Oddly Satisfying: Millionaire Does Manual Labor!! (Mowing Lawns)

Hey, everyone, It's Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com and today I'm joining the Bellingham location for Augusta Lawn Care. Gonna go out and hop out, do some moe's for them, grab some video for you guys, and hopefully be a little educational for you.

By the way, that's our ramp rack. Really great. The trailer is set.

At least five done.

I think it was a big one the first, though.

Let's.

Good morning, everybody.

We are going to go out and.

Mow some lawns today.

I'm going to do a voiceover for you all. Dan's gonna get some better shots than I did last weekend. And so I'm only doing this because so many of you liked the last video and told me I should do it again.

So we're gonna give it a shot.

Try to add some context and business tips while we're mowing.

Stick along for the ride.

So at first here, I thought these were locked, and it turns out that this, the lever at the top was turned. There's kind of two ways to lock these specific rack, which these ones are coming from trailerracks.com but there is a lock, which I'm trying to unlock right now with a padlock. But at the very top, there's literally just a lever and.

Oh.

Oh, my God.

All right. So here in this first job, just getting everything edged up. It's morning and a lot of dew on this grass. So not only is this lawn somewhat overgrown, it's very. It's pretty wet. Just the amount of dew that's on the grass itself. And so, you know, in our market, we have a lot of fescue and rye grass. And so long in our area is anything, you know, 3 or 4 inches, 5 inches, starts getting pretty tough. It's very thick and wet grass. I know in some markets, you know, you can mulch your clippings and, you know, when you multiple things, they just break up little pieces and fall down to the bottom of all the other blades of grass. Whereas in our market, we have to bag our clippings. And this type of lawn, if it is, you know, like this price, 6, 7 inches tall, and it's pretty, pretty overgrown in our books.

So the first thing that we do is edge and weed whack. And I know for some people, they would rather mow first and then edge and blow. But in our market, we do bay clippings. So any sort of debris clippings, as I'm edging or trimming along the perimeter of the lawn, I'm hoping I can kick those back into the lawn and suck them up. When I am actually bagging the lawn and doing the mowing itself. A lot of people also wonder why we keep the guards on. I think I talk about this later in the video here, but those guards really are to protect gravel, little pieces of debris flying back, breaking glass windows and honestly just being protective for the eyes and the person operating the equipment.

So this specific lawn has a whole bunch of these flower beds with trees in the middle of the lawn. It's a whole bunch of just walking in circles. So you'll see I edge it like this in a more vertical pattern using the line trimmer and then do a horizontal cut. When you're doing the horizontal cut, what you want to make sure you do is don't. What you should not do is go way lower than your cut length. So. So if I'm mowing the lawn at two and a half inches tall, I want to do a horizontal cut at 2 1/2 inches tall. I do not want it to be where along the perimeter of my lawn, whether it be the edge or along a fence line. And I'm scalping the lawn down like a half inch. That's where weeds, fungus and a lot of different issues with your lawn can begin is when you're cutting the grass that low along the perimeter. And a lot of times I see that along when someone is weed whacking and line trimming. So you can see here, this, this is a 30 inch mower. It's an X mark. 30X it's called, has a Kohler engine. It's a little bit beefier than the Kawasaki engine. It's 30 inches wide. It allows us to get done larger property a little bit faster. Honestly, this type of property that is not very big, it doesn't really save you a whole lot of time. It definitely makes the stripes look nice though. You'll see here the stripes do look nice on these 30 inch mowers a little bit wider of a cut. However, the downside is the fact that there's two blades which, which means the grass clippings get moved around a lot more underneath the deck, which is great in general. Usually you're going to get finer cut up clippings if you're mulching or if you're even bagging, it's usually pretty helpful. However, when it's wet it's very, very difficult to bag clippings. And so one of the downsides of these 30 inch mowers honestly is the fact that when it comes to Bagging wet clippings, it's a miserable mess. And when it comes to the. Yes, we have to haul away the grass clippings and the debris. And so you saw what I did there is instead of walking with the mower and then coming back and picking up the bin of debris, I made sure that I was putting the bin of debris where I knew I was going to be walking anyways to get to the lawn, to back to the truck. So again, when it comes to these small lawns, when you're stopping 30, 40 times in a day, you're in and out of the truck that many times, it comes down to the minutes and seconds that you can save on every single action. So there should be no wasted movement. So for example, if I am knowing that I'm gonna be walking down a road for a quarter mile using a line trimmer, why would I not trim off 20ft worth of line? So that when I run out of line, I'm not walking all the way back to the truck. Same thing with fueling up. Why would I walk away a long ways away on a commercial property, away from my truck, when I know I'm gonna run out of gas, you know, fuel up before I get started. And so all these little tiny efficiencies gained and time saved is really where money is made on residential lawn care. Yes, commercial lawn care is what most people think of as a big company and bigger businesses that have commercial lawn maintenance. However, money can be made on these small properties if you're efficient. And every single second and every single minute is carefully thought out and planned and efficient. So here I am bagging clippings, the bane of our existence here in Washington state. You'll notice, yes, there is a hole in the, in the exmark bag there. So shame on me. You'll see it spitting out a couple clippings here and there.

Just notice the gas, the fuel container, the fuel. Where you basically flew up this X mark, there's a lot of space. So the capacity of the fuel can, whatever it's called, I don't know what it's called. It's called a fuel something the gas, you know, the gas can on the top of that mower is very big, which is again, this, this mower is really built for larger properties. But again, we usually only have to fill this thing up maybe once a day. So what's nice about that is comparison to a regular 21 inch push mower. It's about twice the capacity of fuel in terms of volume that you can get inside this whatever it's called, fuel can thing, gauge, I don't know what it's called. It's a mower with a gas can on top. But it's a much. It's a very heavy mower. One thing about these small lawns, unfortunately, when you're using a 30 inch mower.

Is it's pretty hard on the body.

There's a.

It's a lot of.

It's very heavy.

Honestly, really, the whole reason why we're doing this today is just simply to convince Danny that he needs to hire Augusta to mow his lawn. Because last time I checked, he sent a video to the team chat. They're using a mower to take out a bush.

So we will leave Danny to the camera.

There's a reason why we didn't hire him for the field.

He'll stay behind the camera and I'll keep mowing lawns.

All right, next one up is this duplex. We're pulling a bunch of weeds and mowing. Let me show it to you. See, Danny was complaining about the fact that the grass doesn't look like it just got cut. See, what you don't know is that this person pre ordered what I put.

On the YouTube channel last week.

I said, elon Musk and I are going to create a formula that we spray in the lawn and then the lawn only it stops growing at two and a half inches. So that's what this one has. Okay, so take it easy in the comments. We're going to do this duplex here and then we're going to do the next door neighbors because route density, baby, we make money. And so 1, 1, 2, 3. All right.

Next to each other. That's the way I like it.

All right, so I'm in the backyard right now. The duplex is just trimming. And again, whenever you're push mowing or doing any sort of zero turn even, you're going to be looking for the edge of the perimeter of the lawn, but then also areas where the lawnmower can get like steep inclines in the backyard there.

Yes, I am using a weed whacker to trim back blackberries. Theoretically. Should I use being a hedge trimmer? Yeah, probably. But why do that? And this is so much more fun. So, yes, it's a line trimmer, but again, this is not going to take the BlackBerry bush out, by no means, because it's just a line trimmer. You can get a metal head. It would actually knock these things out, no problem. But the line trimmer can at least cut the new growth back. And just as long as we do that each time and you know, you can see me knocking the weeds down below the BlackBerry bushes there, it'll be fine as long as we do each and every service.

Again.

The importance of things like trimming the BlackBerry bushes with a line trimmer, all of that is so important. And you can really lose a customer over little things like forgetting that or forgetting certain parts of this property. You're going to see me in a second weeding in the backyard in kind of a, you know, gray zone of whether or not this is even the property for this specific address. However, having clear notes on the property is sweet. Super important. I think I actually will show you here in just a second. The aerial map that we attach to this profile to make sure that every single time one of our service members are there, we know exactly what to do.

You can see here why I'm trimming this side is really a matter of just the fact that it's so inclined. It's very risky. There's a four in four foot drop off the left hand side of this kind of wall. And I don't want a mower getting close to that even though it is dry. But if it definitely feels wet, you do not want zero turn mowers or push mowers for that back getting close to those inclines and drops.

So someone asked on the last video about edging along asphalt. It's very difficult, mostly due to the fact that you don't have a clear defined edge like you would with concrete. So along that asphalt right there, I'm using the line trimmer because it's more flexible and it does not require a stick edger to make it look like a decent edge. It's not gonna be perfect because the asphalt is not exactly smooth.

It's.

It's janky and kind of all messed up.

So I don't want to paint a rosy picture about being short because let me explain why we have a complex of short people every time we pick up a line trimmer. See, the average Joe gets to hang.

Their arms and trim like this.

The problem with being short is now I'm not parallel with the ground. So what do I have to do? I have to. I have to lift this up and pinch my shoulder and arm the entire time while I trim all the time. And it's very exhausting. So I have a solution though. Steel echo. You can make an adjustable head at the bottom that tilts like pivots. So when I'm here, I can just pivot it down and it be at the right angle. Then I don't have to be doing this all day long. If you're short, you know exactly what I'm talking.

Going to show you the coronavirus of the landscaping industry. It's called horsetail. You can never get rid of it, no matter what you spray on it. And when you pull on it, it's broken up all these little sections. So when you pull on it, it just breaks off and keeps growing. Even if a tiny little bit of the root is left in the ground.

The only way to keep it back is just keep pulling it so it doesn't keep seeding or just like wipe it out with something crazy. Crazy chemical based.

The job notes have to pull every weed, and it says that twice, which means they probably have complained at some point. So I got every weed on this whole hillside. Give me five or 10 minutes.

When it comes to weeding, it's really one of the areas of the service that I would say is most of our yellow slips. And if you don't know what yellow slips are, yellow slips are basically callbacks or complaints from a customer. And so when we look at weeding, it's very important to have it in the notes. Exactly how you're going to pull the weeds. Are you going to pull them by hand? Are you going to knock them down with the weed whacker? Are you going to spray them? Because that's usually a big reason for callbacks.

Doing my job too well, Danny. Okay, let's see here. See, one massive advantage of being short. When you're a landscaper, you don't have to bend over very far to grab a weed. It's just like. It's just like right here. Can you imagine being six and a half feet tall? If it bend like way over, it's fantastic. Massive advantage for short people like me.

All right, so we need to talk about a fundamental law of economics. It's called give and take.

Give.

Here I am out pulling weeds for you for the video camera, Danny, telling me what to do all day long. I need a little bit more giving, right? So you gotta give me some likes. We need 500 likes in this video if I am gonna do this again. Cause trust me, I'm getting old. The back gets sore, arms get sore, legs get sore. I need some likes to make it worth my while. Give and take.

See, this is where on P4P get a little frustrated. There's no way in the world. This is a couple weeks of growth. Someone skimped on the last Visit just to leave it up to me to pull up their slack. So get all these weeds out from underneath these barberry bushes trying to stick me here.

So on P4P, this is definitely something that can happen, especially with weeding. Someone can skimp on it, and then the next person is left with all the work. This being said, I got this done in budget hours. If I didn't, there's potential that we could go back into whoever was here before me and take from their work. Pull and give it to me.

All right, so comment below if you've ever pulled weeds, only to find out from the customer later. There's, like, some special family heirloom passed on from generation to generation or some.

Plant or herb from the other side.

Of the country that was $100,000. Because if these are weeds, great.

If they're herbs, well, they're not here anymore.

This is our spray. It is 100% organic. I'm not going to tell you what type it is, because the place we get it from is a really, really small farm. And I told you and everyone bought it, the price would go up. It would be inflated. So right now we're telling the franchise, but it's an organic product. Products that we don't need an applicator's license in our state.

Very good.

And, hey, I'm all about saving the environment. Who needs Roundup? This stuff works.

Great.

Story time with Mike. So when I first got started, it was like my third or fourth lawn with Augusta Lawn Care. Literally, I was, like, doing all the service I possibly could. Kind of sell the customer more things. Got a customer for mowing a lawn not too far from here, actually, from calling people out of the yellow pages. No joke. My sister would cold call people out of the yellow pages, set me up for estimates. So that said customer was like, hey, my plants need to be fertilized. And I was like, no problem. I can do that, too. I can mow lawns. There's no reason why I can't fertilize plants with a sprayer. This is the problem. Michael did not know anything about spray. So what did he do? He used the same backpack sprayer that he used for Roundup two days before, threw a little bit of fertilizer in there, and then sprayed every single plant in this whole house about a hundred plants. And, yeah, guess what happened a week later. They're all shriveling up and they're dying. That was very embarrassing. Still have that customer to this day, but I had to pay for two years for true Grain to come out and spread, spray those trees every couple months to get them back to life. So, yeah, I'm gonna stick with organic and I feel better about it with the guys in terms of just inhaling.

And things like that. So that being said, there's really nothing like Roundup that's gonna knock out these type of weeds long term. And yes, even crossbow or Cornerstone, there's a lot better products that people use Snapshot or even Castor on in terms of a granular product. But it is nice to have natural if you can.

All right, so this is why job.

Notes are so important. So we had two homeowners next to each other. However, the renters pay for the weeding part that we just finished. The owner, they pay for the mowing.

Part of this property.

So on the job notes, I read through that when I went to the next house, it said, hey, their service includes mowing this property. So I was confused. And then also we have on our job notes is a picture of the property from an aerial view. It actually shows the where to mow.

And where to trim.

So there is no room for confusion.

Although people still get confused somehow.

But definitely a great thing to do on job notes. Aerial photos. If there's like large properties or properties where it's confusing in terms of mowing and trimming, aerial pictures do different colors. Just using like your, you know, the app inside of your phone to draw lines and make colors and make it easier for people like me that come out here and mow once in a blue moon. But we know exactly what makes is.

Done based upon that picture.

So if you're kind of wondering how I do that, just go to your Photos app on your iPhone, if you have an iPhone and then open up, click Edit. In the top right hand corner, you see a circle with three smaller circles in there is where you're going to see an option to mark up. That's where you can literally take a screenshot from Google Maps and then open it up in your Photos app and start marking up using different colors. In terms of where things, certain things in the property are, this is great for especially large properties or confusing properties like this where it's like, hey, the owner has part pays for part of it and the renters pay for another part of it. Certain areas are not included or are included. Same thing with big projects, but definitely large maintenance like commercial properties. This is a game changer. Definitely a need for any crew getting on a site.

So just blowing everything off here, making it look good.

See, everyone was giving me flack about blowing things into the road in my last video. Look what I'm doing.

All right.

I am double checking my notes. You can see here we got estimated time is 37 minutes. Estimated time remaining 13 minutes.

So we beat budgeted time and I.

Actually spent quite a bit more time on the weeding, even though we.

We did barely beat the budgeted hours.

On the weeding portion, which was before this job. But I sprayed everything, pulled every single weed. So it'll really.

The crew for the next few months.

Is going to be good. Like, I sprayed everything, so that'll be good. Now I got to do my regular job, which is kind of pouring in throughout the day. I'm missing a bunch of calls, but it's okay. I'll catch up this afternoon. It's hot in here.

So one of the things I also do is Zach, who is our graphic designer, does the pictures that created for me and then asks for captions. So he has three of those I need to do here as well for today. If you haven't subscribed or followed on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, I don't know what you're doing. It's free. Just do it.

Hey, Mike, here. Make sure you watch this other video.

Because it's just as good, if not.

Better than the one you just watched.