon follow up, based on collections like it pays for itself. Right. So I just go ahead and bite that bullet next spring and then I'll use that to be able to put that link in there that allows them to you know, put their credit card information in securely.

Yeah and that Stat you said like blew my mind to like whatever it is, like 50% of your estimates are after the first or second or after the second or whatever email. Like that's like that's crazy because I don't, I know I do my best but like it's all in my head. So if I forget and I don't email somebody back for fifteen hundred dollars like just most job that we can do in a day, a day and a half, like that's, that's just out the window. Like that revenue just gone.

Yeah. And what, what you've been doing in the past honestly works until a certain point. Right? Like because right now if you like oh I should call someone and you call them. That's probably like the most personable way to follow up. The problem is when you got five times many jobs that's when stuff starts falling through the cracks. Right. And so that's why having automations it just makes sure you don't, you don't forget things. Right. And you don't even have to try to remember them because you don't want that in the back of your head all day.

Right.

So I would recommend doing that. I know it's a little bit pricey and you know I have my thoughts on that too but like I would just go ahead and do it. Yeah.

And then we just make sure I have any questions about anything. Already talked about.

How many franchises are you at now?

22.

22.

Awesome.

So what are your thoughts on having a. On having like sorry, thoughts on my website? I already asked you that. Just like that you wouldn't hate me for having a website like yours. What are your thoughts on the, on a first email marketing campaign? Because I haven't sent any email marketing out and you're huge proponent of that and I totally agree with you but I don't know what to send out for the first one. Like what do I say? Like hey, we're just gonna do this now?

Like no, just start, just start. Don't, don't worry about like hey, we're doing this now, just start.

Right.

So in the course you saw that one video has like I think I showed like 8 or 10 of our monthly newsletters. Yeah. Something like just roll with the first one. You don't need to say hey we're doing this every month. Just send it that first one. Everyone's gonna open it because they've only ever seen invoices from you. Right. And estimates. So when they see it like that first one, you want to make it good. So if you want to go for like, you know, fall cleanups. Yeah, send that. Fall cleanups one is your first one because like 80% of people open it up because they've only ever gotten invoices from you.

So that would be. That'd be awesome if I once I make these hires and stuff and hopefully that I have a couple guys. So I'm gonna call after I talk to you. So if I can make the hires and they're good guys, I can fill up the pipeline really quick, which would be awesome. And then what do you. What are your thoughts on overwinter? Cuz here, like, and I'm trying to figure out creative services, but we don't get a lot of snow here anymore. We did probably snowed two or three times last year and like on winter revenue, because I'm not gonna be doing a ton. And so I don't know what to do for email marketing. Like, do I just email? Like, hey, we're just still here. Or like, should I switch to like.

Bi monthly or something like that for email newsletters? Like, you still want to do it monthly? The bottom line is make sure in that email newsletter that you are, you're trying to. You have one call to action, right? So maybe there's three services that you know, you can do over the winter. Maybe it's leaf cleanup, trimming bushes, pressure washing, and gutter cleanouts, just for example. And then just literally each month, target one of those things.

You just don't want to be like, hey, we're still here. We'll do landscaping jobs. We'll do this, we'll do that. Like, they don't know what they're answering to, right? Even if you're doing really simple emails where they respond back and say yes for an estimate, or if you actually get a little more complicated, whether you click on the button and it initiates an estimate, like, however you do it, you're gonna have a much better success rate if you have one call to action, right? So I would recommend like your first one. Let's say it's September. You say end of September, you do, okay, I'm going to do leaf cleanup, and then the next month I'm gonna do bush trimming. And the next month I'm gonna do. You know, you could just call it something else like winter cleanup or winter prep treatment packages. Right? Like, if you're gonna do an aeration or like a winter treatment kind of thing every single month, just have one call to action throughout the winter and plan that. Now what those are. Excuse me what those are going to be.

That's sounds awesome. Thank you. And you're going to send me. Yeah, you're going to send a link after this, right? Of the YouTube video?

Yeah, yeah.

I got to go back and take notes because I'm just. This is awesome. Thank you.

You're good.

One quick thing on your website, of course. Couple things. I know you just built it last week, but I'll give you a couple little things. The video right now, it looks like you're. Is there a way to do it where you don't have.

It's choppy, right? Is that what you're.

No, no, no, the choppy's fine. That. That. I don't care. Like, people get the concept. It's the fact that you have. When you scroll over, it shows the player.

Let's see here. Which would you use to build this wix? Okay, got it. So I'm imagining. Do you have the free version?

It's not the free one. No. It's like.

Okay.

It's like 20 bucks or something like that. 20 to 30 bucks a month for it.

Okay. So just maybe see on your video player if there's a way to hide. There should be a setting when you click on the video to hide video controls, because right now you can see all the buttons. Just a quick design thing. And another thing is your. Because you have a pink, you need to have a contrasting color for stuff to pop off of it.

Okay. So, like, the green, isn't it?

I would just do white and bold it a little bit. So like your. I'm sure I'll just share this real quick. Share.

Boom, boom. I'll make this quick because I know it's not part of what you're looking for.

You're fine. It definitely is this stuff up here.

Just. I would bold that and then make it white. It'll pop off a little bit more.

Okay.

I would change this font here to match this one and just stick with the same font throughout. And honestly, I would try to make it, like, similar to this. Right.

Okay.

Try to stick to, like, no more than two fonts is what you kind of want to do. Just it's easier on the eyes. And then this button here, the pink on the green for some people is very hard to see. Okay. For you and I, it's not so bad. But for some people, they can hardly see that pink until they go there. So I would honestly, I would either make it like it looks like there's where it's black with the white or do like Honestly, what I'd do, I'd make that whole thing pink. The button I would make pink, and then I would make the text, like, white or black.

Okay.

Cause the pink button would pop.

Okay. Yeah. And then.

Yeah.

How does everything else look on the site? It's literally the Augusta site, just with my stuff on it.

Yep. No, totally good. I would just go through here and, you know fonts to kind of be similar. I like this font a lot. It's very simple. This one just gets hard to read sometimes. It's so, like calligraphy. So stick to simple. Right. Same thing here. Just like. I just use that simple font throughout the whole thing. I use the simple font. And then you got your actual font that's in your logo. I just. I'd stick to those two.

Okay, awesome. Thank you. That is super helpful. Because the website. I'm new to the whole website thing. I didn't have one till, like, this year, literally. I mean, I had one, but it wasn't. Hey, you built it. Yeah. So now it's. I'm excited for that. I'm gonna start doing. Depending on how cleanups. I want to just do marketing just for the fun of doing marketing, just to see if I can get people to click on my stuff and start learning more about Facebook and AdWords and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. I would use. In terms of branding, I would use the idea of the full circle a lot during winter. Like, hey, bring your lawn here and your landscaping full circle. Like, don't stop.

Yeah.

Right. So. So I'll be like, hey, don't stop in November or October. Like, you want to bring your landscaping full circle by winter treatments and all the stuff that you can upsell in the winter.

Awesome. That is actually a really good idea. I'm actually sad that I didn't have that idea myself, but I love that I named the company.

Yeah.

I would use that as much as possible. Right. It's like we use Max, our mascot, because very. It's generic enough for us, a franchise, to use it nationally.

Right.

In your area, you can use the full circle thing in a lot of different areas, like treatments. Great idea, right? Yeah.

So I don't. That's another thing. I don't do treatments right now. So do you think I should start them or.

No, don't do it.

Don't do it.

Everyone gets in the treatment game too early. In my mind, like, you would add that down the road. When you have 100 customers, you can start immediately and have 30. 30 treatments. Three 30 treatment packages sold. Go out and get good equipment. Instead of, like right now, you basically just get like a spreader and like a backpack sprayer. Right. Like, I would wait, get mowing. It's easy. You don't have to get licenses. You don't have to get any more equipment. And then when you have 150 customers mowing customers, you send out an email blast and you immediately get 30 or 40. Set up on spraying or treatments or whatever. That's when I would use the full circle thing.

Right, okay.

Yeah, it's definitely great margin, great service. People, you know, pick me apart for always saying, pushing people against it, but when you're as small as you are, go for the easy services. And then when you're ready to, like, really cash in on it, then send that email and get a bunch of customers right off the bat.

Okay, yeah, that's perfect. And just bring.

And then that.

Then just bring in the full circle thing. And that's an amazing idea. Thank you.

I would bring the full circle in for everything, man. I would bring treatments, I'd bring in for lawn care. So, like, whether you're selling packages or even like, I would use on probably five or six out of your of your monthly emails, like, bring your lawn. Bringing your landscaping full circle includes mulch. Right. Like, your lawn looks good. Make sure your mulch looks. Your beds look good. Making, like that full service package, like really full circle. You make that, you merge that into, like, kind of full service, right?

Yeah.

And so during the winter, you really play off of that, but then you also use it to upsell them into services when it comes to bed maintenance, etc.

Okay, awesome, perfect.

You just see what other stuff I have. I don't want to miss anything in here. Okay. I just had a couple general questions. Just random stuff that I've just, over time just kind of picked up. Is so really weird question. But so I love that estimate book idea. I started using one last year. It's not as in depth as yours. Like, I like how simple it is. Like, hey, here's trees we can use. But mine just had, like, here's like, malt long hair, like, pictures of what we do. Like, can we do this stuff for you? Kind of stuff. And I get all these questions people ask me, like, hey, what kind of tree is this? And it's like the weirdest, exotic tree I've never seen before. How does, like, how would, like, a new estimator respond to that?

Because.

And I want to get on the fields, like, sooner than later, and I don't want to have to train somebody on, like, horticulture.

Yep.

So.

So when you say knowing an exotic tree, are you talking about someone, like, asking like, hey, I want to trim that bush.

Installing?

Like, I'm talking about, like. Like, even just like, yes, hey, I want to trim that bush. Like, hey, do you know kind of tree that is? And I'm always like, I'm not really sure. It could be a couple. But, like, I don't know what to say. So.

Yeah, yeah. Honestly, like, if you're sticking to simple services, you don't need to know those things.

Right.

And I wouldn't even try to train your guys on it. Like, we know, you know, 15 or 20 of our local trees, 90% of them, that's all they are. And if it's some crazy exotic thing and they don't know it, you. You know, they don't really expect you to know it either. Just be like, no, I don't. I can. You know, if they're really needing to know for some reason, you go check. But there is apps where you can, like, take a picture and it guesses. So those are helpful sometimes, too. But, like, you know, they're wanting it trimmed. It's kind of like, okay, do you want shape? Like, how do you want it done? It's. Unless it's some crazy tree. Like, there's like, one week in the year where you can trim it, there's rarely a need to know what type of tree it is. And if they don't know what type of tree it is, you probably don't need to honestly either.

Right.

And so I wouldn't worry about that. When we train our estimators, they get up and going within a couple weeks. Basically, it's because we don't require them to know all that stuff. And that's why I'm a big proponent of just simple simplification. Right. You don't have to train them that much.

Okay, perfect. That's exactly what I needed. Thank you again.

And.

Oh, here's one that's not on here, but I wanted to ask you, what do you think about. So I've been commenting on your recent videos because I feel like it probably helps you, but is it annoying or should I just keep going with it?

Helpful? Yeah, of course.

Comment it. No, I answer every. I try to answer every single one.

You do answer them. Yeah. So, okay, awesome. And then.

So I wanted to start a YouTube channel this winter. Right. Just. And, like, mainly this winter, just because I'm so swamped right now trying to do all the Work stuff and trying to carry it into next summer. And a lot for SEO for the business and then also just for fun, want something to do. Tax write offs are also helpful, like all that kind of stuff.

Right.

So what content do you think, like, would you like recommend showing? And then the stuff that you wouldn't recommend showing, like, you said you had issues with your competitors, but on the course at least, like, hey, like somebody set them our price sheet. Like, and that's just like, like, what can you do for that?

So yeah, so in terms of YouTube video stuff, like, don't spend your time on it. That's my biggest thing. Like, okay, yes, there is people who make money on YouTube, but if you actually want to build a business, like City Turf, you're not going to spend your money making videos and you're not gonna spend your time making videos. You're gonna build a real business. Right? That's the first thing I would say. But in terms of like, if you want to start a YouTube channel, you enjoy it, make it first. About what? Like your target audience should be customers, not other landscapers.

Right?

So your first 10, 15 videos should literally be you with a camera or you with a GoPro and just be like, hey, here's our job, we're working here. Not much editing. Maybe once a month if you post a video. So we did this a few years back. Every single, at the end of each job, we just do a quick video and then we just smash those together at the end of the month and made a quick video. Spent maybe 20 minutes a month working on it. That's what I would do. First. Keep your target market, your customers. Because you going from 12 to 13,000 in revenue, you going from that to like doubling that. Making an extra 15 grand a month is a whole lot easier than you making 15 grand on YouTube.

Thinking about that, like, I really don't care about that. I don't care that much about YouTube. Like, I like, I like business. Like, I love, like, yeah, ever since I was, I wasn't 11 when I was, I wasn't as young as you, but my dad has a couple like rental properties. He used to have a construction company. Now he's like insurance, that kind of stuff. So I guess there was just one time I was in the car with him at age like 13 or something like that. And he paid rich dad, poor dad. And then all of a sudden I just like fell into the whole thing and just started reading all the, you know, think and grow rich and all that, all that kind of stuff. Just all the business books.

Yeah. Like I would say, you know, if you started, you know, spend your time making the content as filming. Right. And if you enjoy talking your audience more, being landscapers and you enjoy just kind of getting involved with the community, great. Just don't spend five hours editing a video. Make it a video while you're walking around and then literally upload from your.

Phone to YouTube, go, Keith Kalfa style on it.

Yeah, exactly. He does great. And he doesn't do much editing at all. Right. And so I would do that first and then down the road, if you, like, enjoy the editing, like, if you enjoy that, that's another thing I know that's your, you know, you know, thing that you love to do, but, like, you do not make much money on YouTube until you're very, very big. And at that point you spend so much time doing it. Like, a lot of their. Their businesses suffer from it, you know.

Yeah.

Actual lawn care business. Yeah.

Okay, awesome. And then just on the book things, what kind of. I guess it's all just writing them down later if it's recorded.

But what.

What kind of books do you recommend that aren't like the basic business books, like the ones that aren't the most common ones, just ones that you haven't heard a ton about.

You know what I. There's a book our team just got in our Audible. I haven't listened to it, so I don't know if it's good or not, but it's called the Bezos Letters, and I'm really interested to listen to it. It's basically a. All the letters that he wrote to his staff for the first 15 years of Amazon. So I'm really interested to listen to that one. Haven't done it yet. I'm listening again right now doing a book called Unscripted. That one's kind of like most people don't know about that one.

See, other ones that are like, not big name ones. Let me see here. I'm looking at the ones I've recently. Sam Walton, honestly, Made in America is really good about how he started. I really like, kind of like, I like the stories because I feel like there's a lot to learn from that. And I feel like a lot of people who are just theorizing are basically kind of using a lot of other people's ideas and just spinning them a different way. So I really like that.

Sam Walton.

That was a good one. Same thing with, like, Covert Cows. You know what? My favorite book probably this whole year, though, was.

Where Is it? Sorry. I know I'm burning time. Yeah, you're fine. Oh, here it is. That Will Never Work by Mark. Mark Randolph. And that. It's the story of Netflix.

Yeah, I was gonna say. Is that the Netflix one? Cause I read that book, and that was. That was good. That was awesome.

Some people think it's a kind of a boring. Kind of a boring book, and you kind of do need to listen a little harder because there's a lot of names. Yeah. But I like that book. That was a cool one. So those are some of the ones I would recommend.

Awesome. I just have a couple more questions for you, and then I'll get out of your hair. But. So when you're scheduling projects, are you in. I know you use Team up, but, like, are you putting them both? Are you putting them in?

You listen to a lot of stuff. You got book in there. You got the team up in there.

I. The past. Like, I just got landscape business course, like, probably two weeks ago.

Oh, really?

I listened. Or maybe five, even less than that. But whatever. I listen to the whole thing, like a week or two weeks. Just everything in the course, and I just. Because I fell into your content because I agree with so much of it, and I love what you're trying to do with Agustin. Everything like that, because it's just. It's awesome.

So.

Yeah, but what are you thinking as far as, like, do you put your stuff in service autopilot and team up, or do you put it in, like, team up and then move it to service autopilot for, like. Like, how do you schedule out projects? Like, couple weeks out?

Yeah. So everything's in service autopilot. That's the main thing.

Right.

The only reason we use Team up is for visual.

Right.

So command center has it for every one of the franchisees. And then. And the reason for that. So if someone calls and says, hey, I want to get on the schedule, like, I accept my estimate, they can quickly look at a glance and know exactly where the next available day is. Service autopilot, calendar view just is not simple enough for that to be how it's seen. Okay, so basically, what we can do on Team up is even with if there's, you know, 15 people working in the field, it's easy to see where the next available day is. Because what we do is we say we use the name of the. The name of the customer for the project, and then in brackets, we use how many people are going to be on the job. So what we can do is, okay, let's say 10 people are gonna be in projects, five people are gonna be on mowing. Just the sake of an example. Well, and I can see the next available time when there's not 10 people on projects by just adding up how many people are in the bracket.

Okay.

So it's just a quick visual. It's literally first for when someone calls for them to be able to say, yep, we have a next available spot is this date. And be able to sell it on the phone instead of. Okay, yep, let me call you back with a time and a date.

Right.

That's the only reason we do that.

Yeah. Awesome. Just limiting, limiting that time. I like that. And okay, here's probably the last question I have, unless I think of something on the fly, but what was your biggest mistake in starting Augusta? Like in the actual, like, lawn care landscaping business? What was the biggest mistake?

You made too many services. 100%, you know, did. We did artificial turf. We. We had a tree chipper. We had a 12 yard dump truck. We had two dump trucks.

Yeah. Too many services. That's. That's the number one thing. See if I can get number two.

Number two would probably. It'd probably be not starting P4P earlier.

Okay.

Because it's a very hard thing to do when you already have a lot of employees. Right. Like for you, like, it's gonna be a bit of a hurdle next year if you do implement it. But when you have 15 people that have, you know, for their whole life been paid hourly and you're trying to switch to P4P and you have no one to point to, right? Like the franchisees and people like, you can, they can kind of point at me like, hey, they did it and it worked and people are happy. Well, like for us, there was nobody. And now it's becoming more popular. Jonathan Patosnik started teaching in his private group and things like that. So I'm thrilled about that. But when I was starting it, there was like, hey, we're just starting this out. And we voted on it later in the process. But when we started talking about it, there came a point where I was like, hey, look, we just have to do it. And I still remember I was working out one time and I was like, hey, I ran numbers for months. We've ran all the analytics. I know this is gonna be better for the employees. I know it's gonna be better for the company. I'm all about democracy and, like, getting people to like their opinion, everything. But eventually you just have to step in like, hey, we're Switching and making a hard set date and going for it.

Right.

If I could have done that two or three years earlier, probably would have been a better cash flow position earlier in the business.

Yeah. Awesome. I'm excited to implement that. Gary Vee says like 99% of people won't do what you say, so you don't have to worry about saying it. I'm the 1% that I'm going to do exactly everything you say, so.

Good. That's awesome.

Awesome. And then the last absolute last question I have is, what is your birthday? Cause someone wish you happy birthday and I want to send you birthday cards. You remember me?

It was September 13th, so Sunday.

Awesome. Yeah, perfect.

When's yours?

Halloween.

Oh, really? That's hilarious.

Yeah. October 31st. Yeah.

Hey, then you never forget, right, everyone.

The whole world celebrates your birthday.

Yeah, exactly.

Awesome.

Awesome thing. Well, hey, let me know. Stay in touch. I'll check your website in a couple of weeks if there's anything else that pops out. But that will give you a chance to kind of take a look at it and make a few edits. There was one other thing. I think I was looking at it.

How should I stay in touch with you?

Email is the best. It's not the most effective, like, in terms of speed. So honestly, your comments on YouTube are probably the fastest way to get a hold of me. Okay, here is all of your work in Doylestown.

No, it's not. Doyles Challenge is the bait. Like, Doylestown's the biggest area where everybody kind of identifies around me. But there's like, if you look at it, it's kind of like Bellingham for you. Like, there's still Furlong above you and stuff like that. It's the same thing to me, but it's Pipersville instead of Furlong.

I would try to. I would try to use those city names somewhere in your website. You use Doylestown on every single part. And then you do say surrounding areas, which is great if someone's reading the page. But for SEO, I would try to mention those city names a little bit like in your. In your title of your website. Here, I'll show you what I'm looking at here. Share screen.

So, like, you got it here. That's great. But like, when I go over the. You do have the name of the company. And then Doylestown Lawn Care. I would try to throw a couple other things in there if like 20% or more of your business is coming outside of that.

Right.

Like, if you're trying to focus on Doylestown, you know, stick with what you got. But I would do something, you know, either here or maybe another line here. Definitely in here. So, like right here, definitely add some city names in there. Same thing here on the bottom. You could add some zip codes in. I just add a couple. Don't overdo it. Like, don't every. Not every single place where you say Doyle town needs to have that in there, but once or twice just for SEO purposes.

Awesome. Yeah. Dude, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.

Thank, like, my pleasure, man. I appreciate you. I appreciate you supporting and I know you paid for it, so I really appreciate it. The money goes towards, you know, kind of keeping the content going, so I really appreciate it.

It's worth every cent. That was amazing.

Good, good. I will send you the recording probably later date. Usually takes an hour to transcribe and.

It'Ll send you the link over. Perfect. Thank you so much. And yeah, good luck with everything.

Thanks, Steve.

You too.