Must-Know Tips for Your Landscape Business (Q&A)

Hey everyone, it's Mike and you're listening to landscape businesscourse.com if you haven't already, go to check out landscapebusinesscourse.com join the course today, join Proplus or join the conference. It's going to be next January 2020. Today I'm going to be answering your questions that were submitted on the Facebook page. If you haven't already. You got to get on the Facebook page and more importantly, get on the Facebook group. So on the Facebook page I try to post on there once or twice a week, but then on the Facebook Facebook group every single day, members like yourself can ask questions, share experiences, give tips and encouragement. So go to landscape business course on Facebook and join the group and the page and I look forward to seeing you there. So this was a question yesterday that I posted just said ask me anything. Post me a question about your lawn care business below. And so I'm going to answer some of these questions. There were 75 comments, so I'm gonna try to get through some of them. I'm just gonna scroll, I haven't actually read them all. I, I'm just gonna scroll through and try to get to every single one if I can. I said I would get to every single one. So I don't know how long this video will go, but I'm gonna try to make them short and concise. Some of the answers might just be yes or no. We'll just see. But I'll try to get through all the questions since I did say I would. So let's go ahead and start. Now. TJ Smith asks, I need more customers. How do I make this happen? So as you all know, I've always talked about time versus money. So if you have time and not a lot of money, you should be going and knocking on, be going and talking to people. You should be maybe doing door hangers and you yourself delivering those door hangers because for 100 bucks you can get a couple thousand of these door hangers. So you have lots of time, no money. If you have lots of money and not a lot of time, then you should be doing other forms of marketing like pay per click, Facebook ads, Google AdWords. That draws a bigger, casts a wider net and you don't have to spend a lot of time actually prospecting. Jeffrey Lucas asked, what's the best way to mow? Do you mulch, bag or side discharge? So in our market we have to bag most of our properties just because it's the standard. In our area, we have a very wet grass Just because we're in the Pacific Northwest. So we have to bag a lot. We do side discharge on large properties where the aesthetics of bag clippings is not as important. On small lawns, like we can't get away with it. And if we don't bag the kind of grass that we have here, the rye and the fescue, it gets wet and it sticks to stuff. So like the siding of houses, cars, things like that, it's very wet, it sticks and then it stains. So we have to bag our clippings in our market. Vernon Collins asks. Oh no, he is. Check out some of the content. Okay, Kevin Fairburn says, still doing a lot of hiring here. What key questions or things do you look for when you do an in person interview? So first of all, Kevin, you're in Pro plus. Go on the homepage and you can actually view some interviews that we did at the conference. I know you weren't there, but just go to the on Pro plus there's a tab that has all the links for the conference recordings. Watch the one on hiring. But some of the key takeaways I would or key questions that I am asking on that interview is more about the references. So for me, references are huge, huge deal. Like if the reference that they give me is not saying that they were the best employee ever or like they would hire them back in a second or they're really disappointed they're leaving. Like if there's any apprehension in that reference check or anything like that, then I'm very, very skeptical. So for me, the references are super important. Questions that I'm asking during that interview is when I call Mrs. Jones and let's assume Mrs. Jones is the their job reference. When I call Mrs. Jones, what is she going to say about your work performance? Let them answer. When I call Mrs. Jones, what is going to be, what is she going to say about your attendance and your punctuality? And so what I'm framing up there is the fact that not if I call Mrs. Jones, but when I call Mrs. Jones and all of a sudden they realize that you're actually seriously going to call because a lot of people know that you're not going to call their job references. And so if you actually say when I call Mrs. Jones, they know that you're serious about calling and they're gonna actually step back and take a really good self reflection. And I've actually had people say, well actually. And then they admit something that happened wrong during the separation with that prior business or their prior place of employment. And so I find it really important to ask the question.

When I call your reference name, what will they say about X? And then just keep going down a few different of the items that you care about. For instance, me, it's usually overall job performance and quality of work. It's punctuality, and then it is how they work with a team. And so those are usually the three things that I ask a job reference. And so that's kind of the biggest thing for us now is what is the reference saying? And if they're not a job reference, you even if it's like a school reference or they've done like odd jobs for somebody before, I'm looking for the same thing. I'm looking for like a raving review. If it's not a raving review or there's any apprehension or they have anything negative to say, there's just no way that we're gonna hire that person. Now, other questions during the interview process.

I'm really trying to get to know what their goals are, what their future goals are. Like where do they want to be in five years, 10 years.

How do we play into that? Do they want to be with us for five years? Or is this just something that's seasonal? They're doing between jobs or before they move or after school, just to make some money. So wanting to get really in alignment with what they want and then making sure that that hiring decision has that in mind. So if I'm just looking for a laborer, I'm okay with them just working the season. But if I'm looking for someone that's gonna become a project manager and lead and all of that, I don't want this person just to be around for one year. So asking the questions of what they want out of their career, what's next for them, what's their long term goal? That's what I usually ask them. What's the end game for them? And so just trying to ask those questions is important as well. Tree Wells asks, I need improvement on blueprints and diagrams. Where can I go to accomplish this? So I'm not sure tree exactly what you're asking. I don't know if that means to do with like drawings, like 3D renderings for landscape design. If so, I'm not the professional on that one. We've never used one that I really liked, so I can't really recommend any, to be perfectly honest with you. We don't do a whole lot of design work in terms of the drawings. We will usually sub that out or just have the client go to a designer, come back to us with plans, and then we'll install it. So we haven't really gotten to the actual 3D designs and all that, drawings and things like that. If you're talking about blueprints and diagrams in terms of contracts and templates and things like that, that's on landscapebusinesscourse.com Junior Gonzalez asks, I was thinking about going at it myself. How should I start or promote? Should I give cuts? Free cuts, Cheap and power washing? I was thinking about doing both. So, Junior, this is a good question. A lot of people try to do this when they're starting out because it's the best way to stay busy. And this is something that, again, I know a lot of people trash talk free cuts, and I am 100% on that boat, and I'm going to tell you not to do that. But again, it goes back to the fact that how much time do you have versus how much money do you have? Like, if you're sitting at home twiddling your thumbs, I'd rather you go out and cut lawns for free because you're going to actually hone your craft, get more skill. If you haven't done it a lot and you're going to be out possibly getting people to see you, people to give you. You can give people business cards. So, like, first of all, I would always tell someone, do not do this. Do not do free cuts.

Don't discount your services to try to get in the door. But that being said, that's what I did when I started. Augusta Lawn Care is offered first Mohs for free, and after four cuts, they get four cuts and they get one for free. Their first one would be free.

Honestly, I got people signed up, and I don't think that was a huge reason why they signed up. And I don't think. And they didn't, like, just stop after the first month. So those people actually stayed on. And I have still a bunch of them still as clients. But when I say bunch, there's maybe 15. But, like, I wouldn't recommend you do that on one hand. But on the other hand, I'd rather have you go out and mow lawns for free than twiddling your thumbs at home. Because if you go out there and you're like, okay, I'm mowing this lawn for free, and you're looking at it as more as a marketing venture. In other words, you're going next door giving out your business card. Everyone that walks by, you're waving at and giving them a card. You have a sign out next to your truck, you have signage all over your vehicle in a trailer. Then it becomes of value to do that because it's better than the alternative. Now if you're busy right now and you're trying to somewhat busy, like you're working 30, 40 hours a week mowing lawns, I wouldn't recommend going out and spending another 20 hours burning yourself out working on free stuff. So I think there's a balance there. In general, I would say never discount your services, never give away free services to get started and to get new business, I should say. But when you're just getting started and you have nothing else to do and you genuinely don't have anything else to do, I wouldn't mind you working five, six hours a week doing stuff for free. That being said, you might want to get a part time job when you're first starting out so you have a steady flow of income and you can reinvest the profits from your business very back into the business. So that's from Junior Gonzalez. Next question.

Erich Apple. How do you present a quote by selling the quality and not the price? What verbiage do you use and what things do you talk about before selling them? The price. So a couple things, Eric, that come to mind. Number one is being educated. I think Demetrio actually commented on this one and that is be educated yourself. So giving value to the customer is gonna be giving them things that they can't get themselves. So if they don't know the different levels, like what lime does, like the PH of the soil, they don't know acidity, they don't know the clay type, they don't know.

Things to do with what type of seed to use. They don't know how much nitrogen is in the weed and feed and why there's certain things happening with the lawn. There's patches or there's a thatch layer and explaining what that is. So having knowledge and that you can give to the customer is super important. Educating the customer super valuable because you become the expert, you become the one that they have to come to for that information because they don't want to go get it themselves. They don't have to educate themselves. You are that resource for them. And so by being that expert, by being the one that knows the answers, that knows the soil types, that knows all those things about the landscaping, the lawn care, nutrient profiles, all of that stuff, by knowing all of that, you offer a lot of value. Secondly, by being professional and.

Differentiating yourself from your competitors by the level of professionalism that you have is also super important. That includes having uniforms, having employees that are trained, having employees that are also knowledgeable, having employees that are courteous, that show up on time, that are communicating effectively. So there's a lot of ways that your team can actually be the ones that offer value. Just having a lot of manpower as you get a little bit larger also offers value to larger customers that are asking for big projects.

So a lot of times people ask me, how do I get involved in bigger landscaping projects? I'm like, well, you only have you and one other guy. You're going to have a hard time installing a $200,000 patio. It's going to take you weeks. And so.

Sometimes value comes in the form of just having a larger crew, having more equipment, having more trucks. Value in the terms of maybe you have a space where customers can actually come to an office space where they can come into and pay their bill and talk to you. Even office staff. Having value is also having office staff that are answering the phone all the time and is not going always to voicemail or you're not picking it up in the background, a mower is running. So, like, that's value to the customer. Having an office staff so that they get estimates within a couple hours instead of a couple weeks is also super important, always of providing value. All those things cost money. And so that's why your hourly rate needs to increase as you add those extra value. Add services, or value to your services is you're gonna have to pay people more for employees that are gonna be clean cut, not smoke on the job, that are gonna be polite, that know English, that all those things, it's gonna cost more money. Secondly, you know, to hire those office staff, to have the website, to have the uniform, it's all gonna cost you money. So that's why your hourly rate needs to be indicative of the level of value that you're bringing to the customer. And if you're going to offer those things in terms of value, make sure your price reflects that. Pedros asks how I can grow up my business. I have 15 customers now, but I need more. So first of all, Pedros, it's good that you recognize the fact that you need more. You want more. But there's a level of need if you're small. And so the reason I say that is because for some people, 15 customers is all they need if they have full service customers and those customers are all paying $1,000 a month and you are only wanting to stay solo and not grow your business. That's $15,000 a month times 12. You're looking at like 170, $180,000 every single year. And that's just you taking care of 15 customers. So first of all is be aware of what you want out of your business. And if you want more than 15 customers and you want to run more of a high volume business, then growing is important. But Pedros asks, how do I get more customers? Basically, and it sounds to me like Pedro's, you have the time and not the money. And so I would do door hangers, because door hangers, again, it's like 100, $200. You can get thousands of them and you deliver them yourself. I would do knocking on doors, I would do giving those flyers to everyone around those 15 customers. You should be like hitting them hard. So like, literally, I would do three or four different flyers over the course of the next month or two. I would every week or two, when you're mowing your customer's lawn, I would go down the entire street and canvas that area like crazy. I guarantee that you can get from 15 customers to 30 just by putting on, you know, really targeting the 15, 20 houses on the street of your existing customers. You do that, you know, 15 times 20, all of a sudden you're doing, you know, a few hundred homes. And if you do that repeatedly, like three or four different times, three or four different flyer designs, three or four different offers over the course of a couple months, you're gonna get a lot of those people. I think you can double from 15 to 30 just by doing that and a little bit of door hangers.

James Werenberg, how to keep employees on track. My guys talk a lot, go on phones, take lots of breaks, et cetera. So, James, this is something that I actually just share with Proplus members. This past week, I showed them a picture of our scoreboard. I know I've talked about our scoreboard in the past. There's a video about the scoreboard we used to use on a weekly basis. We actually do it daily now. And that is.

Making it a game. And so there was a book I read a long time ago, I'm forgetting the name of it, but it basically talked about making a game within your business and making it where it's not around money. There's actually a game. And the E. Myth talks a little bit about this. Michael Gerber's book about making a game that people want to play in your business and then creating the rules and the systems around that game. So the game that we play is we have a scoreboard. And that scoreboard is going to keep track of two things, landscaping jobs and mowing crews. So the mowing crews are going to have a number that is indicative of how efficient they are. And that number is usually revenue divided by.

By their payroll. And so a crew that goes out, they're making 20 bucks an hour. Two guys, that's $40 an hour. And let's say they generate $400 within a five hour window. So that's going to be the revenue. Then it's going to divide out by the, by their payroll. So that $40 per hour times five is $200. And so they're going to get a number. And so we have numbers, you know, so sometimes a mowing crew will get, you know, 1.9, 1.8 if they're having a bad day, revenue divided by payroll, 1.8, that's a bad day. We're not going to make much money on that. The goal is to get like 2.5, 3 as a number for them to hit. Revenue divided by payroll. Next thing that we track on that scoreboard is our landscaping jobs. And it's mostly for the project managers, but it's also for everyone working on the job to know exactly where we're at in the project. So if there's 200 budgeted hours, I want them to know when they're getting close to that.

I want them to know when they're ahead of schedule. So if they're at 200 budgeted hours and they're at 170 actual hours, and they're coming in the last few days of the project, they know they're behind and so they're gonna do things, they're gonna figure things out. And so it makes it a game to beat the budgeted hours. So again, this all goes back to making a game out of beating the budgeted hours. And so that's for the landscaping jobs, for the mowing crews. We make it to where.

You know, the goal is always get over 2.5, that number. And when the guys do an exceptional job, like they're way over, above everyone, all the other crews, I'll personally text them, send them a screenshot, of the scoreboard, circle their number and say thank you or great work or whatever. And so it makes it a game to beat everybody else, but not necessarily beat everyone else. It's like a competition against yourself. And they know exactly what they're going to be contributing to the company. And it's easy for Me to know also what, what people are actually generating for the company. Like sometimes you think you have good employees, like you have an all star employee, but it's only because they have a really good edge and they work really well around you. But when they go out on their crews and they go on their routes, revenue divided by payroll tells no lies. You're gonna know who produces the most money, who brings the most money into the business. Same thing with budgeted hours. I have a great project manager that always seems like the customers are always happy, but if he's consistently behind on budgeted hours, you're not making any money. And so being very open with your employees and showing all the information is important. I feel some people would think that's really a dumb idea to show your revenue divided by payroll or show budgeted hours on a job. I just completely disagree with that. And when you show that to people and you make a scoreboard out of it, they start to not compete with each other. There's not internal war against each other to make these things happen, but there is a level of.

They want to beat each other, they want to show everyone else how good they worked. And so if you don't have that, I think the one thing you have to have in order for that to work is you still gotta have that factor of the employees wanting to impress you as the boss, that you still gotta have that level of they want to see you, they want to hear you say great job. And I don't think it's a bad thing when you get onto a job site for people to work hard, hard, hard and really step it up. There's that like, yes, of course you don't want them to slack off when you're away, but you also don't want to lose that factor of them wanting to impress you. And so by having the scoreboard and acknowledging the high performers, I think it puts pressure on the low performers because they're not getting recognition. And so I'd rather focus on the positive things on that scoreboard instead of the negative and just have positive reinforcement of the people who are excelling and doing a really good job. And then by doing things like revenue divided by payroll and budgeted hours, it's just so cut and dry in terms of like, it includes non billable time, so it includes driving, it includes the time they're yakking away and on the clock, it includes the time that they're at gas stations. All of that stuff is included in revenue divided by payroll. And it's also included in budget hours, like we take the hours that they worked on the clock and put it towards that number and so there. And they get drive time taken off of that. But like everything else is, is included in to those budgeted hours and therefore it's going to affect them on the scoreboard. And so if you have that healthy level of competition within your business, that will really help. So Pro plus members saw that and that picture was given to them and explain a little bit better, Harlan Jones, how do you manage your routes and scheduling? So our office manager, her main position, Liz, I think she was on the podcast a year or so ago. She is, she is her only responsibility, like her main responsibility is routing and scheduling. And so how do we manage it? Couple things. We use Zoobie Z U B I E to track our trucks on routes. And so Zubi is $179 a year. It's not cheap. I'm not getting paid to say this or anything. We use them though. And basically it's a little tracker. You plug it into your truck and it's real time live information on the vehicle, where it's at, GPS coordinates, not just it's on a map, you can actually see it. And it also gives like information on the, the engine and the, the fuel levels and the oil and like any sort of diagnostic issues. So it's really, really good for tracking. And also like vehicle maintenance, like if someone has a really hard brake, it notifies me. If someone has fast acceleration or speeding too much, it gives driver ratings based upon their speed and the way they drive the trucks and stuff. So that's important too. But in terms of how we manage our route and scheduling, first of all, for routing, like I said, we used Zuby. And so Liz is able to see on her secondary screen all the trucks throughout the whole county. So she'll see their dots everywhere. And so if someone has a problem, she can see who's the closest using the technology of Zuby. And then that's for routing, for scheduling. And some people ask, well, what if the employees unplug the route, the tracker immediately we're notified. And we've never had someone unplug a tracker. And if they did, they probably get fired. If they didn't, it wasn't an accident. Like if you're gonna, there's a reason why you're doing that. And so, but I've never even had to bring that up. No one's ever unplugged a tracker for scheduling. We basically work, we operate like we are kind of in the south side of our market. And so we kind of work from north to south over the course of the week for mowing crews. And for scheduling, we use another app called Team up that all of our. Because we don't really want everyone to access our CRM, like all the employees, but we do want them to kind of see the schedule, see how far we're booked out, see who they're, what big jobs are in the making. And so we use an app called Team up that basically reflects our CRM. But again, I don't really want everyone to have fingers in the CRM, not because I think they're going to do something dumb. I just don't want them to accidentally delete something or move a job and then we're messed up. So for scheduling, we use an app called Team up and it works really well. We keep job notes on each of those projects as well, and everyone has access to that. Shane Raimin asks what aerial are. Whoa, oops, sorry, I just accidentally went out of the page. Sorry, give me one second here. I'm going back.

Nope, don't want the group. Sorry about this going back pages.

But yeah, I really recommend Zooby. It's not cheap. $179 is not cheap, but it is absolutely invaluable. You're able to double check. So like on our CRM, the guys are clocking in and out on all the jobs.

However, when we have Zoobe, we're able to really double check by actually going back weeks ago and seeing exactly where they were, what times the truck was at. So in addition to the fact of them clocking in and out on their phone and on the CRM, we're also able to double check that information by knowing exactly where their truck was at. So if a customer ever says, hey, you never serviced my property on this date, we just go back. We can check on their phone, clock in and out, but we can also check in, like, was the truck there? How long was it there? And when we go back to the customer and say, actually, Ms. Smith, three weeks ago, from 207 to 246, we were at your property. And these are the people that were there. These are the services they provided. There's just not much they can say against that. All right, Shane asks, what aerial or satellite view do you recommend to use? Looking at, reducing time by visiting sites to quote. So you can use Google Earth, Some people use Google Maps, Lawn Pro and Service Autopilot, both software proxies that I've used in the past. They both have functions within the software to actually.

Like, get that information. So you're able to go in, drop pins, and save it right within the software. So LAN Pro and Service Autopilot are the software services that we've used for our main CRM. And both of those have functionality to drop pins and get square footages right from the software itself. But those are both basically just piggybacking off Google Earth.

Greg Porco asks, I feel that some of our employees lack positive attitudes. They are great workers, but I think some of them think negatively and complain about the workload. This is landscaping and lawn maintenance, though. There's always a lot of work for us. It comes with our industry. Any thoughts on more positive thinking and better attitudes? It's just something you're gonna have to hire for. I don't think that you're gonna change people a whole lot. If you have a really strong culture, sometimes an average performer, an average attitude can come in and have to adapt and raise their game because your culture's stronger. So it's super important when you're smaller because you're. The first few hires are the ones that are gonna dictate your culture. And so.

People that don't have positive attitudes, I just can't handle people that don't have positive attitudes. I just hate being around people that are negative. I hate being around people that always focus on the problem instead of solution. Recently I was reading a book from Dan Kennedy about management, and one of the things that he said that I've always said before, even here in the book, is that I hire people to solve the problem instead of just identify the problem. And so I like people to have a can do attitude when they see an issue. It's like, how do we fix it? What's the solution? I hate people that are looking at the problem, talking about the problem, complaining about the problem, rehashing the problem, telling everyone else about the problem, but never actually giving the solution. And so I pay people to find solutions, not problems. And that is someone that's usually more positive because they're gonna be thinking outside the box and thinking about ways to solve the issue instead of just talk about it. And so I think hiring and firing is the number one way to dictate culture, honestly. So, like, the way you hire and the way you fire is going to be what is really the indicator of telling your people what goes and what doesn't, what's allowed and what's not. Like if you. If you fire someone because they're super negative, all of a sudden people are going to realize that's something that's important to you and they're going to change. And so, you know, I've fired people because they don't introduce themselves to the project manager or hop on a piece of machinery that they're not trained to. I've fired people just because they're not working fast enough. And so it gives a message to people and they know that I'm gonna fire, I'm gonna pull the trigger fast. Literally within a day or two, I will pull the trigger on someone that just started working with us if there's certain things that are not being upheld to our standards. So hiring and firing, in my opinion, is the number one way to dictate your culture. Who you hire and then how you fire people.

Kyle Pearson, how to handle the customers who don't want to pay what you quote. Kyle Just don't deal with it honestly. The people who don't want to pay and are asking for discounts are always the ones that give you the most problems. And once you give them a discount, they think that in the future they can always ask for a discount and get it. And so we really went away from even discounting our services in the winter because people will take advantage of that, which is great. Fine, keeps us busy. But then during the spring when we're super busy, they somehow expect like they're entitled to a discount all of a sudden, and they get mad if they don't get it. So we don't discount our services at all. If people don't want to pay what you quote, they can find someone else. And that's just fine. That's totally fine. It's their prerogative. If they don't see the value in your business and they're asking for a lower price, then they should go get someone else that is going to offer the lower price and have a lower level of value. It's up to them how much value they want in terms of professionalism, having a website, insured, bonded, et cetera.

Henry asked how to get more customers and close a good deal. I would really make sure you're reading and learning a lot about communication, about management, about sales. Get an Audible account. My book is now an Audible zero turn. It's now on Audible. So just constantly learning and learning about sales. Grant Cardone, the seller Survivor Guide. He has a couple others. A seller to be sold. Good books are on sales and what to say for the sale. Micah McKay, how do you deal with the employee? He thinks he doesn't make enough when he makes more Than any of my other guys that trim all day. He makes $15 per hour, so $15 per hour. Micah. Like, in my market, my starting wage has to be higher than that. People are making between $16 and $20. Just starting out with not much experience at my business, but it's because of my market. It sounds like in your area, $15 is quite a bit.

I just think that someone has a lot of experience is probably worth more now. If you can't afford that, that's totally fine. They're gonna have to go find another job. And so we recently just had someone have to leave because they need more money. And we can't provide more money where we're working right now. And as the business is set up right now, can't afford anymore. And so he had to go get a job somewhere else left on really good terms. But if you cannot pay that person as much as they need, they're just gonna have to go find another place to work. The unemployment level is so low and there's so many opportunities. You shouldn't feel bad because they're gonna find another job. They're gonna find it somewhere else. They're probably gonna make more money because of our industry just not being able to afford as much people right now because of unemployment being so low. There are trades out there that are willing to take apprentices, and they're gonna make 25, 30 bucks an hour right off the bat, just starting just to have good hands and a good head that they use. And so it's very to to compete with that, Especially for high performers that can be an apprentice in a trade or go to an oil field or do construction and stuff like that, it's just harder for us to do that. But if you're dealing with an employee still doesn't think he makes enough money, you gotta ask yourself the question if he's worth it or not. Do you raise your prices so that you can accommodate those higher wages? That's really a question you have to determine. Thomas Salazar as relocated due to wife's family to a completely new environment. Totally opposite plant hardiness zones and looking for encouragement to start over. Big city equals lots of competition. Learning curve. Feeling too old to work for someone else in this industry. Pride is killing me. Am I getting too old to keep chasing this dream? Where to begin? You rock, Mike Andes. Thanks. So you relocated. So first of all, large city equals lots of competition. That's true, but it also means lots of opportunity and lots and lots of work. So I wouldn't feel too bad about that learning curve. Yes, there's gonna be a learning curve. What I would recommend you do is educate yourself a lot. Literally lock yourself in a room for two days and watch YouTube videos about your plant zone, about things in your market. You're gonna learn a lot. You're gonna learn more than 99% of everyone in your market in terms of the consumer, just by doing that one day of training yourself. So first of all, don't beat yourself up too much about that. You have to remember that the average homeowner is not invested in knowing about nitrogen and phosphorus and ph of their soil and like nutrient profiles. Like, they're not interested in that stuff. So just by educating yourself for a day, you're going to be ahead of like 99.9% of them. Secondly, I would just go out and start, and start with easy services. So start with mowing, start with weeding, start with, you know, easy stuff. Then as you get more confident in the type of environment you're in, then add shrub trimming, then add weed control, then add fertilization, then add landscaping. Like as you get to know the soil types and all of that sort of things in your local market, you can add those services. But I would just go out and start, get on properties, get to know customers, get to know what they want and what they need. Because right now you're guessing at how many people are gonna want fertilization, how many people are gonna want weed control, how many people are gonna need trimming if you go out and start mowing. Cause most everyone needs that. You're gonna get to know what they start asking you a lot for. You can educate yourself on those things.

Become dangerous in those areas, and then go out and sell that work.

Tyler Palmer asks, I have one lawn crew now. I can take on more accounts but don't have enough for another full time crew. How do I make the jump for two long crews? So, Tyler, usually when you have your first crew and then you're debating your second crew, it also means you're also debating like you getting out of the field and focusing more on the estimates and the sales. I would a couple things. Like I could go really broad here, but let me go try really specific at the risk of someone misinterpreting me. But this is what I would say, like really tactical things is do it right as spring is starting. So maybe that's now for you. If you're watching this now at the beginning of May, do it when you know you're gonna have like an influx of leads Coming in and just tons of work, because then it's gonna take the pressure off you to, like, have to find work for them. And it's also gonna allow relieve pressure off of you to go out and go make those sales and meet those customers and get those estimates of them on time. And when all your other competition is taking longer because the spring rush and you're able to capitalize on it and keep that second crew busy, knowing that you're gonna. You're gonna take a hit in your profit margin as soon as you take that second crew. Like, that's a big jump, because your profit margin really dips after that. However, it's kind of that. That intermediate area that you got to go from one crew to like five. That that's where it's your profit margins and your bottom line is sometimes hindered a little bit. But is that jump you need to make? I would recommend doing it in spring so you have an entire year to keep that crew busy. And then also you have all those leads coming in naturally by having just being spring and the time of year. So if you're trying to go from one to two, do it during spring when you're super busy and you can allocate more time to actually go capitalizing on those leads and all that new business and all the phone calls coming in, and then you have workers to actually perform the work. Paul asks, how do I decide if I should move to an LLC or C Corp or S Corp, et cetera. I'm currently a sole proprietor and need to expand to keep up with demand. So, Paul, I would talk to an accountant and get their opinion on this, or a lawyer. I would actually talk to an accountant first because most of this has to do with taxes and then liability. So talk to them. I've made some videos about LLCs. I like LLCs over sole proprietorships. They offer a little bit more protection. Corporations are great. Usually do it more for tax advantages. So talk to an accountant, and they'll give you the information you need for your state for your situation. Juan asks, what's a fair price for an HOA that takes seven hours for two guys, essentially all day, once a week. And they require insurance and worker's comp. So, yeah, that's a matter of figuring out your hourly rate, what covers your overhead, and then multiplying that out by seven hours, two guys, et cetera. So that's just about knowing your numbers and your hourly rate. Make sure you have, you know, insurance and all those things baked into your. Your payroll. I mean, sorry into your expenses of that hourly rate. So you know, if you're making, if you're paying someone 20 bucks an hour, you're actually paying them like 25 after workers compensation, insurance and all the other stuff. And so if you're charging 30 to the customer, I just doubt you're ever going to make money. You won't because that there's drive time, there's unbillable hours, like you're going to be so in the hole it's not even funny in my opinion. If you're making less than $45 per man hour on job site, you it's very difficult to make any money. Just in my opinion. I know my market's a little bit higher priced in terms of wages and expenses of materials and just cost of living. But in my opinion, 40, $45 an hour, if that's what you're making on the job site, like working hours, if you're making less than that, I don't see you. You're not running a sustainable business in my mind personally. Quinn asks what key systems and organization will help when hiring your first office staff is a good one. So what I would recommend is using a Software like QuickTime or another software that you use that can do Screencast and what we did. I made a folder when I first started handing off stuff to my office manager. I made a folder that just had just tutorials on the homepage on the desktop page. And inside of that I would just put save screen flows or screencasts of important functions. So for instance like how to route a crew, how to optimize the route, how to send out invoices, how to send out an email campaign, how to.

Change the invoice settings, how to change the estimate settings, how to create an estimate, how to sell someone over the phone, how to measure a property. Like I just made a whole bunch of screen shares and screencasts and saved them as videos. And then she would be able to search the title if she was running into something and watch that screen share. She only had to search, you know, do that once in a while. But it saved me from being on an estimate and her having an issue and me not being able to be there and show her. She just be able to search it and find a solution. Now she will make those same videos for all the assistants that are underneath her. So she has three office assistants under her. So she'll make screen share videos and then they have four different computers within the office. They share that video on a shared folder. That folder is viewable on all the computers. So if they run into something, they can watch that screencast. And if we change something in the office, how things are done, a different way of estimate, follow up or something like that. She will make a video screencast, share it with the office assistants and so they can see that at all times. I really like that method in terms of creating tutorials via videos for your office people because so much of what they're doing is on the computer. So let me just try to get a couple more here. Jenny asks, how can you find out prices around your area or other, anywhere you can go city hall, anywhere. So if you're just starting out and you can kind of fly under the radar, it's not a bad idea to have your friends and family ask for quotes from your competitors just to get an idea. But honestly, I would much rather you base your prices upon your expense, like how much you need to charge, instead of just getting an arbitrary number because you don't know if that person came out. This is the reason I don't like this method of getting people's other prices from competitors, because you don't know if that competitor came out and he is really needing work because he lost a big contract and needs to keep his guys busy. And so he comes and under bids that day and all of a sudden now you're basing your pricing based upon a competitor who is underpricing his work for that day or two or that week and he's trying to make up for that work he lost. Or someone comes along and they are super, super busy, a competitor of yours, and they know they're never gonna be able to get to this job, so they just price it days, double the price. And now you're basing your prices on someone that doubled their price for that day. So I would say to get a ballpark figure, get three or four competitors to do an estimate for you or your house or for your family's houses if you think they might know you. And then that can kind of be a ballpark. But honestly, it's gotta be you figuring out your numbers. And the problem that I have with our industry is that no one shares numbers. No one's really transparent about that. And so we all are just shooting in the dark, which I think is just crazy. And I think we should share numbers more and we should be able to talk about, because if we do that, we're going to allow the prices to go increase and we're going to be able to charge more when people are all collaborating Because I genuinely believe there's people out there charging $20 per mo, but they don't know that they are half the price of everyone else out there. And they are just wondering why it's so hard to run their business and make payroll and pay for their food and their table or their family. And yet they don't know that they're the cheapest and they could be charging more. And so I think by sharing our numbers, we're gonna actually give the whole industry as a whole lift the entire value and the prices and thereby we're able to pay our people more and retain our labors, et cetera. But anyways, finding out prices around you, how to do that, I would get your family members to get quotes from at least three or four. Don't do it on one or two. Like I said, there's gonna. You're gonna get a massive range. And I tell you what, you're gonna tell really quickly who's doing good and who's doing bad based on their pricing, your competitors. And let me tell you, the ones that are highest prices, that's the ones you should not be worried about. Those are the ones that are gonna succeed. Usually the ones that are lowest prices, you know that you are probably gonna be getting some of their customers one day when they go out of business. Kevin asks break down your cost per hour, gas, employee pay, truck trailer, equipment, etc. So this is something that I would do for Proplus and something I'm putting together for probably in like June or July when I break down our PL from last year and really go over deep in detail. But let me tell this for everyone else out there. There is software called lmn. Just type in LMN software. I'm not a huge fan of their CRM necessarily, but I really like their budgeting tool. And you can do it for free. That's the really cool thing. It's completely free. Sign up for the trial. And not even a trial. You sign up for their free software. You just don't upgrade for the other aspects of estimates and accepting payment and things like that, you can go for free. You can put in all your information and get a budget. And I really like this because it gives you industry averages versus what you're paying and it gives you some really, really good numbers. So give yourself two or three hours to get some really good data. But go to LMN software and just start a free account and do a budget and you're gonna get really, really detailed information about your overhead. So you put in what you do is you put in how many hours your guys worked, you put in how much you paid for gas last year, how much you paid for your trucks, for your trailers, for your equipment, for your maintenance. You put all that information in and it's gonna give you like a dollar per hour of overhead that you gotta recoup. So that might be 10, 12, 15, $20, whatever it is, based upon how much overhead you're getting. And so I'd really encourage you do that. You'll get some great data. You'll be able to benchmark yourself against the industry in terms of averages. So check that out as well. Couple more questions. John asks, do you ever treat your workers like they should or just run them into the ground like the rest? So I try to treat them like they should be treated. They're human beings. If you don't treat them like that, they aren't gonna stick around very long. Especially in this labor market. From just a very, like just being a human and being a good person, I think you should treat them like that. But from being a business owner and from looking at the profit side of your business, you need them to stick around. And so if you don't treat them good in this labor market, they're gonna go find a job somewhere else. If there's not a good culture and if you aren't a good person to work for, they are gonna go find someplace else to work. That's just the truth of it. And you're gonna have a huge amount of turnover which affects your bottom line. And so I would not work them into the ground. Yes. We have weeks where we work 60 plus hours. And some of them, it's a drag and I do have to push them and, and just keep. It's a grind. And they see me doing that. So if I can do it, I push people a lot. At the end of the day, I do push people quite a bit in my businesses to perform and to do better and to improve themselves. And so some people love that environment and really flourish. Other people do cower down or it really hurts them and it's hard for them to be good in that environment. And so that's fine. There's gonna be people who thrive, there's gonna be people who don't like it and they're gonna leave and they'll find another job somewhere else. But I do push people, I do want them to see the best potential of themselves. I do want to pay them more. But in order for them to get that, they're gonna have to produce more. And in order for them to produce more, I'm gonna push them to get there. So I wanna see them succeed and I'm gonna push them, but I'm not gonna run them into the ground. Bill asks, should I join ProPlus? What all exactly does it include? So I've talked about Pro plus before. You can look on Pro plus on landscapebusinesscourse.com basically, if you're watching this right now, you should join Pro plus. Cause you're really serious about your business and you realize that it's just gonna take one thing that can be a huge benefit.

What I said at the conference when everyone signed up for ProPlus in January was don't look at this as a $379 per month expense. Look at this as almost $5,000, like four and a half thousand dollars per year. That's what I want you to look at this as. But what I told them and what I truly believe about Pro plus and if you're considering Pro plus is what you should be thinking about is, will I learn one thing? Cause I truly believe in our businesses. You're like one, there's one thing, if you change your business, you'd make another 50 grand. Genuinely believe that that could be one thing. Like Zoobie, just figuring out that and be able to track all your guys and knowing efficiencies that could be huge just by making the scoreboard that could completely change your business. And so 4,000, $5,000 is the decision you're making. Literally one thing out of ProPlus, one thing out of these podcasts, one thing out of these videos that that can completely change your business. I give away 90% of my content for free. The other 10% I just can't share. Cause it's like my company. I don't want to share people's names or our numbers because this is public information. That's what I share in Pro plus, the scoreboard, things like that, the setups that we're working on are fiddling with our numbers for like Facebook ads and what converts and what doesn't. All of that stuff, that's what's in Pro plus. If that's of interest to you, if you're still watching this and you're serious about your business, ProPlus is something I'd really consider. Because like I said, one thing, two things a year completely will pay for that $5,000 and it'll absolutely change your business. And so if you don't think like that, don't join ProPlus. If you're just gonna, like, try it out for a day or 2. Don't join Pro Plus. You are literally gonna get a couple webinars a month. You're gonna get contact with me when you need help. And if that's of interest to you, and if you're really serious about growing your business, it's something I would really consider because like I said, one thing can completely revolutionize your business. Charging credit cards will completely change someone's business. Doing the scoreboard will change your culture. Doing yellow slips, like doing Facebook ads instead of other forms of marketing will completely change your brand, will completely change your awareness in your local community. And I feel that one, two of those things from Pro plus that I share will make, you know, $5,000 seem like peanuts. So that's my two cents on that. There's a couple more questions. I'll individually answer those. I'll WhatsApp you. And so I hope something today was said that was a value and something that you can use in your business. And again, if you're watching this, you should really come to the conference because all these questions I can answer in much more detail and have a lot more context because I can see you ask you another question or two. It's like when someone's asking me about culture and how do I keep people motivated and not be wasting time, I can ask them a few more questions and get better details and answer that question with more context. And so at the conference, we have a lot of Q and A, a lot of Q and A. Like people are allowed to raise their hand and just interrupt me at any time because that's when the best information comes out, is when I'm like off script and I'm answering personalized questions. And so if you are still listening to this, I'd really recommend you come to the conferen. It's 299 bucks. It's gonna pay for two meals on Friday, two meals on Saturday. It's gonna pay for, you know, the, you know, the conference and everything that we do to put it on. That's what that is. And then you can stay. I'd really recommend staying at the hotel. It's super cheap. We get a really good deal by signing up@landscapebusinesscourse.com you get like a discount, 15 or 20%. So check that out. I'd really love to see you at the conference landscape summit in 2020. Still a long ways away, like six, seven months. So check that out. And I hope this is helpful today. If you have a question, post it below. If you're on YouTube or Facebook, post it below. If you have another question, email me landscapebusinesscoursemail.com thanks so.

Much.