Secrets to Grow Your Lawn Care Business (WARNING: This Video Will Make You Money)

Hey, this is Mike Andes landscapebusinesscourse.com Today we're going to be mowing this lawn that is completely a disaster. They're doing a remodel on the two homes right here and we mow this lawn every single week.

But there's a bunch of garbage everywhere. There's plywood and gutters and mats. There's even a toilet.

I'm going to show you in just a second. So stick along for the ride. We're going to try to mow this lawn. These are not greatest, you know, like look, check this out.

There's a tree across the driveway.

Like I guess it's security, but my goodness. So we mow this lawn every single week. We get $35. It's not anything special, it's not a fancy lawn. And there's absolutely money to be made in fancy lawns. And where you're doing incredible green, perfectly level, straight lines. This is not one of those properties. You will not see a straight line on this entire video but you will.

See us making some money.

And the day is all I really care about when it comes to business.

So here we go.

I care about other things too, but definitely kind of the reason why I definitely wouldn't be showing up to mow this lawn if it was for free. This is not a charity organization. This is a for profit business.

A lot of times near mowing you'll see these PVC pipes, pipe popping up in the middle of the lawn. A lot of times what those are.

They'Re in the middle of the sewer.

And the house and it's where they do a clean out. So it's a clean out drain.

So we gotta be careful of is.

The fact that when you use a weed whacker, even though it's plastic line.

Seems really flimsy, nothing super strong.

When this thing is going 200 miles an hour it is basically like as.

If it was metal.

So over time it can wear out pvc. Same thing with gutters, same thing with any sort of vinyl, even vinyl fencing. You got to be very careful with this. Over time being able to wear out the fibers of the, of the plastic or the vinyl or the PVC and then making holes.

All right, it's Mike Andes, landscape businesscourse.com I'm going to do some voice over while you see and watch me mow this lawn. First of all, let's go ahead and talk about battery operated trimmers versus you know, gas powered. Obviously I'm using gas powered on all my equipment here today and I really do like the handheld battery equipment. I feel like that is equipment that we could use out in the commercial field, whether it be Milwaukee dewalt Steel makes a great product. There's a whole bunch of different other providers and in part it's because it's smaller equipment. Now when it comes to mowers that are electric, I still haven't found anything that I'm super impressed with. Mostly from a cost standpoint like I'm not willing to spend 25, $30,000 for a 0 turn mower that is electric. I am willing to spend though maybe $100 more in order to get electric for a weed whacker or a blower. Those are things that are lighter and the cost is relatively almost the same. But more importantly, the reason I would buy it is it's lighter. Like the heaviness of this weed whacker over the course of 810 hour days worth of, worth of work is really taxing on the body versus a battery operated is much lighter. It's plastic. There's certain components that can be a lot cheaper to make in terms of plastic versus metal and just be a lot less wear and tear on the operator. That's really in my opinion, why I would buy battery operated equipment. It's not so much the fact of the noise or like pollution or anything like that. It's coming strictly down to a fact of less wear and tear on the operator. Right now the cost actually makes sense. Definitely though when it comes to electric mowers, it's just not worth it. Another thing you might notice is the videos I made the past couple days are also lawns literally right next to this one. It's so important to have route density. And even when it comes to Augusta Lawn Care and all our franchisees around North America, we only give a 5 mile radius for them to work inside of. Now they can get customers outside of that. But what we really focus on is that five mile radius. The reason for that is because if you're going to be doing small lawns like this one, small residential lawns, you need to be ultra efficient. You want to reduce your drive time. Windshield time is like the bane of a lawn care business owner's existence. It absolutely kills your margins and you want to have properties that are close together. So like this lawn is literally right next to two other lawns that we also mow. And that's when you can really make money. Route density is where it is at, baby.

Right here.

A lot of times when people think about, hey, like, should I start a lawn Care business, Am I in a good market? Do I have enough people in my area that I can make a good business? The thing they're looking at a lot of times is like, do they have big properties, do they have expensive houses, etc. Well, you also want to look at though, because that's definitely something you want to look at like income demographics, age demographics. The other thing you want to look at though is the real estate market. So as much as this house doesn't look that great, the thing is they're putting probably $150,000 into remodeling this thing and they're remodeling the house next door. There's a lot of money coming into this area and this house as is is probably worth $500,000. Once they're done remodeling, it could probably be 6 or $700,000 easily. So you also want to look at the real estate market in terms of is this a type of property that even though it's run down, even though they're remodeling, they still have the grass cut because it's a small price, 35 bucks compared to the cost of the home and the value of the home. So keep in mind the price of real estate and how much development is happening in your market or potential market for growing your lawn care business.

A lot of people wonder in their lawn care business, what should I do if there's stuff all over the property? Usually we want the customer to clean it up and we tell them, look, we're not going to mow your lawn if you don't clean things up. We'll even remind you the day before with an automated email telling you that your property is going to be mode tomorrow and you need to clean things up. However, this is a remodeled house. This lawn is maybe 1,000 square ft in the top here, maybe 500ft on the bottom. It takes us like 10 or 15 minutes to mow. So I don't mind dealing with, you know, toilets and plywood and trim and random silicone caulking things.

Oh, it's sick lying around.

We'll deal with it. We'll figure it out. 30 Mile House, we get it, but generally we want them to get rid of all that stuff because we are.

Not a yard cleanup service.

We are a yard mowing service and they pay us to mow the lawn, not pick up after their trash.

You'll see me wearing AirPods for my noise cancellation. They actually work pretty good. They're about 20 to 25 decibels reduction, which is the equivalent of using most standard earplugs. Not the ideal. I like over ear muffs, but these work pretty good.

See, the money in lawn care is great, but the tips the customers leave for you are fantastic.

They left us some donuts.

All right. Just the bottom of the property. It's like only like 5, 600 square feet of lawn. Got a ditch, we got a weed whack. This is why, though, we like to use the trailer setups because we don't have a big 16 or 20 foot long enclosed trailer. Think about having a massive trailer and try to park your truck and trailer along this type of a road. Very, very difficult. Whereas I can go ahead and fit my trailerless setup with the ramp rack in an area just like this. My truck would fit right here.

And this is where we're going to.

Park it, right here. Whereas if I have a big trailer, good luck trying to get down there and try to figure out how to turn around and jack knife the trailer and then you dent it. You spent five minutes trying to turn around.

That's why we use the trailer setups.

Nice and compact, nice, nice and small.

So this video is shot kind of.

Towards the end of our spring rush.

And when I talk about spring rush, I'm talking about that, you know, two to three months where leaves pour in, the grass is growing like crazy. And that's the time that landscapers usually were overwhelmed. We have, we're working like crazy hours. All the rest of it. How I look at mowing, and a lot of times people get discouraged. Like, man, I'm making all this money on my projects. I'm not making anything on mowing. Why should I be focused during the spring rush on mowing if I can be making more money on making landscaping projects? This is how I think about it. You grow in spring and you mow in summer. Grow and mow. That's where the money's at. Because the grass grows like crazy in the spring and takes us way longer to trim. So, for example, this ditch in the.

Middle of summer, I will do this.

In half the amount of time because there's not going to be hardly any grass grown. It'll die off, especially because there's no irrigation here. And I will be able to do this lawn in half the amount of time. So the grass grows a ton during spring rush. But we actually make our money in the summer when it comes to mowing. Mowing is also looked at. We kind of look at it as a gateway service.

Right?

You get a bunch of mowing clients and then you upsell them into other projects, other types of services, things like pressure washing, gutter cleanouts, weeding bush trimming, mulch installations. There's so many other ways to make money from the same client, but a lot of times the lowest hanging fruit and the most common service is going to be mowing. Because if you have grass, you need it mowed. Therefore, that's the gateway service. Get them in the door and then upsell them into other services.

One thing a lot of people ask about is like, well, what's the best form of marketing? Right now we focus mostly on digital marketing, right? Facebook, Google, Nextdoor, YouTube, all the rest of it. But there is always changes in what's working, what's not. Right now, iOS 14, the new update for Apple devices, is going to dramatically change the way Facebook ads work.

A lot of people ask me why sometimes I walk forward when I'm weed whacking and edging. Like, sometimes I do this.

And other times I just walk backwards. It is easier to walk backwards, but the problem is I've never been to this property. I don't know what's coming ahead of me. And I'm walking like this. I only see about 4 to 5ft in front of my weed whacker. And my peripheral vision, if I can do this, yes, it goes slower, yes, it's awkward with my feet, but I'm able to see about 15 or 20ft ahead of me. And that means I won't hit anything and my lines will be straighter on my first pass. So that's kind of why I do it. There's not really a science to it. It just seems like that's kind of what I fall into on property. I don't know, I want to be kind of like in my periphery vision, seeing what's coming.

Sorry, I interrupted myself there. I was talking about Facebook. I was talking to the fact that right now, as I record this, iOS14 is coming out and being a big game changer in terms of how we target and use pixels. When it comes to Facebook ads, this is a constant evolution.

You can't just stick to one thing in your business.

Think it's going to last for the next 10 years. When it comes to getting new leads, the marketing with be digital or print is constantly changing. For example, last year we had the worst conversion ever on print material. Every door, direct mail, postcards, flyers, door hangers, etc. This year I have been seeing a massive resurgence and a lot of our franchisees are really finding a better customer. Acquisition cost, knocking on doors, talking to people, doing door hangers. You've got to constantly be adapting to the changing environment and your marketplace that's different than everyone else. So just saying, oh, like, you know, asking a forum of people, like, what's working? It doesn't matter if they're on the other side of the country, even the other side of the state, or even the other side of the county. There's a good chance that different marketing methods work differently. No, that's not a good chance. It's absolutely true that it works differently in different markets.

We do use the string trimmer on edging, by the way. We use the metal head edger attachment on the combi system. So kombi, there's other different types of attachments that you can get, different brands, but we use the steel Kombi system where you can put like a stick edger on or a pole saw or a hedge trimmer. And so we have, you'll see on the trailer setup on the ramp rack, we have two different trimmers. One is this one here where there's no. There's no attachment, just a straight bar trimmer. Only a weed whacker can be used. But then the other one is a combi system where I can put attachments onto the motor. And we use a stick edger. So we only use the stick edger typically in the first one or two services on a property just to establish the edge. But once it's established, as long as you're fairly skilled at keeping the line trimmer right up against the concrete, the sidewalk, driveway, etc. You can really save yourself from having to go get the other trimmer, the other motor. You can just use the same line trimmer, keep the lines looking fresh. And more importantly, you don't have to use two different piece of equipment because theoretically you're usually going to want to use a line trimmer on flower bed edges versus a stick edger with the metal piece right against concrete and hard surfaces. So in order to not have to go back to the truck in between the lawn service, it's nice to be able to use the string trimmer on the entire lawn, including the edges along the concrete. And you'll see me a couple times when I'm mowing, I'm kicking the bag. Someone asked about this on the last video. That is kind of like the fuel gauge for us people who have to bag clippings. Cause there's no way to see inside that lawn, that bag. So when I'm kicking the bag, I'm literally just Kind of like testing with my foot how full it is of clippings. And when it's like quote unquote hard to kick, I know it's basically full and I need to empty the bag because the last thing you want to do is clog the whole whole system up by getting too many clippings and then the bag fills up, then it clogs the whole system. So you'll see me kick the bag occasionally. It's not like I'm stumbling. I know how to walk. Trust me, I figured that out. But I'm kicking the bag in order to determine if I need to empty the bag of the clippings because it saves me from having to reach my hand into the chute, clear out the deck, all the rest of it, especially when it's wet, it's a pain in the neck, but even when it's dry like this, it sticks. Still a pain to have to pull out all the clippings, flip the deck over and all the rest of it. So that's why I'm kicking the bags. Last thing I want to focus on here in this video before we check out is focusing on warm leads. I can't overemphasize just how important it is to realize that not all clients are created equal. Some clients, if they come from Facebook, you know, you might pay X amount for customer acquisition costs, but they are not created and as valuable as clients that you've already had in the past. That lead, that person filling an estimate request form on your website is much more valuable if they've already done service with you because your close ratio is going to be higher. They're not going to have objections about price because they've already done work with you. They're not going to have questions about how you bill, what, what type of services you offer. They've already done work for you. The clients you've done work for in the past are your warmest, lowest hand hanging fruit. You know, warmest clients and warmest leads. I should say no, not all leads are created equal. And why I say that is because I see people spending money on marketing, spending money on ads. They're doing digital, they're figuring out, trying to fill every door, direct mail, all the rest of it. And yet they're not staying in contact with the customers they already have. We talked about mowing being the gateway service for this industry. Why aren't we upselling? Why aren't we trying to sell them more services and, and make the lifetime value of that customer a lot higher and at the same time, we're spending money on ads.

Now, I know there's some wise guy watching this, being like, but Michael, the grass is good. You cut it up, you mulch it, you get mulching blades and it decomposes. It's good for the lawn. You don't have to fertilize it. Well, here, let me show you what a lawn looks like. If we wouldn't have bagged it, the next door neighbors right behind me, right there.

That'S what it would look like. Our customers would not be happy if our properties look like that. We have rye grass, we have fescue, it needs to be bagged. Is it fun? No. Is it absolutely necessary? Yes. Because we wouldn't be able to handle the lawn looking like that and keeping our customers. That's why.

Now, if you have St. Augustine grass or Azoa or whatever, there's like a thousand different types of grass. There's a lot of different types of grass. As most other places, you don't have to bag clippings. But back to my topic about warm leads, because think about it like this. Everyone is out there trying to figure out how to grow their business. But you could literally have one customer that is worth $1,000 per year in revenue based upon you mowing their lawn every week, etc. You could literally double your business without getting a single new customer. If you just took that, that $1000 customer and turn them into $2000 per year customer, you would double your business without getting a single new customer. So why are we out there trying to get new $1,000 per year customers when we should take our existing $1,000 per year customers and turn them into 2,000? That is why it is so important to stay in touch with your clients and upsell them. Like literally, if you just went out, turned off all your ads, one of our franchisees, we talked about this, doing this yesterday, and he's going to do this. He's going to turn off his Facebook ads because he hasn't been able to stay in touch with his existing customer base. He knows if you actually went to the property and met with and talked to every one of these of his existing mowing customers, he'd probably book his schedule out for the next three or four weeks with just mulch installs and they need an overgrown bush that is, you know, needs trimmed, or they see an issue that they could upsell in terms of a cleanup and a bunch of leaves still from last fall. Meet your customers, talk to those warm leads and turn them into money.

This is an organic, all natural way of keeping your house safe at night. Cut a tree down, block the driveway. It's fantastic.

I would usually say it's cheap and.

Cost effective, but the problem is this lumber is basically like gold. Right now, you're a millionaire if you have a gate like this. Fantastic. Thank you for watching. I'm Mike Andes. Check out the rest of the channel for other business advice about mowing lawns and making money.

Check it out.