NEVER DO THIS! - Ep.44

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes. You're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast and this is the same show that I had over on the Business Bootcamp podcast. If you already listened to it, however, don't log off quite yet because I have a special announcement. And that is. Well, I have two special announcements. One is more special than the other, but let's start off with the good, and then I'll tell you about something even cooler. The first announcement is that now you can listen to the introduction module of the course completely free. So if you go to landscapebusinesscourse.com, click on Enroll now and then scroll down to where it has like the course description, scroll down to the bottom and then you'll see on the introduction you can watch two, three, I think it's two or three videos completely free and it gives you like the 36 month roadmap and then the introduction to the course and you'll be able to really get a better feel of what it's all about. So landscapebusinesscourse.com, click the Enroll button, scroll to the bottom and click the free videos that are sitting there. Will enjoy those. That's the good. Now let's talk about something even cooler. A lot of you have been asking me about something and I just haven't had the time to do it. And I've been mulling it over for probably the last five, six months. And so I'm coming up with, it's not finished yet, but I'm gonna kind of just share it now. And then in probably three weeks, I will double down on it and actually give you more information. First of all, sorry I haven't been able to post as much as I'd like to to this podcast just for landscapers. Definitely in the winter I'm gonna put a lot more content on here. It's just that right now I'm so, so busy with business Bootcamp podcasts, to be perfectly honest. Like, I have sponsors over there that I have to make sure I create content. And so that kind of has preeminence cause I have a contractual agreement and obligation to them. So here, unfortunately, I don't get as much to talk to the landscapers as I would like to. However, it kind of works out because during the winter is when I know you guys as landscapers. And so it's gonna work out good, I think where that's when I can spend more time on the phone with you guys, learning from you guys, trying to help you guys out. And so I'm sorry I haven't posted as much as I'd like to post every week here. I really would, but turned out to be more like once every three or four weeks during the summer here. So definitely I'll get back on schedule in the winter, I promise. However, like I said, for the past five, six months especially I've been mulling this idea over my mind because I've had multiple requests to essentially get like a one on one in the business. And so I've had several people ask for like where they can come with me for a day. And then I've had some people ask, well, can you come to our shop, our location and start refining our business model. So that being said, let me pull up my notes that I've been. So I'm working on the landing page where you can actually will be able to buy this. But what I am going to do is I'm going to create what I call Landscape Business Course X or LBC X and that X stands for experience. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to create two different experiences that you'll be able to get. And what it'll do is it'll offer really anyone the opportunity to have direct access to me, but not just like a phone call, but I'll actually be able to get boots on the ground at your place or you'll be able to come visit me. So let me explain that a little bit more and in the future I'll give you the link where this is all going to be at. But we're not finished the website yet. Essentially there's going to be two different options. One is going to be called Augusta X and that's where you're gonna come to Augusta Lawn Care Services. That's my business and it's going to include me like picking up from the airport, we'll have lunch and dinner together. Essentially you're gonna get like a day in the life of me. You're gonna join me for my estimates, job sites, my staff meetings. I'll tour you around both of our locations. You'll essentially see our entire business model in action. And so hopefully and then obviously we'll help go over whatever problems you're going through with your business. But really you'll be able to see it in action. The business model that I talk about so often, you'll wanna see how it works, how we're marketing, how I'm dealing with employees, how we're dealing with jobs estimates. You'll see everything in action. We'll probably actually give you a uniform for the day so you can follow me around in estimates and with clients and everything and you'll be able to fit right in. And so that's gonna be coming up. That's gonna be a lot of fun. Then even the cooler option is gonna be the Hometown X. So Hometown Experience is gonna be where I come to you for a full 12 hour day. I will pay for my own airfare, food, accommodations, travel expenses and everything. I'll go over your entire business operations. Essentially it will flip the thing on you. And instead of using a day in my life, I'm gonna kinda like tag along with you for the whole day and then we'll improve your systems, your efficiency and really just your bottom line. And I'll be able to actually see what's going on. And we're in that day like probably over dinner after I've seen everything. We've gone over a lot of stuff. At the very end, we're gonna develop together a five year growth map for your business with the kind of like the key performance indicators and the steps that you'll need to hit along that five year course, like numbers, how many employees, what exactly you'll need to do to get to those plots. So that's gonna be coming up here in just a few weeks. Now then I'm gonna create the third option. There's three options. The last one's gonna be called Landscape X, which is a landscape experience, which is in one week you will get both Augusta X and Hometown X. So what that means is you will come here, you'll spend the whole day with me, see how the operations work, and then I'm gonna come to your location and so you're gonna be able to see exactly how I do things. And so then when I come to where you're at, you're able to directly correspond what we were doing back at Augusta and bring it to your location. And I'll be there. Boots on the ground. Essentially you're going to get both the Hometown and the Augusta package and it's going to be great. It's going to be a lot of fun. I look forward to it because I love doing the phone calls with you guys. And I want to go a little bit deeper though. I want to be able to go like Boots on the ground and really see your businesses. And I think I'm going to be offered even so much more value because I'll get so much more feel of what's going on in the company. And so essentially I'm trying To make it as cheap as I can. So what I'm doing, obviously I need to make it worth my while, especially during our busy season. So what I'm gonna do is during the winter months or three or four slower months, I'm gonna make it as cheap as I possibly can to make it affordable for everyone because obviously I'm not as busy. And then in the summer months, the advantage, it's like it's gonna be more expensive. However, you're gonna see like if you come here, you're gonna see it in action, like lots of busyness, lots of crews, you'll see a lot more. So it'll be more just because my time is a lot more valuable during those nine months. However, you'll see, you'll really see the business in work. However, I will make the cheaper option for the winter if you're more going for the consulting, going for wanting that five year growth plan, wanting working with the marketing, your website and me still there or you in person here and still be able to see our shop locations in person, we can still do all that and still get the cheaper model. So it's going to start at 1500 bucks and I am going to get you all of those information on the three options. The Augusta X, the Hometown X and the Landscape X. I will give you all the options and the cheap models for in the winter and things like that. So that is coming up. A lot of you have asked me about it. I'm interested to see if anyone's actually going to pull the trigger and actually do it. It's one thing to say you're interested in coming and seeing me in person, but another thing or me coming to your location and I'm really, really looking forward to it and it's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait to see some of you guys that I've talked to the course members I know a few of them have already emailed me and I've kind of privately told them and so they've already kind of wanted to do some of the things and so it's gonna be a lot of fun. I genuinely believe I can give way more value if I'm at a location. I believe that my phone call conversation I can get more accomplished. I can get a better feel of your business in an hour than if I talk to you on the phone every week for 30 minutes, every single week for several months. I generally believe just like an hour of me feeling out how you're dealing with your employees, seeing your marketing, if you have your equipment in your office, looking at your website, watching you deal with customers, watching and analyzing how you're doing these estimates and how you should be handling prospects and handling phone calls. Being able to see this stuff instead of just verbalizing it and like, theoretically saying it's happening, actually me seeing it and be able to kind of give you constructive criticism, I think that's going to be 100 times more valuable. And I think the value it'll create is. Far exceeds the cost. And it's what I wish I would have had three years ago. It just genuinely, genuinely is. And so it's going to be fun. If you're interested, email me now. But like I said, probably within two weeks, two to three weeks, I'm going to have a landing page where you can actually go. You'll be able to buy the package that you want, and you'll have all the list of, of what, what each one will have. So that's gonna be fun. Now let's get into today's show, which is. Which is with a landscaper from, from Kansas City, Missouri, and his name is Dion. Dion reached out, asked if I could get, like, if he could get, like, paid training. I was like, hey, man, like, let's do the first one. It's always free. The first one. So this is what we talked about and sorry I had to kind of cut them off. I had other calls this afternoon and this evening, and so. But Dion is a nice long one, but lots of content. We talk about some things we have never talked about on the podcast, including why you should never, ever, ever, absolutely under no circumstance give your bookkeeping away in the first few years of your business. We talk about employees, hiring them, why a great business attracts great employees, and why you should focus more on the business instead of trying to attract great talent, make a great business, and somehow talent starts getting attracted to you. So we're talking about lots of stuff today, and I highly encourage that you take, not listen to this one twice and check out landscapebusinesscourse.com, click the Enroll button, scroll down, watch the introduction of the course, and I promise you it will offer you great value. What I'm hoping to do, really, as you, A lot of you have kind of asked me questions about where I want to take the course and everything. Obviously, during this winter, the course is going to get a lot more additional content. As I learn in the winters, I'm going to be putting more content on the course. And so, you know, we're opening a second location because of that. Not only Do I learn how to create multiple location? That's okay. But what value I can really offer to a lot of you more is when you start that second location, it starts showing the holes in your business model. And so how can you improve the efficiency? How can you improve, decrease the reliance on you as the owner and so you're not in the field at all. Like that's where I'm at getting right now, right. Really working on the business and now looking at investing stuff and like franchising the company. Like now I'm stepping out, right. And having a very clear five year goal of getting out of the business day to day operations, really focusing on the corporate structure, like that stuff, right? Like that's all big, high level stuff. And you gotta know, excuse me, you gotta know how to get there though. And so, my goodness. See this, this is why after like as I'm recording this right now, it is, it's almost 10 o', clock, but I've been on the phone for the past four hours almost. Yeah, since 6 o'.

Clock.

So that's why I'm a little choked up here. But I hope you enjoy it. It's gonna be a good show here now. And do check out the course. And it's I believe like you'll see at the end here, Dion, you know, just thinks, you know, let's just go for the course and it returns the value tenfold. So here we go. Dion from Kansas City and with turf tiger dot com.

All right, so you're coming from. Is it, let's see here, Montana, if I remember correctly.

No, we're actually in Missouri.

Missouri, that was it. I knew it started with an M. Cool. Awesome. All right, so I'm on your website. I've looked a little bit around, but kind of just to give me a little bit of background, you kind of give me some context how you started it, kind of where you're at. And then we'll go into kind of like what we can, what we can talk about.

Okay, well, just a little bit of background. We started. This is my. I kind of started it about five years ago. It started on a part time basis just kind of as a way to supplement income. Then it just kind of began to grow from there about, let's say two years ago. It's when it grew substantially. It grew to the point to where, you know, it was that time to make a decision to where you can't handle the workload and work a job at the same time. So about 2000, toward the end of 2015, is when I started preparing to make the jump from part time to full time entrepreneurship. And about the spring of last year, 2016, is when we started out in. And that's when I went full time. So since then I've been full time. Approximately. Coming up on, I'm in the middle of my second year here. My second season is full time. We have. I have one full time employee right now. That's about it. It's kind of going up and down. Last year we were on the hurdle, the roller coaster of, you know, hiring guys and losing guys. Having to get rid of guys or losing guys. This year I retained the crew that I had. I retained it for. I retained them for a little bit longer than last year, but unfortunately, as up to recently, we did lose a guy to college. Guy went back to college and then I had another one. I just kind of, kind of let go because he just kind of stopped coming to work and no calls, no shows. So it's gotten back down here recently to me and my crewman.

And.

Basically, you know, we're just trying to. I'm trying to get this thing down to a science.

To where I can scale it. And because it, I'll be honest with you, this year it seemed like I was almost there. It seemed like I was there for a second and then it just went away. So just trying to get a roadmap of how to get there and stay there. And I've been, you know, since I've been out back out in the field, I've been just kind of listening to your podcast for the last about week and a half. So that's why I decided to go ahead and reach out to you.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, like, right now, what are you kind of doing revenue right now? Are you like, like seven to ten grand? I'm guessing a month in gross revenue?

Yeah, that's exactly where we're at. And then it's fluctuating through these last three months, but about the average, about 7,500amonth.

June, that's what we did about July, actually did 10, two. And then it dropped down about 75. But that's where. And that's where we're on track to do about seven this month.

Yeah. And then I'm guessing like May, June of this year, you felt like you were like on track, like as far as where you wanted to be at. And then it kind of slowed down a bit.

Yeah, just it kind of, I mean, as far as personnel wise, it kind of went backwards. Now, I mean, fortunately for us, Customer wise and client base, it's been pretty steady. And it's been, it's picked up. It kind of took a stagnant state in about, let's say about June, July. But for some reason here within the last week or so, it's just, it's picked back up again heavily. You know, we went through a period, I think last week I picked up 12 estimates in a couple of days. I mean, it's like they came out of nowhere. So it's, it's kind of picked back up a little bit.

Do you ask those estimates where they're hearing about you from?

Okay, so. And that's, that's another thing I need to be more strict and consistent with now. Just a little overview I have. When, when, when we. When I did my phone system, I do subscribe to a reception service. So they take my calls when I'm out in the field and they act as the receptionist for my company. One of the agreements is they never reveal to a customer that they are the answering service, quote unquote. So it comes off to the customer as them being a secretary of the company. We went through a setup process and they had me. It took me some time, but they had me write scripts for their reps. So when a call from me comes up, it just kind of pops up on their screen and they follow the prompts and the instructions and the script. And one of the questions in the script, when they're collecting a customer's information for estimate, one of the questions is, how did you hear about us? So I just got to be. I have to actually get that. That question added to my estimate form on my website, because I have not. I. I don't think we have that one added on there yet.

So. So have they been asking that in on the phone part though, on the reception?

Yes, yes, they have. And when they email me the customer's information sheet, it's listed on there, I just have to get, like I said, I have to get a little bit more on top of actually tracking it and putting it on stretchy and keeping track of it.

So based upon the few that you have got, like, have you seen any, like, where are they coming from right now? Do you know?

A lot of them are coming from word of mouth. A lot of them are either coming from word of mouth or they're coming from, I want to say, Facebook now. It. It changed throughout the course of the year. Towards the beginning of the year, a lot of them came from. We do door hangers here.

Yep.

And I'll Ask you about marketing in just a second because I can probably do a lot better at that. But this year we did door to door, we did door hangers. So in the beginning of the season a lot of them came from the door hangers that we actually put out. But at this point a lot of it's just coming from word of mouth or, you know, seeing us out in other customers yard, they'll ask their neighbor for the information.

Do you have an enclosed trailer or an open air trailer?

I have two trailers. I have a. Both. Both are going to be enclosed. One is a 6 by 12. Enclosed.

Yeah.

The other, the one we actually use now is the eight and a half by 20.

Oh, wow. Cool. Wow, that's big. And then is that include enclosed the second one?

Yes, both of them are enclosed.

Do you. Oh, I see one of them here. The 6 by 12. Is that. Are those. Can you get your logo on there?

Yes, I can. I have.

The thing I'm battling about that is we, I purchased a. We were running one truck and it kind of let laid down on me so I had to go purchase another. And I didn't purchase a new truck. I just came to.

I just bought a used truck. And the issue is in my side of town, it has to get into. I have to get certain things fixed on it first before it can pass dot, the department of Transportation and so. And they're really sticklers in this area. So I got to kind of get those things taken care of and then I can wrap my truck. I mean I can wrap it now, but I just face the risk of, you know, once you put the logoing and the lettering on there.

But what about the trailer? What about the trailer though?

Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Once you put the logo on the trailer, that's when you just kind of make yourself a target for dlt.

Oh, I see. You're saying because then they know your commercial.

Right, right, right. So right now we've kind of been flying under the radar. They don't know whether we're commercial or whether we're residential. A lot of times they don't. A lot of times we've been fortunate enough that they don't check, but once we put the lettering in on there, then that's when we become a target and I may become sub some of those DLT tickets in the meantime, which are not the most affordable.

What, what would they, what would they ticket you for though? Like, is it for like, what would they ticket you for?

They were. I have a List. I have to find the list as far as that they were taking me for the truck. Now the trailer, they won't be able to because everything's legit on there. That the eight and a half by 20 is one that we. I purchased this year and that's what we use. So it's brand spanking new. But like I said, the used truck have a few things that have to get fixed on it. I have the list and we're, you know, we've been working on getting. Getting a few things fixed on it.

Hmm. I've never heard of that. It's like the dot, if it's a commercial vehicle, it has to like pass certain, like EPA standards and everything. Like, like emissions.

Yes. And it has to pass what they want in this. I don't know if it's the same for every. Every area, but I know here it has to pass a DOT inspection.

Hmm. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, we don't have that up here, fortunately. We have. We have to get a DOT number and then. But that's only for trucks that have over. I think it's £20,000 for our dump trucks and stuff here.

They combine. It's by weight to here.

Right.

And it's combined with the trailer too. So the trailer and the truck.

What's that number, Dino?

I have to look it up again. I have a information because I was looking into getting all this taken care of. So I had it all on a. I have it all on a sheet of paper of everything that we need to get taken care of. But I don't know it off the top of my head.

Okay. Does it. I'm just looking at dot, Missouri.

Wait.

Limits because like I've never heard of that and. But that wait.

Because I think if you're, you know, if you, if you're. The reason I say is because if you're getting mostly word of mouth and people have seen you work, like the number one way to get people to recognize your brand is the trailer, even if it's not the truck. Because I get it, you know, like if you're buying older vehicles and they don't. They turn around every few years. Whereas the trailer though, like that things massive eight and a half by 20. Like that's a billboard. Basically you can put down going down the road.

Right, right, right.

Yeah. Like I, like I don't know what that number is, but like if it's under 10,000, you'd probably be okay.

Yeah, I'm going to definitely. I'm writing down here definitely double Check.

On that because like for us, for us we don't even have to get worried about until like 20,000, 26,000 and we can don't need a CDL until we're under, I mean over.

36. Sorry, 26,000. Sorry, I'm kind of reading here as I talk to you.

Maximum length of any sort will be with 2045.

Okay, well anyways, yeah, I just recommend you figuring out go to your local dot and actually confirm that. I've never heard of that before. As far as like if you're just taking a small pickup and a trailer, you can't be going more than ten twelve thousand pounds and usually that's gonna be okay. Now you are. Once you do go commercial, I don't know what your state laws are about dot. Like for us we don't have to get a dot number but getting a dot number for us is like literally go online and pay 10 bucks. So it could be totally different. But I check into it, I check into it. I've never heard of that much restriction as far as having an inspection on all your vehicles and everything but I could be totally wrong.

So something we're definitely going to track.

Cool. Alright, so what question do you have as far as marketing? That'd be my first thing though. As far as if you're getting mostly word of mouth, people come up to you while you're working, they see you work, things like that. You want that billboard on the back of the trailer, like on the trailer. That's probably your biggest thing. But besides that, what have you been.

Doing so far as far as marketing wise? Yeah, we've done earlier in the year we did the door to door marketing.

Okay.

With the, with the door hangers. Also we've run some, some Facebook ads. Yeah and then I did some ads on. Actually I did some ads on Craigslist. Pay more finance on Craigslist. And then I joined. I'm not from. I don't know if you're familiar with Zarly. I'm not, no, we joined Zara.

It's kind of like a like networking thing.

Networking or. Yeah, like a networking firm and we've gotten some customers from there but pretty much, I mean to be totally honest with you, we've been very fortunate because in my opinion we've done the bare minimum as far as marketing wise. Yeah, like I said, still turn out a pretty, pretty decent customer base.

How, how far apart are like your clients? Like is if you take your entire kind of scope of all your customers which I'm guessing is like 30 to 40 if you take all of them. Where, like how far apart are the furthest ones apart? Like 10 miles, 20 miles.

And maybe it's probably going to be.

Between 25 and 30 miles. We're actually at active client count of 84.

Oh, wow, that's pretty good. Yeah, so, so what I would say, wow, you're at 84. Okay, so, okay, so let me switch this up on you then. So what I'd be saying, if you have 84 customers and your revenue's at 7,500. I'd be trying. If I was you, I wouldn't even be focusing on getting new clients. I'd be focusing on how do you make your 84 clients pay you.

$200 a month instead of 110. And so that's offering more services, making sure they know that you offer these services with emails and making sure that come fall they know that you do leaf cleanup or that you do gutter clean out. So you do pressure washing. Because I'm just looking basically solely at how many dollars per, per maintenance client you have that you're making. Like how many dollars are you making per month on each maintenance client. And when that's around 100, you know, there's a lot of room because you can upsell them in so many ways and they're the low hanging fruit. Like honestly, you could take that from 110 to 170 and you, you know, have a 50% increase in your business without getting in one more client.

Okay, so like I would double down because if I, if I hear 84 clients.

I am thinking someone should be making like literally you can make $30,000 a month in revenue on that many clients if you're upselling them. If you're what I would suggest doing as far as getting new clients, at this point, I wouldn't be spending a whole lot of money on it. I'd be focusing on how do I meet more of the needs of my existing clientele. And then I'd also be to get the new clients I'd only get, I'd only be interested in getting the ones that are very close because like 30 miles is pretty far, like a big scope. So what I would do is I would take a bunch of your flyers and distribute them to the five or six closest houses, to some of your key properties that look really nice, they're visible from the road, and write down an estimate on that on the sheet for someone's house and put it in the five or six houses next to some of those showcase clients that you got. And so that's how I would do get to get. Because they see your work and especially if they can see your truck trailer every single week coming, mowing their neighbor's lawn. And then their lawn, you might notice, gets shaggy occasionally they might be looking for someone to mow it, take that off their plate. And they're gonna do it a whole lot more likely with you if they've seen that you do great work at their neighbor's place and if you provide them a quote without them even asking. So I would the two things I would focus on then as far as marketing is, number one is how do you increase your revenue per maintenance client per month? And so that's like offering other services. It means, okay, like can you add fertilization, can you add core aeration, can you add weeding services? Like most people who have a lawn have beds and most who have beds have shrubs to cut. And like, so there's so many things you can upsell them to. And a lot of times it just has to do with asking or at least telling them that you do it. It's amazing my first year how many times I would see someone, I'd go by one of my client's house and someone's pressure washing their driveway. And in my mind I'm like, man, I could have done that. And I probably could have easily got that business. But it's because I didn't convey to my clients that I offered those services. And so whether that be sending them promotional emails like on a mailchimp or something like that, to tell them around the time they're gonna need it, for instance, around fall gutters and leaf cleanups in spring, bark installs, like during the dead of summer it might be trying to zero skate, like take out some lawn and put in a bed, put in pathways, clean out their pools. There's so many things you can do, but it's all about upselling the customer. This is the thing. One maintenance client that does $100 a month and you go every single week, let's say at $1,200 a month, $1,200 a year. Now you take that same client, they give you a mulch install job with some trimming of trees that $1,200 you can make in a couple days. And so what I'd be trying to do if I was you is looking at every single one of your customers properties. And furthermore, what I would do is email everyone this week and say, hey, we're giving away A free home. Or actually I do it this fall when people start kind of thinking about winterizing their house. I'd offer all of your free one on one meeting with you, and I'd call it a property analysis or a property needs analysis. And you'd go over everything from even stuff that you might not do, like winterizing their house or looking for pests, checking out their gutters, seeing if they need cleaned, looking at if there's moss growing on their sidewalks, looking if trees need to be cut away from windows. All sorts of have a checklist of things that you go down, like 50 things that you go through on every single property. And even if they don't respond, respond back to you, fill one out and send it to them and tell them the thing that they possibly need and then what you would charge for it. And I think you'd be amazed how much more business you'd get. Like when I see $100, a little over $100 per client in revenue each month for maintenance, I'm thinking like that can easily be moved to 150, 160, very easily by letting people know what your services are. And then the main thing is pitching those services at the right time of year.

Okay, sorry, I'm just taking notes.

No, you're good. Yeah, so that'd be number one is like, let's. How do you get your, your monthly revenue per client up? I wouldn't be worrying about, you know, getting new clients at this point. Hardly at all. Like, I think with 84 clients.

The guy, the guys in our course and like where I was at, let me see, because I was at 70, I was at 74, and we were doing just under, we did like 28. So like I generally believe you can get over 20,000amonth in revenue on that many clients. Like, I know that's like, you're like, wow, it's like more than double. But like I said, a mulch, install a tree trim that doubles the client's revenue over the course of a year that you make from them. And so it's identifying the issues that you can solve for them and then pitching it to them at the right time. And so whether that be getting all their emails and figuring that out, or it'd be going door to door during the fall, like when you slow down, that's the time you should be kind of getting out to your customers, knocking on their doors, seeing if there's things on their property. The thing that's nice is you're in the field right now, so you have an idea of what they need or could possibly use you for. And so it's easy to be like, oh, obviously there's some moss growing on their deck and you could just go up and ask them. Or, hey, make it a little more formal. Have a property needs analysis, have a clipboard with a checklist. And make sure that all of your clients come fall have, you know, their, their house is winterized. Things like their crawl space have the covers on them, their, their water has been blown out out of their hose, and they're, they got the foam caps over for when it freezes. Like, all sorts of things like that. Looking for leaks that might possibly freeze their pipe, their. The drains on their gutters. Like, there's so many things, like literally 50 things you could make a checklist of. And not everyone does this. And you'll grow out of this phase where you're really trying to siphon all the dollars out of each client. However, the reason you won't have to do that in the future is because you'll grow in size enough to where people will just expect you to do all those other things anyways. But when you're small as you are and you don't have a big brand, the trucks aren't labeled, you don't have a bunch of employees, they think, oh, well, I don't want him to, to feel like he has too much work. I don't want to put too much on his plate. So I don't. I'll ask someone else to do the gutters. I'll ask someone else to trim the trees because they can do it faster. Well, in your mind, you're like, man, if I can only get that, I could hire someone else, or, you know, so I think, number one, I'd focus on trying to get your revenue per client to over $150. I think you're at like 110 right now. Try to get that on average to about over 150. I think it's very, very possible. It doesn't mean raising your prices necessarily. It means like, hey, do you need fertilization? Do they need core aeration? Like, literally out of 84 clients, I guarantee you, I don't know. I guess I can't guarantee you because I don't know your market super well. But, like, I know in most places we can. If I have 84 clients and I send them all an email offering core aeration at the right time of year or thatching, just depending on what your market's like, I guarantee you usually about 20 of those are gonna go into respond, you say, well, I don't have a Thatcher. Well, you can go rent one for like 50 bucks a day. And you get 20 people, and they're 50 bucks each. Like, that's two grand. Wait, 20. No, it's a thousand bucks. It's a thousand dollars, right? If you got 20 people at 50 bucks each, and honestly, we charge a minimum of 100 for those services. So I think there's definitely potential to do a lot more with the clients you have, that's number one. And then number two is if you have 84 clients and let's say 40 of them have properties that are visible, that have neighbors that can see the lawn that you mow or that see your truck when you park there. Those 40 clients, I would print off five flyers per. Per client. Say there's 40 of them that, like I said, are visible from the road, visible from neighbors. I take five flyers per house. Let's say 200. And then when you're at that house mowing their. Your client's lawn, look at the five closest houses, the one that see their lawn the best, and write down on a piece of paper, like handwritten is fine in pen, what the price per cut would be. Just try to get them on the mowing. Like, how I look at mowing, Dion, is just like the bait to get them in. Once I get them in, I can up the sell them to the services that are actually going to make me money. Mulch install, trimming of trees. For us, you know, we can charge, you know, between 40 and $60 an hour for mowing when it breaks down. Whereas for like, mulch install, like, we, you can really get that quite a bit higher, like 60 to 80 if you do it right as you grow. And so I'd be focusing on how do you get those services and just use the mowing as a bait. Because everyone needs the lawn. If they have grass, they need it cut, right? So that's an easy way to get people in. And then once you're in, make sure that you are constantly aware of the other things you could be doing for them and then to them at the right time. So those five flyers, I would write down their address. I'd have like a line if you make a postcard even, and it just has where you fill in the blank, two spots. One, one needs to be their address. The second one needs to be what the cost per mo is for you to come to their house.

And I print off 200 of those. I take five each of those properties that are visible, and I would put those on all the five. And I guarantee you, if you do 40 and five at each one, 200 people. And I guarantee you're going to 10 to 20 calls just from that. And I wouldn't be surprised. Like, that's a 5 to 10% closing ratio. And off of the 200. And I. I think that's pretty. Pretty realistic, to be honest to you.

Okay, I got that down. We're taking notes here.

And, And. And I think. I think, you know, obviously, you know, a little bit more of a long term kind of like next spring, I'd be shooting for trying to get your. Your. Your trailers graphic up. Like, I'd get that tiger face, man, as big as you possibly can. Like, like, it's the one thing that's gonna set you apart and it's gonna attract attention. Right. People need to know, like. Like you right now, there's a hundred of people like Dion running around with a trailer, does not have a logo, has a truck. And they're trying to get past the DOT or whatever. How you're gonna set yourself apart is having that turf tiger out on the road. Like, I mean, that thing should be. That should be the. Like, if that was the only thing on your trailer, that's all you need. Like, literally, that. A phone number and that just. And then just something that says, like lawn care, landscaping services. That's all you need. Because what. The only reason you're doing that is so that when you put those five flyers out on your. On their neighbor's lawn. I mean, on their neighbor in your. In the. On the door of the neighbors, that they already recognize that tiger's face. That's literally your goal in putting it on your truck. And like, that's the only reason you do it, is so when they see that flyer, they're like, oh, yeah, they mow so and so's lawn. It's not like, who in the world is this tiger guy? You know, because they'd never seen it before.

Right. Okay. Definitely have that note down to get the truck wrapped. I mean, the trailer wrapped.

Okay, I got that. Here.

Cool. Anything. Anything else I can help you with, Dion, or like, for now.

Yeah, I had a couple questions. I've been listening to some of the podcasts.

I know you're talking about. Well, one of my biggest. One of my biggest mysteries is, you know, like, you teach about is getting myself the steps to getting myself out of the field and hiring people.

Yeah.

And I don't want to kind of have you Beaten a dead horse here. Because like I said, I've listened to several of the podcasts where you talk about training systems and you talk about the employee.

The employee.

What am I trying to say?

Like the training part.

Yeah, the training part. And then the application. Now the application part we did have. I do have that on the website where they can fill out the standard application.

Gotcha. Yeah.

But the other parts, those are some things I've taken notes on as far as listening to the podcast, doing the orientation, and then doing the interviewing. It's funny because I listened to your podcast and you called out one of the exact issues that we've been facing with just trying guys out and seeing if they work and just throwing them in the truck. And that obviously hasn't worked for us here lately.

Yeah, like, yeah, like, like.

Like.

Just thinking here.

Yeah, like, so right now your, your, your main thing, it sounds like, is really trying to find some good people.

Right, right, right.

One thing I don't talk about a lot in Dion, I don't think I've ever mentioned on the podcast, is one thing about employing people, especially if you're trying to get good people, is good people. People are attracted to good companies and they're attracted to companies. If you want a good person that's gonna be forward thinking, they're not gonna be a loser. They're gonna be someone that's really good. And if someone's really good, really good quality, it means that they got job, there's a good chance they can get job offer somewhere else. So what you have to prove to them is that you're better, you have more opportunity for them, it's gonna be better for them if they stay with you. So one thing I don't talk a lot about is get your business right and then for some reason, employees start coming to you. And so I've found that like, really true in the past few months where like we have people lined up now to work for us, even though we aren't marketing it, like for a job fair. And we have people like giving applications come. Cause they're like, man, this company's growing. They've grown a whole lot in the past couple years. They got another location. They see all our guys in uniform and the work we do, they see all our videos and suddenly all of a sudden, people are coming to us. And so what I would say, and this goes for everyone when you're a 1, 2, 3 man band for landscaping, is that you gotta motivate your employees to be like, hey, we're Gonna grow beyond this because they don't wanna be a part of that small, tiny little business that just kicks around and isn't professional. So getting logos on your truck, that's a pride thing for your employees. It's also a sense of security, that, hey, I'm working for a brand, not some dude that just. Just mows lawns, right? Like, so part of. Part of getting great people is creating a great business that they can believe in and know they have a future with. Like, if they just see, you know, one year you got 84 clients, and next year you have, like, 80, the next year of like 90, the next year of like 82. Like, they. And they don't see that growth. They don't see other employees joining, they start getting worried, and they will jump ship. Now, if they see four guys one year, and the next year there's 10, and next year there's 12, or at least, like, their pay is going up and they're getting more responsibilities. Like, right now, it's not like you can give someone a whole lot of responsibility that you can't give them a management position. So hiring, it's very difficult. I'm not discounting the fact it's hard when you're at first, second, third employee is tough because you don't have a whole lot to offer them besides the dream of what their company's gonna be. And so that's what I'd be pitching right now. It's like, hey, I know I'm small. Don't try to sugarcoat it. Don't try to say, like, hey, we're a great company. Just be like, hey, I know we're small. This is where we're going. This is where we wanna be in five years. If you wanna join us for this journey, you know you're gonna have a great ride, and I wanna do everything I can. I'm gonna be 100% on your team. I will support you 100%. And you gotta sell them on the dream. Like, honestly, that's all you got. When you're one man, a couple trucks, and then you'll see it. You'll switch. That's when you have five, six trucks. They're all logoed. You got six to 10 guys working for you. All of a sudden, their friends, their family suddenly want to start working for you. Because they see a company that's growing, a place where they can grow with the company, whether that be their pay, whether that just be the pride of him saying they can work for the. They work for this big landscaping Company in town and they're the manager and they can point out the rock wall that they built at so and so's house. And over on the corner they mow their lawn. Like there's a sense of pride in that. And so I'd focus on creating great business. And then the employees, for some reason, man, they, they follow. Now that being said, that first cup, those first couple guys, you gotta sell them on the dream.

Yeah, I know it. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it's funny you say that. Like I said earlier in the year, we did have, or I had a full three man crew. I had three guys and that's when we were doing a lot. I was doing a lot more of the Facebook live videos of the crews out in the field on the trucks and pulling mowers off and, you know, everything was bounce, rocking and shaking smoothly. And for some reason, like you said around that time, I remember vividly, you know, I got seven applications. I didn't advertise that we were hiring. I didn't, you know, I didn't post it. We needed more guys. I would just post videos of the guys out in the work, out in the field in their uniforms and they're on the, they're on the lawnmower with their headphones on and they're cutting. And like you said, I would just, you know, I'd be working in application. Seven applications just came in sporadically over, you know, a two month span of people just wanting an opportunity to work with us. So I definitely agree with you there and I definitely understand what you're saying. So we'll definitely work on getting back up to that level there.

I think next spring is probably when you'll have to make the big push for that. Cause it's tough right now when you're like, when you don't have a massive business to keep someone throughout the winter. Right. So like I kind of hold off on. Obviously you still, you know, try to upsell people so you can stay busy in the winter and stuff like that. But I'd say next spring is when like, I think you should do a career fair because if you have, if you have seven applications, one way to like, where did you meet those people when you met, like did like a interview at your house.

Yeah. Or I'll be at the lot where we store the trailer in the truck.

Yep.

So we just meet them there.

Mm. Yeah. Like, like, I know you've heard, I'm sure, like the career fair thing that we did and that if you have seven people. I bet if you put on Craigslist for a couple months, offered food that night, I bet you get 15. 10 of those people show up, 8 of them are bad, 2 of them are All Stars, and you hire them for the whole year. And the reason the All Stars are gonna actually go with you and not someone else is cause they're like, wow, they show up to this career fair, there's a bunch of other people. You make it fun, you make it exciting. You sell everyone there on the dream. You go over the dream, what the company's gonna be, where you're going this year, where they're gonna fit into the whole dream.

And then the All Stars are gonna be attracted because, hey, there's 10 other people here. This is a competitive. People wanna work here. This is a place I can grow. This is a good company. And so that's, that's, you know, I'd recommend doing that next spring for sure.

Got it. Creating some fun videos and some activities to do that night. Now let me ask you this. You know, being a small business going into trying to hire guys this season, of course, you know, revenue kind of slows down. So is that a thing where we kind of. I kind of gauge how much I'm going to want to pay these guys next year. And I start putting away in a reserve now while we're having revenue, for example, for their first checks in the early spring when things haven't really kicked off yet.

Right. And you need a couple weeks before they are really even productive or like before the grass starts growing. You should be training them and everything, right? So like, yeah, you're gonna need to set, set aside some money to train them, pay them their first couple payrolls before they're really even profitable for you necessarily. So, yeah, you definitely gonna want to set aside and as you grow. Dion, like that doesn't, that doesn't necessarily change. Like, we set aside money now for the winter when we're a little bit slower and it just grows the amount. Right. Like at the first, I was like, oh, if we could only. If we. As long as we have ten grand set aside now it's like we better have six figures or else we're not gonna make, make it the next spring. Right.

So it's not like that's always gonna be there. And so, yes. Yeah, I'd be setting aside at least a few thousand so that when you do hire them, they have full time work and training for the first week. At least you can get them on some cleanups. What I would do is, hey, run your cleanups, try to get some cleanups lined up so that you can be with them and see their work ethic and be with them a little bit more for that first week before you start mowing. And that comes down to being able to get in contact with all of your, your clients, whether it be, you know, setting up a mailchimp or some sort of marketing device on email, to email everyone. You know, I don't know if you start, let's say, April 1st mowing, maybe it's March 1st. You send that email out and try to book the last two weeks of March out. So that way you can hire someone mid March and know that you can work with them for a couple weeks before they need to be out mowing.

Okay. Okay.

Now let me ask you this, Mike.

Because I've heard a couple different things and my latest experience is kind of leaning me toward the other side as far as when hiring employees.

I spoke with, he was in another industry, but he still in the service.

And he's telling me oftentimes we make the mistake of wanting to hire, you know, we want to get out of the field too quick. When you want to hire a bunch of field techs, when in doubt, one of the key positions we should hire early as a, you know, office assistant or admin assistant to help with the back office work and paperwork and all that. And here lately, since I've gotten back in the field, I'm kind of starting to see some truth with that.

Because. Because sometimes if I don't get to it, the paperwork side, the scheduling side, the customer relations side, the responding to email side can kind of back up on me. So is that, you know, in your professional being, since we're in the same industry, is, you know, I was looking at possibly hiring a part time assistant to start out. I'm only using a few hours during the day. A few hours of the day. Is that something that you would recommend?

It all comes down to how much money the company is generating. Like you have to remember, office and admin is 100% overhead. So like you can hire crew members and you have to pay them payroll, but guess what? They make you money. If you hire someone to do admin, they don't make a single penny for the company. Obviously, you know, you can say, oh, they can help, you know, improve the business and sell to customers. Yes, that's true. But I mean, just from a very like hourly standpoint.

I would, I would make sure you have at least two employees, at least two full Time employees. Like, I'd be shooting for three before you hire someone to do that, because like, right when you do that, your overhead's literally gonna double. Because, like right now you have a truck, you have some trailers for overhead, you probably pay some for the shop. You have some equipment. Like that's a couple thousand dollars a month of burn rate. Probably if you hire someone that. That will double. So. Yeah. Yes. I would suggest doing the part time thing first, but it's like you said, trying to retain a good office member that's only part time is going to be tough.

Because the good ones go full time. Yeah, go ahead.

I've kind of. Well, when I started my search, I've kind of narrowed it down here and I got a. I got a lot of people who are interested. Most of them are, because most of my stuff is set up virtual, where my office can be wherever I'm at or wherever who's ever at. Yeah. Like our phone system can be an app downloaded on your phone.

Yeah.

Our software that we use, we use Jobber. Yeah, software and QuickBooks. And they both sync and interlock, so. And they're web based, so wherever they are, they can, you know, wherever you are, as long as you have Internet access, you can use them. And so I've kind of got a list of a few of them are stay at home moms.

Yeah.

Just looking for, you know, a couple hours of work to do a day, you know, let's say while the kids are at school or something of that nature. And so that was the kind of. That was the route that I was going to take. I didn't want them to be here, so I could still, you know, do some sit down training with them. But if I was looking to go that route starting off, because like I said, you know, like you said, they want to go full time, eventually I did go the assistant route. It would probably be looking into hiring one of those, you know, kind of stay at home moms or people who are just looking for a few hours of work.

Totally. Yeah. Like, like I, like I'd be asking myself, when you're this small, though, Dion, you want to be looking at every single opportunity to pinch every penny. Obviously, like, I'm. I'd rather see, you know, you spending money to grow the business. I'd rather be on offense than defense. However, right now, if it's only a couple hours a day that you need them, like ask yourself the question, is there any way you can get someone to mow a couple extra lawns? And you do it yourself.

Because if someone's working, I just know this from experience, if someone's working in the office for two hours, it's gonna take you about 30 to 40 minutes a day of just managing them, telling them what to do, telling them who to email. They're gonna be asking you questions like, what should I say to so and so who had a complaint? Or what should I say to so and so about their bill? And literally you're gonna be doing like, not even saving much time, you know what I'm saying right now? That being said, I always would push someone to make that jump earlier than like you'd rather do that sooner than later. You'd rather see, you know, but like I said, I wouldn't even think about it until you have two full time employees because you need, the business needs to be able, like until then, you know, work a little bit extra.

In the evening, whatever you got to do. You just want to keep your overhead down to an absolute minimum. So like, you know, I don't know what your personal expenses are, but like, like even those, keep them as basic as you can. Because every, you know, a thousand bucks a month even is money. That's all the flyers you need to put on all the neighbors of your client's place, right? And that can double your business in a year. So literally, it's. When you're this small, just a little trajectory can change, like massive amounts in your business within a year. And there's no way the business can grow without capital. As far as, like, if you need, if you get super busy next year and you don't have, you know, seven, eight grand to get a new truck, like that's, that's a pain, right? You can't grow the business. So I'd be pinching every penny you can right now. And then obviously it allow you when an opportunity comes up. Because like, what if you get three really good guys at your job fair and they're all incredible, like if I were you, I'd just hire them all and then figure out. But the thing is, you gotta have the money to do it, right? Because if you can, if you can hire, you know, three instead of two, and you're like, man, I just need two. But if you got three all stars, man, I'd just be like, okay, forget it. I can go all in if you have the money. If you have ten grand sitting there and you know, you can float them as far as their payroll and that gives you the opportunity. Now get in the field. And then all of a sudden because you're out there. I mean, you're out of the field as much. Like maybe half the time you can go out, get do estimates, do job, do property needs analysis for your clients. You're getting all this new business now. Now's a good time to get office staff.

Okay.

Yeah. When there's that, there's a moment where literally you'll know you cannot live without the office staff, and that's when you want to buy them.

There literally will come a time when you're like, like, I cannot keep going without having someone to answer the phone, answer emails. And it'll come when, like you get home and there's like 20 of them stacked up in your inbox. You got a bunch of voicemails, and at the same time, you have a bunch of estimates you didn't get to. And your guys worked. All three guys worked 10 hours and they didn't get all their work done. Now it's time to get an office staff member.

Cause the business is on a growth trajectory that will support the extra overhead.

Okay, Like, I didn't get. I didn't get any office staff until we were doing.

Let me think.

Would have been doing 45,000 in revenue each month. And so like, well, wait, wait a second. No, take that back. It was like 35, 35 in revenue before we were. Before I. I got someone full time in the office.

So, like, it's possible to do it until, like, I wouldn't wait as long as I did because I was working crazy, crazy, crazy hours. But like, I think you get 20,000 and a few employees, like two full time employees before you have to get new office staff. And this is another thing Dion is instead of when you increase the customer count, you increase office administrative costs because of all the billing, customer complaints, contacts, like all that stuff, right? That's another reason why you should double down on taking your 84 clients and trying to squeeze more dollars out of them. Because it doesn't increase the amount of addresses you gotta go to. It doesn't increase the amount of contacts that your admin person would have to be calling or setting up for billing and invoicing. And estimate like, like, it's so much better when you get that number up higher per client revenue on that front as well. Because 300 clients, maintenance clients, is gonna keep someone busy full time, just in customer satisfaction. Right. So if you can keep that down to 150, but charge them twice as much, your profit margin is gonna be greatly affected. There.

Got it, Got it. I understand what you're saying.

I noticed you also. And that's all great stuff. And I got it written down here, my notes. Excuse me. I noticed you also spoke briefly listen to one podcast where you talked about systems. Systems having systems in place.

Can you expand on that a little bit? Now I was looking into possibly, you know, like a procedures manual. Is that meaning having the procedures manual or just having procedures listed out on paper or policy, employee handbook or.

Yeah, yeah. First of all, I can only be on about five more minutes. I have another call. But. But yeah, so like, have you ever listened to a book called the E.

Myth by Michael Gerber?

Yes.

Yeah, I've read that entire book. I've done the organizational chart.

Yeah. Okay, that's a good place to start. But. But one thing you like, what part is it?

I forget the exact name of what he uses it, but essentially it's the part where you really need to describe everything to do with landscape. Like, it's like he's very 30,000 foot level. Like. Cause he's kind of trying to encompass all businesses. What you need to do as a landscaper is take that and say, okay, what do I really need to focus on? And a big part of that is like literally when it comes to the systems part, ask yourself every single minute of every single day. Like, how would I explain this to somebody else? And so what I did is last winter, I just created videos during the winter, when I was a little bit slower of everything I did, I made my office manager do the same thing. So she created videos of how to create an estimate, how to set up deliveries, how to set up.

How to deal with customer complaint step by step, and then did screencast videos for the software of how to set things up, like new clients and all that stuff.

And the reason to do that is literally just as much for you as it would be for someone that would buy your business or for an employee. It's just as much for you to have the confidence that you have a system in place that you can fall back on and that things are being done consistently. Because if you don't have the consistency, you can't scale. If you don't have a system for how the phone should be answered and an estimate inputted or an appointment's created. If you can't do that with five and six calls a day, you're not gonna be able to do it with 100 or 200 a day. So having those systems in place is overkill when you're your size, but imperative when you're your size. Because if you don't do it now, when you double the size of your company and just in revenue, it'll start falling apart. So right now you're not gonna see holes, you're not gonna see negatives of not having systems, procedures and all of those things like mapped out videos, I would focus like she talks a lot about writing stuff down. I like video just cause that's what I like. So I did more of like a. We have video tutorials for different employees and things like that. Whether it be our office staff or people out in the field that they gotta watch their first day or two of employment. But then also just in general, you as the owner, it's good just to.

Make a video of how you shake people's hands. And what's the process of knocking on the door, giving them a business card and what's those first few words to get them starting to walk around your. Around their guard? Right. Like those are things that you can create systems around. Number one. So if you ever sold the company or if you ever got hurt and someone needed to take over a certain position in the business, like doing estimates, that's one thing. The other part of it is confidence that you know what you're doing and that it's gonna be the same every single time and then you're not flying by the seat of your pants. And the biggest system that you gotta figure out is your pricing system. And knowing exactly nailing down like that's the biggest thing for a landscaper right now when you're your. Because you can't afford to be losing money on jobs and you need to be making sure that you squeeze the dollars out and you want that consistent profit margin and not make some times and then make a bunch other times and make nothing other times. So pricing system I think is your number one thing I'd be focused on if I was you. And then behind that kind of more of a procedures manual and then documenting everything you do, whether it be in video or written word.

Okay, I know you gotta go. I just got two more very questions. First one is going to be as far as the.

What else being in small phase, do you have any suggestions for the smaller entrepreneur, for example, who may not be able or credit wise may not be in position to go get traditional loans to kind of get some of that equipment or stuff. So if we're in a position where we have to, for lack of better words, bootstrap it, what are some suggestions or methods that you would suggest we use to get the things that we need to Grow.

I'd be focusing on the things that don't need equipment. And what's beautiful about this industry is the things that make the most money require the least amount of equipment up until like you hit skid steers and excavators. But until that point, mowing is great, but you need equipment. You need trailers, trucks. You can have a rake, a wheelbarrow, a blower.

And some shears and make thousands of dollars a month by raking out mulch, trimming trees, and blowing things off, literally. So what I'd be doing is the exact same thing I said right from the get go is number one, and that is trying to up the revenue on each of your clients. Like, I would.

Be looking to rake out mulch, I'd be looking to trim trees. And if you have 84 clients, which is really good, I'd be looking to see if you can rent a machine for an entire day and knock out a whole bunch of people. Like, if it starts, I don't know how much it snows there, but like, it might be worth renting a snowblower for a day. If you can make $500, it might be worth renting a core raider machine for 50, 60 bucks a day and be go out and make 500 bucks. It might be worth renting a chainsaw and lining up all the clients that, you know, have decent sized trees that need to come down or hazardous trees. Or it might be worth renting some other piece of machinery if you can get the jobs lined up. And so what I'd be focusing on though, is what services can you do for the least amount of equipment and manpower? And a lot of that's going to come down to a rake, a shovel, a blower, and a like, like some loppers and some shears.

That's good, that's good. Okay, I got. Yeah, I didn't. Never really thought about that point that the things that make the most money require the least. You know, it's funny because I just got some mulching requests and that doesn't require hardly anything to remulch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, definitely. I'll definitely get on that. And that property needs analysis. Very last question, and then I can let you go here. When dealing with finance and bookkeeping.

I also wanted to throw in there, you know, as far as the finance part of, you know, how often do you review your numbers? Is it a smart thing to work? If I think I found an affordable financial service that I actually know the young lady who owns the company, is it feasible to have them do my bookkeeping and have everything in order for taxes. And do you review those reports yourself? And how often do you review them? And then lastly, what percentage as an owner should I pay myself? And then I promise I'll let you go. But you gotta go.

Yeah. So first of all, I'm gonna go different on you and say don't, don't out outsource your bookkeeping. Keep it in house.

What you don't see isn't going to get managed well. They have no interest in making sure that you're super profitable. Even if they're great people and they love you and all that doesn't matter. You need to know your numbers. And the best way to do that is you stay in the bookkeeping. To this day, we will never outsource our bookkeeping. I want to know the numbers. I want to know exactly how much my guys make. I can, I can name every single employee I have right now and exactly what their hourly rate is. I could tell you right now exactly the jobs that the five or six crews did and how much we made on them. What our net, what are like, you know your numbers because you're involved in them. If you outsource your numbers, it's the worst thing you could do. Like don't outsource your bookkeeping. Keep it in house. Because you got to know if you're losing money on, you know, Bob Jones mowing job every single month. You gotta know if you're killing it on mulching every single month. And that's where all your profits coming from. Like if you don't do that yourself, you say, well, I could just get a report. Well yes you can. But I like at this size in your business you need to know every single number. Like that. Yeah, I look at my numbers every single day. I don't input our expenses, I don't do any invoicing, I don't do any of that. I'm not in our software system for financial at all. All I check it every single day and I know the numbers from a 30,000 foot level very, very well. And I know down to individual clients if we're losing money especially, and I keep an eye on that like crazy.

I would highly, highly recommend not outsourcing out booking bookkeeping.

The reason people want to do it is because no one likes bookkeeping. It's not fun. Keeping track of numbers is not fun. And it's the things that you do at like two in the morning and that's when you're regretting it. But like, it's the one thing you gotta do, especially when you're a young company, to know every single moment of every single day when you're making money, what's making you money, where you're losing money, where the holes are at, where you can increase efficiency, where, like, how you can become better. Like, the last thing, like this is funny because I've never actually had this question about outsourcing. Outsourcing your bookkeeping. I would never ever do that as a small business owner, let alone a landscaping company that needs to be watching basically every minute, every hour as you're on the job.

Okay, got it, got it. Now she. We have a consultation set up because she teaches.

Yeah.

So the first thing she will. I haven't decision to do it yet, but the first thing we're gonna do because she's a guru in QuickBooks. So what we're gonna do, she's gonna sit down and teach me how to properly do it.

Yeah.

How to properly inp. Properly review reports. What I'm looking at. So.

Yeah. And that's great. And that's. I'd be trying to extract as much value as you can out of that. But you don't. You can't afford the overhead. You don't. You can't afford the time to manage them because they're going to have to know, you know, where did they put certain type of category. Where do they categorize certain expenses and things like that. And then you can't afford the. What's, what's the kind of like the unforeseen expense. And that is not knowing your numbers down to the penny.

And another thing is even the advice they're gonna give to you, take it. Like if they're just. If she's just gonna teach you and stuff, that's great. Keep in mind everything's on YouTube.

Right. So don't pay for that.

And don't get suckered in it. Like literally. It's funny because it's never come up, but literally, I'd say the worst thing you could do when you're this small of a company is to let go of any sort of number. Like you gotta know them.

Okay, got it, got it, got it. There. And then just, you know what? As sometimes we get guilty as the owner as far as taking our time. I haven't really taken a salary.

Yeah.

Into next year.

Yeah.

These first two years, I just kind of let it go back all in. But how do you kind of gauge as the owner when you're talking about wanting to Bring employees. And once your revenue gets to a certain, certain point, how do you kind of gauge what percentage or what your salary is going to be?

Yeah, so I determined basically how fast I want the company to grow and just realize that the more I take out of the company, the less, less accelerated growth it can have. So I actually pulled. I halved my salary from last year to this year. Cause I knew I wanted to expand really, really fast again. Cause I kind of the first two years didn't take anything out. I was putting everything back in, just kind of getting by. The last year I was like, okay, you know, I was making six figures, taking home six figures. And I was. This year I was like, you know what? I'm gonna half that and I'm going to go all in, in growth. And I probably actually gave money back to the company out of my salary this past year. Because like I said, we're, you know, as, you know, we're having a location, we're gonna be franchising, like all that stuff. So the company needs money. So it doesn't come down to how much money is right for you to take out. It's how fast you want the business to grow. And when it becomes to a level where you feel comfortable where you want it to be. And that doesn't mean it needs to be a billion dollars. When it gets to the point where you want it to be, that's when I would start taking money out. And then you just realize that when you do that, your growth is gonna start to plateau because you're not gonna be buying more equipment. You're not gonna be getting more people and getting trucks and things like that. And then that being said, you'd just be raising your prices, which will increase your net profit. And so it's a very happy time when you get to the place where you, like where your growth is, is, is stable. Because that's when you can up, up, increase prices instead of going after new work all the time. And then that will also plateau your growth to where then you can start taking money out of the business. But like, that's the question I'd just be asking yourself is like, okay, do you. If you want to go from 8,000amonth to 30,000amonth next year, yeah, you're probably gonna be putting every penny back in the business. Cause next spring is gonna require employees and training them and logoing your trucks and getting right insurance, all that stuff, getting equipment. And then if you're like, you know what, next year I could do maybe 15 grand. And the year after that, I could do 25 or 20amonth. And you go slower. You could take some money out. If you wanna get to 100 grand a month like we did within 36 months, it's basically put every single penny back into the business. But you don't have to be that way. Right. So, like, I'd ask your.

Just repeat that for me one more time about the 36 months.

Oh, oh. So. So. So from the time I started Augusta to when we were making 100,000 in revenue was 36 months. And so that's really fast growth. However, I. During that time, I basically just putting the money all back into the business.

Well, I have about 15 more questions. I'll go ahead. I've decided one further review. I know I emailed you on some things. I'm just going to go ahead purchase the course.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I think it would probably answer a lot of the questions. Like, at the very least, I'd give Lawn Pro a shot too. As far as software, I really do got to go here about two seconds. But I'd give LawnPro a shot. If you do buy the course, what's gonna help you? Dion is number one in there. I share a lot of exactly where we're at along those 36 months. I essentially walk you through what I did those first 36 months, and exactly step by step, and you'll see all the inside of our business, what everything looks like, and then you can just copycat it. I give you our employee contracts, and you get to see all of our employee training stuff. So it's basically everything I wanted when I was in your shoes or right before I started. So I'd give it a shot. Like I said, I don't make much office. I don't really care. But I do think it would be a value to you, especially if you have 15 more questions. It'd probably help you a lot.

I'm gonna go ahead. I have to go ahead and look up Line Pro. It's funny because I actually did use Patrick, and when I first started.

And it just. It kind of got outdated, and that's why I ended up switching to Jobber.

Yep. Yeah, they've made some good changes. About two years ago, when I first started, it was pretty outdated. They made some really good changes. And so that's like. Essentially I could have gone with something more expensive. But in the course, we use Lawn Pro quite a bit. As far as how to set up, you know, recurring invoicing, all that sort of stuff. At least it'll give you a really good baseline of how you can set up Jobber. Cause I've used Jobber before as well. And it'll at least give you a baseline of some of the tools that you could use from Lawn Pro and then just integrate them with job or, like, how to do certain things. But, yeah, I'd give it a shot.

Okay. Yeah, I would definitely get into that, and I'll go ahead and take a look at it. I don't know if I. I bought a lifetime subscription with Lompro. I don't know if he still honors that or not, but check into.

Okay. All right, sounds good, Dan. Well, hey, I. Sorry to cut you off here, but, like, I do got to go for my 720. A few minutes late, but stay in touch and then let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Thanks a lot, Mike. I greatly appreciate the opportunity, and I appreciate you speaking with me. I'll be in contact with you here in the near future to update you where we're at.

All right, Dan. Have a great evening.

All right, you too.

Bye. Bye.