SELL MORE WORK! Starting a Lawn Care Business With No-Debt

Foreign.

We're just outside of Littleton, Colorado now. We got in, had a horrible experience of customer service when it came to a rental car. Sat in the line for an hour only to be name drop, name drop, name drop. Oh, hurts. Well, it became dollar now I think or whatever it's. But anyways, because they're bankrupt. So we know why. It was horrible. Customer service trying to scam us three times. Had to return the receipt to the person. Anyways, we're going to go Anytime Fitness. Great thing about Anytime Fitness, little plug for them. There's 4,500 locations around the world. So basically everywhere where you go, there's one pretty close by. So we're only a mile from here. Our hotel going to.

9:30. We're going to get a quick workout in and then Josh is going to call his girlfriend and work hard on this vlog.

Truth that we eat healthy on our trips. No fast food for us. Josh, you didn't even get anything unhealthy.

Good for you. Wait, what?

You didn't get anything unhealthy?

Yeah.

Editors note the pasta in the top right corner was quickly deemed unhealthy and sent back to the shelves.

This is questionable.

No, I didn't want two of those.

Cancel.

Wait, is this day two? Day three? This is day three. And started off a little weak. Bad WI fi connection that took a long time to download. I had to go to Starbucks to upload the video. Josh forgot his wallet and passport at the hotel, so he had to go back there. So we're about an hour and a half behind. But now we're headed over to Thomas from Littleton, Colorado. It's not too far, kind of the suburbs out of Denver. And Thomas was our very first franchisee. He started last year and so Covid kind of hit his area pretty hard in terms of the fact that we were really depending on a lot of door knocking and door hangers for him. And so that really hurt him this spring. So he still is working by himself and then usually has a couple part timers that work with him as well, but just kind of getting established, getting in the rhythm of things because he's new to the area in terms of doing a landscape business. He used to be down in Florida. So he's been learning a lot this year and really looking forward to growth next year in terms of learning the systems and learning how everything works this year. So gonna meet up with him. Looking forward to it, get some shots. It's gonna be nice and hot here in Colorado and so come along for the ride, brother.

How are ya? Good to see ya.

Can't even see this side yet. Are we shaking?

Oh, yeah, we are. We are here. If you're okay, I'll even give you a hug.

Good to see you.

Been good.

Good stuff.

Got 30x and everything.

Oh, yeah.

You know that one, too?

No, no, I just.

Josh thought it was the customer out there.

Yeah, no, they're working on the house, I guess, so. I just got here.

This is a nice place. The golf course out behind there is. Look at some nice shots of this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just. I just kept moving, man.

That's good. That's good. That's perfect. Sorry we're so late.

Yeah, that's all right.

It's all Josh's fault.

I can hold it against you. How are you? How are you?

This is a nice.

She's actually selling this house, so it's a matter of just keeping it up. Yeah, Just mowing the grass. The bare minimum, I think, is really what she's after.

Got it.

And then, you know, once she sells it, I think it's about making it the next person's deal after that, so. Yeah.

This whole neighborhood is an hoa.

I imagine.

Yeah.

I imagine this is some nice shots because they're on this golf course, so.

Yeah. Do you have a couple in this neighborhood?

Not on this street, no.

Okay.

I kind of rearranged my route today.

Yeah. And then Josh messed everything up.

That's all right.

That's okay. So you go ahead and get started. I'm gonna throw the drone up. Josh will follow you around. Okay. And then get some good shots of you.

All right.

Sam.

My name is Thomas Salazar. My location is Littleton, Colorado. Main struggles would be just getting out of my own way.

Maybe just worrying about not having it all figured out before I move forward in certain things instead of just getting out there and getting it done.

I think that's probably the biggest struggle, sense of fear in that department, I guess. I mean, there's just so many things when it comes to joining Augusta. I mean, great support system, great team members. You know, Mike's available, everyone at the command center, and just everyone's available and ready to help answer questions. You know, a lot. I've learned a lot just because of being a part of Augusta. The systems in place have really, really made a big difference. Just. I can't think of anything negative about it. If I had to start all over, I'd still choose the Gusta every day of the.

Sam.

Like right now. How many estimates are you kind of getting each week.

It's definitely dwindled down.

Yep.

I don't know. Four. Four. So maybe one a day.

Maybe one a day, if that now. Okay.

And are they mostly for the cleanups.

And kind of what you're pitching a cleanup cleanups and then maybe an aeration or just something that we just don't do. Yep. Type of deal, so.

And I don't.

I do not want to get into things that we don't do just because I don't want to make a big headache out of it.

What's your clues ratio right now?

I forget. I don't have it as of lately. Well, since I sent out all the fall cleanups.

Right.

A lot of them were like, it.

Drops it down a bit.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, maybe 60, 50%? 40. Possibly 40 to 60. Somewhere in there.

Yes. Like when? Whenever we're trying to, like, fill the schedule. Like, I don't know if you've watched Marcus do an estimate a couple weeks ago or last week, but like he said in this thing, he dropped the E fee, for example, because they. He knows that the schedule is only booked out, like, two days. Right. Right. So as soon as we start hitting, like, not enough work, that's when we start, like, cutting how many budget hours on the jobs. We start cutting out budget dumping fees and E fees. Because it's more important to fill the schedule.

Sure.

And that's why, like, when you want to get an employee, for example, even if you're charging $60 an hour, let's say you don't charge any E fees, no dump fees, and instead of g them eight hours on the job, you give them seven. That's still a $420 job.

Right.

So, like, and they'll still make decent on P4P. If they do, they work pretty, pretty hard throughout the day. They're just not gonna kill it.

Right.

You're not gonna have eight hours with a dumping fee and an e fee and, like, really have a bunch of margin. But when it's all about just getting the momentum of filling the schedule.

Right.

So that's what I'd be focused on more even like, with the fault clearance, as you go into this next few weeks, just go low. It's not about getting high profit right now. Because, like, if you can get like, four or $5,000 in revenue in lead cleanups is, like 10 jobs. Low, low price job. Like $400, pop. If you have 10 of those, that's $4,000.

I would focus on just filling the Schedule, like, and as soon as you fill out your schedule, say two weeks, like solid. And then even, like, if Elijah's involved too, that's when you start, like, okay, now start adding in a dump fee or an E fee or giving us more budget hours a night or even what I think we actually need. If you look at job like, I know this is an eight hour job, do six.

Right?

Now.

It'S about filling the schedule, right? Because when you fill the schedule and if you start closing a ton of your jobs over the course of, say, four days, you close four jobs and immediately you're two weeks booked out. That gives you the confidence now on the next estimate that, okay, I gotta actually charge the full eight. Right? Right. Okay. So that's why I'm such a big fan. Like, just fill the schedule two weeks. Because once you do that, you go to an estimate and you're like, okay, I can charge exactly what I need to charge. And those are the higher profit margin jobs. But you filled the schedule for revenue sake. Right. And it's just that momentum. It's funny when you go to a job and you know you have two weeks booked out. It's just, it's strange how, like, the confidence, like, oh, I don't really need this job. I got two weeks booked out. Instead of like, oh, I gotta get this on job tomorrow, like, I'm gonna cut the price. I'm gonna be kind of desperate. Like, I don't know if the customer picks up on that, whatever. But like, it's just filling the schedule just gets that momentum going. And so for Tim, for Marcus, whoever, like, when they're out doing estimates, they know if they're not filling their schedule out, cut the prices. Okay. Yeah.

All right.

And I know it seems counter to like, I want high profit margin, but think about it. If you're, if you're doing all the work, you have no overhead. If you have someone else doing the work and they're getting. And you're paying 15, $20 an hour, even, even if you're 40 and 50 right now, you don't have a lot of overhead. Right. You don't have an office. You already have a second truck.

Right.

So I wouldn't worry about like the prices throughout the leaf cleanup thing. It'd be. It's a matter like, let's get the jobs. Even if someone came back and they're like, might be a little bit too high.

Well, what.

You know what? Let's get you on the schedule. We'll give you this price. Take a couple Hours off. And let's just get you on the schedule. We'd love to do work. We'd love to do business with you. We'd love to earn your business. And to do that, we're gonna do this. Okay.

Yeah.

I just be all about. Like, if you're getting five estimates a week, even, like, we should be sheen. Like, let's get four of them closed.

Right.

If you have four closed a week, that's gonna fill your schedule.

Sure.

You know, so. All right, let me send over the door hangers or make those up tonight. Send those over to you. And I think we just pound those for, like, next three, four weeks. And I really get the feel of the booking the schedule, using those small cleanups and the little landscaping jobs. Like, those are the. Those are money makers down the road at the beginning, if you have to kind of learn your way through or, like, cut the hours to get the jobs, it's fine. It's fine. Right, Right. Like, this is the same conversation I had Tim, like, in April and May when he's. We were pumping in more marketing dollars than we made in total revenue.

Right.

That's not an easy position to be in. Right. And so. And for his position, he's making a percentage of profit, too. He knows he's at zero. Right. And so it's the same conversation. Like, it's just like, we gotta fill the schedule. I don't care if we're doing jobs for half off. We gotta fill the schedule. The first step is like, fill the schedule. So, you know, the 500 door hangers will get you kind of like a two times to all the people around your current properties, and especially in Highlands Ranch, like, that third, if you have any extra, the third one should be there.

Right.

And if it's like, well, I'm doing it every week for three weeks straight. Like, it's annoying for them. Who cares? Right? That's the worst thing that happens. They call command center and say, hey, stop delivering to my address. I got the worst thing that happens.

Sure.

Right. The best thing that happens is they start seeing the first week, not really that much. Second week, we can get through it. Third week, okay, we need someone to do our leaves, and we're calling this guy.

Right. I got you.

So that's what I really encourage you. Like, it's funny thing. Like, it's. It's. It's a momentum game. And like. Like I said, like, Tim was. Tim went from 7,000amonth to 18. Like that. It just. And. But those first couple months were not Easy. In terms of, like, his close ratio wasn't that great. We were trying to figure out how to do estimates. We were trying to just encourage, like, hey, you can. His biggest thing was, like, he all. He would not want to reduce budget dollars. Like, if it took eight. He's like, I have to charge eight. So I'm like, okay, well, let's get away with dumpy fees. No E fee. But still, he needed to bring it down. So just working through with him, realizing that you've got to fill the schedule, like, number one.

Because I got a.

Lot of backtracking to do now. It's all good, Josh. Thanks, buddy. You got your passport, right? Yeah. Don't lose that thing. Got a lot of traveling to do. That's a rookie move. I know.

Okay, we'll let you go.

Thanks again.

Real pleasure, man.

You too. Absolutely.

We'll stay in touch. Also, get the door hangers tonight. I'll let the guys know probably by end of this week. They'll have the changes on the website made.

Okay.

Focusing on high lines.

And you get that phone number switched over to the command center phone number on the website.

Yes. Yep. And Google local services or Google my business. Sorry. So Google local services. Doesn't matter. They don't have the phone number on there.

Right, right. Okay, great. Great. And we're gonna be making our way up there. The first plan is for January. Cool.

Sounds good. We'll see you then.

Absolutely.

Be nice and cold. Oh, it'll be colder here.

All right, everybody. So we are headed back to the Denver airport. We left Littleton, Colorado, over with Thomas. That was a lot of fun and big shout out to Thomas for this knife that he got me. Already found a little spot for it to go in my pants. We'll see how that goes to security. But enjoyed being with Thomas. Talked to him a little bit about just growing the business. And really, when you don't start with a lot of money to spend on marketing, it takes a little bit longer.

To grow the business.

And that's just natural. A lot of people look like the Mount Vernon location, for example, we started in March, and they're like, oh, you got, like, profitable within three or four months and a good profit margin and all that. Yes. But we also. If you look at the first video where I showed the first three months, we spent $47,000 before we were profitable. So, you know, you don't have that. It's just gonna take a little longer.

You know, it might take a couple years instead of, you know, six months to get to that point. So anyways, we are now headed over to Denver Airport. We're gonna be flying out to Saline, Arkansas, meeting up with Dave just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. So flying over there this evening and just finished a workout over Anytime Fitness. Got some chin ups and pull ups in doing it with a mask, which is a first for me. And it was not fun. But anyways, if you guys see us around, make sure you say hello. This morning I was over at Starbucks sitting outside. Someone drove by screaming hi Mike. By the time I turned around, I think I lost you. But over in Englewood, Colorado, whoever that was, thanks so much. I know you commented, but if you guys see us in our yellow uniforms, definitely say hello. But until next time tomorrow, make sure you subscribe like the video. We'll see you next time.