Selling Big Landscape Jobs: Reaction to @keith-kalfas

What's up everyone? It's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast. Today we are doing another reaction video on Keith Kalfus video. It's on YouTube. Check it out. It's called I used to hate my landscaping business and wanted to quit. Now I love it. It's a game and it's fun. We're gonna be diving in on this, but if you don't know who I am, my name is Mike Andes and I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care where we have over 20 locations in North America. One and if you haven't checked out the channel, make sure you subscribe like this video? Share this content with someone that would appreciate another landscaping friend. Our goal is to change the level of professionalism in the landscaping industry and if you haven't already, join the course@landscapebusinesscourse.com alright, let's go ahead and jump into this. Keith Kalfus. By the way, I really like this guy. Very different kind of personality from most YouTubers in our space. Very deep thinker, has a lot of really motivational thoughts and like I said, really connects with people who are deep thinkers and in your head a lot. Very, very good balance to someone like myself who's more exuberant, just kind of like out there sort of thing and a little more less in my head. So really, really great content. Really like Keith. I met him at GIE for the first time in person. He watches the content. So thank you so much for supporting. I know he's a subscriber, so thanks so much Keith and I look forward to diving in and seeing what this video has to do. It's 11 minutes long. Let's jump into it and see what think what's up?

This is Keith Kelfus in this video. I want to do a property walk with you. This job right now is 7700 bucks and after change orders will probably be over 8 grand. But come over here.

Been taking on a little bit bigger projects this year just because just the nature of the business and what's working for me. So I want to share with you kind of step by step what we're doing because these are the questions that things that I struggled with and used to get anxiety about taking on slightly bigger jobs or maintenance jobs in the past and now I like them and I prefer them and I want to move up into 15, 20K range as quickly as possible. And what it really boils down to is.

Doing it, going through the hiccups, not making the money. You Wanted to make things taking longer than expected, all the things going wrong that you didn't expect and having to deal with and iron out all those issues until you get to the point where you can anticipate all that stuff in advance because you've already been through it.

So let me stop here and say this, and that is that this is what Keith said. He was right. And as your business is around longer, you're going to be asked more and more for bigger jobs. Is a natural cadence of lawn care professionals as they move into landscaping over time. And not necessarily because they have any more skill or they market it just because they've been around longer. Their existing customers ask for bigger jobs and they start taking on bigger and bigger jobs. You need to be very, very intentional about the size of jobs that you want for your business model. The reason Keith is moving towards these larger projects is because he does work by himself, maybe with a helper. And so bigger jobs are more interesting. They, they're more profitable, they're just more fun. To install and use your creativity and sell bigger jobs is a lot more fun. Keep in mind though, getting bigger jobs might not be the right thing for you if you're trying to scale the number of people and if you're just trying to grow the top line revenue of your business, yeah, getting big landscaping jobs is going to help. But in terms of creating systems, procedures and scalability around a very simple business model, the last thing you want to do is be adding in bigger and bigger jobs. With bigger and bigger equipment, there's more liability, there's more chance for error, and there's bigger chance for you to lose your shirt on a big job. That being said, if you're staying small, going into projects and into work that most other lawn care companies and bigger companies aren't going to tackle, great way to carve out yourself a niche and make some good money. As we're going to see with Keith.

I'm sure here, it's really just the order and the process of just. It just boils down to experience. It really blows my mind how I see some of these guys on YouTube. They get into the business and literally within the first year or two, they're doing a million bucks. I'm like, how were am I stupid? I'm stupid? Or you're just a genius or you have some type of very high IQ that I don't or didn't, or you don't have all the weird fears associated with all the weird little liabilities like I don't know about You. But I'm the type I would like exacerbate. Is that the right word? Things in my head and make them out to be worse than what they really are.

Okay, so this is interesting. So the first part of that, my first instinctual reaction was like, I think that's wrong. I do not think that people build bigger business because they have higher IQs. But he kind of what he said secondarily, I think is right. And that is people do have fears. They have fears, they have complexes, they have stuff they have to work through in their brain. And sometimes, you know, having an employee is a mental hurdle for somebody or getting a second truck or growing the business or having a website and being more public about their marketing and the work they're doing and being able to take some criticisms that might be a mental block. I do not believe that your IQ has anything to do with the size of business that you can grow into or the scale or how many employees you have, what type of services you offer, any of that. Nothing to do with iq. Let me be very clear about that. I've seen some great people that have, they would admit that their IQ test is super, super low. And they're not intelligent, but because they are emotionally intelligent, can connect with people, the employees, the customers, they can build great businesses. You might not have a high IQ and run numbers and financials. Guess what? You can hire people with great IQs that can run your numbers and an accountant, as a legal advisor, banker, whatever you need. And if you can connect with people, people you will sell jobs, you will retain great employees, and that's what makes a great business. But what he said there at the second part is very true. And that is, is something that can cause someone not to grow, is just inhibitions, their own fears and things that they have to work through in their mind.

Anyways, if you look over here.

In this job, this is the main part of the job, there was five pine trees here. They're all 30ft each. Just to remove all these jack pine trees because they were getting needles all over the place and then the whole landscape bed was just covered in needles and all these dark pebble beach stones right here.

So one thing to keep in mind when you are wanting to diversify services is your liability. Traditionally and again, you need to consult an insurance agent about this. Traditionally, the type of services you offer and the amount of your payroll is going to be what determines the cost of your general liability insurance. And so when you talking about your business, if you add tree service, for example, if we Added trees, and we were cutting trees above, you know, trimming bushes and shrubs and low hanging limbs. If we added actual tree removal, like these pine trees that he said were 30ft, if we added that, we would triple our general liability insurance policy cost. So keep that in mind as you add services. Not only are you adding in more equipment, higher skilled laborers, now you're actually increasing your general liability cost. Again, not a big issue. If your payroll is really low, that is, you're a solo operator, have one or two helpers, and you can charge a lot more to the customer like Keith does. But if you're trying to scale and you're trying to get 10, 15, 20 employees, just remember that for every payroll dollar, you're gonna be having a higher percentage of your money going out the door towards general liability insurance as you add more services, bigger equipment, bigger trucks, all of those things are play, come into play and you start paying for it.

Oh, there's a zoom on that too here. We can like zoom in and out if you want.

Remove it all the way down to grade and then grind all of these stumps. Once all the stumps are completely grounded, clean it out, take all the grinds away, reset the grade, and then plant all brand new arborvitaes instead. Once that's done, we're putting all brand new weed barrier fabric with fresh pins, cleaning up all the way around the edging, repairing the grade, and then putting brand new decorative stone on top. So I've called out mist dig, which whenever, before you dig, you call them in Michigan it's called Ms. Dig. And then they come out and they, they stake flags to make sure there's no underground utilities or lines where you're going to be digging, right? And then aside from that, creating a list of everything. So if we come back around this way.

While another thing I'm learning. You're on a quote. This is the biggest thing I've learned of all.

The.

While I'm on a quote with the customer. Norm.

Excuse me, I have to edit that part out now. And I wanted this to be a one take video, but today you can't even like cough or have allergies without somebody.

I'm not making this is why we love Keith.

Fun of it, but Jesus, do I get good headroom? Just a little bit of headroom. Okay, So a customer calls you to do one thing, but while you're on the property, you're not trying to sell them anything. You're just trying to create value. You point out all the other things that could be done it's called creating packages or upsells. So the customer just wants this stuff trimmed. You say, okay, I thought we could get out of the yard this way. Okay, well, we can do a whole property trim. You need any landscaping on. We can. We can literally redo your entire landscape if you mark that, promote that, advertise that. And I've literally.

Just a few hundred dollars with the work for a customer. There's another job.

We'Re about to do. It's like, double the size of this.

Just was a simple little tiny quote. And then very quickly, it turned into this deeper conversation with the customer where I spent 45 minutes, and now it's going to be an entire job. Because the customer is like, now that I'm standing here and we're actually talking about this, all this work really needs to get done.

So what he's talking about here is customer lifetime value.

And this is something that's really important. This is one of the two things that I think is most overlooked in our industry, and that is you can double the size of your business in just changing a couple variables. One variable is closing ratio. So if you close 30% of your estimates, you can literally double the size of your business without any more marketing, without any more new leads, just by closing 60% of your estimates instead of 30, double the size of your business. No new leads, no more money spent on marketing. Just close more deals. That's one way to double your business. Another way to double the size of your revenue in your business is double the lifetime value of a customer. That is if the average customer spends $1,000 per year with you because they do mowing, how can you get them to 2000? How can you sell them a mulch? How can you sell them a tree service? How can you, like, he's talking about upsell, selling them on other services that will increase the lifetime value of that customer.

There's different parts in the timeline. When a customer is cold, you don't really want to communicate with them at that place because they don't even know or don't even care that there's a problem or they want to spend money on what's a luxury service. But then as they start to get warm, it's when they start looking around and say, man, I'm gonna have to do something with this at some point. We're gonna have to make some changes. When they start to get hot, that's when there's conversations going on or in their household that it's really now become a sore spot or thumb or a thorn in their side. There's all different reasons why. But they're like, that's when they're actively going on Google and they're looking for a solution. They're picking up the phone, they're calling they. And then when they're past hot, they're boiling hot. That's when they've got their checkbook out and they're looking for a contractor. Like, I need this problem solved immediately. I need this pain point off. That's one thing. Another thing is some people.

They always have projects going on and they're always.

What he's saying here is exactly right. You want to mark to your warm customers, existing customers, customers that you are already doing mowing services for, really likely, most likely, that they're going to be the ones to accept the landscaping project, a whole lot more likely than some random other person. So again, it's much easier to double the size of your business by increasing lifetime value, that is selling more services to the same customers than it is going out and finding more new customers. It's the bright, shiny new thing that we're all going after. New customer here, new customer there. Focus on the customers you got. Increase their value by consistently selling to them and more services.

Always, quote, unquote, spending money on things. And if you keep in mind that landscaping is a luxury service for the most part, then back up.

I feel weird because I have people standing right here.

This is funny, but what he said there is very true, and that is landscaping is a lot of times seen as a luxury service, like he said. That's the reason why I always encourage everyone to have at least some. Some of their business being recurring revenue. Because mowing and trimming bushes, those have to be done regardless, especially if someone is handicapped or they're physically incapable of getting on a ladder. Those are the type of services that are much more insulated from economic crisis and downturns because if someone has money, they physically cannot do the work and they live in a nice neighborhood, guess what? They still got to cut the grass. They still have to trim the bushes, but they probably don't have to remove their lawn, install really nice patios and walls and pavers like those are optional luxury items. But traditionally, maintenance is more of a necessity and something that people will not just write off right away.

Here they can hear everything I'm saying and like, potentially people all looking at me. But I have to get over that. See, I've been making videos for years and years and years, but there's certain things I don't want to say very loudly that would make people perceive me a certain way. So that I would love to say right now to you.

But the biggest thing of all, here's what. And I'll end this video with this. It really boils down to your unc, your sub communication. When you're communicating with the client and walking the property with them, they can feel just by your body language and your confidence in the way that you talk.

That you are the person for the job. You've done this a thousand times and you have no inconsistency in your energy or body language that shows that maybe you're uncertain. It's all about certainty. When they feel you're absolutely certain and you have all the clout to back it up. You have all the positive reviews on Google that you've built over time by asking the customers to leave you a well worded review on Google on your website, they go, on your website, it looks very professional and this is what really helps that whole process along. So when all these things line up, you do what you say you're going to do. When you say you're going to do it.

You are credible and professional and you're licensed, insured, and you give them a professional proposal. You have other people on the Internet saying that you've done good job. You can show the pictures, the customer pictures, you know all of your pricing and all the lingo right off the top of your head. Just when you're talking to the customer, they can tell just by the way you talk and carry yourself that this is something you do every single day. I believe that it just feels right.

Or sometimes it doesn't matter how they.

Feel mathematically, confidence breeds success. Success breeds confidence. When you're confident as an estimator in what you do and how you do it, you're going, you're able to sell more. And when you sell more, you build confidence. That flywheel of success, right? You know, as you sell more of these jobs, you do get more confidence and that confidence allows you to sell more. It's great. And that's why sometimes I'll see an estimator or even a franchisee that's new. They'll be struggling with their close ratio, getting leads but not closing. And then all of a sudden they'll start clicking and they'll actually start getting sales. And it's not like they change or got a whole bunch of experience even. It's just like they gain confidence. That confidence breeded success. They got sale some sales. Those sales gave them More confidence, which breeded more sales.

Has to be right. But these little subtle distinctions have taken me from a guy who's running around broke, killing myself, not making any money in this business and hating this business and wanting to get out of this business business and being depressed and feeling trapped in this business. At points to now, I like it. Again, it's fun. It's like a game to me. And it's fun taking on these projects because all it is is just a bunch of little jobs grouped together in one job. And if you know how to project plan and you know your cost of goods sold, you know what your numbers are, you know all the landscape suppliers and the places that you can dump, you have all the tools on hand that you've invested in. It gets to the point where you have everything you need to do any of these jobs.

Really good point here. Because you don't need to start off doing the big jobs. You can slowly get the tools, you can slowly get the experience. And you don't need to start right away with the $20,000 project. You can start off with a $5,000 project or a 3,000 or $1,000 cleanup and slowly build up to this point. And that's how you start to sell those jobs, is getting the confidence. It's like when you are swinging for the fences. You don't start off like the first batting, you know, swing of batting practice is not swinging for a home run. If you watch a major league baseball player when they're warming up, the first thing they're doing is just swinging, just swinging, hitting maybe off of a tee, then maybe hitting some softballs and then, you know, some soft pitches from the pitcher and then hitting some line drives and some ground balls. Then they go for the fences. Don't try going for the fences right off the bat, you're going to strike out. And don't try to go for a $50,000 project. Your first couple weeks into the business. Start off with a single, then a double, then a triple. Get confidence and then swing for the fences.

And that's when you can start to just take on little things maybe you haven't done before. That's the last, last thing. Whenever you get into shit that you don't know what you're doing, that's when a job can turn into like a nightmare or give you that pit in your stomach where you're gambling. So.

I try to take those little tiny things and those things just very small and stride. I used to. When I first started this business, I was so desperate for money that I would quote some customers 20,000 patio dollar patio. And I literally had no clue. And I was calling other contractors to show the job site and bid it and help me. And literally making no money, because been there, done that.

If you have to do that, just don't take the job. It's not worth the headache. It's a big dollar amount, but you could lose your shirt if you're not confident in the estimate. Just be honest with the customer. Usually they respect that. And they'll be like, okay, well, maybe I'll have someone else do the big wall in the patio, but can you do the cleanup? Can you install the mulch? And they're gonna be more trusting of you when you say you can't do one part of the job, because on the parts that you say you can do, they know you can do it, and they have a lot more trust in you.

I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I think if you stick with what you know, get really good at it. There's so many other. So many things that I could say and so many people that would disagree with what I'm saying, that that's why a lot of people don't make videos about this stuff. Because really, if you're gonna make a video like I am right now, you have to just stand in your own skin square and speak your own truth for what's real for you and speak that out. And then people will take the value that they get from it and discard what they don't like. Because you can click to the next video and there's some guy saying something completely different than what I'm saying. Anyways, I hope that helps you. I hope that serves you. I'm about to jump back on this. I got a bunch of phone calls to return.

Okay, well, Keith is having a bit of a moment, but that's fine. He's just wrapping up. But I think that we should take his advice. We should click to the next video and watch another one of landscape business course videos. But hopefully that was helpful for you. I'm gonna do more of these reaction videos to give my perspective and hopefully get some different angles that I don't talk I haven't talked about. Like, there's been hundreds of podcast videos now and content and training. So I'm trying to do some of these reaction videos to get little tweaks or angles I haven't seen or heard you haven't heard before and give some of my reactions to these things in terms of if you have different types of business models if you're more solo or if you're going to be growing and scaling your business. So hopefully that was helpful. Make sure you check out landscapebusinesscourse.com in the links below. Check those out. Lawn careweb design.com you can also get us to build your website. We'll see you next time on the Landscape Business Course podcast.