A recorded consulting call on launching a lawn/handyman business after incarceration. Hector asks about tattoos, professionalism, whether a felony will block him, and whether to work for another company first or start solo. Mike Andes advises prioritizing professional behavior and communication to build trust (visible tattoos/face/arms can harm first impressions), recommends working for a reputable company to learn skills and capture unmet niches, and setting concrete customer-count goals (example milestone: 15–20 mowing customers over 1–2 years) before quitting steady work. Mike emphasizes compensating for past incarceration by developing skills, numbers/business knowledge, and steady habits rather than relying on equipment alone. The video ends with a plug for the Landscape Summit (Jan 13–15, 2022).
Chapters
And what I've been really scared overall is, is a felony going to stop me from anything.
Hey, everyone, Mike Andes here, lawncaremedia.com and today's a pretty serious consulting call that I had. I think we could all relate to it. As we go through things in our lives that are very difficult, we can rise out out of those things and still make a successful lawn care business. Here we go.
My other question is tattoos. How do you think about tattoos? I'm worried about, is that gonna bring me down the level of professionalism?
To some customers, it might like, especially if they're visible, like face and arms. But, like, we don't. We don't tell our guys they can't do it. They either allowed to. Because in my mind, if you're. If you're professional, the way you talk, the way you handshake, the way you communicate, if those are professional, people will look usually past those other things. The thing that you lose when you do get tats or like, for example, people get crazy beards or like, you know, they do stuff with their face and dreadlocks or whatever it might be. The problem is you're gonna have people's first impression. That's what gets affected, right? Like when someone knocks on their door and they're afraid they're not gonna answer the door. Right. But if they talk to you and right away, you are, good eye contact, you, handshake, Give them a good handshake. You're communicating really well. You're not trying to hide or be quiet. That's the type of thing that people are really looking for. And that's where you get trust. Right? The bottom line is they need to be able to trust you. And so that's the biggest thing. And I think we've had guys that have tatted and they just, you know, hey, I got to compensate with the fact that I got a better eye contact, better communication skills, talk to the customer better, and they can overcome that.
With my newborn son, I really want to, like, be prideful. You know, I like, that's my everything. So my. My. One of my tattoos I had aiming for was get his name in calligraphy and stuff right above my eyebrow. I want to get it, but honestly, should I forget about it? I mean, that is just one tattoo that I.
Want to. I wanted so bad for my son.
This is. This is what I would say. I'm not going to tell you women how to get a tattoo on your face, but what I'm going to say is, I think if you're doing it for pride. What would make a lot like yourself a lot more proud is to build a. And build a future for your son that he can look up to and admire you. And not just because you have his name on your face, but because you're someone that he looks up to and is proud of.
Should I find a company that I can start off with, take the knowledge, but really take advantage of where he's failing and use that to my advantage and really try to take that business over, or should I try to find some way where I'm finding a good business and within the community, good reputation, get the knowledge off of him and then slowly start, not even worry about doing anything to him, Just leave and just do my own thing.
You definitely don't want to be the first one, because first of all, you don't want his customers because he's going to be unprofessional and bad anyways. They're not going to have, they're not going to be used to have good systems. Those aren't the customers you want anyways, right? And furthermore, you want to keep that good relationship because that person, if they're a good business person, can give you a lot of work. So what I would recommend doing is getting with the most professional company you possibly can and then figure out what they don't want to do. For example, there's companies that do property cleanups and landscaping and never want to do mowing. So what you can do is get in with them, learn tons of stuff from them, and then basically start doing mowing on the side and they're okay with it. They don't mind. And then when you go full time, if you keep your relationship good, they'll send you leads every single day for mowing jobs that they don't want.
Like, how many months should I really stick with this company and when should I really be expanding myself to start doing my own thing and start doing the year growth, Two year growth.
Like, everyone thinks about this a lot, but honestly, it becomes very apparent when after maybe a year or two, you have 15, 20 mowing customers and you're working all day Saturday and Sunday, and you're making more money in those two days than five days working. That's when it's like, okay, this is obvious, right? So even setting goals, like, I'd set more goals in terms of like, how many customers you're gonna get, that's a more important goal. And figuring that out. Cause eventually you'll get so busy where it's like, it makes no sense to keep Working your job. And that's when. That's when you're gonna jump. So I'd be like, hey, I'm gonna. My goal this week is I'm gonna get 2 million customers. And to do that, I'm gonna knock on 300 doors in these neighborhoods. Those are the small goals you need to take now because those steps will set you up for the bigger decisions down the road, like equipment and things like that.
What I've been really scared overall is. Is a felony going to stop me from anything. I just got out of incarceration last year, and this is the reason why I'm in. The situation I'm in right now is because I lost my childhood due to prison and shit. And now I'm 20 years old with nothing. I got out of prison with nothing. And I'm trying to do something.
It's not going to keep you from doing anything. The bottom line is you have to compensate for it. What I mean by that is, first of all, most customers are never going to look you up. And they're only going to be afraid or think about that even as a possible issue if they can't trust you.
Right.
If you come up their door and you look like a gangster. Yeah, they're gonna be afraid. They're gonna look you up. They're gonna be. That's what's gonna happen. Right? And that's where you might have to release some of that. Like, look, if I'm gonna build a great business and build a financial future for my son that he can be proud of, that he wants to emulate me, that might mean giving up some other pride in terms of looking a certain way or acting a certain way that would be off putting to customers. It's like if you look at an Olympic bodybuilder lifter right now, they look so incredible and so amazing, but they started with a few pounds, right? So you might not see yourself as some incredible person with all that confidence and that ability, but you've got to start somewhere. And if that means being an employer or not, doesn't really matter. It's a matter of being professional, making life decisions. You're going to make more money as an employee. Trust me, if you start educating yourself, knowing numbers, learning about business, you're going to be more valuable to that company, regardless of whether you start your own business or not. These are steps that you've got to take if you're going to actually make money. Change your life, change it for your family. And there's no excuse to, oh, I can't become an Olympian and I can't lift 300 pounds, so I'm not gonna go to the gym. No, like, you've gotta go get started. And whether or not you lift 300 pounds or maybe you just lift 100, but you're gonna be a lot stronger at a hundred than you are now at nothing. So the inability to go get started on your journey to change your life is the thing that's gonna keep you from doing anything.
I wanna do my own thing. So I sold it and I bought $500 worth of power tools and try to start up my own handyman thing. Got big old magnets and everything. Put it on my Suburban nothing. Nothing. I literally wasted I don't know how much money in equipment and gas and everything just to get me to nothing.
But here's the thing. I could go out right now, get some really nice basketball shoes and a gym bag and say, I'm in the NBA. But guess what? I have no skills. There's not a shot in the world I'm going to do good just having the tools and going inspired. Like, I'm going to go become the best NBA player in the world. Doesn't make you an all Star. Doesn't make you no LeBron James, right? Like, that skill comes with day in and day out of expertise of going to the gym, nailing your body, figuring things out, learning, growing. And that's the part that you got to work on, right? Not buying more equipment or like, I'm going to go do this now. Like, that's where your wife and other people probably doubt you a lot is the fact that. Oh, yeah, he's tried it before. Oh, here goes Hector again. Gonna go try another thing. And it starts with, it's gonna fail. Of course you're gonna fail. You just grabbed your gym shoes and stepped on the court with LeBron James. You're gonna get whacked, right? So go figure out the skills, right? Go get some skills dribbling and hooping. And then you go step on the floor. You'll have some real artillery. And like, that's what's so cool about being an employee. Go figure out the skills while getting paid, right? Stop trying to go up on the court without any skills. Hey, everyone, I'd like to invite you to Landscape Summit. It's a conference I have in January. It's gonna be the 13th, 14th and 15th of January, 2022. It's here locally. And I'm really looking forward to meeting other landscapers like yourself that want to grow their business.
