Must Listen! Scaling Up Lawn Care & Value-Add - Ep.32

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes. You're listening to Landscape Business Course Podcast and today is probably, in my opinion one of the best episodes of these live calls that we've ever had here on the podcast. So definitely you want to take notes today it's like an hour and 15 minutes, I think of just solid, really good content with a young entrepreneur that's in his second year business, is doing already between 5 and 7,000amonth and is wanting to scale, scale up the lawn care portion of his business. He's from Canada. You're definitely gonna take notes. We just covered a whole bunch of stuff, everything about hiring our systems and then marketing, from Facebook ads to print marketing, talked some real solid numbers and your projections of what you should be hitting for customer acquisition costs. So just jammed loaded with information. I did want to mention a few things for people that are wanting to do a 30 minute call with me for free. You can go to landscapebusinesscourse.com and if you do do that, this is your first time ever hearing that, please do listen to some of the podcasts or even subscribe to the YouTube channel, things like that. Try to, I think you get more value out of our conversation if you've listened to already some of the basics that I have outlined. So you'll get to know what I talk about systems and marketing. And that way when you come on the call, you're already educated as to what my general thesis is on a lot of these business, landscape, business stuff. And so if you already kind of searched that, you already know that then the details of your specific business, you can get those ironed out on the phone call and really get more specific and more better advice. Really the more the stuff that you can already listen to on the podcast on YouTube, the vlog, things like that. So do kind of poke around, but as always, feel free to go to landscapebusinesscourse.com and sign up for a call and we can talk about what you want to talk about or also some of you had asked, so I had gone ahead and now instead of having to contact me directly to get access to the course, you can now just go straight to landscapebusinesscourse.com in the top right there's a button that says enroll. And on there now you can see everything that's in the course, everything from like our templates, the marketing stuff that we give you, employee training, the access, lifetime access to lawn for all that stuff. You'll see all of that. You'll see what the course entails and you can Actually directly buy it now through just go to the website landscapebusinesscourse.com and then click Enroll in the top right and that'll lead you through the process. So that's there now also, last thing, if you are on Instagram, you'll want to follow the channel that I have. It's landscape business. So if you just search landscape business on Instagram, you will. Or if you search the tag Landscape business course, you'll find my content. If you want to see kind of what I do every single day. I try to post every day landscape jobs that we're at. Some of the behind the scenes of me like in the office driving, when I have like random tips or stuff that comes up throughout the day. I make calls throughout the whole day for around the podcast. Usually not the 30 minute ones. Those are. I try to be at the office or at home, but usually like 5, 10 minute calls with the course members. Like you'll sometimes see that stuff on Instagram. I want to get some more of that stuff. And just after I. You won't see the call, but you'll see afterwards I'll mention something like something about a certain tip or a certain marketing tactic that's being used. So a lot of fun there. Go to Instagram if you're already on there. Facebook, we're on there as well and we post there. So Landscape business course, you can just search that on Instagram or Facebook is where we're most active. Of course, YouTube have the vlog there every week. I put up a video too, but that's that. So without any further delay, let's get to Christian. Christian is in Winnipeg, Canada. He's 21, already starting a successful business and he's really wanting to scale it up. And, and so very interesting conversation with him today. Here we go.

And it's been snowing off and on all day, so I just wanted to see if I needed to service their place. So I'm driving up the back lane and they happen to be leaving their place at the same time. And she didn't check her mirrors. She said that she didn't check her mirrors, was only staring at her backup camera and back right into my truck as I was driving by.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. What happened? So what was it like a big dent?

You know what? She got the worst of it. It's still a thousand dollars of damage for my truck at least.

But insurance gonna cover it.

Is your insurance gonna cover it or how's that, how's that gonna work?

Yeah. So she's deciding if she wants to just settle it privately and just pay for the body shop. And that would be a thousand bucks on her end. Or we can go through insurance and It'll be a 200 deductible on her end. I don't have to pay anything either way. She's just deciding if she wants to go through her insurance or not. So it's okay from my perspective. Just kind of sucks for her.

Oh, man, that's brutal. But the truck is. You can still drive it and everything?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just a small dent, but 2015, so I want to get it.

I don't want it to rust or anything. That's no fun. I'm sorry about that, man.

No worries. Didn't even stress me up.

So where. Where are you exactly in Canada?

I'm central Canada. I'm in Winnipeg. Not a lot of people know where that is. We're right above North Dakota.

Yep, yep. Yeah, I know. I actually went to school in Canada and I live right south of the border, so I actually. You know, it's funny, I knew the Canadian anthem before I knew the American anthem.

I went to school up there when I was younger, so.

Okay, cool.

So tell me about. Tell me about yourself. So are you running a business now or are you just starting out? Where are you at as far as landscaping goes?

Okay, so this will be our second season. We're 100% residential. And it's. I focus mainly on the maintenance side of things.

So the way the season works here in Winnipeg, it's five months of snow, a month of spring cleanup, and five months of lawn care. Then a month of fall cleanup. It's pretty consistent that way.

The weeks may vary a bit when you go from cleanup to summer or whatever.

But yeah, we're 100% residential as far as lawn care goes. We're fully focused on maintenance. So we don't do. I. I don't. And I say we, but we, as in the company, as in. I. Yeah, we don't do any landscaping right now at all.

Okay.

And I want to keep it that way. I want to do small residential crews and just really niche in that.

Okay.

And I was actually just talking. I. I'm sure you're aware of the custom truck beds and the.

Yep.

Running 21 inch modes of that. Yeah, that's what I want to do here in Winnipeg. Market's perfect for it. I was just talking with someone a couple minutes ago before you called about getting a quote on the custom truck bed for the second truck, so. Yeah, that's sort of the direction I'm moving in right now. As far as revenue goes, it's. It's small, it's tiny. I didn't put in any effort into marketing or anything in the first season, so we did like nothing. And that was because I hated it and I hated doing the work. And I was burnt out after my first season of spring cleanup. So I didn't put any effort into getting long care clients.

Okay.

What was nothing for you as far as numbers?

Nothing. Like literally 10 clients. Like literally nothing. Okay. As far as snow goes, we're in the middle of our second season right now and I'm doing about seven grand a month revenue.

Woo. That's pretty good.

Yeah, it's. It's all right. It's not what you were doing, but it's all right.

No, hey, no, no, no, no. Let's clarify. In my. My first year, my best month was under seven grand.

I guess. So.

Yeah. That snow though, right, that you're doing right now for the seven grand a month?

Yeah, that's snow.

Okay. Okay.

My projection for spring cleanups, I'm expecting like my original goal was 20 grand in the one month spring cleanup season.

I'm thinking realistic numbers. I'll at least do 10 grand. That's like a given.

Yep.

Anything above that's a bonus. And I'm confident we could do 15 or even 20. As far as mowing goes.

I ran the numbers and I need to do at least about eight grand a month to be livable this year. Because even. Even with the company being so small, I want to get over the field as quickly as they can.

Okay.

So I'm going to attempt to run it. Just one crew this year and then me out of the field just doing spot checking and dealing with clients and phones and whatever else.

Got it.

This year, I don't need a lot of money to live off of. I really have no expenses right now.

No family or anything like that.

No. 21 live with my girlfriend in an apartment. Cool. My. I paid my pay my truck note through the company. I paid all my expenses through the company. Really? And I pay myself a salary of like 1800amonth to live off of. I could live off of 1300amonth if I needed to cover personal rent and food and everything else. But personally, awesome.

Awesome.

I don't need a lot of money and I've been reinvesting everything back into the business right now.

Okay. All right.

So sort of where I am.

Right. Okay. So going to 2017, like the mowing Seed, like. Or you're gonna be going to your spring cleanups. Like, what's kind of the highest priority item you think right now to kind of grow the business?

Highest priority item to grow the business.

Like, what are you kind of focusing on going into this year? Like, is it hiring someone? Is it, you know, are you trying to grow how many lawn accounts you have? Like, what's it kind of you, what are you focusing on?

Both of those that you just said. So right now, specifically, for the past two weeks, my entire focus has been on hiring people. I've set up a system where. I don't know if you're familiar with Kijiji, but it's like Craigslist.

Yep.

In principle, it's what we use here. So I've been posting my ads on Kijiji, really well written ads with nice pictures. It gets attention. People reply to the ads and I get them to go to calendly, book an interview with me so I don't actually have to talk to them. Okay. And then once we set up that interview, we do the interview. And over the past.

Week or so, I've done about 20 interviews. And I actually have a great problem right now. I have too many qualified people. So it's tough for me to pick my people right now because I have too many that I want to choose. And I'm only hiring two. How many have a good school to pick from?

How many qualified people out of those 20, do you think you have? Like five.

Four or five that I would be confident in hiring?

So I would do something to try to weed that down. I bet out of those five, two of them are really good. And the reason I say that is because we just did our first career fair. So I don't know if you. Have you listened to the podcast and stuff before Christian or not?

Yes. So I was listening to your podcast, the longest one you have. I don't remember what the title of it was. I listened to the with this morning at the gym. Okay. And it was you speaking with someone on a call like this.

Okay.

And I listened to the whole thing and one thing that stood out to me was you said you would choose the person who is younger, who can grow the company over the experienced person. And that's sort of the position I'm in right now.

Especially people that I want.

Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

No, sorry, keep your train of thought there because you were gonna say something important there. But the reason too, as like, I'm 21, you're 21. Another part of that like when I was talking to that person, I believe they're talking, he was older and so I was trying to get him to get people that were younger that will grow with the business and be able to handle the labor aspect. And the other thing though, for someone like you and me who's 21, a lot of people just socially it's awkward or weird for them to be a 30 and 40 year old listening a 21 year old and you can fight that all you want and like try to create the culture within the business to not be like that. However, when it boils down to it, you are their boss and especially the first few people in your business, they're gonna be directly reporting to you. And so it's just easier just in my experience, had people that are older and it just doesn't work out like it's just easier when you're growing the business as a young person to have either people around our age, like everyone into my business, minus my office people, office manager, they are 24 and under. So like it just so much easier to be honest with you. But go ahead, you were going to say something there. There was someone else that you were talking about there.

Yeah, I was just going to say so. One of the people that I really want to hire, he's. I didn't ask him his exact age, but he's in his mid-30s to maybe potentially early 40s.

Okay.

Ran his own business back in BC and just moved back to Winnipeg and is looking to start fresh. He's way overqualified for a lawn care position that pays twice 12, 50 an hour, no benefits and whatever else. But this is. So my fear is that as soon as the job comes up that pays well and uses his actual qualifications, he's gonna leave me.

Yeah. Yeah, so.

And I know. Well, while he's with me, I guarantee you he'll do an amazing job. He'll be a great manager or supervisor, he'll mow lawns perfectly. But as soon as that job comes up that he really wants, he'll leave without even thinking. That's why I agree with you, I guess.

Well, did you ask him why he's taking. Why he's even interested in taking a job with you?

Yeah, he said he's having trouble finding anything else right now.

Is he looking anywhere else?

He said he's been looking. He's only been back in the city for a couple months now and he hasn't found anything that really resonated with him, I guess.

Okay, so it's either one of two things. Either a, he lacks confidence or doesn't ask for what he's worth and you have a steal of a deal that might work out. Or two, he's not telling you something, and that is when they do background checks, something pops up or something's on his driving record or something weird. And. And so, like, it's. It's a risk. This is the thing, this is the. This is what we're coming back to though, is what I said before. I do something to try to weed out two or three of those people. And so like, when you have. When people send a resume, like I'm guessing right now from Kijiji, they're sending you a resume and then they're sending up an interview. Is that right? Yes, yes. So the problem with that, the only problem with that is this. Out of 50 people, they will send you their resumes. 20 of them are going to actually interview. Because what happens is the tire kickers in our industry will send out 50, a whole bunch of their resumes to anyone on Kijiji or Craigslist and just hope something happens. And so just in the fact that you have interview process, you're gonna knock out a whole bunch of those people because they don't even like, when they hit calendly and they have to book an appointment with you, they just automatically check out because they're looking for like a summer job, right? So automatically you're clearing out some people, and that's a good thing. But then right now you're saying, okay, I have five people out of these 20, that's 25%. That's not bad. That's actually pretty good. But I would figure that if you can do something to weed them down. And this is the thing we did this year. If you listen to more of the podcast, you'll hear more about this stuff. And that is we did this career fair. And that's where I invited all of the people that kind of made it through the initial process of our application and everything. And I invited them to career fair night, where I essentially, like, you don't have to. We have an office, but you could do, you know, anywhere, your house, a garage, wherever, library, coffee shop, and you essentially walk them through all the responsibilities of the job. You talk about all the pros and cons of the job. So, like, the cons for us is like, you're gonna be out in the rain, you're gonna be out in the snow, you're gonna be long hours sometimes you're gonna have to work weekends, sometimes And I actually try to scare them away. I try to get them out. I bring up all the, like, obviously I bring out the positive things. I talk about our team culture, a lot of the perks, things like that, like how the company's growing and there's room to grow with the business. I talk about those things. But the end, I go hardcore. Like, I want to get rid of these people because you'd rather get rid of them now than later. And so I think if you have these questions about, say, this, this really qualified person, this is the moment that you can try to weed them out now instead of in five, six months. And it being a really big hard on the business and on you and the relationship, even with the person. And so what I did is I talk about all those negative things and right away I weeded out one of the guys. He came up to me right after the job fair and like, hey, I'm really just looking for a summer job. And in the presentation, I said, if you're looking for. If you're looking for a summer job, do not apply for an interview. Because for us, we did the career fair. Then they sign up for an interview slot. But I say, like, if you, if you're looking for a summer job, just don't waste your time. Don't waste my time. I can refer you to other businesses, business owners that I know would use your services. So, like, one guy did that. Another guy, he was in his 40s. And I talked just really openly, really honestly, saying, hey, if you have problems with working with people that are younger than you, that's going to be a problem. Because I'm really young, my managers are young, everyone else in this company is young. And if you're just starting out, you're going to be underneath all those people and learning from them.

And.

And if that's a problem for you, that's totally fine. Like, that's what I said during the presentation. Like, that's like the social norm. It's tough, it's hard to work. So one of the guys, he's probably late 40s, had lots of experience and all this other stuff, and he bailed out. So he's like, you know what? Like, this probably just isn't for me. And there was a couple others, they couldn't. They didn't think they could handle it physically as far as being outside and all of that stuff. And so I weeded, even though from the application, they were great and I thought they were going to be good. Like, usually this is what happens. People would have taken all eight of those people that I had there and taken them on for like a couple weeks or a month and tried them out, quote, unquote, tried them out. And that does one of two things as you start to grow. And one, it's going to be hard on you because you're going to start not trusting people when they stop working out. And when only half of the people that you try out actually work, you're not going to invest as much time into the new hires because you, you're thinking, oh, this person might not work out in long run, in like long term. So essentially what I would recommend you do is do something, whether it be a meetup or you do a second interview and talk about it with each one, like, however you want to do that. Do something that you think will weed out the people that are in it for the short term or that are going, that have some other motive than the people. Like, I know that the people I hired are going to be with us for several years. I. I just know it. And unless something happens, I totally get it. But based upon all the. They had to go through an application, they had to go through the career fair, they had to go through an interview, they had to go through training, and then they are offered a job. And so if someone's going to jump all those hurdles, literally, it narrows 90% of the people who apply for the job out because either one, they find out that it's not going to work for them, or they're not going to be able to eventually grow at the company because they're only wanting to stick around for a year. Like, it gets all those people rid of all those people. And if you're just really open and frank about, hey, I'm young, the company is young, we're still learning, we're growing, there's lots of opportunities, but there are downsides. I think you'll be able to weed out some of those people and get to down to the. I bet two or three of those people are stellar and one to three of them are just, they're okay. And so if you have five that are okay, like, I think if you can narrow it down to two or three that are amazing, that's where your gold is.

Okay, so as far as weeding it down, do you think just a simple second phone interview, if I just interviewed everyone again over the phone and we just had a frank, open, honest discussion.

Don't do it over the phone. No, don't do it over the phone. No, do it in person. Definitely was Your interview in person?

Yeah, yeah.

The first one was, yeah, if I was you, if I was you, I would do it in person with all of them. And the reason you want to do that is also to create this impression that hey, we're hiring for two people and there's five people at this meeting. And so it's going to do one of two things. Either A, they're going to get scared and say I'm bailing or and they're going to realize that this is a serious business. They business owner is like legit. Like this is the thing about small businesses that especially when you're getting your first couple people, they've got to trust you. And if they just think that you're kind of just like picking up random people off the street to work for them, even though I know you're not, they don't know that. And so what you want to be able to do is really kind of like this is the problem with too many small business owners is they expect people just like hop on board and give 100%, but the business owner doesn't commit at all to the employee. And what I mean by that is you've got to show that you're willing to invest into them time. And that means time in doing this career kind of fair or career orientation or this meeting with all of them explaining all about the job, what about all about the company, where you're going, all of that explaining all that, that's time they see that you're investing time. This is something serious to you. Then when they do get hired, they do get a job offer. It's not like you just throw them out there, you do another, you commit more to them, you invest more time in them and you train them. You know, whether that be video training, whether that be out in the field, like that should be all part of the training. Like one, two weeks of really solid in depth training. Because this is the thing, when they see you commit that much time to them and that much resources and an evening of career fair and not just like throwing them out there and trying them out, you're going to see that same level of commit coming back to you and the business. And, and so many small business owners cry because they're saying that their employees don't care about the business or don't work as hard as they do. But the reality of it is the business owner isn't showing that level of commitment to the employee.

Okay, okay, so what I'm thinking then is.

I guess I can set up a group Meeting with the potential people, all of them.

Bring them all down to the shop.

You have a shop right now? Okay.

It's nothing fancy. It's just a two car garage I rent out.

That's good.

A secluded property outside of the city.

Perfect.

But it works as a shop space. It doesn't have offices or even electrical or anything, but it works as a shop space. Storage equipment, stores. The truck.

Yeah, exactly.

And bring them all down there, show them where we'll be working out of, and then sort of do a mini fair, mini, you know, presentation. And then talk with all of them and really feel it out, I guess. Feels the best fit.

Mm, exactly. And. And I would. I would do something where. So you've already done the interviews, which is a little different. How we do it. I like to have the interviews after the career fair because it gives me an opportunity to.

Kind of vet them out before I even interview them. However, you already kind of know them, which is. It's actually kind of cool. So when they come to the career fair, you already know a little bit about them. You've talked to them in person, you know their personality. Like, I think you already know the two or three that you're leaning too hard. Like, you kind of already. Right. And so I get that because, like when we had the career fair is funny. So there was like eight or ten people and the. My managers were there. And so like we talked afterwards and everyone had the same two or three people. And those are the ones we ended up hiring. So like, you kind of already have an idea, but. And so if you're really confident, go for it. But if there's kind of a question about this other guy and all this, like, I would just you being open and honest and saying, hey, I'm young and if you're gonna have a problem with that, I'm totally cool with that. That's like the social norm. It's harder for it just. It's just a social.

It's an inequality. Like, whatever it is. And if you're open about that, that might be enough for them to just be real with themselves. Say, hey, could I really listen to a 21 year old tell me what to do? And if the answer to that is no, it's better they bail out now than in two months when you're super busy and they bail out then.

Mm.

So I. If I were you, like, if I were you, I'd be actually trying to get rid of them. That's what I'd be trying to do. Like, if, if I was Allowed to by the law, like, make them go through an obstacle course and, like, do like, crazy physical stuff with them. I'd do it know, just because you're trying to weed people out.

Fair enough.

So. And then. And so I hope that helps a little bit. Like, it sound like you just kind of got into the podcast. So if you listen more of the podcast, you'll hear about, like, a lot about our. What I call our hiring system, how we exactly do that, and even about, like, what to say at that career fair. We call it career fair or job fair. But, like, at that meeting, what to say. And then on YouTube, I have some short clips of actually our live meeting. I had put up a camera, and I've seen those. Okay, cool. Okay, you've seen that. So, yeah, like, if you have a slideshow, a little something like that, it's nice, but you just. You want them to. This is the thing. An employee wants a paycheck, but they also want security and the knowledge that they can grow with the business. So security. Security comes in the fashion that, is this company gonna go out of business tomorrow? You need to put that first and foremost and be like, hey, we're growing. We have the money. You as the owner, are fully invested. Like, I told my people.

During the thing that I just took a pay cut of 50%. Like, I cut my salary in half in order to grow the business this coming year, because we want to start a second shop. We really want to expand. Like, so when they see that level of commitment like this is that that one hour or 45 minutes, whatever you spend talking to them is your opportunity to really, like, recruit people and get them into the team mindset of not just being, like, a worker. You really gotta ingrain into them. Like, most of my talk was about the culture of our business and how we respect each other, we look out for each other. There is, like, the only way you're gonna get cut from our company. Like, if you put rocks through windows, we're not gonna cut you. Like, I'm gonna cut you. If you say some one. One bad thing about your manager or even the person under you or you put someone down. Like, you're out. And so people feel secure in an environment like that. And if they know that business is financially doing okay, they're gonna have a paycheck. They. They feel secure about that, and they know that the business is gonna grow and that if they work hard and are committed to the company that they're gonna grow with the company, their paycheck is gonna Grow their job responsibilities and skillset is going to grow. That's when someone becomes long term. And so I wouldn't focus so much on like things like some people focus on so much on the pay and that is important. And like, so I talk about like in their job offer, they have their pay increases already scheduled out so they know their pay is going to increase. And it's a quick incline that first year because they learn so much and they're more valuable to the company. So like all of those things is inbreeding, security and the knowledge that they're gonna grow at the company. Those are the two things you kinda wanna emphasize at that career meeting. And as the new employee is with you, you wanna emphasize those two things. That they're gonna get a paycheck, they're secure and coming to work isn't gonna be a drudgery, they're secure. And number two, that as the company grows, their paycheck, their skills, their job requirements, their, all of that is going to grow as well. And so that's what I'd be trying to emphasize at that job fair.

Okay. Okay.

Now. Yeah, I listened to everything you said. I have a ton of good notes on it. Is it okay if we talk about training now?

Yeah, go for it. Yeah, you're good.

Okay, so I've listened to a bunch of your podcasts and you say how you do a ton of training. You're training them for a week at a time. You're taking them to the park and doing that. At my shop, I have a big open field. You can work every machine on there. I want them to get used to using the trimmers the certain way, the way you're supposed to do it with the edges. So I'm going to get them doing trimming for an hour or two straight just to get used to the trimmers.

But as far as after that, I don't know what to do for training. I have maybe half a day of training plan and that's it. I am going to do paid training. And that was a plan before I even found out about you. And the fact that that's something that you advocate is awesome as well. But I don't know what to do past training them on the essentials of the machine and then maybe take them to a few properties showing them. This is how we do every job I go like, what else training on.

So my first question really is, do you have enough business to hire two people full time?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, if you can, that's fantastic. It's Rare that someone is able to make the jump from. From by themselves to two full timers. But if you, if you're confident you have enough work to keep them busy, you know, that's really good. But it also. Go ahead.

Here's the thing with that. Specifically, I don't like doing the work at all.

Okay, that's cool.

I'm fine taking a major pay cut and making little to no money and paying two people to do it and just supervising them because I don't enjoy doing it. And then I can focus on growing the business. So, yeah, it's pretty much going from me doing the work last season to two people doing it and me out of the field entirely.

Yeah. You know, you know, I love about you. You know I love about you is you're just so honest to say that, hey, I'm in this only for the money, and I don't like landscaping.

No, no, no. See, see, that's wrong too. I'm not in it for the money.

Oh, okay.

I'm not in it because I. Because I enjoy it. I'm in it because I like running a business. And it was an easy business to start that you can start with a little capital. And when my last business went under, this is what I started. And that's why I'm in it. And that's like the honest truth. I don't enjoy the work. I'm dreading going out shoveling tomorrow.

But.

I have to do it because I don't have employee. I have one employee right now.

Okay.

But I don't have someone to drive the truck because he doesn't have his license anyways. That's another story. But yeah, that's. That's what it is.

So what's the long term goal? What? What? Why? Why landscaping? Is this a three year project? Is this a ten year, like, what's the long term goal for the business?

It started off as a three year, but then I realized I probably couldn't grow it to a sellable point within three years.

Okay, so you're wanting to sell it?

My knowledge.

You're wanting to sell it.

Yeah. Automate it. Grow, sell. I want to. I want to get systems in place. I want to grow it to almost the point where it's an owner absentee business. And then either. Well, if it's an owner absentee business, maybe I'll keep it, but I want to sell it and I want to get into something else.

Okay, what do you want to get into? You know, that I don't know yet. Okay, that's cool. All right. So you're kind of in the same spot as I am. Like, I'll be really honest, I'm not. I don't love landscaping. I enjoy doing it. If I was, I would enjoy if I was doing like two or three days a week. But for me to be out in the field doing it five, six, and seven days a week, I would hate it. I'm in it for. I started the same reason for you as you did. Like when I was 11 and 12. We started because I need to pay my way through college. Then when I got. When I was 18 and I figured, hey, if I can make a couple hundred grand take home.

Why would I go become a doctor when I can make this big business? And so my passion is health and all that stuff. It's not so much landscaping. And so I'm in it for the money and the business experience. And I think that's totally okay for us as younger guys to be thinking like that, because this is the thing about landscaping. It is an incredible opportunity to grow your career and your skill set. Because, like, there's not too many 21 year olds that are hiring people. There's not too many people, people like you that are worried about hiring people at 21 and also worrying about equipment and utilizing capitalization of equipment and taxes. And now you got to think about payroll and all this accounting stuff and marketing, which we're gonna get into about your lawns and stuff. Like, all of this stuff is incredibly valuable. And so I think it's smart that you're like, hey, I don't love the work, but I'm in this for the experience. And then if I can sell this, that's just gravy on top, and you'll make money coming out of it and figure out what you really love to do. And so that's awesome. I think that's great. And I think if you can hire two people right off the bat, that's great. And what's nice about that is as you have two full timers, it will release you almost full time for you to go and. Or say a lot of time. Like, you're still gonna have to check up on them. You're gonna get them started every day, clock, get them back at the shop. You're gonna have to check on their larger jobs. You have to spot check stuff like that. But it'll open you up to go sales full time. And what I love about that is you already said, hey, I'm willing to take a pay cut, I'm Willing to go. I can go as low as 1300 bucks a month because that's what you want to go that low, I don't think. But you have to go take quite a bit of a cut when you hire two people full time right off the bat. But I think within a couple months you'll make up for it because now you have time to go do sales.

And so as far as the training, as far as the training, like, this is our first year we did a video training. So, like as part for them, it's really mainly because I wanted to do it for my business, but then I put it out for the course too, because a lot of people were asking for a template. And so even though I created, I tell people, like, you need to make your own. And the reason I say you need to make your own is because you have your own equipment, you have your own style, everything like that, right? And so essentially, like how we do it is the first day when they were on staff. So this is actually only like a couple weeks ago because we hired 1-2-335 new people that haven't been with the company before. And so they had. Essentially what happened is the first day they sit down with me, with my manager, with everyone on staff, including the office, they all. We all watch the training videos. So there's like 20 videos right now that I've made. Everything from mowing to trimming, using a skid steer, using the dump truck, dump trailer, everything that we do in our business, even if they're not going to be on a landscaping crew or even if they're not for you, like doing snow plowing, if they're only doing mowing grass, they should know kind of like what everything kind of how it works in the business. Because I want them as a team player. I don't want them just to get really specialized and kind of like be like, me versus them, like the lawn care guys versus the snow plowing guys, like, and all that. I want them to know everything about the business. And like, this is the thing we've always done in person training. So, like the day after that, we essentially went out into the field and practiced everything we had learned on videos. And I was amazed how much the videos. I haven't even talked about this on the podcast. And I was amazed how much the videos helped them pick up the skills in the real world because I thought there wouldn't really be a whole lot of. I was thinking, like it was kind of more of a backup or for people that were a little maybe More visual learners. But like when they hopped into the zero turns or like they started edging, they were already spinning back words at me that I had said in that video. Things like, you know, keep the. The edge, your parallel with the concrete. Like all these little things I had said. And they picked up on that and. And the training process was literally half the amount of time that I was expecting because they had seen the videos. So like if you're able, if you have time to do some videos, make your own or whatever, or even if you find some online that would work, that's important. And then go do out in the field, which is really nice that you have that because especially for zero turn mowers, they make marks if they're new and if you're out in a field, doesn't matter. So that's pretty awesome.

And so like the training process is important. I think the main thing is that you tailor it to the person. So that's why I'd asked about having two people right off the bat. Cause it's gonna be a little bit tricky. And the reason for that is. Cause after they do that training out in the field. So usually like for us they do. Excuse me, they do one day watching the videos with everyone. Then they do one day and they do out in the field training like at like a park or we did one of our big commercial jobs the other day and that's where we did training. Then this is the part that's gonna be a little bit hard for you. And that is they need to be with a manager. And in your case, you someone that's experienced for a few days, at least a few days. For us, they're gonna be with a few weeks because I want them to see virtually every one of our customers properties before they're allowed to go there by themselves.

I don't think it's gonna be tough for you because either a. Go ahead, go ahead.

Here was my plan basically. Yeah. The entire training process up until then. I'm basically doing the same thing you did, minus the videos. I was planning on just doing all the explaining in person.

Yep.

But it's probably of value to record the videos for future employees.

Yep.

Save me time in the future. But anyways, I was planning on doing a week of tagging along with the crew.

For spring cleanups. I was going to go with them for a full week to show them just, you know what, basically be there with them for a week. Get them used to each type of spring cleanup. We offer different packages. And then once spring cleanup Season is over. We switch over to mowing, which is a little bit different. So I'm going to go with them again for a full week through mowing. They'll touch every property. I'll be there with them on every property. And then I'll let them go after that.

Yep.

And then it'll just be spot checks after that. Do you think that's a fair way of doing it?

Yeah, that's smart. And what I would do is, because what's going to happen is during the spring cleanup month, that first week, don't book yourself for anything. And what I mean by that, I mean, like, if you're going to get an estimate for a new job, make sure it's after 5pm like just so you do a hard set rules, so it doesn't allow you to. Because you want to make sure they get that it's the most important thing for you to be with them and train them and that the quality that they're doing is important. So what you don't want to be doing is leaving the job four or five times a day, that sort of thing. So what I would do that first week, block out 8 to 5 or whenever they're working and be with them. And then those next three weeks, this is what's going to happen. You're going to get super busy. Because now you're out in the field doing sales stuff all the time, and you're gonna be super busy. And that the hardest part is gonna be that first week of the mowing. And it's gonna have to. You gotta do the same thing and just block out those two hours and say, like, no estimates during these times. It doesn't matter if I lose a job. It doesn't matter if I have to push it off to next week. Like, you've gotta be with them for that first week.

Yeah, that's a good point. Cause I could definitely see myself dropping them at a site and taking the truck to go do a quick estimate down the street or something like that, or a couple blocks away.

And I think you'll be surprised too. Especially though this is the positive part on the lawn care portion. I don't think it'll take them a week to learn the. The mechanical part of like how to mow, like how to do the lawn and things. What I'm more concerned about, and this is why we have a few weeks with the manager, is I want them to see all the clients. However, if you only have 10 or like 20, like, that's a little easier. And so it's not so much them learning the equipment as it is just seeing the clients, seeing the property, getting to know a couple of the little unique things about each one. Because the last thing I want is for them to, like, miss a portion of the property because they've never been there before. And so. But this is the thing. If they've done spring cleanups for a month for you, they're pretty familiar with, like, how you like things done, how to drive the truck, even, like, where equipment is at your shop. Like, the only thing that's going to be different, and especially if your spring cleanups are at your mowing client's house, like, they've already got a feel for things. So I literally think you might only have to spend a few days with them if they've already seen all the properties, and if they haven't, there's a few that you don't do spring cleanups on. Maybe just take them there and walk through the whole property with them, you know? And so if they have the mechanical part down, there's the two parts, really, of the training, the mechanical. Like, can you run a mower? Can you edge straight, like, all that stuff? And then the other side is just getting to know the properties and the clients. And if you can do both in that first month by training them out in the field, even if. Even if during that first month, the last hour of every Friday, you guys go out into the field and do some mowing just to get them, like, worked into it, I think by the time you hit actual mowing season, they'll be ready to go. And if they've seen all the properties, you literally might only have to be with them for a day or two.

Yeah, yeah, True enough.

Yeah, I do want to. There are a lot of clients that, like you said, I don't do cleanups on, or I do a ton of cleanups for clients that I don't do mowing for. But I do want to spend the time and go with them and just touch every property with them at least once when it comes to mowing, just so we can get through the. This client, you know, this needs this done in a specific way. Just the minor things, you know?

Yeah. And.

The thing, too, is you can systematize that as you grow, too, because, like, eventually, this is the thing that we're running into and that we've really worked on the past year is eventually, once you hit, like, 200 clients, you can't have them see every client property. It's impossible. And so. And so then that's when you really have to lean on your systems. And that is having job notes for every single client so that someone brand new will see all of their complaints or the things they prefer, like on little things, like, that's all part of it too. But when you're, when you're, your first couple, people are so important, you want them to be like direct replicas of you when it comes to the work aspect. And so you don't want to like, you don't want to undervalue how important those first couple labors are to the success of your business.

Yeah, yeah.

So as far as the marketing portion, like, unless you have more question about the hiring part, but like as far as the marketing kind of, what's your thoughts on that right now?

Okay. Yes. Hiring and training. That's good marketing. So right now.

It'S a two pronged approach for me. I've been paying for SEO services.

My site was hacked a few months ago. That slowed things down and things are better now. But the site's still not ranking great. So it's not going to really pan out for this season, particularly next season. I'm confident I'll be on the front and hopefully near the top.

One second, one second. What's Your site name?

Cleanremo.com c l e a n r mo dot com.

Yeah, poke around on it right now actually.

Yeah, I'm just on it right now.

And then. Okay. Second prong is. It's a flyer campaign. I'm putting out 10,000 flyers. 5,000 specifically for spring cleanups. 5,000 specifically for Mullen.

Okay.

It's cleaner. Like C L E A N E r m o w dot.

Not e r. Oh, not Dr.

Oh, just r. I got you cleaner. I got you clean. Armo.

I just emailed it to you as well.

Gotcha. Oh yeah. Okay. I just got nice site. Okay. Lawn care service and Winterfield, Manitoba.

Cool. You standardize your prices. I like that.

Cool truck. Is that the truck that got hit today?

That is the truck that got hit.

Oh, man. That's okay.

Yeah.

You have a nice site. Nice. I like your logo.

Cool.

Yeah. You're really nice site. Really nice. I like that. Let me see this. Watch this video. A three minute video. Oh, cool. I see your face. Cool.

Yes. So that's me. I sold this idea here. I assume you're on the front page of the site right now. That came off of city turf, Jonathan. Yeah. You know, city turf. I sold this idea directly from that.

Yep.

And I made that layout there and it. The estimate on the side. And then the video is basically the same video that he made. I just, you know, sort of put it in my own words and made it three minutes instead of seven minutes. Right, Cool.

I really like your site. Really nice. Okay.

It's been my winter project.

Yeah, it's good. All right. Ramna's testimonials. Okay. Yep.

Looking for the best deal. Yeah. Looks good. Yeah. So the site looks good. Like, when you say you're paying someone to do SEO, what exactly are they doing for you?

They're working on backlinks, working on de. Indexing all the pages that were hacked. There was, like, 200 pages of my site that were, like, pages made that I didn't make. So they indexed all those and then had to index all the actual pages that I wanted. Oh, did you just message me?

Dude, how. That is so cool. That is so cool. So right now. That is so cool. So I just put hello on there, and then you're able to see that.

So is that just like a plug in that you have on there?

Yeah, it's called.

And talk, spelled T A W K. Right, Yeah, I see that.

That's pretty sweet. Very cool. Yeah. So go ahead.

Yeah, normally it changed my cell phone as well, but it didn't this time.

Cool. That's very cool. All right. Yes. Like, I think your site's on. On point. And, like, your. Your logo is really nice. I like that. I like the. The kind of style that you have. And so I think I don't know what they're doing for you as far as backlinks and all of that stuff, but from my experience, you can do it better. And the reason I say that is because Google values content so much that content creation is really gonna trump a lot of this SEO stuff that traditionally they're gonna do things like backlinks and all that. Like, if you're not. If you've been in business for a year, like, how long have you been kind of working on the business on the site? Like, SEO stuff? A few months.

The SEO stuff that I hired him about three months ago, so it hasn't been long. Site's been up for about a year, but it was hacked in November. Ish.

And I wasn't even looking at the site around that time. I wasn't concerned with the business at that time. So it was hacked for a solid month, which created lots of issues. And Google ranked it very, very bad, because for a month straight, when you went on the site, it said, this isn't a trusted site. Don't Go on it. Oh, wow. So we've just been trying to overcome that. And I understand the basics of SEO, but not the intricacies, I guess. I have been doing blogs. If you go to the blog page, I've been adding content through the winter.

Do you have a Google. Do you have a Google plus page?

Yes, Kate.

Is it linked here, though, where the Facebook is? Are you able to put another one that had like the G plus on.

There.

On the actual website? I don't think I have the Facebook at the bottom.

Okay. Because the only reason I say that, because you want. So this thing, if you use Google products, they're going to push you up. And you've probably heard this before from me, but, like, Google is the worst social media website in the world, in my opinion. However, it works to get you higher in Google because if you search like I'm going to do right now, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Lawn Care. Here we go. So I search. All right, this is perfect example. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Lawn Care. Into Google, you see some ads on top of. And then below that you see like lawn. Like actual sites, email, I mean, actual websites in between that. Like, above that is Google Pages. So, like, I'm seeing CN River Lawn Care. I'm seeing Lawnman Incorporated. I'm seeing Hero Snow Removal and Lawn Care Winnipeg. Like, those are above the ones that really are doing the best SEO or like, have the best site, like Green Blade Winnipeg, Winnipeg Lawn Boys. Right. So, like, the. If you. The reason is because if you look here, like Hero Snow Removal up here, because they have the Google plus page that's on the top. They have 18 reviews that are five stars on Google Plus. And so Google's gonna knock them up to the top. And eventually I would guess. And I would. I would. I would be. I would imagine that within a year, Hero Snow Removal on the native results on the organic part will be a lot higher. Like right now they're fifth on the organic part. I bet they'll be second or third within like six months if they do absolutely nothing else because they're so high. Go ahead.

One thing about Hero is. I know. I know for a fact he spent tens of thousands on. Maybe not tens of thousands, but he spent thousands on SEO. And usually he does rank first for organic. That's his, like, competitive advantage. He's trying to sell his company. So I was talking to him a lot about it. Yeah, honestly, a lot of time on that.

I would say. I would say, like, I would say most of his SEO benefits or most of his. The. The upside that he's experienced is because he has 18 reviews on Google.

Exactly.

Because that's one thing I'm working on now is getting those tough to get.

The, the mo reviews in the winter because we operate under the winter ground, which is cleaner snow. Some focus on getting snow reviews. Right. And we're not doing lawn care work. But that is one thing that I'm actively, really, really pushing right now is just getting reviews, getting especially Google.

Yeah. And if you want to hack the system, this is what I had to do. When I was super small, I was able to get to the top three organic within the first year. Doing only 30 grand that first year. Because I figured out the Google review thing is a huge deal. It's a huge deal. Like when I. So I, once I saw that this is what I did, I was like, okay, I can't get enough reviews for my clients because I only had 20 something like. So what I did is I said, okay, I'm gonna do a drawing, I'm gonna put on my Facebook page, I'm gonna put it on my Google, put it Every, make a YouTube video and you're gonna do a giveaway for like a hundred dollars for Christmas. If someone, if everyone, whoever leaves a review and I'll do a drawing. Right? And this is the thing. Most of it was my friends, family, people that knew me. And so I told them, hey, if you don't haven't actually experienced my service, just write a review about the owner. Like if you know me personally and you know that I'm integrity, like I have integrity or I'm honest or just write that, don't write like I do great lawn service. If you've never used my services. So like I'd say half of my, half of my the reviews were actual clients. Half of them were, were like friends and family. There was a problem with that. And that's because when you have a whole bunch of Google reviews dropped at the same time, Google will weed out most of them. However, it didn't take away from the fact that for a few months it doesn't take them out. And so I had a whole bunch. Now I think there's only like six of those remaining because Google eventually weeds them out when they drop fast like that. Like all of a sudden, however, it was enough to bump me up. Like that was the thing that put me on the map as far as online.

And literally like if there's the one thing that's going to put you on the first page, I guarantee if you got 10 Google reviews, you'd be on the first page within three or four months.

Okay, I like that idea. That's something I can even implement. That's something I can implement immediately.

Right.

For the long.

Right, Totally. And it goes for any industry. Like right now I'm just looking. When you go, when you search Winnipeg, Manitoba, Lawn Care, you see the first few top Google pages. Now if you click onto that, it says more places and you can literally see all the people, how many reviews they have on Google. If you take note of the ones that have five star reviews and have like multiple of them and then go back to the first page of Google, you'll see a pretty close correlation between the people who are organically quote unquote, because Google is pushing them higher. If the organic search is gonna be affected by that so much, you'll see those people on that have a lot of the reviews. They're gonna see them on the first page.

Yeah, like that one thing in and of itself will do more than any backlinks. Like whenever someone says they're paying someone to do SEO, I get a little bit skeptical. I know that's not the best thing. And like, I've just seen it too many times where like they focus on the, whatever you said, inconsistencies of, of SEO, but they fail to like do the macro stuff. That's really going to drive the needle fast and that is going to really actually move the revenue needle and not just, you know, the look of the site and things like that, which is all good, but that, like, if there was one thing that I would do for you being SEO, I, I would do a giveaway and I'd try to get at least 10 Google reviews. And I guarantee you, you'd be on the second page of Google within a week. And I bet within three months you'd be on the first page.

Okay, I'll definitely work on that.

And then all the other things, like there's all these other things in Google, like having, I don't talk about this a whole lot in the landscape business course, but like having, talking about, you know, trying to get higher in Google, like getting that first page, honestly, is not very hard. Google plus using Google, the review site, linking that back to your site, having a Google thing on your website that links back to the Google page, having some videos on your YouTube channel that are on your Google and they're also attached to your website. The reason you're trying to do that, you're trying to create like a web effect essentially so that when Google scans a bazillion of these websites, they, they can see that, oh wow, this is a big site. They have connections to all this social media. Like backlinks are okay, but those are, who knows where those are going to. But if they can see, okay, they are backlinked or you know, linked somehow or connected to this Google page and this Facebook and this YouTube video. Like videos in search are gonna become more and more prevalent. Like right now it's not the best, but like this is the thing. Like for instance, me, if you put my town name lawn care services, my video from YouTube was on the first page before my website was. The video I made for just about my company was on the first page of Google before my website ever was. So like having the YouTube channel, who cares if people watch it? It's just for Google to say, hey, this guy's got various social sites, he has a blog, he has all these hyperlinks. Like it makes you look big and you'll get to the top fast.

Okay, yeah, that's, that's definitely something I will, I'll do immediately, sure.

But like let, let's go a little more actually, like more marketing tactical. Because that's kind of like online. Like I get that that's important, but like how so you doing, you're doing the print the mailer thing. How's that? Have you done that before?

Yes. So are you familiar with copywriting course at all?

No, I'm not.

Okay, so there was a case study about a pressure washing company. They made this flyer. It worked really well. So I copied the flyer. Last season for spring cleanups, my response rate was incredibly 4 to 5%. The small sample size is only about a thousand, so it's nothing to, you know, I'm sure the response rate goes down as I put more out, But I'm doing 5,000 of those Flyers this season for spring cleanups and 5,000 of a very similar flyer, just different wording targeting lawn care clients.

What's the general kind of like ask or theme from those? Are you asking for an estimate? Are you just talking about your services? Like what's kind of like the punch on that?

I'm asking some of the book now. It's just, it's an ugly flyer. But I compared it side by side. Like I ran two campaigns last season. One was a pretty looking flyer and one with this ugly flyer. And the ugly One outperformed it 1% to 4. 4 to 5%.

Okay.

All right, so it's, it's. Yeah, it's ugly, but it does the job.

And I'm just getting people to book now. That's, that's the ask of the flyer. That's the call to action. Cool.

Yeah, if it works, it works. And if you're getting 4 to 5%, yeah, I'd just keep doing it. And like there's, you know, I'd be interested to see if you get higher, if you did something like, even if it didn't look good, but if it was more of a educational piece where you talked about, gave them advice on how to do certain things in their lawn or advice on how to trim trees correctly or advice on types of fertilizers and when to use them. And, and see if that gets bigger clients or people that have even commercial jobs. Like, I just, I'd be interested. But if you're in 4 to 5%, I'd, you know, stick with that for now, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm throwing those out and then if I don't, my number for this season to be able to support two full time. And actually on a side note, while we were talking just now, I added that Google icon to the bottom of the site. So it's there now. That's already done. So my number is 80 clients. That's what I need to be able to support two full time employees because I want to be able to pay them full time. When it slows down in the summer when it's not as busy, I still want to provide them full time hours and I would feel bad if I couldn't. So 80, 80 clients. That's the number. If I can't hit that with my first round of flyers, I'll either tweak the flyers and put out more, or I'll just put out another 5,000 if I have to just to, to hit the exact same houses again. And I found that hitting the houses three times with the same flyer, similar flyers, but with same deal, it worked really well this past winter. So that's, that's what I'm looking like I'm doing. I do want to add other forms of marketing and I really wanted to get Facebook ads. I know that's something that you're really good at, but I suck at it.

Well, I spent any time, but I've.

Never accomplished anything with it.

Right. Okay. Okay. Like how much are you spending on your flyer campaign?

$700 for the print plus about 1200, but the moat. So call it two grand. Okay.

I'm just taking some notes. Okay. All right, roll with that. This year.

This is what I would like is that over the course of, like, a week, or is that one timeout? Like, they send that one time.

Those flyers will be spread out over the course of a month or so.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

All right. So you're hoping within one month you can go from 10 to 80. Is that your kind of goal?

Yeah.

So first of all, like, I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying it's really steep as far as growth. And that's not a bad thing. Like, that's fantastic. But if you look at it, that's like, two clients a day. And in order to get two clients, you're gonna have to, like, four estimates, just generally speaking. And so I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm not saying, like, anything like that. I'm just saying, like, don't be disappointed if you hit 40 or 50, because I think that'd be a win.

Yeah.

And if you're.

That's my concern is that the amount that I'm putting out, I'm only gonna hit 40 or 50. So I need other channels of marketing, and I need potentially even more flyers because I need to hit that 80.

Well, this is my question. This is my question. If you have 10, how many do you have right now? 10?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, but if you. If you have 10 right now and you're doing, you know, between, you know, five to eight grand a month right now, like, you don't need 80 to. To sustain.

Sorry, sorry. No, no, that's 10 for. No, I have. I have more.

Gotcha. Okay, so for mowing, how much do you make per month, you think?

Like, a thousand bucks?

Oh, okay. Okay. So. Hey, I got you. All right, so really, right now, the bulk of the business is snow, and you're. You're trying to grow. Gotcha. Okay, I got you. I gotcha. All right.

And this thing is here in Winnipeg, a lot of people pay for just snow and then don't sign up for the rest of the season for any. For lawn care.

Okay, that makes more sense. More sense. Okay, so I was gonna say you don't need to get 80 clients if you have 10 and you're making six, six, or seven grand a month. So.

Smart. Okay. Yeah, because you definitely have to grow up the lawn care portion if you want to keep someone on beyond the snow season. Right. So smart. Yeah. So first, like, if you're only doing, you know, 10 clients and a thousand bucks or so a month, like, around that, if I was you, like, I would love to see you at 80 within three week. Because really what's going to happen is when you get, like, that first week of spring cleanups, you're going to be with the guys, training them. Those next three weeks is where your mojo is going to happen. That's when you're going to be out, like, doing every. All those estimates. That's when you want those flyers to be going out. I would try to not have them go out that first week when you're training. Otherwise you're going to be getting calls throughout the entire day. You're going to be distracted. You're not going to train them. They'll mess up. They'll see you're not committed, whatever. Have them go out that second week. Once you trust the guys to do most of the work by themselves, and you just are checking in on them occasionally. And so you can go do estimates and you can go follow up on all the leads and the calls that are going to come in.

That's the three weeks, right? If. If you got to. If you got to 40 or 50, like, I'd say that's a win. Now, I would shoot, like, if I was you, by the end of the year to be at, like, 75. So, like, as far as, like, how we structure the course, like, the first year, I tell them they need to be at 30, like, between 25 and 30. Second year, they need to be between, like, 60 and 70. So if you're able to get to 60 and 70, I think you have, like, don't underestimate that. I think there's a lot of value to that because when you get 60 or 70 of those people, a bunch of them are going to sign up for fall cleanup, and a bunch of them are going to get snow removal. And so that's going to compound for you. And as far as keeping people busy, if you had two full timers, they can. As far as mowing, it'll keep them busy. If you have about, like you said, 60 to 80 is what you're going to need to keep them busy full time. But you're going to find this out when you start getting more of these residential people even. They're going to want you to, you know, trim a tree here, put some mulch in here, do some little things, and you can, when it gets a little bit slow in the summer, just send an email out to all your clients and start booking out those jobs, like those little stuff.

Okay.

I just don't want you to be disappointed. I just don't want you to be disappointed when you don't hit 80 because it really is a big stretch. Right. But I just. I don't want you to feel bad if you hit 40 and 50 within three weeks. Like. Like you've hit a home run. I'm not joking. Yeah.

I'm not. I'm not a disappointed person. I wasn't even angry with my truck.

I believe you, man.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's fair. That's something I didn't think about because I didn't offer any additional services last season when it was in the summer. Like, the reason I say 80 is because at my minimum rate, my minimum rates 120.

Yeah. So that's 9600amonth. I'd be paying out roughly 4500, or about half, two employees, 1800 to me, and then the rest to the business for any overhead and then whatever. So to be able to pay myself, basically, I need about 80. But it's more of an income standpoint than a keeping them busy standpoint. 60 keeps them busy. 60 keeps them working full time. 80 keeps me eating food and not starving. But if there's extra work. If there's extra work. And that's something I didn't think about at all, actually, until now.

Yeah. And I think you'll be surprised. So when we do our budget forecast and stuff at the beginning of the year, and I'm looking at how many new clients I want to pick up, I look at. Yes. How much does people pay average for lawn care? But I know that the value of a client is twice that much because this is the deal. They might pay me 150 bucks a month for mowing their lawn. For here, it's like nine months out of the year, but for you, five months. But I also know that. That on average, that client is gonna spend another 500 on a cleanup or another 500 on a mulch in store, or another 500 on some sort of landscaping project, planting, whatever. So really, as long as you market yourself to your existing clients enough and you tell them that you have other services you offer, don't have to be, like, complicated. Like, don't have to be paver pathways and patios and stuff like that, or fencing, like, simple stuff that literally can double the amount of money you make from a client in a year, like, easily.

Yeah. Yeah, that's smart.

And so, like, when you're looking right now, you're saying 96. If you get 80 people, I guarantee you, if you had 80 clients, you'd make over 20 grand.

A month.

Really?

Absolutely. No doubt.

I never would have thought Those numbers.

Because this is what will happen. When people start seeing that you do have employees, they're gonna know that you can handle bigger jobs. Like, this is what happened to me. My first year, 98% of my revenue was just pushing a lawnmower. The next year, hired people started to really make it a business. That's when landscaping jobs started coming my way. And when I say landscaping, I don't mean what we're doing now with like excavation, like bigger stuff. It was like mulch install, trimming more trees, planting bushes, and really starting to do those value add things for the property. Even cleaning out gutters and cleaning up leaves in the fall. Like those things just all of a sudden started coming to me. But it's because.

Your customers realize, okay, this guy has a crew of people, he can handle these bigger jobs. And the other part of it is I started actually telling them I did those things. Like come fall, I was like, hey, I clean out gutters. Guess what? 20 of those people got me on gutters. My minimum was 99 bucks. I made two grand that month. Right? So like every single month there's something else you can do. When it's super, super hot and everyone's lawn is dying and they hate paying their water bills, you can market to take out their lawn and install landscaping with some mulch, some nice trees, some rocks. Like that's a few thousand dollars. And that might be a client that will only pay you five or six hundred dollars and entire year for their mowing. Like, we don't make money on our mowing. We make it on the, all the value add that we, we sell to those, upsell those customers on.

Interesting. See, I'm trying to niche and just.

Sense mowing routes of like 100 clients a week.

Right?

That's sort of what I'm trying to niche in. But if it takes. And I guess even companies that do that probably have, you know, the crews that go around afterwards and do the value add services as well.

This is the beauty of it. This is the beauty of it. I agree with you that you should niche down. And we've actually started cutting things out like, like retaining walls. Like these bigger stuff. We're starting to cut out and sub that out and we're focusing more than it because this is the whole reason and is because it doesn't take a whole lot of training to do installing malt. Literally it takes me, you know, a couple weeks or whatever to train someone for lawn care and a mowing route. It'll take me an hour to get Someone off the street and tell them how to install mulch. Like, okay, pick up this shovel, throw it in the wheelbarrow, dump. You know, it's super simple. Same thing with, like, planting a tree. Like, how wrong can you get? Make it right. Like, so the reason I'm saying that is people, if they can mow lawns and if you train them do that, they can do a whole lot of other things while they're at that property. Everything from fertilization to spraying to pulling weeds to raking out beds. Things that literally you don't even have to train them on. It's just super instinctive. And that means that you're not gonna be paying someone super skilled, and that's scalable, and that's where the money's at. Because I can have. This is what happens with us all the time. We charge 40, 50 bucks per mow, for instance, and take some 30, 40 minutes to mow the lawn, whatever, but then they're gonna pay $20 for us to rake out their beds, and that takes five or six minutes to pull out the weeds, pull, maybe spray, do spray, a little bit of weed, stuff, like, whatever. And that's where the money's at.

Yeah, because they're already. They're already. Yeah, they're already at the property. And I've essentially made them a $60 client when they used to be a $40 client. And out of that $20, like, because. Because all your overhead is in driving there and getting your guys there on all the equipment there. Right. Well, the extra $20 that upsell while they're at the property is where all of your margins at.

True.

So, like, if I were you, if I were you, like, you'll hear this. You listen to the podcast a little more and stuff like, yes, give them an estimate for Mode, trim, edge, and blow. But while you're at their property, why not give them a price for an annual cleanup? Or why not see, hey, they need mulch. Maybe they might want that, like, in their bed. Some wood chips. Or maybe you see, okay, they mentioned they like a hedge or they want some privacy, like, just throw it in the estimate. And I think you'd be amazed that, like, 50% of those people are like, oh, thanks, I was. I didn't even know you did tree trimming. Or, I didn't even know you did this. Like, so I think it's valuable. And another thing, too, you might want to think about is when you do these estimates, have a packet that explains all the services you do have a. Has a page about like, we call it our, our introduction packet. And it has five pages, has like reviews on one page. It has about our company. It's like all out how I started the company and how we're growing. Dah, dah, dah. Has before and after pictures on another page, has reviews on another page and the other one, I forget. Oh, yeah, it's like insurance, proof of insurance and all that stuff. Like, so have that packet because then they're gonna see that you do all these other things. So list all your services. And essentially you want them to be coming to you for everything in their lawn. And if it's too big for you, like a fence, just tell them to go get a fence guy or sub it out and make some money. Like however you want to do that, it doesn't matter. But I think you'd be amazed at how much more money you can get out of a person.

Than you are now just for lawn care.

Yeah, okay.

They just don't know it. They just don't know that you can clean out gutters and pressure wash their driveway and clean out the leaves out of their beds and pull the weeds and trim the trees and plant the flowers. Like they don't know that right now.

So do you like run a second crew or something that goes behind the mowing crew and does all that, or does the mowing crew do that stuff as they go?

Right, so we have. Right, we have maintenance crew and then we have landscaping crews. The maintenance crews need to do everything. Maintenance. That means, yes, they mow and edge and all that, but they also need to be knowing how to prune. They need to be knowing how to weed. They need to be how, like rake out beds. Like simple stuff like that. Trim some trees. Because like I said, if they're already at the property, that's where the margin is. When the guys are already at the property and they can knock out a five minute job and make 20 bucks.

Yeah. Doesn't make sense to send a different crew there.

Right? We do. We do have a different crew for landscaping. So like if they're doing a property cleanup, we like, even though the mowing guys are trained to do it, we'd have another crew that's gonna be there for the whole day. And like, if someone requests something, even if they might be on the mowing route that day, but they. And they request to get a bunch of work done, they're gonna probably get the landscaping crew. Or like even the same guys that were on the mowing crew might be in the quote unquote. Landscaping crew. But they're gonna come for the whole day or like half a day or something like that.

Okay.

Because the mowing crew has the most equipment. Like, they have all that equipment sitting there, and it's burning money while it sits in the trailer. So I want them to be moving as much as possible. So if it's gonna be a job that takes four or five hours, it's gonna be a separate trip with just a truck and for us, a dump trailer. But for you, whatever you need. Because whenever that equipment's sitting there, it's burning money. It's taking up money. It could be making more money.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

This is a lot to think about.

I know. Sorry. I'm recording this. I might send it to you. Actually, you know what, Can I use it for the podcast? I think it'd be a good one.

Yeah, go right ahead.

Yeah. And then that way you can listen to it again, too. I know we've covered a whole bunch, but. Yeah. Anything else before we go? I do have a 7:30 I have to go to, but anything else?

Training employees, Marketing, I guess. Marketing. That's the one area that I want to.

Expand in a little bit more. I'm sort of focused on mainly just the flyers right now. That's the main money maker. But I want to. Like what I have written on my board here in the office is referral campaign, giveaway campaign, Facebook campaign. Yeah. And as far as Facebook goes, I've done ads before for this business and for a different business. I've just never been able to figure it out. And I watched or listened. I can't remember who was a video or a podcast you did about Facebook ads.

Yep.

So I was trying to implement some of that stuff earlier this morning, actually. And I like stealing from the competitors, that sort of thing. And it wasn't working, I believe, because the competitors here don't have big enough pages. Right. Yeah. Something that came up as an interest or anything. So I couldn't do that. And then I got discouraged and shut it down because I don't like using Facebook ads.

Yep.

But what are just some quick tips you might have for that. And I guess we'll have to wrap it up right away, but no problem.

So. Yeah. So, like, this is the first thing I'll say before I get into Facebook ads for you. You're going to spend two grand right now on flyers. If you make. If you did 40 clients, that's a customer acquisition cost of $50. That is really, really, really low. So if you're able to get 40 out of spending the 2 grand. Like, if I got that, I'd be jumping off the walls. So I just don't want you to be thinking you're going to get 80 right off the bat. Like, if you got 40 out of this, out of the 2 grand that you spend on the flyers, that'd be phenomenal. Because I'm willing to pay up to 200. I'm willing up to pay up to 200 on some of these things. Right. I don't look like for Facebook ads, it's way, way less now. But, like, when it comes to print marketing, we're seeing numbers around 100, 150. And then if I'm buying clients from another company, like when we do, when we acquire companies, I'm willing to pay like up to 200. So that's just some numbers for you to kind of think about, right?

Literally, if you got 20 clients, that'd be like an average campaign. If you got 20 out of the two grand, I would say that's like a pretty good. It's actually better than average. If you got 12, I'd say that's an average campaign.

Literally. And so if you got 20, it's pretty good. If you got 40, it's phenomenal.

So just, just, just to, you know, kind of. So you have those numbers. But then as far as Facebook ads, I don't know if you saw that. You listen to the podcast based on what you said there. There is1 on YouTube I did where it actually showed you what Google, what our Facebook ads look like and stuff like that. So I don't know if you saw that one.

Yes, that was the video I saw.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Yes. So. So Facebook ads is a funny thing. It can be the. I haven't said this enough. It can be the absolute worst money drain, and it can be the absolute best thing in the world. You have to kind of play around with your creative on your ads to figure out what works. Literally, what will happen is you will get. You will do like two or three ads. You'll keep playing with it. Watch, like, how many people are clicking it versus how many see it. Like, that's an important number. And track that. Like, they don't do a whole lot of this on Facebook is that it's like how many people saw it versus how many people clicked it. That's the most important number to me because that's how I track how responsive people are to my ad. And so I essentially would do two or three kind of see what works. And what doesn't. You'll find out real fast what works. And you'll find out real fast what doesn't work. And when you find what does work, like literally you'll be, when we talk about customer acquisition costs, it'll be the lowest, it'll be way lower than print. Because this is the thing, if you just run the numbers. So like right now I pay, I think right now if I do a click, because you can pay for video or you can pay for clicks. So like if I'm paying for clicks right now, I'm looking at right now like 91 cents per click. Okay, if I get 100 people to click on my ad, and that means like an ad that literally says, do you need lawn care? Okay, A hundred people click on the ad and go to my website. Like let's say 20 out of the hundred even need lawn care. Let's say the other 80, like for some reason, whatever, they just leave. Okay, let's say 20 of them are actually interested. They look at my website. Ooh, this is a cool thing. Okay, then let's say 10 of them ask for an estimate. Alright? Out of the hundred, 20 of them were interested, actually clicked around. Ten of them asked for an estimate. Let's say five of those people convert into paying clients. Okay? Out of the 10 estimates, I've paid a hundred dollars to get those hundred clicks which turned out to be five clients.

That is cheap, right?

And this is.

Do you find those numbers actually pan.

Out if you get the right creative, if you, if you do an ad, that's pathetic. And when I say pathetic, the difference between a pathetic ad and a good looking ad is very close. Very close. Because it's the same size picture. It's very same, same kind of, you know, same text size, like all that. It's. Are you grabbing their attention? Are you targeting the right people with your creative? So for instance, you've, you heard me talk about in that video how we're going after the, the female because a lot of the people we're going after are like 50 and up, usually 60 and up, right? So that's who we're targeting age wise. But then the creative's got to target even deeper. So because if I can go after, if I can say on my title, are you tired of nagging your husband about mowing your lawn? And I can target it after females that are above 60, married and have a net worth over $500,000. If I could go that direct. When someone clicks on my ad, they are so targeted and Such a qualified buyer. Now, if you run an exact same ad that says.

Need lawn care services and you target that from 30 year olds and up, and for male and female, you will literally have 1% of the return as you would with the other ad. It's a feast or famine kind of game. So if you get the right creative to match a good targeting, like when I say good targeting, you know what your age demographic is and you know what area you should be going after and you know what your current client's net worth is and like, you know all of that and you take that, target those people and then make it creative to match them. Don't just create some generic ad for an entire area or whatever. Like it should be one. When they see that title, they know that that ad is for them. And this is what I get a lot of. How did you know that about me? Or like, how did you know that my husband is like, this is the funny thing about older people. They're like, they literally think you know about them and they're like, how did you know I'm nagging my husband to get the lawnmower out. So like, if you can make it to where it's that personalized. And when they literally connect with that title or whether it be about, like you're nagging your husband or something, like, I had this one, it was for video. You know what it was on the, it was on that one that you saw that video. It was a thumbnail. Some guy, like with grass all over him, he's like hunched over his mower, he's like super tired. And I targeted that at older guys that I know are going to be married and that they are probably the one that mows the lawn. And I said, are you, are you like, do you want to take your weekends back and play golf? And so like, it's all about creative. There's no right or wrong. Sometimes I've created an ad that I think is gonna be a hit and it's been absolute disaster. You spend a hundred bucks and don't get a single callback and that's discouraging. And a lot of people will quit after that.

But now after, yeah, that's what happened to me.

Yep. And it's totally understandable. And it might take a few of those, but you will hit pay dirt if you stick with it. And you keep fine tuning and watching how many people see it versus how many click it and then reacting to the response of the market and saying, oh, okay, they like that thumbnail. But yet My video has been doing really good. So let me put the thumbnail on the video and not just have it as a picture and see if that works better. Test that out for a few days, you know, and so I know for some people it's just not gonna work. They're going to either outsource this to someone who isn't as interested in and isn't gonna tweak it and isn't gonna work with it and they're gonna lose money because that person is not invested. Like if you outsource this stuff, it never works. It really doesn't. Unless you're going to like a big ad agency that it's too expensive. But as far as small businesses, you can't expect to pay someone 20 bucks a month and they're going to actually be interested. If sue on fourth street sees your ad, like they don't care. And so you've got to do it yourself because you know your clients, you know what their demographics are, you know what their needs are, you know, you know what's gonna perk their interest. And this is the amazing thing about it. Come fall when you start need to say, cleaning out leaves, make an ad that says exactly that. Because now this is what's so cool about Facebook ads. You can change it every single day. So number one, you're able to kinda like a B test it, see what works. The other thing is every single month in the year, you might be able to mark a different service based on that time of year, whether it be leaf cleanup or when it comes winter. You can like before winter, like the snow flies. You can do things like pressure washing, trimming trees in the spring before it starts to grow. Like there's so many times a year that you can literally just like target people on Facebook ads. And then as you develop that and you get a Facebook following like on your page for instance, you can target just those people. You can target people that have just been to your website, like using the Pixel. And so like there's so many cool things you can do. It's a long term game. Yet some people hit pay dirt right away. And so I don't. The problem is with the podcast. I talk about Facebook ads a lot. And so people think they can throw up an ad and spend a hundred bucks and it's gonna be like instant pay dirt. Is not like that. Number one, the longer you have the Pixel on your website and you get more and more traffic that gets better and better. That's one thing. Another thing is add your Facebook actual People who like your page get bigger, you can target just them. That makes it more effective. If you have an email list, you can import that and just target the people that you've done business with in the past or at least got an estimate. So, like, you might have heard me talk.

That's the key right there.

Yeah.

Yes, I've got the list. Why am I not using the list of clients?

Yep.

I've got 150 emails with people that I've worked for in the past. Why am I not using that?

Right, right. And this is, this is the thing, this is the thing. Like, so you have 150. Don't be discouraged though if you do an ad based on those 150 because only 20 of those people will use that email address for their Facebook.

Oh yeah.

Well, no, it's worth trying because it only takes one. Right? It takes that one person that saw your estimate, refused it, but then now they're thinking about getting someone else. Like they might hire you. But like that being said, like we just put in like I think 2000, I think 400 people actually were in the list at the end of it, the ad worked good.

We actually took it down because it snowed and it was a one for lawn care. But.

That'S the thing too. Even with Facebook ads, if it's snowing, I shouldn't be today. If it snows, I just take down the ad for mowing because I don't want to spend 10 or 15 bucks on something that I know people are going to see it. It's like there's snow outside and they're not going to be even be thinking about it. However, I can make an ad that says, oops, sorry, I'm just, I can make an ad that says the snow's almost gone. Soon your grass will be growing. That will connect with someone. So it's a long term game, it's a learning curve. But this is where marketing is going. Like I think, you know, for the past couple decades, flyers, like if you listen to Jonathan Pinochnick, all these guys, they've built their businesses on flyers. And this is the question I have for everyone. When you get a flyer in your mailbox, are you excited or do you throw it in the garbage? It's really that simple. And this is the thing. If you break down the cost that you're paying per postcard and per address, it's probably more like 40, 50 cents. That 40 or 50 cents could be allocated to someone that actually wants to click on your ad. So some People say, well why would I pay a dollar for someone that clicks on my ad and it's an accident. Well, what about the person you sent a postcard to that doesn't want your service and throws it in the garbage? Because if you're going to send it to five.

That's a really good point. That's a really good point because I felt like when I used Facebook I was just flushing money down the grain. But.

It'S the same thing as putting flyers to people who are never going to buy anyways. That's flushing money down the drain.

Well, yeah, because like, yeah, with.

I don't mean it like that, but.

Yeah, no, I get you. I got you. Yeah, totally. Because like with, with, with the postcards, 5,000 you send, okay, let's say 50 call you. That's, that's like 1%. That's 1%, right, or 50. Let's say that even 50 convert like 1% become clients. Like, which is amazing. Amazing.

Yeah.

All right, that's 1%. Right. So if you spent 50 cents per trying to, you know, print the thing and then send it to them or whatever that is, that is 100 to like 50 bucks. Right. And so technically you time to $50 per client is what you paid there. Right. It's all about numbers when it comes down to it. Because now, now it's okay, 50 cents per person and 1% of them bought. Okay, can I for 50 cents get a click? Which by the way, these people are clicking on your ad because they've seen your, that you're a lawn care business. It's not because they have an address in your vicinity. You know I'm saying.

Yeah, no, I definitely get what you're saying.

It's targeted. Right. So it's a long term game. A lot of people will get discouraged. I think for the next year to two years it's going to be a land grab because in a year or two and is the big brands that will come in will buy up the ad space and then the cost will go up like big time. Because right now I can pay $0.03 to have a very targeted video watched by someone that's over 60 years old in my target market for 3 cents. And it's a 3 minute video that's essentially an advertisement about my business. In a year that's going to be 10 cents. In two years that's going to be 50 cents. And how do I know that? Because that's what happened with Google AdWords right now. Yeah, exactly. That's what's gonna Happen and there's gonna be a few businesses, there's gonna be a small percentage of businesses that will become, that will go from small businesses, like four or five figure businesses that will become seven figure businesses on the back of this next 12 to 24 months when they can pay pennies on a dollar of what will cost in 10 years. And the reason I know that is because that's what happened with Google AdWords. You know, there are some businesses that got in, they were making a million, 2 million, and now they're making 40 or 50 because they got in when they could buy their, their, their search, the search word for like 3 or 4 cents. That's what happened.

Facebook owes you a commission check for all the money I'm about to spend.

Say it again.

Sorry, you convinced me. You convinced me.

No, but don't, but like, don't let me convince you because it will get discouraging the first few times. Let, let it. Like this is the thing too. You've got to track now if you do the 2K. Oh man, I'm over time. Sorry. The 2K. If you do that for the postcards, you. And then you do Facebook, you've now got, you have to track when people call you. You got to ask them where they heard about you.

Because definitely something I can implement into my software.

Yeah, in your software. And when you answer the phone, just like first, you know, Right. When they ask for an estimate or whatever, you need to ask, you know, where did you hear from us? Some of them will say, this is the, this is the powerful thing. And this is a little bit confusing for people. Like you have the Facebook ads, they see you there, then they get something in the mail from you, then they call you. That's the power too about this whole Facebook thing is it's just another touch. Like if they see you online, then they see you in the real world in their mailbox. And you might double your response rate on your mailers because they've seen you or they saw a video online. They might not have called you, but they saw your video, they know what you're all about. And then the mailer reminds them to not throw it in the garbage, but to actually give you a call.

Yeah.

So I would ask them, like, did you see us on Facebook or did you get us in the mail? Like, how did you hear about us? Or is there a referral? And. And then like mine all that data this year, like big time. Mine it big time so that next year, you know, it worked. And then just go all in on it.

100%.