NEW OFFICE! Installing Furniture - LIVE Q&A

Hey, everyone, Mike Andes here, landscapebusinesscourse.com I'm in our new office space, which I'll show you in just a second. I'm going to go ahead and do some Q and A whilst we are waiting or while I'm putting this together, I should say. So if you have any questions, go ahead and put them in the chat and we'll go ahead and answer as many as possible. I'm putting together this TV stand. It's portable. It's going to be for the training area here, which I'll show you in just a minute around the office. But if you have a question, by all means, feel free to ask it. I'm extremely bad at putting things together, so it might be somewhat humorous because I try to. I'm like the worst at this stuff. But if you have a question about lawn care, landscaping, I might be able to help you this morning if you went out mowing, doing lawns. You'll see the videos next week. My shoes, I'm back at the command center in the office. I took those off and I'm all dirty. So I'm just gonna go ahead and put these together. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away and we'll see if we can't help somebody doing their business if you didn't already see it. About an hour ago, video dropped and we launched the print marketing materials campaign. So definitely check that out. I'm really excited about that. It's on the public YouTube channel and you can see. You know what, I should probably put a link in here. No, I won't. But yeah, feel free to check out the YouTube channel. There is a new print marketing template design that we have created for you and I think you'll really like it. I think we're really beneficial. So. All right, I'm just gonna hang out. If you have any questions, post in the comments. Not seeing any come in. I might have disconnected my comments part. So.

There. There you go. Cool.

Now you should put comments in. Yeah, we'll do some live Q and A, answer anything I can. And we'll see what we're putting together here in just a second. I'll show you around the office. This is the new office space. It's basically next door to Command Center. We basically made this where we could do training. So next week we have at least four starting new. And so we are setting this up for training because the other room is just getting kind of packed with people. So we're trying to limit it as much as possible just because we are building a facility, and so we don't want to be overspending by having too much office space. But it's definitely kind of getting claustrophobic with a lot of people over there. All right, John Garretson, are you sure you know how to build that? No, I'm not sure I know how to build that. I'll probably mess it up, to be perfectly honest. But we're going to give it a shot. And if I don't, that's actually why I'm going live. I figured all these great mechanics and landscapers on here, if I have an issue with putting this together, then.

We'Ll figure it out. And if it's like anything, like mowing, I have so many people telling me I'm doing it wrong that together we will figure it out eventually.

I already think I've messed this up. I don't think this is level. It's not level.

All right. Anyways, questions? Okay, now some good questions. Come in. Just wanted to say thanks for all the videos you and your team produce. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. Angus, what do you look for in company trucks? Do you go with gas or diesel? And what type of mileage do you look for? This is a really, really brutal truck market right now, as most of you know. If you're trying to find a truck, it's brutal. The cost of used trucks is way up. And so what we traditionally are looking for, though, is less than a hundred thousand miles. Four to six years old.

Eight foot bed, regular cab. That's kind of our ideal setup. And again, if you're going to have bigger setups, bigger trailers, you're probably like a three quarter ton or potentially like a flatbed or something like that. But we don't do that. We focus on, you know, quarter ton pickups mostly.

Or, sorry, half ton pickups. Colton just hired my first employee. How long after training should I track their revenue to wage percentage before I start adjusting prices to customers and efficiencies? Goal is 33. Okay, great. So you must have watched the video from yesterday where I talked about the numbers you need to know. So kudos to you for that. Yeah. Until someone's what we call considered solo worthy or like they are able to go solo and mowing, we don't consider that. They are trained up fully and you're 100. Right. They're not going to be as efficient before that while they're getting trained and while they're learning and all the rest of it. And even once they learn they're not it's not as big because they don't know the property as well. Takes them longer. And so I would say at least three or four weeks before you start really tracking the revenue. And if you did it for a few weeks, you'd be able to figure out the fact that they're getting better because they're just getting more experience. Right. So.

Any nutty from North Texas? Brandon. Hey, Mike. Tips for training. First two employees to be a mo lead and project lead. They're really tied into our company goals and want to grow with us. How can we best teach them to be leaders? Yeah, you got the first part down. And that is they are bought in. That is the hardest part. If you figure that out, then. Then it shouldn't be too difficult in terms of being leaders, because if they bought into the goals of the company, it's like, hey, we need you to do this so that we can continue to grow and expand. And we need leaders out in the field so that I, as the owner, can focus on growing the business and expanding. Okay, I'm doing something wrong here. What am I doing wrong? Oh, these just sit on here. Oh, that's easy. Not even a screw. Let's go. Made in China. All right, let's. Okay, that should be good. Cool. Next step.

Okay, sorry. We're trying to build this for the training. Is the second office where we are putting this together? I'll show you around the office in just a second. I gotta figure this out, though. Okay, next question.

Will Hawkins. Julian. Mike. How do we differentiate our lawn care business from the hundred of others that are in one area? Yeah, so, like, you know, at the end of the day, there's a couple ways you can differentiate yourself. One of the best ways, honestly, is from a marketing standpoint. So figuring out what your unique selling proposition is. For example, there are people who. They made their unique selling proposition. The fact that they close gates, that's literally their motto, is that they close gates.

Maybe it's that you answer the phone, maybe it's that you're young. A lot of times your. What seems like your greatest weakness can be your greatest asset in the form of being a unique selling proposition. Again, something that no one else in your market can do is capable of doing, or they're just not that. Like, for example, if you're 18 years old, that's a really good chance at the selling proposition. You can say, hey, look, I'm saving up for college. And none of those other providers can say that same thing. And so again, focusing and doubling down on that and obviously too.

Trying to go after customers that no one else is. So, for example, they all might be going after the customers that are going to bargain on price and ask a bunch of questions about price. And you're like, hey, I'm going to produce so much value where I'm going after the client that doesn't care about price, they care about the value that I'm bringing. And they're willing to pay 5, $10 more per cut for a great website for uniforms, for English speaking employees, for well trained employees. Those are the type of things that you want to look at. And again, it doesn't mean you have to do that. You could be. Your unique selling proposition could be that you are the cheapest. There's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong with this is that I can't find B. B1 complicated. All right. B1 is this one here.

So, yeah, I think there's so many different ways you can make yourself unique and different than everybody else in your market. And when. Look at a market where there's. When there's a lot of players, I just see more opportunity. And that's the beautiful thing about lawn care. It's so fragmented, which sounds like a bad word, but in another way, it's like even the biggest and best, like, Bright view literally holds like a small percentage of the revenue that comes into this industry. And that just is opportunity for all of us. Okay, now I gotta find. Oh, there they are. See? Okay, next question. What tips would you have for naming your lawn care business? Grayson, have you sent this, put this in the YouTube comments? Because there was someone that I had told to specifically come on this, this chat here and ask something like, I think it might have been about naming your business. I think, Grayson, I think it was you. You had mentioned, like, you have a business. Maybe I'm wrong. I think I might be wrong.

But basically, there was some of the YouTube comments. They're like, look, I've already invested all this money into postcards and business cards and a website underneath this old name. And the name was their name, their personal name, their last name. It was like, I forget the exact name. It was like Bob Von Care, for example, right? And their argument was like, hey, my last name is unique. And therefore.

You know, is it okay that I still name it after myself? And I still was of the opinion that you shouldn't do that. Because if it's. If your name is unique, it means when you try to sell that business, they're always going to wonder, whoa. They're always going to wonder who that person is that it's named after. And.

If you are in the business.

They'Re always going to be asking for you. And this person specifically, their last name was really difficult to spell. So you don't want that either. Like, honestly, Augusta, everyone forgets the second letter, which is you. Not everyone. Some people, I should say. That's like the only thing I don't like about Augusta, the word, the name is the second letter. You people forget it all the time. You don't want a name where it's like complicated or like, they have to always ask the spelling. So this specific person I'm talking about, it's not. I don't think it's you, Grayson. I forget, though.

Their last name they named the business after was extremely difficult to. To pronounce. And I was like, look, you do not want that name going forward, if at all possible. Oh, I forgot to put this on, man. See, that's what happens when you turn into a live stream and put together furniture. Ah.

One second question. We're working. Okay, one second, brandon. We're working 12 to 16 hours every day because of the spring rush, but really want to start writing our operations manuals. Should we just wait until the summer when we get. Get down to 10 to 12? Yeah. So I talked about this on the last one of the last videos. Okay, so why would I put it like that? One second, guys.

Okay. All right. Just do as I'm told.

So.

Yeah, like I talked about in one of my last videos, and that is, you know, don't keep putting weight on the boat if the boat has holes. Right. If there's issues in your business, you know, the last thing you want to do right now, Brandon, is add a whole bunch of time into like, creating operations and procedures and all the rest of. When you're drowning in work. There's issues out in the side, out in the business. Like, focus on that right now. Like, that's why we have the winter. And that's why I always tell people is like during the winter, I always tell people, hey, spring rush is coming. That's the time to go do all the things like operations manual, standard operating procedures, all of those things so that come spring rush, we can actually focus on making money. The end of the day, we don't make. We do not make money creating standard operating procedures. Those are just unnecessary evil that we have to do order to manage the people that do the work, but doing the work where the real money is actually made. If I could just figure out how to put this in here. Thank you. What.

Telling you.

Come on.

Okay, next question. Sorry, guys. Wonder Guerrero. Hey, Mike, at least you got to move to the office down the hall. Question. What do you look for in new hire to be in the field? Honestly, right now I look for someone that has a good attitude. In the past, we would look more for experience and things, but with the labor market the way it is at most of our locations, it's just a matter of, hey, are they going to be someone we can trust to work pretty hard? It's less about the experience side of things. You guys can't even see what I'm doing.

Brandon, we are in Y2 doing 30 to $40,000 per month. We are planning on changing our company name July 1. Any tips to make the transition as smooth as possible? Yeah. Changing your business name is not as big a deal as you might think, especially because you're not changing anything else. Right. So first thing I would do is I would let all your customers know via a video. In that video, this is basically what we do for Augusta Lawn Care franchisees when they join and they're switching brands from their existing one is we tell them, hey, make a video. And basically you're telling the customer, like, hey, nothing's changing. Same people, same prices. Just the name is changing. And in that video, you can do, like, where you edit.

Your uniform on and then like you say, as of today, Bob's Lawn care is changing too. And you flick your fingers like you jump or something and then you switch it to your new uniform. And that's kind of a cool way to do it in terms of video letting your customers know. And I'd also take the opportunity to try to get some PR around that. So, like, when Apple or Google or any of these other companies change their logo, you always see they get a bunch of pr. The reason, because they try to push the fact that they're going to try to get free publicity to get the fact that their brand is changing. So I would recommend talking to your local newspaper, try to get a local story, post it in nextdoor and local and Facebook groups, and try to actually just get free publicity because you are changing your brand. And that will also help us with the public image side of things. And then you can tell your story of, like, how the business started and why you're changing the name and all the rest of it. Look at this, folks. We are making progress.

James, how soon is too soon to raise the prices on new customers? Good question. Honestly, at this point in time, when prices on everything is going up so fast. I don't think it's necessarily the wrong time because they're not going to go find another provider. Traditionally it's more not so much a matter of how much time passes. It's about matter of timing in terms of the spring rush and when they're really like you want to be changing prices when the grass is growing fast and when it's going to be hard for them to go find a different provider or someone else to do this their service. So I would recommend.

Look at that. It's a beautiful thing.

I would recommend changing prices if you need them as right away like I, I just can't over. I'd rather someone charge raise prices too soon than not at all because I just never see people like oh man, I wish I didn't change raise my prices. It never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happens that way. People always are happy that they do that at the end of the day. So.

Any Francis in North Texas. There's a couple going to come to Dallas it looks like.

Thanks. I just hired my first office manager. What are the roles she should be taking care of? Really everything you want to start with the most simple things that are redundant and that are taking your time that you can train around really quickly.

So things like answering the phone, taking emails, setting up appointments for you, setting up, you know, if an estimate request form comes in from your website, they call the client and set that up on your schedule, invoicing, billing. So I would take inventory like all the things that you do and then just try to chip away the things that are most simple first. And then over time you can add to that with more complexity like adding packages or trying to do up sales or them sending out emails for marketing, all that sort of thing you can keep adding on as they stay on with you. So okay, I'm going to show you around the office a little bit. Feel free to keep posting questions. I'll show you around the new office here. So I'm on WI fi, so if this falls off the WI fi, I apologize. Okay, so this is the new office. It's right next door to the command center that you see me in multiple times in the past. It's kind of, this is kind of like the break area for the employees because in the past we had it all in the same room but now I have fridge and all that good stuff. So kind of this is the break ish area. Over there though is going to be. Over there is going to be the training facility. So today I'm Putting together more tables. And we're going to have computers in here. And this is where we can train people outside of the main office. So that way, like next week we have 400 people starting. They'll get trained here, and then this will be the thing that we're building. This is going to be a TV stand with this monitor on it. So that way Liz can train those four people again in a separate room than where all the other actions happening. So that is the office right next to the existing office at command center. What percentage of corporate Augusta's customers are paid versus organic? Oh, I see what you're saying. Most of them organic. Because now we have a brand established and we don't spend much on marketing. So again, that's why I always talk about the third year being when you start taking off in your business is because not only figuring out the business and all that fun stuff, but also.

People are figuring out you. They're figuring out the brand. They're figuring out what. What your value proposition is. People start to recognize your trucks. They see you more around the area. You have more trucks rolling around. So in my mind, that's why year three is always so is really when you start to see the inflection points. And so now the local shop does not spend very much in marketing. And I would say 95 to 99% of their leads come through just organic. People see the trucks, people, word of mouth, stuff like that. Let me see here. If you haven't already, make sure you sign up for the print marketing materials. This is the one that says your lawn was treated. You're able to. Whoa. You're able to customize these with your phone number, website, and things like that. Then fill. This one, for example, is the after lawn treatment. Then we got like snow removals. This is the postcard. This is six by nine. There it is. If you want to rip it off, go for it cost, trust me, it cost you more to buy these pictures than it is if you try to copy this stuff. So there's the fertilizer one. Then we got the spring rush door hanger for every single service. Like, so this is like the spring cleanup one. There is a door hanger, a flyer, a postcard, and a yard sign. Whoa, that's gonna fall over. Okay, so this is like the yard sign for leaf cleanups and then fall cleanups on the other side. Again, these templates drop right into to vistaprint. Sorry, I dropped this other one. One of the one. One that was. I didn't show you guys yesterday. Or this morning, I should say, was this one. This is what I'm looking forward to the most, which is a postcard, but it's for hiring. And I've already used this for the Bellingham shop. So that's why it has $18 per hour, because I customize that on Vistaprint. Put this in, put their phone number on Vistaprint, and it says, we are now hiring. Call today. Explains some things about our business, P4P, etc. And this is great because you can give this to people at Home Depot, at the dollar store, at a gas station, that these things are good employees. So, again, these templates are all in the program. Obviously, it wouldn't have Augusta on it. These deals have been customized for us for our franchisees, but they have. It has the same essence of it, and you can edit it however you want. What else we got here? We got fall cleanup. These are flyers. 8 and a half by 11. Again, has really good verbiage on here. Like, the weather is changing, the holidays are coming. Make sure your property is looking great before the winter rolls in. Fall property clamps can make. Can include leaf removal, bush trimming, weed pulling, and much more. We make sure your gutters are cleared out before the winter rain comes and ensure that all your shrubs are trimmed away from your roof and siding. That's the fall cleanup one. This is the sod one, which I really like.

Your perfect lawn instantly. Again, you can customize these. Also, if you haven't already, watch the video that I posted like an hour ago. Talks about these. Talks about how you can get a hold of those and make them your own. But there's a whole bunch coming. There's a total of about 13 or 14, I think 15, actually, 15 services. And each one of those services have four designs. Postcard, door, hanger, flyer, yard sign. So next question. Exmark commercial 30s are sold out at all New England dealerships. And Exmark is giving no delivery dates to any other dealers. This Augusta is doing. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Don't blame it all on us now. No, honestly, I like the skag ones. More Time Masters. It's just in our area, our dealer only does Exmark, unfortunately.

So do you hire people that smoke cigarettes? We do not at a local shop. Honestly, though, again, like I talked about before, when it comes to removing filters and hiring right now, you potentially might succumb to this, and not if you can't find anyone. But we do not. We do not allow smoking.

How do you deal with negative reviews, Javier? Next. Next week is a video that I made today because this morning we went and mowed some lawns. But while I was mowing lawns, I made a whole video about dealing with negative reviews and how they're actually a really good thing. You can really make them a positive if you handle them correctly. Because think about it. Think about it. Hey, you know what? I can show you exactly what I'm talking about. Watch this. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna dig up some dirt on Augusta. You ready? So let me just. Let me just make sure I got this first. Bellingham, Washington. Okay. All right, let me share my screen with you. We're gonna do a little dirt digging and show you my window. No, I don't want to do that. Chrome tab. There we go. All right, so I'm looking up Augusta. Bellingham, Washington. Okay, there it is. Great. Fantastic.

Wait, I don't want the website. One second. Sorry, Michael. Here you go. Bellingham, Washington. Can't spell. Washington. Lawn care, Augusta. All right, so over here on the right hand side is in Google my business, you can see we have 153 reviews. All right, so let's pretend we're an actual customer, right?

What are you gonna do first? Are you Gonna read the 155 star reviews? No, what you're gonna do is you're gonna click lowest and you're going to read all the negative reviews. All right? So I think there's about five or six on here. They're really bad. Oh, wow. There's more. There's like eight. Let's go. So again, how you respond to these is really, really important. And that's the most important thing, because these. These are. This is my whole point here. These are the. The reviews people are going to read. They're not going to read the other ones that are really positive, right? So, for example, a customer reading is like, look, you didn't even do service for this person.

They're complaining on behalf of their sister. This one, for example, is someone that we tried. We bend over backwards trying to help, and it just didn't happen. This person here, we literally had to report because they're such a horrible person. And, yeah, we won't go into that. But anyways, the bottom line is how you respond to these is really important because that's what customers are going to read, right? So I always recommend being. Showing that, hey, we tried to make this person happy. We either gave them a refund or we went back to the property.

Or we did whatever we possibly could to rectify it and that we don't just ignore the issue and that if someone's just completely out of their tree and what's the word? They're just. There's no way you're gonna make them happy. Most. Most people can figure that out. For example, I would have pulled it up, but there's one of the people who left a one star review for us. You go to their profile and they leave one star reviews only. They have like 15 of them. So customers see that too. So how you respond to them in a professional manner is important, in my opinion. Would you use the H2B program? We do not. Nathan. I don't have anything against it. It's just a matter of like. Part of our value proposition is that we do have English speaking employees. And the fact that the H2B program is governed by the government. I do not want to be subject to whether or not the government wants me to have employees. I want to take matters into my own hands. And that might be difficult right now, honestly, is very difficult. But, you know, I saw too many people about three, four years ago get their businesses whacked simply due to the fact that the government started cracking down on the HDB program and dramatically decreased it. And I do not want to make that a vulnerability in the business. Again, I'm not against it. I think it's a great program. Just, I would hate to show up one spring. This happened a few years ago, and all of a sudden 80% of your workforce is not showing up two weeks before spring rush because of the change in regulation or some policy gets passed or some law gets put in place. And now my business is dramatically affected. I don't want to have that.

Potential weak spot in the business. Oh, man. Now I got to figure out how to put this thing together. Okay, where's the little racking thing I got? There's a plate somewhere I'm missing. Ah, there it is. All right, next question. Getting behind.

Should I incorporate my name in my business name or keep it out of the business name? I would recommend keeping it out. I would recommend that highly for resale. For the fact that if you want to get out of the business daily operational level, that people start to look at you and your brand instead of you and your name, why they stick with you? I would highly recommend that. Do you have people that pay in cash? If so, how do you deal with those customers if you are not there to collect the cash? Very easy. We do not collect cash. We do not accept cash.

If you're gonna have employees, it's very difficult. If they lose the cash throughout the middle of the day.

And they're responsible for that. Like if they leave it in their truck or like, that's brutal for them. And it's not in my mind, as convenient for the customer that could just pay with card online.

So again, if I could just figure out, put this through. What am I doing wrong?

Probably read the manual. Number seven. Yep.

Next question.

Paul West. How about how many field employees does it take to sustain one office staff? That's a good question. I would say.

As long as you possibly can. Honestly, like, when I. So, like, I know some people were put off a little bit last time. They were confused because I said, like, at Augusta, our model, ideal model is one general manager and then 8 to 10 people in the field. The thing is, we have command center, right. They're doing all the office stuff.

But in terms of if you need an office person, I would say when you get like six to eight employees, you start thinking about it. Once you hit 10 employees, it's probably necessary to have an office person. But again, the roles of the owner go from field labor to office person to estimator. So usually when you're becoming the estimator is when you're hiring out the office role. But I see too many people having someone in the office full time. When there's like three employees in the field, I'm like, what are you doing? It doesn't make economical sense to have that much overhead. Now, ideally, a great place to start might be someone part time. But again, the challenging part is finding someone good that's gonna be part time and involved enough in the business to know what's going on. Right. Oh, my goodness.

So.

Mike, love what you do, man. You help a lot. What do you think if the most of the most important number to know in the business. I referred to this kind of yesterday a little bit. I honestly believe that it is revenue.

Does this fit in here?

I got D. Those are right. Yes. I honestly think it is labor as a function of revenue because labor is our biggest variable cost.

And then obviously that's after the fact that you keep. You're doing your very best to keep overhead down. There's no point in trying to reduce labor and variable cost if you're fixed expenses. That is overhead is out of control. Right. Okay. Yes. This is kind of embarrassing. I'm doing a horrible job at putting this thing together. Just gonna try to figure out what I'm doing wrong here. Next question is, I gotta bring this closer.

It's gonna be a bumpy Ride. Okay, here we go. Whoa. Someone gave me $10. Kevin Ferburn updating our next door deal with bark mulch install. What do you feel is the best way to install the bark mulch?

Best way to install the bark marks? It really depends on your market in terms of what type. Like someone was asking about no cedar wood chips for example. Those are awesome for keeping weeds out. That is too expensive in our market. And in terms of how to install it, those mulch mate things are really cool. Like if you have a stand on mower. A stand on. Yeah, stand on mower they have where you can install the mulch like way faster using those mulch mate things. Again, I'm not gonna buy 10 of those for my crew and then them expect those all the time. I'd rather just stick to wheelbarrows. But again, I'm not doing 50 yards at a time. Typically if I was doing 50 yards, I'd get out one of those blow in trucks and just sub those things out. Honestly, we've done it several times. They actually work really good. We've done it for compost and we've done it for.

A bark mulch. On really massive jobs. We'll have like one crew member there. That's basically their job is to manage this blower crew. Blow things off because they always leave stuff in such a mess. Like they blow things that blow the mulch in and then like they're burying the bottom branches of bushes. They.

They don't blow things off as good as they should. They leave piles. It's not always like as smooth it should be. So we used to have one of our guys there, like those really massive 80, 90, 100 yard mulch jobs. If we get those, just sub them out and then send one of our guys there to kind of have a presence as from Augusta. Right. So the customer still feels like they're getting the job done from us. We don't necessarily sub it out. I should say, I should just say that we have someone else do the work and we still charge the customer as if we're doing the work ourselves. So typically that's why like our average molten stall is probably like 8 to 10 yards. And so if I have a dump trailer for example, and I have a whole bunch of mulch in there, I don't want to bring a second truck with my zero turn stand on and a mulch mate. I'd rather just bring my wheelbarrows and throw them on top of the pile of mulch in the back of my dump Trailer. So that's how we install it, but it's not necessarily the right way or best way to do it. Colton King, what's the timeline goal from training new part time hires to becoming solo in their own truck? Part timers are tough because they don't get the whole day of experience with the business. So part timers are going to take a while, honestly, typically, to actually get the hang of things because they're only, they don't see the whole day, they don't see all of the jobs. Learning from on a part time basis is pretty tough. But in terms of timeline, we want it usually within two to three weeks. That's again going to come down to simplification of your services. And the more you do that, the faster that's going to be for them to get up to speed. Speed. All right, next question. Big John lawn care, what is the biggest advice for me? A $3,000 per month lawn care guy that has 140 hours per week of work? Oh, per month. Okay, so 140 divided by four. So that means you're doing about 30, 35, 36, 37 hours per week of work. My biggest advice for you would be to try your very best to keep growing till you have like 45 or 50 hours of work a week and then go hire an employee if you're trying to grow, if that's the goal, you know, focus on top line revenue growth. I would, you know what, my top, you know what, I occasionally gotta plug things. I gotta be better about that. So this is the time to plug things. So what I would do is I would get.

I would get our print package, which if you haven't seen it, the video I posted an hour ago, I would get these designs and I would make like a hundred of sod. I would make a hundred fall cleanup ones. I'd get a hundred paver patio and retaining wall. I get a hundred fertilizers. I'd get a hundred, you know, door hangers, all different services. And then what you would do is as those services are pertinent in your area, in your climate, I would just use those on all the neighbors of your clients. So when it's a good time to do fertilization, just go put fertilizer door hangers on all your, the neighbors of your existing clients. Like I bet you probably have 20, probably 20, 30, maybe 40 mowing customers. I would recommend, like I said, get 100, 150, 200 of those door hangers. And every single time the climate changes and a different service could be offered. You're going to put a door hanger on all the neighbors properties.

Okay, give me one second because I'm almost done with these screws and I'll answer more questions. Give me a second here. See if you can. I can just show you what I'm doing here. Come. Not good at this at all. Should we buy. Should we purchase a lightly used trailer for our projects or brand new? Honestly, I'm not opposed to use dump trailers. We've always gotten new for the fact that in our market, a used dump trailer literally goes for maybe 10% less than if it's new. And so we just get new and we get yellow trailers like they're the color of Augusta. So we just usually get them new because of that too. But if we were to buy used, the thing is, I still remember looking for my first dump trailer and looking on craigslist and Facebook and stuff. And like literally the used ones were 80 to 90% the cost of the new. The used ones were 80 to 90% of the cost of the. Of the brand new ones. The challenge right now for new is that they're expensive because everyone, everything's expensive right now. But more importantly, the problem with buying new is that you're probably gonna wait like three or four months.

Just to get it because the, a lot of the warehouses and manufacturing plants are way behind. So we use load trail. That's the brand of the, the trailers that we get. And I know that we're. We have to wait like three or four months just to get our trailer here, even though we ordered it brand new. And then like our ones in New York took like five or six months. And then when it came in, they didn't even have the right color. So right now the challenge for buying new is, is really just a matter of inventory. And if, especially if you have a custom, if you're like, oh, I want a certain size, I want certain, you know, things on it and all the rest of it, that's when it's going to become even longer to wait for it.

Two owners, three employees, 30 to $40,000 per month. Should I start stepping out of the field two, three days a week to focus on office work and growing the business? If so, what aspects of growing should I focus on? Well, the thing is you have two owners, Brandon, which means you're probably going to end up being the guy that is in the office and doing estimates and all the rest of it. And then your other owner is probably going to, I'd imagine the operational side, like the guy in the field making sure the jobs are going good, the crews are set up for success, all that sort of thing.

So that's fine.

But you'll just want to make sure you're really clear with that other owner what your roles are because otherwise it'll lead to friction down the road if you start stepping on a day to day operations and they're out slaving away out in the field. So I would definitely, you know, partnerships are very difficult, especially when you're small because you have to do what you're doing and that is delegate and divide and conquer. And so there's always going to be like that kind of like.

There'S always gonna be times where certain parts of that partnership has to work harder or longer and then they kind of have a little bit of bitterness towards the other party. It's gonna happen. So I just be really, really clear about that. And in terms of should you start stepping out of business, you know, at 30, $40,000 a month in revenue, I definitely would say two or three days a week is pretty accurate. You start hitting 40, 50 and then into 60 and 70, that's when it becomes a little more of a full time. So I would say yeah, I definitely give the green stamp on that in terms of focusing on the office side and growing the business. What I would warn you on is.

That extra time that you're going to have doing that, working on the business, try to as little as possible to be doing clerical work, you know, emails, phone calls. Try if at all possible, focus on actually growing the business, which is going to come in the form of hiring, marketing, making strategic changes in the company, training employees, thinking about the future. That's what's going to really drive the business forward. Not just like, oh great, I got two days, I'm going to, I got two extra days and now I'm going to just answer emails like, trust me, it's not going to actually move the business forward. It's just going to be a time doing all the busy work, which is not really where the company moves forward.

Javier, thank you so much for the $10. I really appreciate that. Thank you for answering my question. The possibility of getting a negative review has me bending over for picky customers. Yeah, like honestly, no, now that I'm out of day to day operations and I don't have the emotion of one star views because like that's the hard, hard part, right? When you've done all you can do for client and like you know who they are and you've Worked with them. Like there's a lot more emotion, evolved, involved. And actually for every single franchisee at Augusta, if they get a review, it comes to my phone. So I see every single one every single day. Like, I got a whole bunch. And so it's funny because I know that it's very difficult, especially when they get their first couple. But like, I mean like one star views their first couple bad ones. But from my perspective, I'm pretty unemotional because I haven't been involved in the customer relationship. And I'm actually, I'm actually pretty pumped. I'm like, great. This is an opportunity to show why we're professional and, you know, why we're different than everyone else. And this is our opportunity because again, like we just showed early in the, in the, in this chat is those are the reviews people look for. First are the negative ones. So how you respond, how quickly you respond, what is said back to the customer is all very, very important. And so when you start thinking like that, you won't bend over for the customers quite as much, which is totally fine and a good thing. You won't especially. They're picky and like being. What's the word? They're just not even in the realm of reason. You won't deal with them as much if you start looking at like, hey, look, if this person leaves me a one star review, that's fine. I know exactly what I can say. We bent over backwards. We tried everything in our power to make them happy. We came back to the property, we gave them a discount, we came on the weekend. I put extra hours and time to this. We're basically losing money now. This was not in the estimate, like all of those things. That's when it's like chaos. I want this person to give me a one star review so I can basically brag to everyone how I tried my very best to bend over backwards and help this person. And I stayed professional. I didn't lose my temper, I didn't lose my cool and swear at them online. And those are the things that a potentially new customer is looking out for. They're not looking out for a perfect contractor. If you see someone that has 150, 101 reviews and they're all five stars, you know that says, right? They're perfect and getting what perfection is, it's an absolute lie. It never happens. So if someone really thinks, you know, customers, when they see someone with 155 star views, they're very skeptical. If there's 155 star views and there's one. One star review. They're gonna go read that one review. So just make sure your response to that review is, is quality, super professional, and exemplifies what you stand for in your business. Trayvon, I'm 15. I'm at 45 lawns, at about four to six thousand dollars per month in profit. I have two employees since I can't legally drive, and my own equipment, and own my equipment, truck and trailer. I just got my llc. What should I do to expand? When you get your license, which I'm assuming is gonna be at 16, you really. That's when you're really gonna be able to expand. However, you've obviously figured out how to hire people that are older than you that can drive. So kudos to you for that. That's awesome. In terms of what you can do, expand, I would say double down on the fact that you're 15. Like, I know this is. Everyone's, like, when they're 15, like, oh, I want to appear like, I'm super professional, and I want to, like, you know, make everyone look at, you know, feel like I'm. I've been in this business for 50 years, and I have everything put together. Trust me, in 10 years, Trayvon, no one's gonna care how old you are right now. You have a story, and a story is what sells. I double down the fact that you're 15, I would put it in your marketing. I would tell customers that you are saving up for college or whatever your plans are, or if you have a story to tell, I would double down on that. Your unique selling proposition. That's what it is. And in expansion, I would just double down on that. I would tell the newspaper, your local newspaper, try to get a story on that. I would, in all of your marketing, say, hey, my name is J. Travon, and I am growing my lawn care business. I'm 15 years old, and over the past two years, we've grown to three employees. I enjoy creating jobs, my local community. That's the type of thing that's going to get you business. That's the thing that sets you apart from everyone else. That's going to set you apart from everyone else. That's saying that they're are quality, guaranteed, great service. We cut lawns with straight lines. All the other stuff, 200% money back guarantee, ironclad, like, all that stuff.

Gregory the broker, what is the best way I should advertise for the first time with very little money? Gregory, this is exactly why we made such great pitch. This is why we made these for you. All right, so check out the video I just put up on YouTube. You can get access to the program and get all the designs for postcards, door hangers, yard signs, flyers. That's what I would do. If you don't have much money, I would not do digital. You're going to spend a lot more. You're going to. You're going to have only do that when you have no time and lots of money. When you are smaller and just getting started out, you don't have much money. You need to go put some sweat equity into it. And that's going to come in the form of knocking on doors, passing out flyers, sending out postcards, taking door hangers to all the neighborhoods that you want to do business in. It's a little more hand to hand combat, but it's much, much cheaper. That's what I would be doing one of these days. One of these days, whether it's a year or five years from now, I want to go kind of quote unquote, undercover. I want to go to a place that's like 100 miles from the closest Augusta lawn Care location. I want to spend like a month. And this is why I don't know how long it'll be, because that's almost impossible in terms of just my schedule. But one day I want to do it. And I want to grow a business from scratch. Not underneath Augusta's lawn. Augusta lawn care. I build it under just some ram.