She Built a $100K Landscape Business With a BRAIN INJURY

I'm here and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Ultimately, the biggest risk to this business is you quitting just simply 'cause of burnout.

The accident happened in 2016. These flare-up situations, they can be pretty intense.

You see all the struggles. You can see the pain in trying to manage a company by yourself.

I really wanna make this work and I've put everything into it.

Today we're in Michigan visiting Krystal from Grounds to Gardens. Like, you're just running around fighting fires 'cause there are a bunch of part-timers that don't know what's going on.

It's like, Krystal, Krystal, Krystal, Krystal.

She has a lot of ideas for where the company can go, and I think it's easy to like get carried away.

She started the landscape business 4 years ago after being in an accident where she suffered a traumatic brain injury.

My head bashed into the car seat. After a brain injury, you don't have like reserve anymore. Crippling body spasms. Emotional reserve. Vomiting. Spiritual reserve. Mental reserve. Severe headaches.

Things that you have done like having 5 part-time technicians does not help. Last year she made $96,000 in revenue, but she has 5 employees and And chaos happens every single day. How far are you usually booked out?

I'm not exactly sure.

But when you have people leaving and coming, it does create a more unstable environment.

This is the Business Turnaround Show. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and HomeWork Software. I travel the country fixing struggling businesses. Our goal is to give Crystal a strategy to turn around the company in the next 6 weeks. The reason it's not big changes is because I'm not asking you to go out and triple the business. Yeah, I don't want you to. Like, I think if you take these 18 leads, we close them at a higher rate, we'll be more profitable. I think if we get better technicians that are more full-time, it'll settle you a little bit more. If we time block correctly, you won't feel as scattered. And I think if we sell on site, even with the higher price, we'll still convert 80, 90% of people.

Hey, Mike. Oh my gosh. I hope you get this video and I hope you consider coming out to Michigan to help out Ground Soup Gardens. My name is Crystal Collin and I've been in business since June 22nd, 2022. I was working in corporate America, got, you know, burned out. It was a soul-sucking job, and then I was in a significant accident. I was actually a passenger. I wasn't driving. We got rear-ended. It was really brutal. My head bashed into the car seat, and you think a car seat is soft. It crushed in the back of my head, causing a pretty severe injury to my brain, to the brainstem, and fractured my neck bone, one of my neck bones. And that took 7 years for me to recover from a traumatic brain injury. That was one of the hardest things I've ever been through, and my eyes weren't working right. I would fall a lot. It was pretty difficult. Even if someone walked past me kind of fast, I would throw up. In the beginning, when I was working with the pre-K, You gotta— a lot of it is about movement. And so they would do things like this, like we would sing to them and they would do things like this. And I could not do that. I mean, it was super humbling, but also really eye-opening. Like, wow, the stuff we take for granted. This is my comeback story. This business is my comeback story. So I wanna make it great. I follow all your stuff. I could really use some help. I have—

Hyped up.

I think I have at the moment 9 people that work for me part-time.

Whoa! So last year, $96,000 in revenue, 9 employees. I tend to want to have 1 or 2 really good employees instead of 9 part-timers. Not even part-timers, these folks are working 100 hours a year, but they're only making between $5,000 and $10,000, which thank goodness, because if they were making like Even part-time wage, we'd be negative $100 grand. Profiting $43,000 despite all that. And there's no owner salary inside that. So that's what she's using to live on is the $40,000.

Eventually, I would like to make the company so profitable that I can get off of the disability and be free from it. I've come this far and so I'm going. So hopefully you can help me. I'm definitely a great student, and I really want to make this work, and I've put everything into it. Excuse me. I remember in the video when I got choked up, and it was just thinking like, wow, girl, you've come so far. Take a pause and celebrate because look at what you're doing. Like, this is amazing. You know, first job's at Lori's. That's where we did that huge overhaul. She gave us a great review. You guys will just need to be doing weeding around. I don't think you're going to need any tools. You might want to bring a hedge trimmer for that one just in case. You want the big rakes or the kid rakes?

No, this is good.

Okay. Oh, this is a great story. I've known this guy since he was 9 years old. I met him at a school. I used to teach there, and I met his mom, and we've just been really tight ever since. And then he grew up, he got big muscles, and I was like, hey, you want a job? And he's like, yeah.

My name is Alan Misiewicz. I've been working with Crystal at Grounds to Gardens for on and off for 3 years.

The company for me was like a rebellion against what I saw to be sort of a problem in our world, especially for younger people trying to make a difference. difference, make some money and have some free time and be able to buy groceries and pay rent. So I, so I wanted to build a business not only around what I want, but also what's good for other people too. I want to see everyone reach their goals. And, you know, they stay with the company, great. If they move on and create their own thing, that's awesome too. Hi, how you doing?

Good to see you.

Thank you so much.

This is a great place you have out here.

Thank you. I feel pretty blessed.

A little further away from the The city, but not like too far away.

Yes.

That's awesome.

Good stuff. It's paradise. Come on in the backyard. All right, we've got 2 dogs, Sebastian and Lily.

Hi, and are you Angelica?

I'm Angelica.

I'm Mike, great to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

How many— how many— is this a half acre, or do you have all the way back there?

So I rent about 2 acres, and there's a two-track. You can kind of see it over there.

Yeah, yeah.

And then this— I mean, this is just a storage.

Bringing the mowers into here then?

Yeah, exactly. So we got some lavender out there, and we bring saplings and stuff home and plant them, and we'll sell them to customers in the future.

Are these from 2022 when you started or more recently?

I had a Toro TimeCutter, my very first mower. $3,000, let's go.

Was that the one I just saw out there, the push mower?

No, that is a Toro, but that's a push one. No, I started with the zero turn. But I sold it, and I got those 2 Exmarks.

I know I looked over there, So we went over all of the financial side. And so, but maybe kind of give me a background. So you started the business in 2022.

Yep.

Maybe just kind of give me like the revenue projections or what you kind of roughly think for those 4 years, the last 4 years.

Well, the first year I put in a lot of money and we were negative $4,000.

But in terms of revenue that year, do you remember?

Revenue was about $3,000, I think.

Okay.

It was only 6 months I had owned it. So I started in June. Officially with the LLC. The next year was a full year and we did about 35. It was just me.

Okay.

And part-time too because I have this injury and I'm— so, but then the next year, 2024, I was like, whoa, we could actually do something here. I brought on some people to help.

And right now, how many team members do we have?

In the field, I have 2 team leaders and then we have 3 crew members.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so 5.

Yeah. Angelica helps me here. I can always count on Angelica. She is so sweet and kind and but Also, she's so competent. I could ask her to do anything and she just gets it done. And then I also have a marketing gal who's also doing a little bit of admin too.

OK. And is that person contractor, like a monthly fee, or are they on some sort of salary?

They are. Everybody is on—

1099s?

No, everyone is on payroll.

OK. Including the marketing gal?

Yeah, because I'm having her do mostly admin stuff at the time, but she's part-time. She's only working 5 to 10 hours a week right now.

OK. And that's really most of the team, right? Is 5 to 10 hours a week?

So I have one guy that works 3 days a week. And so he's making like, I guess he's probably about 20 hours a week or so. I had a few people here I was paying like almost $28 an hour, but I'm realizing now as we're getting more and more employees that maybe I need to be more strategic about pay. And so now I'm starting people out at a little bit lower, whereas before I was like, here's more money, please stay, please help me.

Are you helping with the admin a little bit right now?

I'm helping more around the house, so I'm helping with the animals and I'm helping with meal prepping, cleaning when needed. Okay, that sort of thing.

I think this is a really big hack for entrepreneurs, especially if you feel overwhelmed. What are the tasks that I can take off my plate, whether it be cleaning the house, folding the laundry, preparing the food? What are those tasks that I could delegate to someone else and free up my time to focus on the business?

I don't know exactly where I am this year, but we're looking at about 150 to 200 with you here, probably like 200.

But you're on track for like 150, you think, this year? The reports I got are all from the end of last year, so some of them are old. Kind of, especially because you're growing so quickly. So maybe just bring me up to speed a little bit on like, okay, revenue last month, for example. Do you know what that was?

I could pull it up on the computer.

Even approximate is fine. Even if you have it off the top of your head. Are we running around $20,000?

I feel like it's more than that.

Okay.

I feel like we're probably between like $30,000 and $35,000. Oh, awesome. Yeah.

Cool. So you are really busy during this time, I assume during winter, almost nothing then.

Yeah. And you know, and that's how I used to manage the brain injury. I was like, oh, this is— I'll work Hard these months and then take these months off, but I don't know that I can keep doing that.

Right, for the business's sake.

Yeah.

Got it.

Okay, for my employees, like, I, I want to give them something year-round, and so I don't want to lose them. They're so good.

For most people, if I walk into any business that did $100,000 last year in revenue, the first thing I'm trying to push the owner to do is like get out in the field and do as much work as possible. In this case, there's limitations emotionally and physically That we cannot cross because it would cause the business owner to want to quit and burn out. Every other case where the owner's physically capable of doing the work at this stage of business, I'd be telling them to optimize for as many hours out in the field generating revenue as much as possible. What are the limitations because of the injury that like physically you can't do? Is it a few hours a day where you're just like after that you're kind of tapped out? Is it exhaustion? Just so I can make sure that I'm not saying something that is like Physically, you're just not capable of that right now?

If I go down for a day or 2 days, we lose my labor.

Okay.

But the team can still function and things like that. So I don't think we have super, super limitations with that. The brain injury, the aftermath of it, which includes like severe headaches, crippling body spasms, vomiting, losing control of my bladder sometimes.

When you have those flare-ups, can you still do admin and sales or is it just physical work, like exertion that's tough? Or is it like you kind of just need to check out for a bit?

It's almost like a horrible hangover the next day. Like, you can't really figure out what you're supposed to do. So there is like a day recovery. So looking at a computer and things, not so great.

Does that happen often?

So it happens more during like the stressful times when it's super hot out or stuff like that. But I, um, some— like, I do go months without them. Like, one time I was like 6 months without one. There are times I'm out on the job and I'm trying to hold it together for the crew And they don't know I'm suffering. And I'll go around the corner and sometimes I've thrown up and things like this. And so trying to make sure that you can protect yourself in a way where your injury is not going to spill out and taint maybe client retention or even employee retention, it has been a tricky independent challenge that I face that no one else understands.

Have you tried to hire people full-time in the past?

I had, yes.

Okay.

And it didn't go so great. Okay.

And what was it? Just like those hires were not great fits or were they getting burnt out or what?

Definitely that hire was not the right fit.

The 2 individuals that you said want to work full-time, would you want them to work full-time?

100%. I would love everyone that works for me right now to work full-time. Okay.

Yeah.

Have you committed them for full-time at all or not?

I told them, I said, I have it if you want it now.

Okay. And they don't want it now?

They can't. They're a little bit like one's training in a program that It goes through January.

Okay.

And another one, I don't exactly know. Okay.

He's—

yeah, but they did say that they're interested.

From my perspective, part-time is nice because I have a lot of things that are going on. I'm pretty young. I still have a lot of things that I'm interested in business-wise. So I have the opportunity to still live my life, have really amazing hours, work when she needs the help mostly, and have certain days of the week where I have scheduled out, but then have a lot of the week where I can do things to what I want to do.

We tend to do jobs in like kind of a bite-sized fashion, say like a 3 or 4 hour job, and then we'll do another one. So if I needed to bow out or I had something going on, it was a lot easier to move around that for school or whatever I needed to do.

The problem I have with having 5 technicians is also just the management load on you.

Yeah, that's right.

Right? That's why I want like the current 5 part-timers can do like 2 full-timers will do their work.

That's amazing. I never even thought of it like that.

Yeah, well, it's just the amount of hours they're working. Per year, right? Like even right now, it's like when I looked at last year, it was like $40,000 in salary. I'm like, my goodness, that's basically one, one person.

That's right.

If they just work just the one person, right?

Wow.

Like you're just running around fighting fires because there are a bunch of part-timers and don't know what's going on.

It's like Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal. I have nightmares sometimes. Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal.

Now at least it'll just be 2 Crystals, right? Yeah, just one in both ears.

The phone rings all the time. If I'm on a job leading a crew, it's like Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal. You know, you have to make all these decisions. And be able to use your executive function.

I do want you to do one-on-ones, and I want it to be with these 2 full-timers starting now. I'm having a conversation with them and ironing out the details of when they're starting, what their pay is going to be, full-time hours, what that's going to look like. I'm not really too concerned about people that work 4 hours a week. I'm not going to spend that much management time on them. I eventually just want them out of the business so I can work with my team. The reason I like full-timers over part-timers is because someone only has so much discretionary effort, meaning when they're in the shower, they're thinking about stuff. I need them thinking about my business, not their 4 other side hustles and their other job and school's going on and all this other stuff. I just want them focused on my business.

I would love to work here full-time, and maybe I will in the future. I don't know. I don't know what God has for me, but I'm really interested in travel. I have the opportunity and the privilege of working online pretty much every single day of the week.

So I'd have individual conversations with them. Don't bring them together. So that way, if they have things that they're concerned about with the business or like, well, are we going to be growing? Like, what's it going to look like next year? You can address their concerns one-on-one. I want to stay in communication with them every single month to make sure that by next spring they're still locked in, they know what's going on, they're fully secure in their job, and they're locked and loaded. Right now she has the work for essentially 2 full-time employees. So to do $150,000 to $200,000 in annual revenue, you only need 2 employees. Usually that's the owner and one person, but in this case it's 2 employees that are full-time. She has 5 part-timers do the work of 2 people. Next year when she starts to grow in spring rush again, She'll likely need another truck and probably a third full-time employee.

Then I would feel also better to step back because they are amazing, but they haven't had the great training. It's all been work next to me and I'll show you. So I definitely need a system for training. I don't know how to train people on lawn mowing. I am failing miserably at it. I don't want to brag, but I'm the only one who can get this stuff started every single time, and that's just a problem.

I agree.

Okay.

I think though If you cut out 5 or 10% of your services that you're currently doing, you wouldn't need to train them on most of what they're lacking right now.

Okay.

There's a lot that can go on the list. Like, I know she has her own, like, mowing and, uh, like, general lawn care service. Really anything to do with the lawn, mulching services, tree treatment, of course weeding. We do such a crazy variety.

The challenging part with having someone like yourself that's so skilled is you're like, yeah, we can do that. And then, but Billy, who's worked here 4 months, can't.

Yeah.

And so we have to, when we look in the estimate, what can they do?

Okay.

I truly believe if you tell the customer, my crew is not fully trained and certified in that, they'll be like, oh, that's totally fine. The other 95% of the job, you are— I know now you are confident you can get this done for me.

Yeah.

So you actually gain trust with the client by saying no to them.

I mean, I feel like I'm still on the curve. I definitely have gotten a lot better with like the general day-to-day things, but there's always something new that comes up or a new kind of style or Some kind of new plant that we're pulling that I need to learn about.

A lot of the stress when you have 5, 6 technicians is just scheduling.

Yes.

And juggling all the jobs. That becomes an absolute nightmare to manage the schedule and everything else, and even quality, because like they're, they're showing up once a week. They don't know like what happened yesterday and 3 days before, and that the customer called in, that you've gone back 3 times already. And so you lose a lot of quality even just by having People are part-time.

100%.

Crystal's always great with talking to you about like what needs to happen to like have you progress as an employee. We communicate very well here. So like, you'll know if you're doing something wrong and it isn't like this silent thing that you keep doing wrong. You're always corrected. I think that kind of builds loyalty from the employees.

What do you charge per hour? What's your hourly rate?

Well, right now we're in between $65 an hour and $85 an hour.

OK. And why is there the range?

Because I'm trying to get into profit mode.

But when you say there's a range, is that like existing customers?

Yeah, these are.

Yes.

Okay. So existing customers, some are $65 still. But if you get a new customer, you're billing them at $85.

Exactly.

So are you usually billing by the hour?

Yeah, mostly. Yeah. When we go in and do projects, I kind of do a project base, but I'm learning like it's basically, it's just by the hour anyway.

For detailed work, it's the one area, like we don't do detailed work because it's, I hate hourly work. But gardening, gardening is one of those things where you can do this.

Yeah.

Because they do so very much custom work around gardening. It's very difficult to give an exact price. So a lot of times she's just giving an hourly rate. What I really recommend is having some sort of an hour cap so the customer's not worried about you going way over budget. When you look at the business, what do you enjoy? The only reason I ask these things, I'm trying to optimize for you. Like, I could care less about what's right for business. I want the right business for you. And so, like, when you look at the business, what lights you up? What do you want to do for the next 20 years of your life?

I really love interacting with The employees, they're phenomenal people, some of the best people that I've met. Well, I really love working with the clients. I think like, so sales, the sales part, I think I thrive there. I've had some training, I'm pretty good at it, but also I'm super authentic and people feel that and they like that. And they— so I definitely want to keep working with the clients and keep, keep that sort of touch in if I can to a certain degree. I love getting to a client's house and looking at a job and everyone's like, oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? And then at the end of the day, we're all high-fiving each other and just so hyped up that we You killed it and the client's so happy. If I can sit down and do the payroll and the numbers, I don't mind doing those things. Realistically, when I'm looking at the numbers, I mean, for the life— mostly I want a lifestyle that I can support myself with these injuries in the future, retire and still have a good life, and then I will be okay. I don't have to keep going with that. I'll do other things. But yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I honestly think the business is positioned in a really good place right now to launch into that next level, maybe get up to that $500K. But in in a lot of ways, we're just beginning.

You were saying we closed like 98% of people.

I yeah, I could show you.

Close like everyone.

Every.

And then all of a sudden you raised to 85, and everyone's like, "I'm out." There was like four or five people in a row that ghosted me. And do you have any sort of follow-up sequence with those?

Yes, I do. Yeah.

Wow, that's surprising when you had a 98% close rate because you never needed it.

I did, but I got I'm ready, man. I'm ready.

Do you text and email them? Call them?

Email. There's an email.

There's Okay.

And do you explain why you're expensive, quote unquote, in the estimate?

I kind of talk them through it when we're there and I let them know we're not the cheap people. You know, we're gonna come in and one day it's gonna look amazing.

Okay. Because you have an hourly rate for gardening, why do you send them an estimate?

A lot of people want an estimate, but also it helps me stay organized with the crew. I put in the notes, and then I also put in a list of like all the supplies because we also do new designs like Bring in plants and trees and things like that.

But the estimate, when they get it, is that the first time they see that hourly rate?

No, I explained it to them right there.

Oh, and they're still ghosting you?

There were 4 people in a row that— 2 of them were from out of town, so I don't know if they're maybe still out of town. But then the other 2, I thought for sure. I mean, they were— it was, you know, when you're talking to a client, you can kind of tell they're going to go with it. You know what I mean? You can tell, like, there's a vibe. And we totally were vibing, and then all of a sudden it's like nothing. I'm like, damn.

Okay, so I want you to leave their property with a yes or no. Okay, because they already know before you leave they're getting cold feet. They like you, they're like, this is great, it's a little higher than I expected, but like, you know what, I like her, I think they're gonna do a great job. And then you walk away and send them an estimate that night, and And now they're talking about it, thinking about it, they're getting other quotes and they get cold feet. And so when you go upmarket, i.e., you start raising prices, you will need to strike when the iron's hot instead of letting it settle a little bit. Because you've been so low cost in the past, when they get 5 bids, you're the lowest, so they take you. Now you're not. So what I would personally do is already when you go into the lead, when you're meeting with the customer, know which day of the week they're probably going to be on. Do you generally know which part of town? I kind of know. So like, how do you present that right now?

Well, I kind of put it off till like the middle of the conversation, you know? And then, and then I say, okay, well, for what you're describing right here, and this is within our wheelhouse, this is what we do. Our costs are $85 an hour per person per hour. And this is what I think it's probably going to take to do something like this.

Okay. That's for a project, right?

Yeah.

When it comes to like a recurring monthly, because this is what I like about the business, the monthly gardening. That's what I like a lot. All right. So the monthly gardening thing, you're still giving them an hourly rate, right? And then like approximate hour range.

I tell them I think it's going to take us 3 to 4 hours every other week or maybe 10 hours, something like that.

Right now, if you're talking to them today, are you usually the next day sending them the quote?

I try to send it the same day, but sometimes it's the next day.

Okay. So what I would say is try to close the deal in person, even a verbal, and then just say, I will send you a signed Estimate, just so you have it in writing. Typically, when you send an estimate, the thing that you're giving to the customer is new information on the price that they need to accept. In this case, when she is giving the actual price to the job to the customer, she should just close the job then because there's no new information in the estimate. They just start negotiating with themselves. They talk to their spouse. They think about whether or not they should get 3 other bids. They think about maybe do it themselves. You just need to help them make a decision and solve their problem. And I think your, your quality speaks for itself. Your communication with them, it speaks enough to where, like, they'll just buy from you. I wouldn't say it's pressure on the buyer, like the customer, to like, hey, you got to do this now. Like, it's like the customer's ready to buy. Make it easy for them to give you money. When you do like, say, 5 estimates in a day, do you get exhausted?

I'm so exhausted.

Okay.

All right.

That's so exhausting. It takes like almost an hour, you know, for driving and all of that. Yeah.

2 estimates a day, is that okay?

Oh yeah, I could probably do 3, no problem.

What time does the crew start in the morning?

They come here at 8:30, we're on the job by 9.

And do you usually show them the job in the morning?

I've been working on systems to make it so I don't have to tell everybody everything, and so we're— I'm doing a video of the job and then I put it in our app so they all have that. I also will put like a little note in the— it says instructions on the— and I'll put in there if there's anything Anything specific. I learned that from you.

When I'm talking about project videos with Crystal, one of the things that really gets us to the next level is not just taking the video, storing it on your iPhone, sending it on Google Drive or iMessage or WhatsApp or making a YouTube video, but ideally that video file stays with the customer on their profile or on the job. This is one of the things that I love about HomeWorks because inside the FieldForce mobile app, I can take the video and It compresses it down. It can be like a 12-minute-long high-definition video, 500 megabytes, right onto the customer's profile. So anytime my crew goes back to the property, it's right inside of the software. It doesn't get lost on some Google Drive folder or I delete it off my cell phone. And so if you'd like to use this, I'm going to give you a promo code, something we've never done before, and that is you can get 2 months free at HomeWorks. So use this code right here, Mike, and it will give you your first month free. And then once you complete your import and your implementation calls, you get your second month free and you'll be able to use this video feature in your own business and see just how transformational it really is. So what I want to do is time blocking.

Okay. Yes, that's what I need.

So before the crew gets here, do you usually do a little bit of prep?

Yes.

Okay. So how I want to think about this is we have sales, getting the work, operations, doing the work, admin, getting paid for the work. Those 3 buckets for time blocking. Otherwise we get too complicated and It gets too all over the place. I want to think of it as 8 to 9:30 is ops. That is getting the equipment ready for the crew, getting them started their day. They're going to forget something on the first job, all that stuff. First hour and a half of the day. All right. Your first estimate starts at 10 a.m.

Okay.

All right. So you're going to do 10 and 11 a.m. as your 2 open slots every single day.

Okay.

No more, no less. So that way, if someone calls in today and you don't have any scheduled estimates tomorrow, what time are you doing it? 10:00. If someone else calls in this afternoon, does 11:00 work for you? You're going to do 10:00 and 11:00 every single day. Makes sense?

Yes.

Perfect. All right. So then we have 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. That's going to be sales. That's when you're going to go out, meet the customer, the whole nine yards. What time do you like to get off work?

I like to be done, done for the day, like 6:00.

Okay. And what time does the crew usually finish?

They're finishing any time between 3:30 and 4:30 now.

OK. Is it helpful for you to have like an hour in the day to kind of decompress? Yeah.

OK. Like between 1 and 2 would be great. Cool.

Do you usually do admin here until they get back? Like, are you working on the computer or stuff like that? OK. 2 to 4, we're going to do admin. You're probably going to want to get back here, decompress. By the time you get back, it's probably noon. You have a little bit of time if you do need to put some notes together or anything like that, you can from those 2 sales. But then 2 to 4 is admin, and that's when you're going to make sure you do payroll, email, you send out the quotes you made that morning, like all that stuff between 2 and 4.

Great.

All right, 4 to 6 is break glass. I'm not even gonna label it as something. Ideally, we don't have to do anything. That's the goal down the road. Also, this gives you time to welcome the crew back to the shop.

Yeah.

Right, they're coming back. How'd it go? Do you need anything from me? Did anything go wrong on the job? Do I need to know anything about tomorrow? Do I need to communicate with the customer? All that stuff. That will help you a lot, I feel like.

Yeah.

Of just like, what am I doing right now? I am just focused on operations. The phone's ringing. Who cares? I'm going to address that when I'm doing my admin block.

I don't think I could realistically right now do this every single day. Like, for example, on Thursdays and Fridays, those are heavy, heavy project days and I have everybody with me and we just go and crank them out.

And are you going out with them because they need this supervision? Or because they need the labor?

It's a good question. I would say they need the supervision less than the late— just the labor. I mean, I can produce— I can't believe how much I can do. I can produce— I'm probably the top performer. Yeah, of course you are, right? If I'm there, it's less time. If I'm not there, it's more time.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to sort out how to quote if I'm not there. I just don't know if I should be helping out in that way. I think they probably like having me there because I have heard say like, whoa, they're kind of like, whoa, and I'm like, that's okay, we got it, it's okay, you know, it's gonna be alright. And then when we get done, they're like, oh, I didn't know we were gonna do that. And I was like, yeah, me either, but you know, we got it, we're gonna do it.

My favorite memories are all the stories where everything went wrong, honestly. It's kind of fun to look back at all the nightmare situations. I can remember all the past clients where I've made tremendous failures, where I've broken things and made a mess of myself, but I think looking back on all those memories, it's It's very cool to see, like, at the end of the day, even if you fail, it's just part of the process in life and part of the process in working at a company. And if you can grow from it and you can learn from that mistake, that's all that really matters.

Are you okay with that Thursday and Friday schedule, or is that the part that kills you?

But it's hard. It's really hard. I could be doing other things. And probably maybe it starts up here at the lead end where maybe I don't take certain jobs where I feel like I have to be there. Right?

I agree.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe I agree. Like, if we're talking about— okay, so here's what we'll do.

Okay.

I'm gonna do 10 to 1 PM as your sales. You'll still get 9 estimates per week. That's 10, 11, and 12 o'clock Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

All right.

Yep. Now, the eventual goal that as we grow is you're going to need more— you're going to need more time on Thursday and Friday. When you get really busy and you're like, we are smashed, you need to make sure that when you're saying yes to to leads, like when you're talking to customers, you basically say no to anyone that's asking you something that you're gonna have to be there.

Okay.

But we won't do that for now until you are so busy. And if they ask what— crew is not all licensed and trained on that. If you say that, you'll now get a whole bunch of trust on the other 95% of the project that they can do without you.

That makes sense.

Okay, so I'm gonna say for now then it's 10 to 1 for sales. That will allow you then to just do Monday, Wednesday, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. That'll give you 9 estimates a week, which will be plenty for now. The eventual goal as you grow is that this is Monday through Friday. But to do that, you have to start being able to say no to leads on Thursday and Friday that you have to be there for right now.

Okay.

How many Google reviews do you have right now?

We have 35 right now.

Okay.

And we're doing a push. I just had some little cards made up. I got them over here. I don't know. Yeah. With the QR code. And then I'm having them write their name on there and they get a bonus. if they get mentioned. Okay. And so I'm help— so that will help them push them. This is a cool program for you guys that we're going to be initiating. These are Like Us cards with— we got a QR code on the back.

Awesome.

And if you look at the bottom, there's, there's a place for you to put your guys' names, and I got pens in here. So write your names on here, and if you can get a client to mention you, I'm going to give you guys a $25 bonus.

Oh wow.

So That'll be cool, fun little thing to do.

Usually how this next part of the conversation goes, I tell you how we're gonna scale quickly. I don't actually want you to do that.

Okay.

Because if I look at 20 leads in the month, that is averaging about 1 per day, working day, and I don't want to push that to 3 or 4 and overwhelm you. Ultimately, the biggest risk to this business is you quitting just simply because of burnout.

Yeah.

And so we, we have to realize that the business is growing organically from the website and word of mouth. 40 or 50% a year, and I'm okay with that. You're not in a big rush. Do you do any Facebook right now?

I don't do Facebook. I have Instagram.

Okay, you can connect a Facebook page so you post on Instagram and just post over on Facebook. Do you make posts at all?

Yeah.

Okay, what do you post about?

So I try to do like before and afters or interesting jobs that we've done.

Let me pull it up.

Yeah, check it out.

Okay, you're like weekly. Wow, Miss Consistent over here. Let's go. Okay, this is what I love right here. Pictures of your crew. Yeah, that's excellent.

This post got more like eyes than any other post, and it's us working.

So I was like, oh, instead of so good. Yeah, what I would love to see— do you have a problem with the— obviously you don't have a problem with cameras.

I don't mind cameras. You—

can you talk to the camera on your social media a little more?

I can, sure.

Yeah, I want, I want people to see your face before they meet you in person. Okay, because you, you have a great personality to explain things. You have a passion for The plants and everything that you're doing, it's, it's more than just money to you.

Yeah.

And that will come across when you show yourself on screen. So when I'm trying to optimize for keeping the entrepreneur's head in the game for the long term, I want her to be the face of it. I want her to feel the fulfillment that comes along with being able to share all her knowledge with customers and with her employees. And so a great way to do that is using social media, getting on camera, and she has no problem doing that. Instagram is great. But everyone older than you, they're on Facebook and they're your customers. But then what I want you to do, and I think this is the part you're gonna excel at actually, is just talk to the camera about the job.

Okay.

So we're at Mr. Jones' house here. We're taking all this out right here. It's gonna be great. I'm Crystal from Grounds Guys. Here's Billy over here doing this, and welcome guys. Just make that sort of a shot. I would love for you to show some of your expertise. You have a lot of expertise around plants and how things are supposed to be done, when to do it, certain times of the year. Ask one of your crew members, take my phone and film me. Down the road, you can get an operations manager to handle things like equipment or people or the drama with employees. That'll come. The thing that you can do forever is educate people.

Yeah, I love that.

Making social media content, whether YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, is absolutely great for your local area, specifically if you call out homeowners and in your market. That being said, for some people, they'd spend 5 hours making a 30-second clip, and that's probably not the best use of your time. But for someone like Crystal that enjoys talking to people, enjoys educating, and is okay behind camera, she can just quickly pull out her phone, make a quick clip, and a few hundred people in her local market see that video. And there's no selling. Yeah, right. There's no, there's no time you're like a hard close, like, okay, so what is it going to be? And like, we don't do like negotiation. It's like, here's the price. And they're like, oh yeah, I was already going to go with her before. I saw her online. I saw the great work she does. I think she's awesome.

Like, let's do it.

When I'm building these quotes for like projects and things, I have an idea of what my overhead ratio is now. Do I need to like bill that additionally, or is the higher rate covering that?

Okay. Yeah, I would love to get into this great debate about numbers and COGS and direct costs and all that stuff. I have a feeling you're not gonna enjoy it.

Okay.

So I am— I'm thrilled by the fact that we've raised price by 30%.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna leave it at that.

OK, got it.

Right? When you start getting to that $350, $400, $500 range, you do want to figure out what's a direct cost, what's a cost of goods sold, what's my net margin, what's my overhead.

Yeah.

All that stuff. Right now, I'm not gonna bog you down. I just want you to sell $85 an hour. But once you don't have any work on Thursdays and Fridays and you have a little time on your hands, that's when you're gonna listen to like my— some of my stuff. I talk about cost of goods sold and how to figure that out. And yes, you can go down that path.

OK.

Good stuff. It's not big changes. You're really, really close.

OK, that's good.

The thing that— the reason it's It's not big changes, 'cause I'm not asking you to go out and triple the business.

Yeah.

I don't want you to. Like, I think if you take these 18 leads, we close them at a higher rate, we'll be more profitable. I think if we get better technicians that are more full-time, it'll settle you a little bit more. And if we time block correctly, you won't feel as scattered. And I think if we sell on site, even with the higher price, we'll still convert 80, 90% of people.

Okay, I love that.

Alright, it is 6 weeks since we got back from Michigan. Let's go ahead and check in with Crystal. and see if she turned things around.

I had a couple folks who had mentioned they were interested in being full-time, and one of the assignments was for me to check in with those folks and see if they're interested in committing to full-time starting next March. So I did have those conversations, and I'm just coming to terms with the fact that we have been a part-time operation, and everyone who works for me basically has other things going on. So The conversations went well. They're definitely interested, but it's clear that the capacity is just not there.

I think this really just emphasizes the importance of one-on-one meetings with your team to make sure you're not building the business and building infrastructure thinking that you're trying to serve them when that might not align with their goals. And so she found out, oh, I've got to go out and hire people that want to work full-time because my current team doesn't want that. So shout out, let's go.

The next thing we really talked about was block scheduling, and I can see right away the benefits. Oh my gosh, I don't know how I was not doing this before. So the goal in the 6 weeks was to get at least 3 full days of the block schedule, and we're at week 5, and I would say I'm able— I've been able to get about 2.5 consistently. And I do have plans in the next week or so to increase that up to 3. I actually only have 3 to-do lists now, where I used to have about 12, and it's ops, sales, an admin, and it's just revolutionized my use of time. And I've got the Facebook account, our Instagram has been rebranded, and one of the younger guys on the crew set me up with a TikTok. So I still have to learn that, but we've been posting across the 3. We've already received one application from a new subscriber, and we have like almost 30 new followers. And it's only been a few weeks.

Even the fact that you got one application in the 6 weeks, pretty phenomenal. Because most of the time to get leads in the short term, you're going to advertise and do paid ads. And long-term strategy is to become that figure online in your local community that people know, like, and trust. But that can take a much, much longer than 6 weeks.

Oh, I should also mention with the social media, we got 2 new clients already. And we've already finished 2 of the jobs. And then we got a referral from there from the neighbor. So it's all Okay, so number 4 is to start being— start saying no to certain services and start to narrow down and weed out anything, anything that we have been doing that I have to personally be involved in. It's time to go. It's gotta go. So I've been weeding all that out. I've been taking inventory and really, do we need to do this? And then on the front end, when I go and meet with the client, I'm asking them, what do you need? If it's something that's a bit of a stretch, I know the answer is nope. Nope.

I don't think I've ever talked to a home service business owner that has cut out and removed services that regretted it later on. Kind of like firing an employee. No one regrets it a couple months later after the initial Band-Aid is pulled off. Same thing is true of services.

Number 5. Oh, this has been really something transformative. Know the schedule and selling on site. The schedule is probably the thing that I I had the most anxiety over, um, and that I would literally try to avoid at all costs. And with just my stress would get higher and higher and higher because it's so last minute. The calls come through, the leads come through first. I know exactly when I can get over there to them because in my block schedule I have a 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, and 12 o'clock, 3 days a week that's just for that. So I'm just like boom, boom, boom. And then they're impressed, they love that. I get there, we talk about the job, and then I'm like, okay, I can get you in next Thursday. We just had this opening up. And that sense of urgency, and they— we're shaking hands right then and there. So that's been amazing. And it just like living in my body with so much less pressure and stress, it's just so awesome.

Crystal's a gem. And so her energy is infectious. And I'm glad that she's able to get more energy from the business than feeling like it just completely robs her of energy and depletes her of that spontaneous spunk that I think we all can kind of see inside of her. I'm glad that the business can contribute to that instead of subtracting and detracting from it.

The second you connected with me and told me that you guys picked me, I just felt like honestly embraced by God and like At peace, like, okay, everything's gonna be okay. We have a direction now. There's support here. There's good people coming. And I just, I just wanna just honestly, from my heart to your guys' heart, thank you so much. You have, you have someone here for you forever. If you ever come to Ann Arbor and you need to eat, I will feed you. So thank you.