Should You Pay Employees "By-the-Job" - Ep.045

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you are listening to the Landscape Business course podcast. So happy to be back here again. It just comes so natural to have recorded on this podcast and I love it, I love it, I love it. And I just don't get around to it enough. So I'm sorry for the delay. And like I said, during the winter I'll be bringing more, more content on this show. So, you know, definitely stay subscribed and things like that to get the updates. I haven't gone anywhere. I'm not going anywhere any. It's just during March through October, I'm trying to build an actual landscaping business and so I get distracted sometimes. But I do stay up with your questions, the course members, things like that, and it's been a lot of fun. That being said, I wanna make an announcement. I know a lot of you have heard it over on Business Bootcamp podcast, but I am starting what's called Landscape X. So if you go to landscapebusinesscourse.com there's a tab in the top right, it's called Landscape X and it's going to give you the opportunity to have a few different options. One is you can come, it's called Augusta X and that's where you come and essentially shadow me for a day, see how I run my business. And then there's Landscape X, which is the combination of two different things, which is Augusta X and then another product called Hometown X. So there's Augusta X, Hometown X and Landscape X. Landscape X is just a combination of both Augusta X and Hometown X. Hometown X is where I come to your location for a day. I'm gonna basically shadow you, see what you do, how you operate in your estimates, how you are dealing with your customers, your employees, just basically shadow you and be able to talk to you throughout the day. And then we have a dinner meeting and do a five year plan for your business and go over marketing and all sorts of stuff. And the value of that I really think is I can see so much more if I'm there in person. And then you can see so much more of my business when you are here in person. So if that's of any interest to you, definitely check it out. Obviously it's quite a bit more like 50% off if you are doing that during the winter, whether it be coming here or I come to you because I'm just less busy. And so definitely check it out if that's gonna be of any interest to you. I truly believe you will get your money's worth in A heartbeat. I think a day of seeing how I run my business or me seeing you a day's worth running your business and being able to give you lots of different pointers. Little things become big things. How you interact with clients, how you interact with your employees, different strategies, route efficiencies. I'm able to really see your marketplace drive your routes, see your office, your literature you do for advertising. I really dig, dig deep into it. So I really feel this isn't gonna be beneficial for people. This is my disclaimer. If you're doing under like 3, 3, $400,000 in revenue, this isn't going to help you a whole lot. Be the one that where I come to you, everyone is going to, it's going to benefit everyone. And anyone on this podcast would be Augusta X where you come and see me. However, I think the biggest value when I come and see your business and I think people that are doing over 500,000amonth, I mean $500,000 a year is going to really see that. If you're doing around a million dollars in revenue or like 6 to 800,000, this is a perfect opportunity to do Landscape X where you come and see my business and then Hometown X where I come and see yours. And we really dig deep into your business. Do a five year plan, what the key indicators are of each of those years, what you need to be doing each year to get to those goals. And so a lot of fun. If you feel like you've plateaued your business, this is a great way to kick it off. If you want to be hyper growth and kind of be doing what we're doing, where we grow really quickly, this is something you, you definitely want to check out. So landscapebusinesscourse.com if you haven't already become a member of the course and that's just $247. And you get the package for Lawn Pro software, which is also 247, but it's included in the price of the course. And then obviously they'll click on Landscape X. It's the top right button there on the homepage and check it out. So without any further delay, I want to jump into the show and answer a couple questions that came from course members that I feel are a little bit different. So I answer all the course members questions. However, Seth wrote a question in and then also Leanne wrote a question in both course members and they were ones that I haven't mentioned here on the podcast. As far as subjects, I haven't mentioned them on the Podcast before I wanted to talk about those. And this first one, I think this one can be wrong or right answer for depending on every business. So this one is definitely my opinion for this first question and then the second one is a little more about my theory of just business in general. So first question is coming from Seth. Seth is a course member and he comes from Australia and was actually one of the first course members to ever sign up. So here we go. This comes from Seth. He writes. Hi Mike, I've just finished listening to Dave Tucker's Clip. So Dave Tucker is the founder of Clip software and he wrote a book and so Seth says, I've just finished listening to Dave Tucker's Clip Software book on piece work. P I E C E Work Piece work and the beautiful business in it. He explains that you should pay your employees per job and not per hour. Price the job based on man hours and pay the employees based on your estimate. Example, mowing one yard price at $60 per hour. Your guy mows in 50 minutes, he still gets paid for one hour's work. I think it sounds great because as the owner makes more, the employees make more. Win, win for everyone if you can control quality. I wanted to know your thoughts on his system. Thanks, Seth. Alright, so first of all.

Do I think that you should do per job.

Pay? Okay. In short, no.

I see the benefits of it. I really, I genuinely do. The problem is, is that it's when you give an employee a certain pay incentive, when you give them some sort of incentive to do work faster or more efficiently. The only problem with that is you got to remember you're going to. They will take perverse incentives. What I mean by that is they're going to look for the best way way for them to make the money using that incent. And there might be repercussions from that. So what repercussions do I see from a system like this? All right, number one, how does your employee really see any sort of progress when one mo they make, you know, 15 bucks an hour, the next mo they make 50 bucks an hour, the next mo they make 7 bucks an hour? Like as far as just their time.

That'S one thing. The next thing is perverse incentives. What happens when you have three guys on your cruise or three different crews, Sorry. And they are now arguing over which route they are gonna have for the day because they know that certain routes are gonna profit more money. What happens when you have a landscaping job and it goes way over the budgeted time and you can't get Your employees to go back to the job because they know that they're making peanuts, when they could go out and do a different job and do it faster than a budgeted time and make more money per hour.

What happens when a client asks someone to do something extra and because it's a two minute job, literally would take them two seconds, the employee to do, but they don't do it because they're not getting paid for it.

Obviously that would add doing it would add goodwill for your company, the business, the brand. But because they are not incentivized, because they are not incentivized to make the customer happy. But rather the focus I feel in this model is how does the employee make the most money? Now, if that is your ethos as the business owner is you are trying to squeeze every dollar out of your customers and you are trying to make the most profit and you're not trying to make a super, super sustainable business, but more or less you're trying to make the most money you can, then your employees will pick up on that. And this is a model that might work for you where you are heavily incentivizing people based upon monetary rewards. What I would encourage you to do is pay an hourly rate and then do the very hard thing. And this is what this whole model is trying to get around, this whole paying by the job. They're trying to get around the fact that it's hard to motivate employees and it's hard to motivate employees outside of a monetary system. The problem with the monetary system of incentivization is that it doesn't make your person any more.

Identified or it doesn't make them any more bought into the company or the brand. They're constantly thinking about themselves. When they have a fixed rate per hour, it doesn't matter if they take five hours in a job or one hour. Yes, you might say, well, that means they could be lazy. Yes, it does. Guess what? You can fire them. Go find someone, go find people that you can motivate. And this is the thing that people are not good at, is motivating their staff, getting the right people. You are, as you grow a team, really your main goal is to motivate and keep the people within your organization pumped up, fired up about working, about making their job better, making it more efficient. And so people try to cut around that by doing this whole pay per job thing. Another thing, that problem I have with this, if you have really, really good people that one day want to start their own business, this might become A problem when all of a sudden they see, oh.

Bob is the business owner and he's getting $60 per mo, and I'm making $20 per mo, fixed amount. And in their mind, they're saying, well, I could be making 60 right now instead of 20 bucks. And in your mind, you're like, well, I have overhead and I have to pay for a truck, and I have to pay for gas and insurance and wages and taxes and payroll and all the other overhead involved with running a business. But yet in the employee's mind, they're like, man, If I'm getting 20 bucks for this MO, regardless, if I take an hour or 30 minutes and I take 45 minutes one day, why couldn't I just make that 40? I could make 60 bucks in 45 minutes. And they're thinking constantly now that you as the business owner are ripping them off because they will not think about all the overhead. They will not think about the cost of driving trucks and insuring those trucks and then making sure the corporation of those trucks in which they are registered in is paid and the taxes are paid on the entity. So they don't think about that. They think about what are the dollars they're making in a day, in an hour, in a minute on a job. And then they're trying to figure out, okay, am I getting ripped off? And the problem is, is that labor is a substantial part of your cost. However, there are significantly more costs than overhead, cost of equipment, financing that equipment, taxes, et cetera, overhead. And your employee won't think about that. If they know that you're getting paid 60, they're getting paid 20 a job. They're going to start thinking about ways to get that job from you so they can make three times as much per job. So I really think the bottom line on this whole theory. I have not read this Dave Tucker's book, by the way, and I should. I should read the book and get Devil's Advocate and recheck this idea that I have thought about in the past.

It's not an idea I like because I think it's not scalable.

Think about the logistical nightmare of trying to figure out, because what happens then if you're going to get. What's going to end up happening is you're going to have a client that you got to keep happy, and then you got to keep your employee happy at that client's house. Because if they're getting paid by the job now, they are going to be arguing with you how what the estimated time should be on that job. Because if they're used to making 20 bucks an hour on average, when they're getting paid by the job, and all of a sudden Sally Joe's house takes them twice as long as it should, and they're only making six bucks an hour on that job. And.

They are bought into the whole price per job. Well, guess what? Now they're either a gonna try to go as fast as they possibly can, and they're gonna mess stuff up, quality's gonna get down, or they're gonna argue with you about what the estimated time should be on that job. And then you're gonna cut in your profit margin to try to make them happy. Because they're gonna say that job, there's no way we can get it done in 20 minutes. We need to have 35 minutes to have that job. And you have to essentially do that to keep them happy. If not, they might leave or not wanna do that job or just do a bad job so the customer ends up dropping you. So I feel like it's a shortcut that business owners take in our industry to do that. That's the bottom line. If they, because they can't motivate their people, they try to lean on money too much. And you can only motivate someone so much before, you know, like I've been reading this book, start with why Simon Sinek. And he talks about how, you know, the why of a business. Employees that stay at a company are that for a long time. Many times they're governed by the why of the business, the mission of the business, what's the, the driving ethos, the long term vision of the company. They're not driven necessarily by their paycheck. And employees that are driven by their paycheck will follow a better paycheck. In other words, they'll go to another company when another job offer comes up at a different landscaping company. And there's always jobs at other landscaping companies in your area. I promise you that if you have competition and everyone does, there's always other job offers. There's always better opportunities. Other landscaping businesses are always happy to poach your talent. And if you have good people, they're gonna want to offer them more money. So if you create within your organization a system that is only rewarding based upon monetary benefit, like the better they do, the more they get paid, the worse they do, the less they get paid. They're just gonna go after a job that pays them more, because that is what you're training them to do. Now if you give them a Very fair wage. And you make sure that that is obviously rising with their responsibilities and things like that. You have to be fair. But give them something beyond money to shoot for, whether it be making the job more efficient, whether that be just the satisfaction of being able to beat those budgeted hours times, make it a game. I do believe that, like as Seth talked about, you know, giving them the budgeted hours per job. I believe in having them see that and know what they should be shooting for and make it a game of them trying to beat that number instead of it being a game of how fast can I get this job done so I can make more money. I think you can do get the exact same benefit you as a business owner, if you have the determination, the skill set and the mental fortitude to motivate your people, inspire your people, and make your employees, make your team come together as a cohesive unit to come to work, to do work that inspires them. And so that's what I would encourage you to do. And if you haven't already, listen to the last podcast on Business Bootcamp podcast about the power of why and really figuring out what the why is in your business. It's easiest to say what you do in your business. Landscaping, lawn care. It's easy to say how you do it. Well, we create a good business plan or we do good marketing, or we do really good quality work. We have great customer service, whatever. But the why is how is hard. It's hard. The why of your business is hard to kind of define. So, like, for the why of our company, we want to revolutionize the. The level of professionalism in the landscaping industry. And we want to have a team that comes to work every day doing work that inspires them. And that's our why. That's why we exist. The what and the how is not so. As important. Easier to define. Yes. Not as hard to talk to, kind of put into words, but a whole lot less important than the why. The why will bring your people back.

They'll keep them loyal to you, and they will come and work hard and be inspired by the work they do, regardless of whether or not they're getting paid by the hour or by the job. So that's my $0.02 worth. That was totally broken up. I don't feel like I got the point across, really, but I hope that helped you, Seth. Let's move on to the next question. The next question comes from Leanne. Leanne is from thegrasskisser.com also one of the early members of the course@landscapebusinesscourse.com so let me read her question. And and this is also about employees. So great kind of segue leeway from the last question. So let's go from Leanne Question via email says, hi Mike, I hope things are well for you. I am to a point of needing some advice again. I have two guys that have been with me through the season and from the very beginning the pay for both of them is $14 an hour. They are now asking for $15 to $1550 an hour starting next week. I have offered them both $15 an hour starting November 1st when the season ends with the city, the hours will be somewhat less even though we will switch to mulch planting, shrub work, etc. One runs my big tractor for those big mo's and the other guy runs a crew. Does this pay seem high to you? They both call off a lot and have been careless to the tone of a couple thousand dollars. It is just really hard to get good guys. Thanks for your help Leanne. So there's a couple things obviously I need to talk to you Leanne, a little bit more to get more information about these employees to give you really hard like solid advice. However, I'm gonna take a couple of things you said in this email that kind of point in the right direction. So until you until the last little bit that says, quote, they both call off a lot and have been careless to the tone of a couple thousand. Until that part I was saying yes, pay them more money. And then you said they both and this is a double edged sword here because it says they both call off a lot. And I'd say okay, that's not good, that's a bad employee. If they're always calling you off like saying oh, you're not showing up to work, that's really, really bad, then this is something that I'm going to go against. Kind of what you're probably thinking, that's when you say they have been careless to the tone of a couple thousand dollars.

What business owners need to recognize in landscaping is accidents are gonna happen regardless of how good your people are. I feel I have one of the best employees, best staff members, best team members right now that we've ever had. I feel all of our guys that are that way, by the way, especially our kind of our top five that we work really close with, I feel the best of the best. However, the one that's my project manager, really the one that works closest with me and the management team last week probably created a damage. Actually, I know the damage cost, but the damage cost is about $38,000.

Damages. And you could say careless or whatever, created a $37,000 problem, cut down the wrong fence of a neighborhood. And so that's like 12. It was like 1200 linear feet of fencing that was taken out, and we are going to replace it. That's a lot of money. We are not firing him. In fact, he got a raise, not because of that, but just the timing of it was just out of coincidence. But so I feel that mistakes are going to happen. And this is what I told my team the next day in our staff meeting. I told them I would be worried if we weren't making the occasional mistake, because if you're not making mistakes, you're not making, you know, obviously not trying to make mistakes, but if you're not making mistakes and you're not making blunders and you're not learning from your mistakes, you're staying in a safe zone. You're staying in a very comfort zone. And you're not growing. You're not seeking new opportunities, you're not growing in new markets, you're not expanding the company. And so realize that as you do that, you get more people on board, you grow, you scale the company, you. You start doing bigger projects and bigger contracts. There are going to be mistakes made by your team members. And so that part I wouldn't be too worried about. Now. They both call off a lot. That's what you said, Leanne. There is a remedy to that in their employee contract. Make sure it says something about that. We have also had issues with that, even recently. And so we've made it a point of talking about it in our team meetings, bringing it up very openly about how it's hard to schedule jobs in advance if we can't depend on people being there, have to have those open conversations. I really feel if you as a business owner are thinking things, you need to communicate it and just say it out loud to your people. You just need to get it off your shoulders. It's never good to have internal conflict or internal tensions because you're not saying things that you want to be saying. Because there's a good chance employees are thinking things that they want to say, but they aren't saying either. So you got to have a safe place, safe work environment to have these discussions and explain to them why it's hard for you as a business owner. The scheduling and to schedule jobs, which then gives them solid hours. Like, hey, you guys. Say hey. Especially if you have like, four or five Guys in your crew be like, hey, I want to give you guys 40 hours a week every week. But it's really hard for me to have a consistent schedule and schedule jobs in. If you guys are going to call me up the morning, I'll be like, hey, I can't come to work. So in your employee contract, you need to have it spelled out. I think what happens a lot of times it's happened to me is you're so nice to a fault and that means that you don't really have a policy about it. You just kind of take people at their word. If they have a family emergency or whatever they call it and then are sick or whatever. And that's all fine and good, but in your employee contract, you should spell it out and spell out how that protocol should be, whether it be they have a certain amount of sick days or they have a certain amount of days that it can call off. Our big thing is now, if you have certain amount of days of.

We don't know where you are, essentially, like, you just don't show up to work, like, you automatically will get fired after, like, I think it's three days or two days. And then they know, they know that their performance is going to track with their pay. And so if they're consistently not calling and their pay is going to reflect that, you could do something, Leanne, where you tie their pay to something like if they not calling off or whatever, you could do something like that. That being said, From a very 30,000 foot level, if they've been working for at 14 bucks an hour and they're requesting 15 bucks an hour, if you really feel that that's a big step.

You either a need to look at what your profit margins are, because if they're a good worker, they should be making 40 to 60 bucks an hour for you in gross revenue. And so can you afford the extra $50 an hour? Should be able to. Now when you start doubting whether or not they're worth it, then it comes into question is like, okay, well are they not good workers? If they're not, let's fire them and get someone else. And then if you're like, well, I have good people, I don't want to fire them, or I mean, it's hard to find good people. Well, then go try to find good people. When you get good people, fire the bottom feeders. That's what I've kind of adopted in the past a little bit and that we're going to really focus on next year is we're going to hire people throughout the year. And if I get people in the pipeline that I feel are amazing, I'm just gonna fire the bottom feeders, the one or two lowest performing people in the company. And if you have that environment, then the people, they know that they want to be performing well and showing up to work on time and all that. Like, I had to have this conversation literally last Saturday with one of our employees that was showing up to work late, was going through a really tough spot in his family life and things like that, which is, I totally understand. I supported him 100% in so many different ways. However.

There comes a line where it's like, okay, you're letting the team down. It's hard to schedule jobs. The crew is delayed, the crew is behind on jobs because we don't know if you are showing up or if you aren't showing up and if you're showing up late. And then we have to schedule a certain truck to be with you. Like, so it became too much and eventually had to have the conversation and just be like, hey, it happens one more time, you're out. And sure enough, things change. So you really find out really fast if they want the job. If they don't, they shouldn't be in your company. You should just, they should just leave. So I'd make the ultimatum. I'd say, you know, you get one more time of that happening. You know, if you don't give me 24 hour notice outside of X, Y and Z circumstances, then you know, you're out, you're letting the team down, or if it happens so many times or however you need to phrase that. I'm not giving you a clear cut, like answer on this one, Leanne, but I'm just saying that there's several different things in this. Number one, if you're weighing out the balance between 14, 15 bucks an hour and they're good workers and they actually produce for you and you don't want to let them go. Like, because you said at the bottom it's just really hard to get good guys. Well, are they good guys? That's what the next question is, right? If you're paying 14 an hour and you're like, man, that's a good deal. If they're asking for 15 or 15, 50 an hour, you should be able to afford that if you're charging correctly. All of our guys start at 15 bucks an hour. Unless they're, what's it called, minors. If they're minors, where they have to have supervision by older person or they can't be on bigger equipment. Like, they're gonna start off at a lower rate. However, just about everyone else starts at 15, and they go to 16 after, like, one month of training, usually, and then they're off to the races. They can go up to however much they want if they want to stay with the company long term. And so.

The reason we can afford that is because we do charge more. And so obviously, that means that you're gonna have a lower acceptance rate of marketing and your leads aren't gonna accept. The percentage might go down a bit. But if you have the solid branding and you have the good people and they are working faster, like, this is the thing. Someone that's working for $12 an hour, they can make your company a whole lot less than someone that you pay 20 bucks an hour. If the $20 per hour, like people think. People think. This is what people think. They think that in order. Let's do this simple math. Let's have someone. Employee a is making 10 bucks an hour. Employee B is making 20 bucks an hour. People think that in order for employee B to be as profitable as employee A, they need to double the amount of work. That is incorrect on many factors and many reasons. If Employee B produces $10 more per hour, they are basically breaking even. So if you can get $50 an hour in production from employee A, that you pay $10 an hour, you will net out $40 per hour. Not net, but you like gross profit, you might say, after wages are taken out, then employee B, if he can make 60 bucks an hour, he will also net out for $40 per hour. Because after you take out his $20 an hour wage, now, really, employee B is only 20% more efficient than employee A, and yet they're making.

Double. Right? 10 to 20 bucks an hour. And so what I'd be looking at is finding great people, because great people usually will work at, you know, a great person compared to a $20 an hour person in our company versus someone that is 10 bucks an hour, they literally can do double the amount of work. And so what that means is that employee B is gonna produce $100 an hour worth of work, whereas employee a would produce $50 an hour work. And that happens. It does. It just absolutely does. But what I'm telling you, the reason I say that is I'd rather pay more for your people, pay 3 or $4 more than what other companies are per hour, and try to raise your prices. Because you have good people, you can raise the prices. But also just the fact that they're gonna work faster and be more effic team mentality and want to make their position within the company more efficient. If you can do this, create a team work like that, team mentality that where they want to create efficiencies and they want to get better and they want to beat the times that are budgeted on the jobs. If you can create that environment with good people, I promise you, you will save a whole lot more money and you will make a whole lot more money. Take that back. You won't save a lot more money. You will make a lot more money. And I promise you, trying to skimp on people's wages is the last thing you should be doing. I know I was thinking about this today. I know that once we franchise our company and there comes a certain point where we've kind of got to a certain point, I know that there'll be a day where I come into the office and say, all right, everyone's starting at 20 bucks an hour. And I truly believe we will become more profitable.

16 to 18 months after that fact, I think there'll be a dip in revenue, like in gross profit. We'll be like, I'm sure my accountant will scream at me, office manager will scream at me saying, no, how can we get starting employees that have never picked up a mower or weed heater or anything to start them at 20 bucks an hour? I know that conversation will happen. I know it'll be like, well, so and so is just happy working with us right now at 16 bucks an hour. Why would we just raise it up to 20? I truly believe that the first year we would decrease in our gross profit just because the added expense. But I genuinely believe that the second year we would see an uptick in gross profit margin. I just believe that. And you're asking me right now, why aren't you doing that? Is because right now, that one year of downtick in gross profit is that I'm using that cash right now to grow the company so I can afford the $20 an hour thing. I just know that one day I was thinking about this today, it might not be $20 an hour. It might be a salary number, thousand bucks a week, or whatever it is. I know I will do that at some point and I'll get good press out of it locally, and a lot of people will apply. And guess what? Out of all those people that apply, I'll find good people. I'll attract the great talent that will make up for the extra $4 or $5 an hour? Tenfold. Tenfold. And the more as I talk about, I'm like, man, we could do that tomorrow. But then on the other hand, I know. I know that the short term, we would lose money. We would lose money for the first six, 10 to six to 12 months. But I know. I just know that the people in your organization, once they commit to you because you're paying them good. Like, I just kind of said things. Some people are gonna say opposite one way. I say, you know, wages shouldn't be the driving factor of a way to incentivize your company and your people. And then on the other hand, I'm like, you need to pay your people good. I want to pay my people more money, all that. Like. So I think there's a balance. I think there's a balance. Definitely. Money's important, is a great incentive. I just don't think it should be the only incentive. I think you need to pay a fair wage, a wage that people know you are doing your very best for them. And I feel that if I. If I walked in my company next year and we're starting a franchise, and I'm like, hey, everyone's gonna get 20 bucks an hour, I feel that everyone would immediately step up their game. Now, I don't feel. I don't feel that if the next year I raised it the $30 an hour, I don't think that everyone would step up their game in proportion, like, another 30% more. I feel that there's a certain level of money that people need to get and they need to see the commitment level from their employer. And they are gonna then either buy into the why of the company, the mission, or they're not. And so I just generally believe that the starting wage should be high enough to attract good talent. Get them in your funnel, get them in your team, and then kind of like. I don't know how to say it, like, I wanna say radicalized, but that's been used in terrorist groups and all stuff. But I mean, like, you want to get them in your mindset, your frame of mind for the company, and how you think about the business and how you get those good people and attract them is usually the starting rage. And so if you're 10, 12 bucks an hour, like every other landscaping in the world, you're basically flipping a coin, guessing, hoping, crossing your fingers that good people show up on your doorstep. And so I guess I'm not living exactly that yet. Like, we. We do start 15 bucks an hour, which is decent. Will we eventually put it up to 20, like I said, yes. And do I believe that we'll get great people?

Take that back. Do I believe that we'll get a much more better profile, individual applying and much more number of applicants? Yes, absolutely. And in doing so, we'll get better people. We'll get people that are welders and electricians but have become tired of their work or hate working in their work environment and are willing to take a little bit of a pay cut because in our area, you know, a good electrician might get 25, 30 an hour doing stuff by themselves or working as a contractor. And so they might be willing to start at 20 and work their way back up over the next few years if, if they know that they're going to be coming to a great work environment, a team that's growing, a company that's growing. So I think you get those more professional slash technically advanced applicants and people that you can depend on more. They can be management, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's a whole nother episode in and of itself. Really feel this whole episode has been kind of jumbled up. But I hope those two questions that coming from Seth and Leanne kind of gave some clarity and balance to my perspective on hiring people. Everything from the pay part of it to, you know, inspiring employees and giving them incentive beyond just money. If you can make them buy into the why of your business, it's, it's incredible. If they begin to like, it's amazing. Today I had a 16 year. He's either 16 or 17. I think he might turn 17, but I don't think so. I think he's 16. One of our employees, the team members, and to hear him start talking like, I think it was incredible. And this, this team member, particularly when he started out, great worker, like great worker. Hard, hard working kid. His dad used to do a bunch of work, does do a bunch of work around heavy machinery. So he's comfortable around machines and just hard work in general. Great worker. But he was, he was an only child and like kind of, it was hard to, he didn't work well with people as much and he just needed to learn that part and like communication with the team didn't get it at all right. Literally within the past six months the guy's matured incredibly. And literally for him to telling me today, talking about teamwork and talking about how like how he's working with the other team members to create that team environment and get them to start thinking about working as a cohesive unit. And I was just like, that's rewarding, number one. And number two, that's what the company needs. Right where my vision of what I see as a team, how we should be acting and really the framework in which I've built the entire company is the team is number one. And so to see that really being reflected in our youngest employee is very, very rewarding. And it just, it was a good experience today. And to be able to see that and to realize that, like, he isn't the highest paid employee, definitely not one of the lower end actually, because he's younger, but yet to see him buy into the team culture. And that's how a company grows and thrives. And yes, he got a pay raise and yes, he will continue to get pay raises because I feel that's how it's just fair. If they're going to be making me more money and managing people and working the team, they should be rewarded monetarily. And then also from my praise and giving them accolades and then them get more responsibility, they feel like they're growing and there's a place to grow towards and something to work towards. And so that's kind of my two cents on teamwork.

Paying people slash culture in your company. So I hope that helps someone. All right, now, if ever again, just to remind everyone, landscapebusinesscourse.com if you haven't already, sign up for the course. $247 that comes with the Lawn Pro software Lifetime Access, which is $247. It's the cost of the course. Just go on the landscape business course. You can sign up today, get access to all the video content. In fact, you can actually now listen to the introduction for free. You don't even have to buy the course. You can listen to the introduction to the course and kind of see the framework of how we talk about going from zero to $100,000 in revenue, in monthly revenue in 36 months. And I walk you through how and exactly did from day one till 36 months later when we were making $100,000 in revenue in the month of March. So check that out. And check out Landscape X. That's the tab in the top right corner of landscapebusinesscourse.com and if you go there, you can just go ahead and check out everything it includes. See all of, like when I fly out, for instance, for Hometown X, I fly out, I pay for all my airfare, my hotel, everything. You don't have to worry about any of that. You just pick me up in the morning. I think it's at like 7 o'. Clock. I go with you the entire day, we get dinner in the evening, we make your five year plan, we go over in depth all of your customer relationship management software, your marketing plan, everything like that. It's just gonna be a great, great experience for you guys and I'm gonna be able to see you guys live in person and like really get to see your business. And so I'm totally looking forward to it. I can't wait. I hope a lot of you jump on this winter when I have a lot more time and there's 50% off on all of those experiences. That's what the X stands for. Hometown experience, landscape experience. And for the ones that are really hardcore landscape X. You get to come to my company and from and shadow me for a day and we get to do that whole thing and then I answer all your questions and then I come over to where you live and I shadow you for a day and you get the entire landscape X. The landscape experience. Check it out. Landscapedinisports.com we'll see you guys next week.