Q&A at the Office: What is the Best Lawn Care CRM Software? (YELLOW SLIPS!)

Hey everyone. Welcome to another live Facebook session here. Before we get into questions, because everyone's just still hopping online, a couple quick announcements. First of all, I'm at the office here. It is a little past 8pm on a Friday evening. A couple quick announcements before everyone is hopping on Facebook. I'm sorry. Franchise training is going to be June 4th, 5th and 6th. That's our next one. So we've had to shove them off the past couple months because coronavirus. If you're interested in becoming a franchisee, go to augustalongarservices.com franchise. You're gonna book a zoom call with me so I can see a face to face and we can talk about see if it's a good fit for you or not. But the bigger announcement is that we are actually doing discovery days. So June 20th is our next Discovery Day and you can come here for a day. We're gonna do a tour of this location where we've been in operation for a long time. We're gonna go down to our Mount Vernon location. We're gonna go to Command center, gonna show you the training facility for the franchisees. And so if you're interested in becoming a franchisee, but you'd rather come see and check things out first, that's always an option. So if you have questions about that, let me know. But right now I am at the office. Everything is pretty much wrapped up for the week. Everyone's back besides a few trucks. Oh, that's the trailer. They're in the back. Nevermind. So anyways, I'm here gonna answer some questions. I already got some questions on the texting platform. Go ahead and answer those. But if you guys got questions, there's 15 or 16 of you guys already on here. Just post below and I'll get to those. But before we get to those, let me answer some of the questions that are popping in on the text messaging app. So I'm just gonna go through these again. If you guys have questions, post below. If you want to see anything outside, I can try to. It's almost dark though.

Questions I haven't answered. Okay, first off, LMN or Service Autopilot, if those were the only two softwares available and you were starting out, which one would you go with and why? That's a very tough question. There's positives and negatives to both of those software programs. I would say Service Autopilot, but I would make a caveat and say that it's all about keeping it simple on both of those platforms. Honestly, they're very, very complex programs. They're built for companies that are multi million dollar companies and that have massive amounts of massive amounts of project managers, office people, et cetera. So it's all about simplification. It's easy to get lost in those software packages, especially when you're starting out. Next one is. Hey Mike, what is your strongest and most effective source of marketing that is not from word of mouth? Would love to see you discuss this if you haven't already. Definitely could use the help. Thank you. We've been using these things called lead forms on Facebook ads and really, really crushing it. But also the team has been putting these out this past week during the coronavirus whole thing. It says the grass is growing and we are mowing. We are essential services and we are stronger together on the other side. In light of the current health crisis, we are doing mowing estimates without incident in person appointments. We will drive by your property and email you an estimate within 24 hours. Give us a call today for a free mowing quote. So those are the door hangers. The guys are putting out this next to our keyboard where they get the keys in the morning. So that's what we're doing right now. We're seeing a lot of traction down in Mount Vernon, which is our new location, new corporately owned location. We're seeing a lot of really good traction right now on Facebook lead forms and doing some cool stuff there. Okay, next question. What is a good profit margin to have overall? I've said this before and it's just very much of a general term. It's going to depend a lot on your service, is how many employees you have, your overhead structure, if you have a shop, etc. However, a good margin I would say is what you want to shoot for is 20% net profit margin. And that's assuming a million dollar business. If you're smaller than a million dollars in revenue, you can do a lot higher margin because you don't have a lot of overhead, you don't need office people, you don't have a lot of employees. You do work yourself, you're out in the field. That inflates those numbers. So when I say 20% net profit margin, I'm talking about a million dollar business. Plus if you're doing less than that, you should be higher. But than that in terms of take home pay. And.

So I usually break it down like this. 20% is a really well oiled machine. Lots of systems, the owner does not have to be there. 15% margin, it's like good like that's a good business. I would not beat anyone up over that 10%. I feel like you're starting to get a little bit risky and you're starting to play with what's happening now with the coronavirus or a downturn, something like that wiping you out just because it's not as it's not like. I just truly believe you need that protection and that net margin to be able to withstand economic pressures and take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace when they come. And so if you're under 10%, I would be really worried turning the light on outside here. So that's kind of my $0.02 on net price. Any questions? You guys have any questions for me, let me know. Just post below in the comment section.

We are pretty busy. We've been crazy busy here with. We're kind of. What's crazy is that our governor today extended our stay at home order for our state until the end of May. But the thing is the grass is growing and people have been putting off their services. And what we're seeing across the board with our franchisees and other landscapers is that people that have been putting off their services, well, guess what? Now you can't because the grass is a foot and a half tall. So I think this week this local office probably did a hundred plus estimates. Down in Mount Vernon, I think they did probably about 20 plus estimates. And all of them are overgrown lawns, people that have been putting off services and now they can't. And so we're trying to take advantage of that, really trying to.

Bulk up on our recurring maintenance and mowing services and upselling those to our existing database of contacts. So that's really what we've been working on a lot and it's been working really well. So, like what's called 8 o', clock, the guys just finished working the day on a Friday evening. And I think there's a few crews, you can see over there, a few crews going out there tomorrow, it looks like, just to wrap up the week on some of the commercial sites. But if you guys have any questions, let me know. Post comments below. I will answer anything I possibly can in the next few minutes here.

Let's see if there's any other questions coming in on the texting platform. Can I come. Can I pay you to come implement P4P or do I need to become a franchisee? I have a greenhouse irrigation, landscape install and maintenance business. You do not need to come and you do not need to pay for me to do it on the conference that is on the course. A lot of it was explained. And I think a lot of times people think that P4P is a magic bullet, when in reality it's a process. You have to have the trust with your employees, you got to have open book management, you got to be able to have that cultural aspect if you're going to implement P4P. And so just implementing P4P a lot of times actually leads to a lot of bad things happening in businesses. And even if you look at like lawn care millionaire Jonathan Patosnik, they tried to implement it about five, six years ago and they ended up having to go back on it and going back to hourly. And just because P4P just is just a bunch of numbers. But you gotta have the soft systems, the culture. You've got to have all of that stuff in place to actually make it work with your team. And so you can pay anyone you want in the world to come implement P4P for you. But if your culture and your team doesn't buy into it, it's worthless and it will backfire. But in terms of the franchise, we just try to make it as easy as possible to switch to P4P. And we are launching next Tuesday, we have a zoom call with the franchisees and I'm showing version 2 of P4P software and then we're launching it later this month where they'll have an app and it'll be super easy. And that's the easy side, though, like, calculation is not the hard part. The hard part is creating a culture where P4P works and where people want to work for P4P and not be hourly, that's the harder part. And so once you get over the hump and you make the change and you get rid of the people that should not be working for you and that are not going to fit in that culture. That's when, like, amazing stuff happens. All the things that I talk about, how I talk about it all the time, how much amazing stuff it's done for us locally and for me as the owner to be able to step out, all of that. All those benefits come after the initial incredible difficulty of switching from hourly P4P. It's very difficult.

You can't just have someone slap it down and like, okay, we're doing this, you're gonna have to fire people, you're gonna have to let some people are gonna leave. It's not an easy process. And once you're over that and you've implemented it, the quality of people that want to work for you is incredible. The amount of people that come and try to. The quality of those candidates is so much greater when you are doing P4P and they are working with people that are kicking butt all day long and working as hard as they possibly can instead of slacking off. And you really attract the people that are tired of working with people that are subject performers. So let me show you a little bit around. Apparently there's no questions. Everyone knows everything. That's fantastic. If you guys have questions, post them below. I'll show you around a little bit. This is from Jocko Willink. Liz got this for all of the crew, a whole bunch of them here. So I don't even know what it's about but he wrote Extreme Ownership. The guys have listened to several of his other books and so she's gonna give this to all of them. Looks like she got 15 or 20 of those there. Then the day they had the end of a photo competition. So $50 went to the winner of the photo competition because Liz wants photos for Facebook and social media. So that's. That is. This is the yellow slip system, by the way. I'm gonna cover up names. This is the yellow slip system. You guys have seen this at conference where we have callbacks. People have. So this is actually a damage case.

See if I can show this. Yeah, so you can show this. So it's a damaged case of our equipment. They broke the doors on DT3, which is dump trailer three. There's the client's last name. And then where my hands are at shows who was on the who did this or who's responsible for this yellow slip. And then what happens. Let's see here. It goes from yellow slips, it goes from yellow slips to resolve yellow slips. Once they go back to the job site, they sign where it says owned by. Where it says owned by. They sign that. Then they put it in the resolve yellow slip section. And then when it is time for the team meeting, we pick up all the ones that are sitting there and go over the as a team. Another quick thing you might like, if you haven't seen this before, suggestion bank deposit your innovative game changing idea to improve Augusta. If your idea is implemented, you'll receive $50. So there's one that implemented or put in there last week that we might actually implement. So we'll see. But a lot of the little stuff around the shop that increases efficiencies like the hardscaping boxes, toolboxes, the ramps for getting off blades, stuff like that, the fueling thing, all the little Stuff that they do to increase the efficiencies, a lot of times comes from. From their suggestions. So I really encourage you guys, if you don't already. Oops. If you guys don't already ask for suggestions, ask for feedback from your crew. They're on the front lines. They have the best suggestions you could possibly be doing for efficiencies and things. I've talked about this before, but like this right here, this clipboard is for non P4P activities. So if they're sharpening blades. Nick on here was sanitizing trucks. The pat every single day this week. This one, they're fixing a shed door, I think the green shed door. Anything that's non P4P, they basically just put in their time in and timeout. They put their name and then Liz signs off on it and goes onto their paycheck. This is also where they can sign up for a meeting if they have questions about their P4P after the paycheck comes out. So every pay period. What's really cool, though, and what I'm looking forward to is version two of P4P that we're launching for the franchisees. They will get. The employees will get a text message every single day of what they made the day before. And so I think at first, we'll get a lot of questions, but you always want the incentive to be as close to the performance as much as possible. That's why Emma gets quarterly and annual bonuses or, like, pools of money. Like, okay, we're gonna start with 10,000 at the end of the year. Whatever's left over from damages. Will this disperse between. Between everyone. That's fine and good, and I think it helps a little bit. But the closer you can get the actual incentive to the performance, in my experience, the greater the yield and the greater the benefit and the greater the change in behavior that you're looking for and greater efficiencies. So we have a security system here. Whoa.

There's an. That is based upon movement. So if there's moving, there's like an auditory alarm. Then we have actual security cameras. Then we got motion detectors. What else we got? We got. These are motion detecting lights that come on. They're solar charged. Then we have actual cameras up there. Then we got fake cameras. This is a fake camera with a real camera below it. And then we got other fake cameras, but then real cameras on the other side. Back in the back, we got these strobe lights. I can't point to it. Right there. It's a red strobe. Light that comes on if there's motion. And so that's really cool on this other side because we've had issues with stealing and stuff. But when they hear lights going off and. Or they. When they see lights going on and off, and when they hear the noise is going off, it scares them away pretty good. And then the cameras catch them. But these are trailerless setups. If you guys have been here before, you've seen these. We got several more of these coming. We hired three more people in the past week, so we're gonna have to get some more.

Stuff up and running. So I think they ordered a couple more ramps, maybe one more trailer to set up. We hired three more people in the past week. We just been super busy here. So I'm just really fortunate, really blessed that during this time when a lot of people are hurting their businesses, that we're able to keep working. And so, you know, obviously the gym, we can't do anything there. And it's been horrific financially, but really fortunate. We can work here. And everyone that is here working, working really hard. We gave everyone a bonus last week just because they've been super awesome in terms of. As most of you know, some employees can make more sitting at home right now, or close to what they make at least, especially if they're lower, paying like 14, 15 an hour. They make more money on unemployment right now, and so for them, no one tried to SAP the system or take advantage of stuff. And so I just really appreciated that. So I felt like giving them all a bonus.

Was necessary and good. They deserved it. They've all been working hard, and like I said, they all just left. And it's 8:30. All right, I'm gonna let you guys go. I'm gonna get some work done getting ready for. I'm actually working on the franchisee training up for in June, making a few changes because the new pay for performance software is gonna be coming out, and so it's a lot simpler. And so I'm working on the training for them. And then next Tuesday, we have the Zoom meeting with all the franchisees. We have quarterly meetings with all the franchisees where they. It's like a roundtable. So we got. We're gonna get on Zoom. They'll be able to ask me questions and really, like, hard questions too, like stuff that they might not ask publicly and things like that. So it's gonna be really good. Kind of a state of the union for the franchise and where we're at, what we're trying to do. So I'll be showing them version 2 of P4P and lots of really cool stuff that's coming out. Really looking forward to getting more support that they can call 24 7. Not just with the command center. Like, that's cool. But we also want to. You know, my goal is to. Where they can call someone any time of the day with a video call and then get help on an estimate or even on a project. And we're working with Lee to develop that so that, like, literally any time of the day they can. You know, if they're in the middle of a project and they have a question about, like, a drainage system or, like, what to do on a wall or how. How to estimate a certain project, that they have someone in their back pocket all the time. So we're working on that, working towards that. But the newest thing for them is version 2 of Augusta of P4P software. So any questions? My goodness. There's no questions. It must be a Friday evening. Everyone's been at home all day long now. They don't want to ask questions about lawn care and landscaping. That's all I want to talk about. Any questions, guys? Friday evening. I know it's late for a lot of you, but, yeah, like, it's. We've been. We've been very fortunate here. This is our best April. Well, I guess it's May 1st, so it was our best April ever in terms of the local shop. We just really invested in the marketing, really put the pedals of the metal. We hired three people in the past week. Got into the truck last week.

Yeah, like, I know. And I'm hesitant even to say that, honestly, a lot, because I know some people are hurting really, really a lot. And we've just been very fortunate to have the cash reserves from previous years to be able to invest at this time. Hire the people that are unemployed and really overqualified. Hire them for. I don't know if you can see or not, but people are asking questions. Oh, no. People are asking questions and I can't see them. That's horrible.

Okay, one second. Everyone hold the phone. I'm gonna turn this, but don't worry.

What is going on? Why can't I see your questions?

One second here.

Why can't I see your questions.

Man? Oh, you know what? I have an idea. Keep posting them. I'm gonna answer them all. Give me one second.

I'm gonna bounce on here.

That's so weird. Why can't I see your questions popping in? Give me a second. I'm gonna go into my Laptop here and I will be able to. Here we go.

Questions, questions, questions. Live.

All right, turn this down. Comments button. Yeah, no comments button. I clicked the comments button.

Yeah.

That'S so frustrating. All right, well, I got the questions pulled up on my laptop, so here we go. All right. Oh my goodness. Yeah, there are a lot of questions. Okay, let me get through these.

Phil. What's up, Mike? Mike, how your next door local deals been doing for you? Any positive feedback yet? Yeah, we're doing really good stuff on.

Nextdoor and for a lot of you. For 100 to $200 per month, you can literally reach every single house in a 10 mile radius around your shop or address.

Really, really good stuff. I like it. As a second touch, we don't see a huge amount of direct conversion, but for clicks, cost per click is still super good. We're seeing a anywhere between two and four dollars per cost per click, which is really good.

David Rowley.

I used to use Lawn Pro. With no experience, what is the best way to learn software in and out? Lawn Pro is very simple. If you have problems with Lawn Pro, do not try to switch to LMN or to service Autopilot. They're very complex systems that are built for large companies. Do I feel they could do a better job of easing in smaller companies? Yes, I do feel like they could do a better job of that.

And YardBook and LawnPro are great starting softwares. They just don't have the automation capabilities that we really want to scale the business quickly. And we also use for command center at Augusta Lawn care for all the franchisees and we use to save a huge amount of time on admin time. And that's the name of the game. So it's just a bigger, much, much bigger learning curve than Lawn Pro or Yardbook. Mark Hanson, do you have any franchisees in Utah? No, we don't. Mark, you should come over for discovery day on June 20th. You can come over here for a day and I'll show you around the places. We'll go to the command center, we'll go to the training facility, go to both shops and see if it's a good fit for you. Or just book a call with me on augustalawncareservices.com franchise. How much would you charge for overgrown lawns? Specifically those over a foot long? So we charge based on our hourly rate. And so right now, like I said, we are getting mostly 12 to 16, 18 inches long on the lawn that we're getting new customers on. And so those are always, usually Two, three, four times as much as a regular mow. And those are. That's the reason why this time of year we send an estimator out, whereas most the other time of the year, you could do it by square footage or you could do it by lot square footage. But right now, literally four or five times the time it takes on that initial mow. And so we charge based upon how long it's going to take. And sometimes it might take six hours on one initial MOW, which is usually a $40 MOW. All right, David Rowley. I like it too, but setting up routes and services is being difficult because I'm getting slammed with work right now. I'm basically using for estimates and that's it. All right, so that's Lawn Pro. That's what you're talking about? Yep. Okay. Amity loves Lawn Pro. Need to play with it.

Routes on Lawn Pro is garbage, in my opinion. This is from Phil's. Too laggy. And never correctly identifies customer's address. Honestly, that was the biggest beef we have with Lawn Pro 2. The routing was not that great. That being said, it's been a few years. I know they've improved the software, but when you start getting hundreds of services in a day and hundreds of to dos and you have lots of people and parts moving, you cannot have issues with your routing. And so that was actually our biggest reason to get away from Lawn Pro as we grew up the business. Mark Hansen says Lawn Pro isn't as user friendly as others, but it can work just as well. Utilize their info database and their support staff and ultimately try new things with it. And don't shrink when it doesn't work the way you thought it would. It is a great platform and can maximize your use of time. Amity, Phil, does Mike not see our questions? Yeah, I'm sorry, guys. I just started seeing your questions.

I guess not. Not in YouTube. The text. I don't know how. Kate. Just started my own business and great advice. Do's and do nots. I would learn as much as you possibly can. I would listen to every podcast and audiobook while you're working. Cause right now, if you're just starting out, you are working, which means you are in the field, which means you're by yourself a lot, which means you need to tap into some good knowledge and you need to.

Listen to audiobooks. You need to educate yourself and just pour yourself in. Like, don't be listening to sports podcasts right now. While you're working. While you're working. Listen to work stuff if you like sports podcasts, if you like listening to gossip or whatever on the news, like do that at home. That's your personal time. When you're working, you should be How I think about it was when I'm working I should be learning and working about my business. So like when I was first starting out in the field, getting a lot of the work done myself, I would be plugged into Audible, into audio books and so that's what I would do if I was starting out. That's my biggest piece of advice probably.

Did your business receive any money for Eidl? Yes, Jose or Yasui, we did. And now Eidl program for the advance is closed down.

Hopefully it opens up again. Joshua Berry Learn me David I'll trade landscape advice for IT support Mark Hanson do you have any franchise in Utah? No we don't. Yeah, in Idaho. Best app to keep track of everything. Just use a great CRM you want as much as possible in the same software system. The more software packages you start diversifying, getting more of it just starts to get confusing.

Very interested. How do I get more info about flying out to you guys in June? Send me an email to franchisegustalongarservices.com, and we'll make sure for the June 20th discovery day that you are set up. If you're if that's what you're referring to. Otherwise just we can talk together and see if it's a good fit. On augustalongersurface.com franchise book a call with zoom we can talk one on one. Mike well, not sure why none of you mentioned Jobber. We really love that platform. Yeah Mike, I like that platform too a lot. It's actually one of my favorite in terms of ease of use. The problem is as you get into the Pro version it becomes about as expensive as Service Autopilot and Lawn Pro.

And the customization of the.

Automations is just not there yet. However, ease of use is equivalent to like more of like a Lawn Pro. Like very easy to use in terms of like the learning curve is much lower on jobber 100%. Really love their platform. I wish that Jobber and the design and user interface of Jobber could be married with the customization and the flexibility and the automations that Service Autopilot provides. That'd be like a match made in heaven. Honestly, one day I really want to create our own software for the franchisees because I don't see anything that I love just exactly the way it is. Do you think pay per click on Google Ads is cheaper right now. It is a little bit. We've tested this a lot. It is a little bit cheaper. Every single week we are seeing different. Like it's just moving so fast. So we have been spending a lot of money just to be testing what's working. So here's what I've seen. Print marketing, absolute nosedive in return on investment during this whole crisis. We saw originally Facebook ads were doing really, really well because we were marketing no contact estimates and drive by estimates worked really, really well. Then what happened is the whole marketplace for Facebook got saturated because everyone and their dog was having an ad having to do with their response to the coronavirus. And so we began to get diluted. So our customer acquisition cost started to get back to where it was normal. So it wasn't much of a deal. And then we really started attacking the door hangers by actually addressing the situation.

And so that worked really well. Now what's working really well is lead forms on Facebook is crushing. And I mean crushing it. Incredible. I have actually never seen customer acquisition costs as low as I have in the past five days. I posted literally yesterday to our franchisees. But I think it's so important that I'll probably be making another video, our third one on the lead forms on Facebook. And it's incredible right now. The reason for it is because people are on that channel and it's like every other marketing tool. It eventually people crowd it out and it becomes diluted. But right now we are seeing incredible numbers from Facebook ads using lead forms. It's been like Mount Vernon location is gonna be built on that a hundred percent. Today they did eight estimates, all from that. It's incredible. All right. And like I said, it's changing so fast. In two weeks that could be diluted and the opportunity moves on. Because what's happening is like usually with marketing, I see trends happening every three to six months. And I'm just keeping an eye on what's working, what's not. Right now I'm literally seeing it change week by week. Like, what's working, what's not? Because ad platforms are changing their requirements, they're changing which ones, they're boosting more on their feeds. They're also changing which ad products they have in general. It's like next door deals, they've changed some stuff on local deals. People like older clientele. The people we are trying to contact right now are getting on social media, they're getting on next door, they're getting attached to be able to use devices. And so there's opportunity. There's just. And what's amazing is like the thing is print literally could come back in storm and in a few months and be like the thing because people are tired of their devices and everyone's like, oh, be off of social media. And like now print somehow takes off. I just don't see that happening that fast because we now have our target demographic, the 70, 80, 60 year old people that in the past might have been shunning technology. In the past two months, three months, they've been forced to figure out Amazon, they've been forced to figure out YouTube, they've been forced to figure out how to use Facebook to contact their kids and and their grandkids. This is game changer. They're getting used to using email, they're getting used to using voice notes, they're getting used of seeing a video instead of a phone call. This stuff is game changer. I think it's gonna change our industry forever in the way that we market because it's not even marketing the way we communicate with our customers because they're getting more tech savvy because of all this that's been going on.

Mark Hanson, where do you put job listings to get potential employees? Tried Facebook but not getting too many employees or we've never seen good traction off of Facebook for hiring people.

But that's just in our experience. We've used Craigslist and we've made it very, very detailed what we're looking for. We've put videos on there. We have.

Really P4P attracts a lot of the higher performers and we explain why that is the case and we really talk about why our business exists. And for Augusta Lawn Care, it's to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. You've got to figure out what your why is and really talk about that on those job ads to get those the really, really good performers. If you just talk about hourly rate, if you just talk about the type of work that you do, if you just show before and after pictures, you're going to be like every other job ad. You're going to be like every other lawn care company. You're going to be absolutely no different than anyone else. You've got to make those job postings different. Like if there's nothing that, like if you're just saying, oh, we need work, like there's nothing different about that. Every other lawn care business needs help too. Like if you're growing so you've got to make yourself different, you got to have something like P4P. You've got to have a mission that's like worth striving for. You got to have a company culture that's growing and expanding. You've got to be able to brag about your team culture because they are great and people do come to work wanting to improve themselves. And if you have that, you've got to show that on those ads if you want to attract great talent. We've hired three people in the past week. We let one go.

And.

Here we go. And that was to protect culture. Letting the one person go was to protect culture. We were definitely needing that person. We were super, super busy. But we hired three more. And they're people that we would never have been able to probably get before this virus because they are overqualified. But the posting, your job postings are so important. And if you do not stick out and if you're just offering an hourly rate for getting work done, you're not going to get anything special.

All right. Past four months I've made 20k. This is Jose. I made this year $20,000 gross revenue and 4,000 expenses. Is that good profit for mowing? Yeah. So like in this case, for example, this, you know, hojuay. Sorry, I'm saying your name wrong, but like you're making like 80% profit in terms of what you're saying here. And that's because you, you're doing the work. As you add more overhead, as you add more people, that does decrease. That being said, right now, if you break your leg, you go from 20,000 gross to zero if you're doing the work. And so as soon as you get an employee, one employee will take that 4,000 expenses to 7,000 expenses. Right. But can you go from 20 to 30? So that's just the business of scaling David Lindbergh as far as audio to listen to when starting out, what would you recommend? I've mentioned this a lot. I would literally go to best sellers on business, on the business category of audio books, Audible and let's start listening honestly, what are your thoughts? Mike Eisenhart, what are your thoughts on subs for snow and landscaping services, managing them and working towards some regional contracts? We personally, that's not what we focus on. We focus on residential, we focus on small commercial that are willing to pay a premium price due to what we offer in terms of communication, in terms of having the command center, in terms of having the website and the professionals that the guys have, they've got to be willing to pay a higher price. So we typically are not doing that.

But in terms of we do not like doing subbing. The reason is because our customer is expecting our level of professionalism and, and for me to sub out to someone else, I want them to be able to perform for that customer. Because my name is on the line when I sub or recommend someone else. I'm putting my name, my reputation, our company, what we expect and what our customers can expect from us. I'm putting that on the line when I go refer someone else. And I can't control them. I can't control if they don't, if they come to. If they cuss out a customer or if they are smoking on the job or if they come to the job high or whatever or their employees do. I can't control that. I can only control my culture and my team and my company and the way we communicate on the phone and the way that we communicate in terms of speed. So we don't like subbing. We don't like to do it.

Phil's long care. Mike, we need your Facebook lead form templates. It's not rocket science. Figure it out, people. I show the franchisees, but I can't show you that. That's like our secret sauce. But honestly, like, just search, like, do a few hours of research on, on Facebook lead form stuff. You'll be able to figure it out. It's not rocket science. There's a few things in terms of creative, like, stuff like that is obviously helpful that we have for the franchisees, but, like, you can figure this stuff out, I promise you. Spend time or become franchisees. That'd be really cool too. It's a better deal doing that, honestly. I was talking to someone yesterday. They were like, there's no. They literally called me. They were mad. They were kind of. They were. They've always kind of trolled my videos and, like, made negative remarks and stuff. And so they call me and they're all mad. They're like saying that I had hidden costs besides the twelve hundred dollars a month for the franchisees. They're like, you cannot afford to give them a website and you give them all this other stuff and like, you can't support them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can't give them software. And they're like, we know you're spending $80,000 on P4P software. You can't give this to the franchisees without charging them. I'm like, there's nothing hidden. Like, I know it sounds to be good, too good to be true, but, like.

We will not be profitable with the franchise for probably 50 to 80 units. And it's because like the value that you're getting for twelve hundred dollars a month is incredible. And I know that like I know from a financial perspective it's impossible to get like the website and all that stuff. But anyways.

Yovoni Leal, will you please share your Facebook lead form? I just talked about that. Mark Hanson, as always, thank you for your time and getting back to us. You and your experience have been a huge help. Cool. Alright guys, well I'm go ahead and sign off. It's Friday night, I'm going to go spend some time with my parents. But thank you guys for joining me again. If you guys are interested in having a Discovery Day June 20, you can come out, you can fly out to Washington state or spend a day. I'm going to show you around the place, see if Augusta Lawn Care and the franchise is right for you and I'll take you to Mount Vernon where we just started that location. I'll show you around this whole shop. I'll show you Command center as well as the training facility. That's going to be June 20th. But if you're actually serious about becoming a franchisee, I need you to kind of hop on board because we need to get your website built. Takes us about six weeks to get you really set up. Five, six weeks. And so June 4th, 5th and 6th, 6th is the next franchisee training. We're gonna have several of you coming up and really looking forward to the next group of franchisees joining us after this whole virus. And we have a few hardscape design build people that have been in this industry for a long time and they've realized that they really gotta get recurring revenue, they've gotta get maintenance figured out and so they're switching over to Augusta Lawn Care because of that. And so this is the thing, let me just say this and I think the best franchisees for Augusta Lanka know this and this is like becoming Augusta lankier franchisee is not a silver bullet. It's not like I'm just like gonna give you this great business. It's hard work. Like it's still hard work to switch to P4P for franchisees. We're giving them the tools. They're getting like one on one access with me to get set up with P4P. It's still hard. Like it's not an easy flip of a switch. Half the franchisees are still working on switching the ones that had an existing business, especially the bigger businesses, they're still switching like this week, one of them is switching to P4P. But it's a process. You got to change a lot of things. You've got to change the way you do your budget hours. You got to switch your culture and the way you communicate with your team. You got to do buy in. You got to go through the steps of getting them on board with P4P. And so it's not a silver bullet. The best franchisees are the ones that realize, hey, I'm still gonna have to grind, still have to work, I'm still gonna have to invest in marketing, but this is gonna cut out the learning curve of.

Trying to figure out Facebook lead forms, trying to figure out how to make a website, trying to figure out all of these things that we can take that curve out for you. So I just really believe in this. Like, I know people can say what they want and like say I'm trying to sell or like make a bunch of money off. This is like, it is what I Wish I had five, 10, five, six years ago to build a great business and build a business built on systems and build the business that I have now. Like the fact that I am here on Friday evening and really don't even know any of the jobs that are going on, don't know any of the problems, is a testament to the great people that are hired here and the culture, but also to the fact that there are systems in place to make sure that I do not have to be here and that there's an estimator that's getting the jobs done. That there is. You know, they're doing affirmations over here. So today's May 1st, so there's only one affirmation up here. Like this is for Will and Nick owning mistake and going back to first time job. So they must have made a mistake and then gone back and fixed it right away and owned their mistake. So like that's culture, right? And that can run without you. You don't have to be there. And so I really hope that Augusta Lawn Care and like the franchise is a way for people to get those systems so they do not have to be a slave to their business. Like I'm not here at 8:30 because like I have to be here. There's nothing for me to do for this business. I'm working on the franchisee stuff here. But like, I want to give that to people. I want to give people the opportunity to not have to be in their business and be able to really think about strategically how to run their company and think about marketing and have the time to spend working on Facebook lead forms because they have a crew out there working for them and they have an estimator, they have systems in place for estimating and making sure that work is profitable and making sure that P4P is working because they're based on budgeted hours. And that's not easy. Like the franchisees are not getting to where like I'm at right now, where they can just like walk away from the business and everything would be fine. They're not getting there right away. This is like a two, three year hard work to change the P4P and figure out budgeted hours when you're doing estimates. Because like right now if you're just going and eyeballing things, switching to budget hours gonna take some work. And right now I'm literally working on our next training for June and putting way more emphasis on estimating because I've found out that so many people, like we did on the last training that, that we did for the franchisees, when they're here, we take them to a few different sites and we go over projects and we go over like, hey, what would you bid here? Here's how you should be looking at this. Measuring it out, showing them how to take the project management video, how to send that to command center, like how to do all those things. But still that's one of the hardest things for people to figure out is like estimating using budgeted hours, simplification, keeping it super, super easy, using project management videos. You don't have to go back to the job. And so like right now, literally as I'm talking about that, you talking to you guys, the reason I'm sitting here is because I'm making better training for estimating for new franchisees. It's not easy. This stuff is not easy. And some people think that like, that I'm just gonna like show up their, their place even like and implement P4P. It's not happening. And people, you know, if you look at what we talked about at Landscape Summit and some people thought that like half of that was fluff or a couple people did and they thought that like it was like not about P4P. It's like, no, you need to have culture, you have systems, you need to have a great hiring and you need to have like people that care and you need to have transparent pricing and you need to have open book management. That's what is the foundation for P4P is it all runs on trust. And so I think sometimes people are looking For a magic bullet. They're looking for someone just come fix their problems. They're looking for one tactic that's gonna change their business. There's just so many elements. There's so many things in this industry that can sink your business and there's so many things that can really take it to the next level. And.

Man, like.

Past two months, man, has been really eye opening for me in this industry. The past businesses that have closed their doors and the businesses that are just killing it right now, literally. The guy we hired today, his name is Ben, he came from a local business that their owner decided to go solo. And I don't, I'm not against that. I don't think it's bad. I think every owner needs to figure out what they want to do, how they want the business to serve them. But honestly, if someone ever has said I want to have five, six, seven crews and I want to be working on my business instead of in my business, I want to be the estimator and I don't want to have to be actually doing the work and I want to be able to do this when I'm 70 years old if I have to because my kids can manage it and I don't have to be there every day. Like if they said that and then now they're going to solo, they're giving up on their dreams. That's what I have a problem with. I don't have a problem with them making the business meet their lifestyle. That's great, I respect that. I think that's great and that's why I don't say negative things about it. But when they do that, they're going back on their dreams and they're breaking the promise with themselves to continually strive for excellence. And that's my problem with it. And I want to give the systems to make sure that they can get through that time, that your pricing is correct, that you can actually scale because your marketing has like systems in place. And so yeah, past couple months a lot of companies have folded. Some design build companies I know are over leveraged, they're going under.

And so I just really hope that some of the content that I share is a warning. I don't care if you come a franchisee, I don't care if you buy a book or become a course number. I want you to implement this stuff. Like the number one thing we talk about, the very first thing I talk about when franchisees come here is why we exist. And guess what? It has nothing to to do with making a bunch of money. We want to change this industry and I just hope that people take what we talk about. Like if you listen to the past two, three years of landscape business course, saving cash, the amount of cash you need to have on hand, deleveraging yourself, buying cheaper trucks and not having leases, focusing on recurring revenue instead of projects, focusing on your culture so that you can implement P4P. All the stuff we've been talking about right now is what's determining who implemented those things and who has not. And across the board, the companies that I'm seeing going under out of business are the people that have been like ignoring or just not learning and not educating themselves. That's why I respect all the people that logged on this video. It's midnight, some of your places and you're learning, you're trying to educate yourself, you're trying to get better. And those are the people I want to hang out with. Those are the people I want to be with. There's a reason why, you know, Liz has bought this for all of our team here. She bought all these books for them because, like, we're full of a team that wants to get better and improve and help the franchisees. And we're always trying to figure out, like, what can we make it better for them and figure out systems for them and we want to improve. And.

I don't want to hang out with landscapers that don't want to improve themselves, don't want to get better, don't want to do the hard work on themselves to improve. And so I respect everyone on this video and just everyone that through this time that's really been hard for so many people and put other people out of business, they have stepped up, they have learned, they have done the hard work on themselves, they made the hard changes in their businesses, they have gotten desperate in some scenarios and really begin to figure out recurring revenue and figuring out maintenance when they have never done it. Like, you've got to do the hard work on yourself and on your business if you want to get through these type of time times and if you want to grow and expand during these times instead of contract and giving up on your dreams, do not let this time when there is so much negative news and there is so much stuff going on and you'll see other businesses in the next few months close down in your local area. Do not let this season of negativity keep you from.

Going out and getting your dreams and like just going after and doing the hard work.

And the only, like.

Right now people are expecting so much to just be given to them because of hard times. And I don't disagree with that. I don't think that. I'm not saying about the government thing, I'm just saying like success is not going to be given to you. It's going to come from a hard work, it's going to come from dedication, it's coming from long hours. It's not easy. You know, having a business that's run on systems is not going to come easy. It's not going to be on a silver platter, like, oh yeah, here's a million dollar business that's just gonna run without you. Has systems in place, great culture, great people. It doesn't as much as hand to you. It's hard. It takes like people right now, 12 midnight on Eastern standard time and there's people listing on how they can improve their business. They're the people who win. The people who took Friday off and want to make a long weekend and you know, this whole coronavirus, they're just gonna cut staff and just take time off and go on unemployment. They're gonna lose. And so I just wanted to say hi. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks so much for hopping on here. Hopefully something was said that was helpful besides me just ranting and raving. But again, kind of the announcement for today, if you guys want to come over for Discovery Day, June 20th, or if you want to actually become a franchisee, June 4th, 5th and 6th is, is the training days for that. Really look forward to seeing you guys and really building Augusta Lawn Care into the change agent that we want to see in this industry. And yeah, have a great weekend, everyone. Sorry for the rant. Love you guys.