Secrets to Grow Your Lawn Care Business AND DOMINATE!

Hey, everybody, it's Mike Andes. And today we're going to be doing a live show answering questions and taking callers. Haven't done one of these in a few months now. I've been really busy and just not been able to get to it. And unfortunately, I haven't get to a lot of emails from many of the listeners. And I've just been telling you, hey, wait for the next Q and A. Well, I haven't done a Q and A for months now, so I want to go ahead and make that available to everyone and hopefully some of those that you have emailed me can I can hop on here? Because I have not been able to get to my email in the past couple months. It's been very busy operationally in Augusta. Let me just make sure everything here is rolling correctly. It is not. There. All right. Now you should be able to hear me. Okay, that's better. Okay, that's better. Much better. Cool. All right, let's go ahead and get started. If you can hear me, feel free to say where you're from. And let's go ahead and jump in. Little's Press Washing. Very cool. Very cool that we don't just have lawn care landscapers, we have water. Whole bunch of industries in here. So very cool. So feel free to call in. The number here is 361-733-3333. Gonna be taking callers. Welcome everyone that is hopping on here today. Edenboro Landscaping. Welcome. We're gonna go and answer some callers. Haven't done one of these calling ch for a few months now. If, if you've emailed me in the past few months asking questions or anything like that, I apologize. I have not literally looked at my email inbox for the past couple months. Has been really pretty locked in. So hopefully be able to get back to some of these Q and A's as much as I possibly can every couple weeks. So feel free to give a call in. I know how it usually works. No one calls in at first, and then at the end we have to block off everyone that's waiting in the waiting room. So if you have a question, feel free to call in. Number is 361-733-3333. Let's go ahead. And we got a caller from Thomasville, Georgia. I think it's Larry. Are you on the call?

Hey, Mike, it's Caleb Conger.

Hey, how you doing?

I'm doing very well.

Good, good. What's your question, brother?

So, so my question for you was we're trying to grow. I'm 15. I, I actually talked to you in December and at that point our goal was 100,000. This year we did about 16 last year. So we've raised that to a quarter million and then have a five year goal of 10 million in revenue. And so I'm looking to do 20 locations at a half a million each. But my question for you is kind of what should I make that process?

My process that I was looking at is next two years kind of focus on this location and then three, three years after that other locations. But I mean right now we've got a truck, dump trailer, maintenance trailer, and then two full time guys, me and like three part time guys. Should we look to do pro? I mean should we buy more trucks first? Probably, or new hires or. I mean, what's your opinion?

You know, first of all, you're crushing it at 15 to be doing what you're doing. I'm going to talk to you like I would any other person because when I was 15, I wanted people to talk to me like a real business owner, not like I was 15. So I'm going to talk to you that way. And that is you really want to lock in and focus on what you're doing now. Don't worry about the five year plan, don't worry about $10 million in revenue, don't worry about 10, 20 locations. None of that matters. The only thing that you want to focus on in the next six to 12 months of growing your current location, hiring employees, getting them full time, implementing systems, focus on that only right now. I know it's easy to get wrapped up into how many locations you're going to have or you know, revenues. That's very cool. And hey, you crushed it. You know, we planned for 100,000. You're shooting now for a quarter. That's awesome. But just focus on that one location and just keep tweaking it, making it better till it can run without you. Then start focusing on the next thing, which is what? Your second location. Right. That's the only thing you need to focus on. Don't worry about getting wrapped up in the numbers or things like that. Like you don't hear me talk a whole lot about like even how many locations we want for Augusta and things like that. Because it doesn't really matter. I'm focused on like the next few months. These are the operational things I'm trying to get done. And for you I would stay within 12 months. And anything beyond 12 months is a wild ankle guess in terms of what's going to Happen and you know, things happen in life things happen. Economy things happen with employees. So don't, don't put too much emotional.

Investment into what the future is going to hold. Past 12 months.

Yes sir. Do you suggest looking to do like more. More trucks? I mean in our market, the lawns that we're regularly servicing are about 3/4 acres and it's common to use like zero turns. I know y' all use the trailerless setup and we normally use 60 inch zero turn. Is it a good idea to do what's called like an Isuzu truck where it has a flatbed and you put a ramp on the back? Or is it a better idea to just do pickup trucks and trailers? I mean what. Have you seen markets like that?

Yeah, it definitely depends on the market. I've seen some people that swear by this use. Other people say they're too much maintenance. Personally, like I'm horrible mechanic. I have nothing, no idea what I'm doing. So if I was starting out, I wouldn't want to buy a piece of equipment that I have no idea how to fix and potentially could be very expensive to fix or hard to find people that can work on them. So I would definitely look at landscape business course, the Facebook group. There's been some really good debates about Suzu and what people's opinions are. I have not used them personally mostly because I feel like it's one of those things if you're going to buy them, you kind of got to keep buying them. And I would rather take an interchangeable piece which is more like a pickup style, something that is easier to find and get more of instead of something I have to lock in myself into a specific type of truck. And that's typically why people have to start buying things new because the only way they can find that specific type of truck they've locked themselves into. So I'm not against them though. I think they're great. I really like the driving experience, honestly from Isuzu. It's like from a safety standpoint and just. I really like it. It's just a matter of maintenance things. I have no idea. Sometimes hard to find dealers that will work on them, mechanics that will work on or they can be expensive. So I would just look on landscape business course Facebook group, see if that's something that when you look at their debates kind of between people who have actually used them, if it's worth it or not. But again, I would just really, really zero on the fact that your limiting factor. Was it Caleb, right?

Yes, sir.

Caleb? Yeah. Like what's going to be your limiting factor is not going to be the trucks that you buy. Right. It's going to be your employees, especially your age. The thing that's going to keep you from growth right now is going to be your ability to lead. And so the trucks, you know, I, I really, I really think you should flip a coin in terms of if you need another truck, what you want, which one you should buy. Because that's not going to be the determining factor of whether or not you get to what your goal is, which you just said is $10 million. It's going to be whether or not you're able to lead an organization, learn how to have managers underneath you and doing it at a very young age is no, no easy thing to do. So I would be really focused on spending your time on that, not, you know, spending hours and days trying to debate what type of truck you should buy.

Okay, so for.

For the process of truck right now we have an extended tab, but we've got at least two full time guys in it all the time. How many? I mean I should be looking to purchase another truck, right? Or should I?

Yeah, especially if you, I mean by.

The end of the month we'll have three full time guys and that's a small truck that we squeezed in into it. Kind of uncomfortable.

Yeah. Even at 3/4 acre of an average lot size, anything above 2, 2 people in the truck starts to get wasteful. Right. It's really going to come down to whether or not you have the cash and you do have the cash and you have the aspiration to grow. I would go and buy the truck for sure. So, you know, especially the rate that you're growing, you can definitely afford to get another truck. And again, assuming you can find those employees, I would really bank on employees when they, once they're full time, not necessarily when you have a bunch of part timers because at your age that's usually the.

The mistake I see a lot of young entrepreneurs making. They're hiring friends, high schoolers, part timers, and then they fail to make that step to getting a whole bunch of full timers. And it's mostly because it's easier to find part timers at our age. When I say our age, I mean I know it's like to be that young and hiring people. And so I would really focus on honing your skills of leadership, hiring full timers and lock that process in. What type of truck you buy honestly is not going to make a big difference in five years. It's going to be those other soft skills.

Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, right now another issue I have is like you were talking about hiring friends. I have two guys that asked if they could work with me and they're younger, so I can't run payroll for them.

Is it.

Should I continue to have them work or kind of. I mean, I. Because I hate to break like one of them hasn't even started yet, but he's going to be doing full time. But I mean, I'm going to have to pay all of his taxes. Is that worth. What's your opinion on that?

Yeah, first off, you're going to want to talk to a bookkeeper, potentially even talk to, you know, what's the work kind of in your area of the labor sort of department and see what's regulated. Because first of all, you're hiring minors, so that's a different license that you have to do in your business licensing. Furthermore, it's going to affect insurance and a whole lot of other things. So again, running your business that way before doing that and then taking a step toward your hiring people above 18 that have driver's licenses, you can get a regular business license that you can run payroll for. That's a whole different step of business. Right. So that's what I want you to focus on over the next couple of years, doing that and then focus on like growth and expansion and more trucks, all that down the road.

Okay. All right.

Because I know, I know there's like an unlimited supply of, you know, 15, 16 year olds that are willing to work for you part time, but they're not that. You can't build a really good business on part timers that are 15 and 16. They're usually less reliable in terms of showing up. They're typically, they don't need the money. It's just, you know, side cash they're trying to make. And so building a business that is sustainable and, and you can promise to customers you're gonna get jobs done and know it can be done and you can schedule things out in advance. You're gonna need full timers and you're gonna want people that can drive. People can. Sure. People can run on payroll. You have a legit business. And so that would be what I'd be really pushing towards doing. And that's not easy when you're 15.

Okay. And then I had one other question for just culture and everything. Should I do weekly team meetings or I mean, how often should I do those and how should I kind of like y' all do two Team meetings a week and then off site meetings, all that stuff. Should I be worried about that as much? And I mean, yeah, I don't know, what's your opinion on kind of passing the vision along to others?

Yeah. When you have a couple, a couple, only a couple employees, a little bit weird sometimes to have meetings literally every single morning you're seeing them already. Now if you're working part time doing like school things, you're going to make sure you actually do have in person meetings. But I'm assuming that you end the day started with them and so you're already kind of connecting with them every single day. What gets really important, you start getting three, four, five employees is having dedicated times on a couple days a week where you do have an actual meeting time to talk about specific things, safety callbacks, a training, and that becomes more important. It's a little bit strange when you only have one or two employees just because you already are talking them every single morning. But the sooner you can get into that habit of making those regular meeting times and have a specific day or two a week where they know first thing you're doing that morning is a meeting is a good thing, in my opinion.

Okay, and then for yellow slips, how should that. I mean, because don't y' all kind of pin up your yellow slip should be. If the crew is out working and I'm working with them, do I just say, hey, we got a yellow flip and go do it, or do I actually ride out a yellow flip or do I wait till we get back and then pin it up on the wall? And that seems kind of dumb. I mean, what the best. If we've got like two crews, what's the best way to do that? Just to call them and tell them or.

Yeah, I think the best way to do that is going to be still. Even though if you're with the crew, make a yellow slip, write it up, put it on the wall and then that's what you're going to go over at a meeting is making sure that you actually go over what happened, how it was resolved, what we could have done to improve that and resolve or circumnavigate making that mistake altogether. It's a great way to start with your meetings, is just using those callbacks as a way to kind of kick that off. So I appreciate calling in Caleb. I'm going to go ahead and go to move to the next caller and. And that is going to come from Toronto, Ontario, I believe. Give me one second here. No, sick. I did the Wrong one. I'm talking to James Moncrief. Sorry, go ahead.

Hi, I was calling because I was wondering if.

I was wondering how to. I'm focusing on picking up more customers this year and I want to know some tips on how to pick up some more customers.

Absolutely. If I was you. Sounds like you're pretty young. I would definitely be going, you know, if you can, in your local neighborhood, assuming it's a safe neighborhood where you feel like you can go door to door doing door hangers or knocking on the doors, talking to people. Even if your parents want to come with you just to kind of make sure you're safe, that's a great way to do it. Otherwise, even if you just do your local neighborhood, you could do some flyers and then put them in every door direct mail or EDDM. And so you probably spend about 25 cents or so per house to be able to print and then deliver those through the mail. So if you can't actually knock on people's houses or they're kind of spread out, I would start with that. That's what I started with when I was 11 was every door direct mail. Put them in, in the. Take them to the post office in a big bundle. They send all just the ones in your neighborhood. Right. Because you're not going to be able to drive, you're not going to go far. So just focus on those, you know, 50 to 100 houses that are closest to your house and just keep cocking them all the time, whether you knocking their door, door hangers, you trying to do every door direct mail. That would be what I'd recommend.

Yeah. I printed out some pliers and I delivered them to a couple houses around my neighborhood whose houses I wanted to try to pick up.

And then do you get any responses from those or not yet?

Not yet, but I'm hoping so soon.

Yeah. Is it a safe neighborhood? Like, do you think you could go knock on their door and be. Feel okay?

Yeah.

Like, even if, even if your parents were out on this main street just making sure you're okay, feeling good, or even they're with you and you could just knock on those people's doors that you put the flyers on and just say, hey, I put the fire last week. Just making sure you got that. I just want to make sure didn't blow away in the wind and just wanted to see if there's any work you needed to do. Like, you know, at your age. I know. Like when I was your age, I wanted to be really, really professional and seem Like, I have everything together in a big company and really, you know, look great. But that's not what your selling point is right now. Right now is the fact that you are young. And so just be honest, people. Like, whether you're trying to save it for college, you're trying to save up for something, you know, a summer camp or whatever it is, it's extremely important to realize that is your unique selling proposition, not the fact that you're going to have the best lawns or the best equipment. Because if they want that, there's other alternatives that are going to do that better. They're going to be buying because of you. And so the sooner you can get in front of them, the sooner they can see you doing the work, the better.

Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Cool. You got it, brother. Best of luck to you. I'm going to go ahead and move on to our next caller, which is in Toronto. Let me just make sure I actually click on it correctly now. Toronto, Ontario, 647. Go ahead.

Hey, Mikey. This is Mike from How to Hardscape calling in.

Hey, how you doing?

Good, man.

You Good? Good.

I got a question for you. What keeps you going?

In terms of what.

In terms of your North Star or whatever it is that you're working on through all the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, what keeps you going?

When I'm ultimately very, very low, I have to fall back on the fact that I decided to do this right. And I think as business owners, we have to step back and realize that no one's forcing us to own a business. We are completely in control. And that's why most of us got into business. So if I. If I really think it's that bad, then I should just go get a job or I should go start a business that is, quote, unquote, easier. And so I think that's when I'm really, really low. I have to realize that I ultimately made the bed that I'm sleeping in, and I wanted to change it. I wanted to have less stress. I just hire less people if I want to have less stress. We just not have a franchise like that. That's ultimately decisions I have made. And so that makes me feel a little more in control. And then in terms of, like, you know, motivation and keep moving forward, things like that. I really do enjoy seeing other people make more money and get ahead in life and kind of change the story of their. Their financial life. I've seen what that's done for people, and I really believe that small business owners having more money for them is a very good thing for our local customers, communities for creating new jobs. It's more efficient than the government. And so I get pretty inspired by that. And so when I see things like the jobs report that came out last month where small businesses are just getting obliterated right now, that's what keeps me motivated. I really do feel like the underdog in that moment. Like, we're small business owners. We're trying to out here hustle and fight, and I'm doing everything I possibly can to kind of be on that side of the small business owner. And so that kind of keeps me going.

Amazing answer, man. I'll keep listening in. Thanks so much.

Take care. Bye bye. All right, next caller is from Erie, I think Pennsylvania. I'm so bad with states. I went to school in Canada for my first few years. Bad with these things. Go ahead.

Hey, this is Graham Hipwell from Edinburgh Landscaping. How you doing today, Mike?

Very good, Very good. Thanks for coming on. What's your question?

Pleasure finally meeting you. I bought your P4P book, and I'm trying to integrate it in my business. My thing is I don't want to pay lower than $15 an hour. And I'm afraid that, like, the P4P is just going to push me to a point where I can't grow.

You know, I don't want to.

I would like to pay 20 an hour. Honestly, I'd love to. The guys are worth it. We do great work. I just have a concern that I can't, like, continuously grow. So I guess the main question is, what's the average amount of lawns you should be doing a day or the daily amount of money that you should be pulling in each day to kind of stay afloat while paying those types of wages.

Okay, well, there's a bunch of questions in there. Okay, so first of all, if you want everyone to make $20 an hour, why wouldn't you just make your base pay in P4P? $20 an hour?

So wouldn't that mean that the PPP, they would end up making way more than 20 per hour? What I'm saying is I can kind of afford the 20 an hour. I don't think I can afford much more than that with our prices.

Got it. Okay. So what's your hour, if you don't mind me asking, what's your hourly rate on average to the customer? Per hour?

To the customer, it's about 75.

Cool. So in the book, I talk about how my kind of equation I really look at is making sure that my hourly rate that I pay for base pay on P4P is 25% or less than my hourly rate to the customer. So assuming $75, you could easily afford an $18 per hour base pay on P4P and still have plenty of margin and profitability. Now if you wanted to make that $20 as a base, you would need to be charging $80 per hour. Now, whether or not you can afford to pay someone more than 20 doesn't matter in P4P because you're only going to pay them more than 20 if 20 is your base, if they're performing at the extent to which you are then able to afford it. Right. And so I would recommend you doing now is looking at last year's wages. The gross wages you paid fueled workers against the labor revenue last year, not the total revenue. Because that's going to include like material markup, you know, dump fees, a whole bunch of other stuff. But if you can look at how many, how much labor revenue you earned last year versus how many your wages was, I bet you it'd be surprisingly high compared to if you did like a 30 or 33% that you're giving the employees on P4P and then when they're making 24.

That's a good point.

Go ahead.

That's a good point.

You use the 33%.

I saw it in your book. I run two man crews. And are you talking about 33% of the labor revenue for each of the crew member?

So 66 as a whole?

Nope. So basically every single dollar that's made 33 cents in that case would go towards wages. If there's two people in that crew, they're going to split that money. And so in theory they should be able to get more lawns done to account for that. But that's going to be the math on that.

Gotcha.

But I think, thank you very much yourself and everyone listening. The the thought process of I cannot afford to pay above a certain amount is 100 true. If you're not on P4P. If you're on P4P, anything they make above base pay they've earned. And so therefore you can budget in how much they're going to need to pay, you can afford to pay them. So for example, if you went last year and said okay, total labor revenue last year versus total wages, it's for most businesses, when they look at it's like 45%, 40 to 45%. And if you're at 38, 36, whatever, that should give you confidence Okay. I know I can do 33. And that means that if they can get above, they make $24 an hour. Great.

Great.

I'm thrilled because I was able to pay them a lot more and still stay profitable at 33. Instead of 36, 38, 45% that I was paying last year. So one of the best ways to determine what you should be paying on P4P or just to alleviate that mental pressure is look at last year and just see. You'll be shocked. Most you would be shocked how much. What percentage they're giving to frontline laborers as a percentage of labor revenue. Not total revenue, but labor revenue. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Thank you very much. Good answer.

You got it, brother. Take care. All right, next question comes from Nate in Nampa, Idaho, in 3, 2, 1. Nate, how's it going?

Oh, can you hear me? I can't hear you. That's not good. Going once, going twice. Nate from Nampa, Idaho. Area code 208. I'm gonna drop your call. Oh, no. Okay, Gonna drop the call. And.

Hello?

Oh, there it is.

Hello?

Let's go. We're on.

Hello?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Oh, wow. Yeah, it's not actually Nate. It's Lucas.

Okay.

But super nice to actually talk with you. I do have just a couple simple questions.

Go for it.

Hey, Mike. So my business is Lucas Landscaping, and I've had several other businesses in the past. I'm 37 years old. You know, this is not my first rodeo in business, and obviously, right now I'm in my third year. It's pretty. Pretty rough because I'm still a solo operator. I own all my equipment. I'm working really hard to dial everything in following the processes, you know, making sure.

Sure.

I'm organized. One question that I have that seems to kind of be reoccurring. Do you have any recommendations.

On how to automate text messages? But when a lot of customers start texting and texting, it seems to take up a lot of my time to get back with those customers.

And so are they texting your personal phone right now?

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, because I just use one personal phone for the business to keep everything simple. And so a lot of. A lot of text messages do come in. So if I start marketing more in the future.

And the call services, they don't really have any system set up to respond with text messages yet. And so if you have any recommendations on that, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, like, I think, you know, the short. The short term Quick fix would be to try to wean your customers off of text, especially if they're texting you. Like, just like, hey, are you coming tomorrow? Or like, hey, you forgot the gate that's open. Or like random little things. That's usually the problem with being solo for multiple years and getting customers that have been around for a long time is they start to text you about those random things. Like, oh, could you trim the bush next week? Like, oh, no, Sally's gonna be out her. She left her bike outside. Like, all that random little stuff starts to be texted to you when they know it's you and they know it's your number. As you grow and they. You start to have an office intermediary, they know they're not texting, Lucas. So therefore they're less likely to text. They're more likely to call if it's a big issue or email if it's a bigger issue. So I wouldn't try so much. So difficult, you know, try really hard to like, automate your text messaging. I wouldn't try that. Like, you potentially could have like, certain, you know, copy and paste template that you would have for certain responses. So if someone says, hey, I want to skip service tomorrow, if someone says, I couldn't get my bill or whatever it is, you could have copy and paste text messages for that. But honestly, it's. It's a. Text messaging is a difficult thing to automate responses to a client texting. Right? It's just very difficult. Right. And furthermore, they've built a relationship with now with you, where they expect you to respond, and that became. Becomes a bottleneck. As you begin to keep growing, the business that is going to put you in a hold because now you're texting five people between every single job because you got now more customers, and that's going to become a bottleneck. So either a start to wean them off of texting and just literally have it where it's like an automated text back to them that says, you know, please, if you have a email or phone call or whatever, and then you could have an answering service take those things from you. But what I'm concerned about is that every single job, you hop back into the truck and you're texting for 15, five or 10 minutes because they're all directly responding to you. When my goal would be that they contact a call center or send you an email and do everything that would take you five minutes in 20 seconds or 30 seconds, or better yet, they just don't even contact you because you haven't made it so simple for them to tell you that, you know, the left side of the driveway grew a lot last week because the sprinklers were left on. Like that's the type of thing you don't really need to know. And there's over starting to over communicate. And that's typically what I see happening with solo operators that give away their personal cell phone.

Wow, that's actually, that's so helpful right now to hear that. And I thank you very much for that. You know, one other question, and this is, this is what I'm kind of concerned right, right now is being the solo operator. I don't have any plan to hire until I've dialed in a few more of my system and I'm really dialed in in the business and then I will get my first hire. But right now I'm very, very burnout after a long day of, you know, mowing, bush, trimming, other projects. Right. But like long days of mowing. So seven, eight yards of mowing and some of these jars, they're no joke. So I come home and I still have to do quotes. I still have to like look through some other paperwork and I'm just physically completely white. I'm 37, so I'm getting a little bit older. So I know this can kind of be a younger guy's game at times. But I am very physically fit. Do you have any recommendations for me to, to help manage this burnout and still get, still get the other things done like the quoting callbacks, follow up the things that actually build revenue for my business?

Yeah, I think the first step is to realize that, you know, getting out of the field or getting to the point where you're not doing the physical work doesn't necessarily mean less stress. Right. It's a different type of stress that you'll move to as you have employees and grow the business. And so right now you have a lot of me of a lot of control. You do. All the jobs are probably not a lot of callbacks. And so the stress that becomes when you start hiring people is financial and psychological. So I always say when you're solo and are small, you may have one or two employees. Most of the stress you're going to face is physical. As you grow a little bit more, you start having four, five, six employees, it becomes more financial pressure because now you are not able to be outside, outside doing the work and performing in revenue producing work. So it's stressful financially. And then as you get 8, 9, 10, 12 employees now we're talking more psychological stress because every single day there's a very mad customer. Every single day someone's calling out a big mess up is happening. And so it's a different type of stress. And before, before a lot of us, I'm not saying this specifically for you, but for, for, for every single owner that wants to aspire to grow, I think they got to realize it's just a different type of stress. And you got to realize what type of stress are you willing to work with and what type of stress do you thrive best in. For some people, the, the financial and psychological stress of growth is crippling and they should stay maybe by themselves and one or two employees and that's fine. And so that'd be the first thing. As you do get older though, and your body physically starts to give out, regardless of whether or not you can handle the stress of physical work becomes irrelevant because your body is like, no, you think you can deal with this, but I'm not gonna, it's not happening. And so that's when you start, you start to really start figuring out, okay, how do I price my jobs to the point where I can't afford employees and I can afford them to not be as efficient as me. I can make sure I have a P4P system like pay for performance, where I know when they go out and work, they're, they're trying to be efficient as they can throughout the day and they're able to make good money. So they're not leaving me every two weeks. Like that's the type of things you'd be, I'd be wanting to focus on right now because. Absolutely. And I don't even need to know your age if you're saying this, but like at your age, you got to be thinking about five to 10 years from now and if your income 100% is coming from the business right now, it's, you're putting in a wild card. You got to make sure you've grown the business to the point where you can afford employees and, and that they aren't going to be as efficient as you are not going to be as perfect as you in terms of doing the work. And that's not easy, but I think that'd be a worthwhile two to three year goal of trying to get two employees that can do the work without you being in the truck so that you're not physically burned out. And that will shift the stress to financial and more psychological. But that's going to be necessity as you get older.

Oh, that's perfect advice. I really appreciate that because that aligns with my, my two to three year goal and then my five year vision, slash goal. Things move so quickly, it's hard to have a too much past five years. But that makes perfect sense. You know, I really appreciate it and.

You know, I, I do, I really appreciate it. You're one of the only entrepreneurs that I've ever known at your age that, you know, has done so well in so many areas. So it's a privilege to be able to watch your videos. I think you're very knowledgeable guy. If I was your age and I started a business, my business is at your age, like 13. I can only imagine where I would be now. Unfortunately, I didn't get into different businesses till I was about 23, 24, and I had a few failures and then some successes. And I've learned a lot, gained a lot of experience. But now being at that age where it's like, okay, you know, five years goes by, I'm getting a little bit older. I do believe I could handle more of the emotional and, and financial stress a little bit more if I can slowly take off some of the physical stress. Right. Because my mindset is right. But it's the physical stuff that hurts me, me. So if I just keep pushing forward and I'm persistent.

You know, this will all work out. Those are the two things I really have going for you. It's like you have to stick with anything that you like. The other caller that called in and, you know, said, what keeps you going? It's like, you know, I chose this path. It's not the easiest one. You know, entrepreneurship in any way is hard, but at the end of the day, we do have to remind ourselves we chose this. If you want something easier, go get a 9 to 5 by.

Absolutely. Thanks for calling in, brother. You have a good one. Bye.

Thank you.

You too. Bye.

Cool. All right, next caller is from Urbana. Urbana, Ohio. I believe I'm going to kind of try to help you guys wrap up your questions a bit. I appreciate the sentiment at the end of each call, but our, the call room is completely full right now, so I'm going to try to move to these a little bit faster. But Next caller from Urbana, Ohio, you're on. Go.

Obana. Ohio, Ohio. 9, 3, 7 is the first three letters or first three numbers.

Oh, no, we're gonna have to drop the call. 3, 2, 1. Okay, we're gonna drop the call. Sorry. Shreveport, Louisiana is coming up in 3, 2, 1. I think it's Robin Green. Go ahead.

Hey, Mike. This is Garrett Green. How you put sir?

Good, good. How you doing?

I'm doing well. I'll be quick, man. I am wondering what is wrong with Facebook ads. They're not performing as well. And as far as Tik Tok, if you guys have had any success on Tik Tok. Not, not like Brandon, so to say, but an actual paid ad on Tik Tok. Thank you.

Absolutely. Cool. Yeah. So first and foremost, in terms of Facebook, the iOS 14 update and as they've continued in 15 is really hurt targeting. And so you might think you're targeting people 45 years and older, but literally more than half of your ads are probably being shown to people that are 18, 15, et cetera, and they're not buyers of lawn care and landscaping services. So the targeting has really gotten diluted because of the privacy settings that Apple has instituted on iOS. And so that's really, really hurt. And that's why if you in the stock market, you've seen Apple or Meta or, sorry, Facebook or Meta, dive in their stock price because a lot of their growth is stalled due to the fact that advertisers are leaving and a lot of small business owners are leaving because we can't target as directly anymore. I think Facebook's gonna figure this out. I've already seen a few things that they're doing to try to get around these different strategies. But that being said, when it comes to TikTok, I really do believe what you said there at the end is important. And that is, I feel like TikTok might be a good branding play, but you're not going to get very good direct sales from TikTok in this industry of lawn care landscape because the majority, the vast majority of those users are going to skew younger. And so the older demographic that is on there uses it less. They're not super mature in that market, in that platform, I should say. But that being said, I don't think you should not do it. We're starting to make TikTok videos every single day in trying to create an audience around it. But the general platform that everyone's going to use, that is 50, 67 years, is still Facebook. In a few years, that will become Instagram. In a few years, it'll probably become TikTok. Right. So I've always said that like these social platforms, they age with the population, but they're sped up. So it's not like going to take 20 years for that 20 year old to become 40 year old and move to a more mature platform. It's going to take three or four years and so being ahead of that curve is not a bad idea. But definitely keep in mind it's not going to be short term sales. You're not going to get people calling you from, from TikTok or like directly filling out your estimate request form. They're scrolling fast and we have not seen meaningful results in terms of actual leads coming in that we can track and measure from those specific ads. Next caller is from. I want to say Man T, Utah 4, 3, 5. Go ahead.

Yeah, hey Mike, My name is Jason Gray. I'm here with Gray's Lawn Care Services. So I college kid, you know, just going through school, won submissions competitions last semester and I started my business, have a little bit of experience in the field, but I just have a lot of questions based on like, how do you start? What's like the number one thing when scaling? So I'm trying right now with things I don't have a big budget, so I'm trying to do my own website, learn how to do SEO, all these things and it's really complicated. I was just curious if you have any advice or pointers on how to deal with SEO better and if I can't like afford to pay somebody to help me do it.

Totally. So first and foremost, I assume then that you believe your biggest bottleneck right now to growth is just getting more leads. Am I right on that?

I do, yeah. So I, I've had a lot of contact with Angie and they're trying to pressure me into doing that, but I don't necessarily have the funds to do that. But yeah, I think just getting my leads and things like that. So I think SEO is the cheapest way to go about doing that.

Okay. And, and keep in mind that SEO is still a long term game. Right? Like it's going to take 6 to 12 months to rank typically on SEO and start getting leads that are organically from that. And so if you're in it for the long run, that's fine, but just keep in mind that SEO is not direct response marketing, which is going to be much more immediate. Right. And so, you know, I would say in the short term, if you can't afford, you know, to pay someone to do it, just use weebly.com, use Squarespace, build something that looks really nice and then don't worry about spending a whole week building it. Right. Build it in a weekend and then like dedicate an hour or two each week to making it slightly better, improving the Videos, improving the pictures. You know, I've made several videos. If you go back, I've made several videos about how to make your website better from an SEO standpoint, from a design perspective, from a Google ranking. Like I made a lot of these videos and you don't have to use lawn care web design. Like I tell you what we do on the back end in terms of rasterizing images, making them smaller so they load faster, making your image, making your, you know, the zip codes and the city names, all of these things I talk about all the time. So I would just say, hey, go ahead and get your website started, that's the most important thing. And then just chip away at it every week. Just say I'm going to dedicate one hour a week to make it better. Whether that be adding more text, adding some better pictures, whether it be going out and getting some nice photos of myself in my uniform with my truck and putting those on the website. I'm going to optimize it on my mobile this week. I'm going to make sure that everything looks better on my mobile device because that's really important. So these are the things that I'd recommend you do. And that's going to be though a 6 to 12 month game. That's why I don't want you to spend two weeks or a week figuring out your website like build it, chip away at it. But that's going to be a longer term game. I'd say more in the short term. You're going to have to do more direct response marketing which usually will come in the form door knocking, door hangers, every door, direct mail. Actually those things that are cheaper, like you're not going to have the money to spend a bunch on Facebook ads or a whole bunch of Google Ads and do a big, big campaign. But going like hand to hand combat is going to be the way to get leads right now. And then let that continual chipping away at your website be the thing that eventually six to 12 months later you start to get leads that fills your pipeline without you having to do that direct response marketing. But that's going to be a longer term game. So a lot of times people like I'm going to build this website, people are going to show up. I guarantee you won't get a lead from that website natively without sending them via from a advertisement for several months. And so that's the part that gets discouraging for people. And so I don't want you to put all your eggs in that basket and spend a whole bunch of emotional time, like a week or two building it. Just get started, chip away at it, and then focus on the more the direct response marketing that you're gonna have to more pound payment for because you don't have the budget for online. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. And just a quick follow up with that. So would you consider like Angie Leeds or Home Advisor or whatever, Would you consider that a good service to do? Like, even if I don't have that much money to put into marketing, would you recommend saying like, oh, set aside $100 a month to get, let's say like four or five leads a month?