The $100 Tool That Saves Lawn Companies THOUSANDS (Mike Andes Q&A)

Outside of Copilot, what tools have you found were critical to lawn maintenance businesses? We're big on Zapier. We're big on, you know, what other tools, maybe in something that enhances Copilot, something outside of that, that does more SEO for your site.

The basics are, you know, QuickBooks. Just from an accounting perspective. I'm happy you already know Zapier. So that's fantastic. I would connect for me personally, I like Jotform and Paper form as the custom form builders. I would then connect that using Zapier so you can do instant pricing from your website so that you can collect resumes from your website. All this can be funneled directly into Copilot. For example, you can have applicants that come in. They come in through say a job form or paper form. They're put as a customer type as an applicant and then you run them through an automation. So when they apply they're immediately getting a text. They're getting a text three days, two days, one days before a interview. They're getting text three days, two days, one day before their first day on the job. So we send out information about pay for performance, about ways to be able to make more money, all these aspects leading up to day one because we know just because someone accept job offer doesn't mean they're showing up. And so we, we nurture them in the automation process just like we would a lead. So those would be like right off the top of my head. Like especially if you know Zapier, I'd be like looking at those form builders down the road we are going to have custom forms a lot more customizable Inside of Copilot, it's more like a 2026 thing though. So like I would still be lean paper form and like that's all they do. So there's so much cool stuff you can do. Like would it be integrating with payment stuff, whether it be colors and you know, your logo etc and it's relatively cost effective too. Like eight, ten bucks a month.

Awesome, awesome. Very good. So back onto that, just what you were talking about, you know, hiring. Do you find that, you know, word of mouth, indeed.com, you know, how do you guys find employees? What's been successful?

Yeah, Indeed is still the best paid strategy. Once you have a larger team, referrals work really well. And I just incentivize it like crazy. Like not like $100, like we're talking like 500 or a thousand or more. Because I'd rather give the guys money than indeed. And then Another thing you can do is use your email list to to especially during your off season when you know there's not a lot of leads to just get your bench of employees ready to go for the upcoming season as well as you can't run job postings on Facebook. But what you can do, and usually we'll get through, assuming you don't go too hard on it, is you can just make a post, it says like hey, we're, we're hiring for the upcoming season. You use hiring carefully more like join our team. Put a whole bunch of pictures about you doing work, et cetera, and then just link it to that paper form or that jot form or just directly to your website where there's a careers tab and then they can sign up there. But just be careful with this one because if you do a post like that, you can get flagged and they'll take the post down because they don't want job postings. But if you make it generic enough and then you just tell them to kind of go to your site, you can even say hey, join our team this upcoming spring. See our website for details and to apply and then just have pictures of all you guys doing the work, et cetera. Then the part, the reason this is effective though is because then you can then boost that post, which I hate, boost posts for marketing, but it boosts this post and then just target your area and then your demographic that you're targeting. So for example like 20 to 40 year old males and I'm assuming that's kind of your demo, great target, just them boost to your 5 mile radius and all of a sudden you're going to have applicants coming through. That seemed to work pretty well, but we are seeing they're getting better and better at screening those out. So you just be careful with using words like hiring, higher compensation, salary, wages.

Things like that if things started going well. My partner has mentioned acquisition growth by acquisition a lot and I've also heard a lot of red flag warnings about growth by acquisition. And I was just kind of wondering if you could give me some pros and cons or your thoughts on growth by acquisition.

Yeah, so the turnaround that I just posted an hour ago on my channel, I would watch that he did an acquisition. What I'm really looking at when it comes to recurring customers like mowing, cleaning, et cetera is what's the customer acquisition cost? What am I paying as a premium? Because I'm getting it all at the same time. So if you go out and get a customer Using door hangers for, let's just call it 50 to $100 per. Are you willing to pay 300, 400 or $500 on an acquisition? Because really what you're doing is you're acquiring a customer. Now also I have to discount it because I get them immediately, but I also have to bake in the fact that there's going to be a percentage of them that don't stay with me once they transfer the business.

Exactly.

I also have to bake in the fact that if I don't make that customer acquisition cost back now, it's inflated. Let's call it $400 instead of $100. If I don't make $400 in gross profit, actually lost money on that customer in the acquisition. So what I'd see is that let's say someone's like, hey, I, I get a customer for $100 and you door hangers or $400 per customer if I go acquire someone's business. Well, if 20% of people are going to leave when they, when I transfer the business, and then another 20% are going to leave in the next three to six months because they don't like my service, all of a sudden I'm paying more around the lines of 700, $750 per customer. Now all of a sudden it could take me a year to recoup the cost of that investment. And so the vast majority of times people are better off simply going out and doing marketing themselves. And so the only people that would usually acquire are the ones that are not confident in scaling their marketing. Because if you can get a customer 50 to 100. Yes. As you scale, you have diminishing returns if you're in a smaller market. So if I have diminishing returns, maybe I'm paying 120 or 150. So is it really worth paying the 600 or the $700? So in the video, like the day that went out, he's paying like $2,000 for customers. And now those are high value customers, four to six thousand dollars per year in revenue. But he can't upsell them into other services that he wants to because the contract, they, they take the fertilization, he can't, he can't upsell landscaping to the customers. So it's just a matter of like, well, a $4,000 customer. If you're 50% gross profit, it's going to take a year, a year to get that money back.

Right.

To recoup the customer acquisition cost. So if your churn, if your churn is 33% year and you keep customers on average for three years. We got to bake that number into it. It gets really, really hard to make sense of it. So the vast majority of times I see people saying I'm going to grow by acquisition. What it really means is they don't know how to acquire customers on their own and they don't know how to scale that. So I would take what you do with the 15,000 door hangers and then ask yourself, okay, what happens if I did 100,000? Because it might actually be a better deal than going out and buying the business.

The only, the only thing is the reason that we're looking into that or that I think he's, he sees that as an option is because I'm going to be the operator. I'm going to be the one on the, on the sales guy and the operator. So as soon as I do the 15, I don't even know if I'll get through 15,000 door hangers before I'm too busy to be able to, to continue to do that. But we haven't tested any other markets. So in case this, the online marketing is saturated and that we don't know. We're not sure yet. We just have. I spent $400 on 2500 door hangers in November. And from that I have 12 recurring customers. I'm doing about 1600amonth. I did about 4000 and one time jobs off of that and that was enough to kind of convince them. And we've spent the last two months putting together a game plan and getting equipment together and uniforms and all that stuff.

And so based upon that math, you're getting about one customer every 200 door hangers. And so it's just a matter of, okay, well, if I can do 100 door hangers per hour, that's two hours worth of labor. And then let's just call it $10 worth of a print cost. So if I'm paying someone $25 an hour, two hours plus $10, that's $60 per customer. And so you just track that number as you begin to scale, that number will go up. But if it gets to 80 or 90, I'm still much prefer doing that compared to paying 3 or $400 per customer. If I go out and acquire them from business.

Okay, one of my customers, I'm in South Florida, so his backyard is extremely sandy and he wants a sod job done. I don't do sod, but I did call and get a, a quote from a company who would come in and do the topsoil, the sod, all that stuff for 5,600. How would you handle that in regards to the customer? What type of upcharge would you put on it? Would you, would you be the one who hires the company to do it and then just upcharge the company and kind of make it a three party thing or how would you handle that?

What are you doing in the job besides, are you just sub, like you're just subbing the whole thing out?

Yeah, I don't plan on doing any of the work.

Really?

Yeah, it just becomes like, do you want to have this as your business model? Right. Like I personally don't like doing subbing.

And I want to own the, I want to own the customer relationship from top to bottom. And if I'm not going to, I'm just not going to do the work. So it just comes down to if you want to do subcontracting, like that is a business. You know, if you tack on 10%, 15% or whatever, then it's a matter of like, do you hide that from the customer? Do you tell the customer? Do you like, are they going to be rolling their trucks and confusing the customer? So like I've typically not played with it. I think there are companies that their business model is subcontracting. They do a great job of making sure they have contracts in place, they know how to explain it to the customer. It's part of like their shtick. They are able to provide value to the customer in excess of just like a middleman that does absolutely nothing. So. But you want.

I think SOD is something that I would want to get into though sod installs because eventually I see the 3 to 4 year plan is landscape installation and hardscaping and it's just because every single house down here eventually needs landscaping or hardscaping done. And I want to have the mowing as like the, the pay the bills type of thing and then we make the profit from the jobs. And I think SOD is something that's going to be pretty big for us and it's relatively easy because with a four man crew and a little bingo, you can get it done in a day. You can do 4,000 square feet. And I think that's something that we do want to have. So I wouldn't be there working, but I think I'd be there kind of learning a little bit. So I would be overseeing the job, but it wouldn't be, they wouldn't work for me necessarily. You Know, So I don't know how that would.

I'm not opposed to it. I just think that if right now your focus is getting more mowing customers, I just don't want this to be a distraction because if it's going to keep you up from two weeks away from doing door hangers and what that is the strategy, this is why, like, there's always a hundred ways to skin the cat. Just figure out one. Right. So, like, that's my biggest concern is this is going to be a distraction. You're gonna make a thousand dollars when potentially you could spend two weeks doing more door hangers or, you know, your evenings and weekends. What you're worrying about this and making the estimate. All the rest of it, just go out and get 20 more customers for mowing, and it might not make sense. Figure out this one job. So, you know when you think I.

Should just sell that to the customer based on their estimate and then sell that to the company, tell them that they just need to pay me and I already sold the job and just get rid of it.

Good. You good? Yeah. That's like. That's the subcontractor model. Right. And so as long as you're going to be on this job site, like, managing the whole job, like, you're adding value. So as long as you feel good about that and the value you're offering and it's. You're basically subbing the job out, I would just be careful with this being a distraction from what you're currently doing.

All right. For sure.

Yep.

Thank you.

At what point does it make sense to have a resale permit? Should we have that now or should we just keep baking it into the price that we're giving to the customer?

Yeah. So depending on the state a little bit. Most states will require a contractor's license. So if you go to Department of Revenue or you just give them a call, just be like, hey, what do I need to do with reseller's permit? They'll tell you, most states are going to require a contractor's license, and so you might not want that. So that's why I put it off for a long time. But eventually it's like, okay, I'm going to get the contractor's license because I needed it for Google Local services, and then any raw materials I started using it on. So just contact the Department of Revenue. They should. They should hook you up.

You know, Chase kind of like founded most of it last year, and then we kind of have three of us now for this year, so four of us total will be split between two trucks. We're all pretty bought in right now, you know. And this year like the three of us will be on profit share. Not quite P4P yet, but we just didn't know how to split up roles and responsibilities outside of just the normal labor to kind of earn that profit share outside of just doing like the normal work. I mean we were thinking like a person be in operations, sales, marketing and admin. You know, the three of us outside of that. Is that something that makes sense to you as far as like responsibility split to earn that profit share?

Yes, like in, in its mature state, sales, operations, admin being the three legs of the business are all overhead positions. And so that size of like you can have a 1.5 to $2 million business with that, that model. One person in the office full time, maybe they have an assistant and then a salesperson and then a GM type operations manager. So like just keep in mind this is not going to happen when you're at 3, 400,000. What it's going to look like is you might split it up now based upon if you know who's good at what, you might break out. Hey, your sales, your operations, your admin. Here's the task you're all responsible for. Oh, and by the way, this is going to make up like maybe 10% of your week. The other 90% of the week we're in the field working. And so that just becomes a function of like I would do the organization now like what does sales, operation, admin, what does each of those roles include in terms of tasks? And then what's likely going to happen is the admin role will probably become the first one that actually needs to work four or five hours a day doing admin because that will scale the fastest as you get say 5, 6, 700,000. But you don't need a full time estimator year round sales at that size. And so as you scale it'll just be like as long as you're all very much acutely aware that this is a matter of we will do more overhead tasks as is required. Because I get scared of when people are like oh, three of us are starting a business is everyone wants to be out of the field and all of a sudden you have a $500,000 business, three overhead positions and that will never make money. And so that's what I'm careful, just be careful of that. And then as long as you're, you're all on the same page that you're going to get out of the field at different times then, then I'm fine with it.

Yeah, I think that is something that, you know, we've talked about as far as I know. Like what you talk about is, you know, at certain point you're in a wasteland, you know, you really only have like one person that's out of that work in the meantime. And I think that we try to keep that, you know, open now so there's no surprises later on and kind of take it as we go.

Yeah, Good stuff, man.

Thank you.

So I've had a lot of trouble keeping, well, getting quality employees and keeping them for a long period of time. So that's been one of my biggest problems as of lately. So I was wondering if you had any suggestions for like training systems and, and a good interview process.

Were they making substantially more on P4P than base pay?

Well, the base pay was 1950. So when they were doing really well, they were making like 24, $25 an hour.

Which was around like 90 or 80% efficiency.

And was that usually the case or was like that, like a one off time? Like were they usually hitting base pay?

Well, when the first guy started off, he had experience, so he was hitting it and it was relatively regular. And then when a new guy came in, I had to train him so it wasn't happening. But once he got in, once we all got all three got into the groove and we were working together as a team, as, as I was training them, it was happening regularly. And then one spring rush hit. Well, my spring rush has already hit and here in Richmond, Virginia. So this other guy. Well, first of all, that first person left during the winter. I wasn't able to keep him. He wasn't excited about only getting 500, you know, every week. So this most, the most recent person who left, he was making really good money when we're, when, when we started mulching. So he was making like $25 an hour while he was doing that.

So that's kind of where I'm at with that right now because as soon.

As they hit base pay, they're super unmotivated on PvP. It also brings the whole culture of the company down because all of a sudden they don't care. So like, for me personally, when I look at my, my GMs and I get like the monthly scorecards, I just want to know, is everyone above base pay? Even if there's a couple people like out of like, you know, 20 or 30, like I can't, you can't have them under base pay. And so what you can do when they're new is like you can facilitate a lot of stuff. So for example, if you put someone that's new or someone that's experienced, it's going to slow the experienced person down. They're not going to like it because they're going to make less money. So I'm going to, you're probably going to want to boost your, your trainer bonus for that period of time to make sure that your well experienced person doesn't get discouraged with new people. All right? Then the next thing is like during spring rush, they're not making up a base pay because wet, it's grass is tall, whatever, great. I'm going to have a higher percentage on P4P during a period of time. So for us, for us, we do April and May, April and May, we know the grass in our area grows fast and it rains a ton. So I am going to make sure that during that period of time, instead of giving them 25% on PvP, I'm giving them 30 or 35% which yes, cuts into my margin. But I need them above base pay. So like anytime someone's below base pay for more than one pay period, it's like system failure. Like everything red lights need to be going off because if they see base pay, PVP means nothing. And then it's a matter of like, even from a pricing perspective, you can get your pricing to high enough to where they them doing good means I'm making $30 an hour. They can't. You can't like no one, none of your competition can compete with that right now. Like 24, 25 sometimes when they're doing good is one thing, but if the average that they're making is 21 or 22, it's not enough incentive based upon 1950 an hour for them to actually do anything. Like I want bonuses of 500 or more per paycheck. And so my like the goal becomes like, how do, okay, do I need to change my services? Do I need to change my route density and reduce my service area? Do I need to change my pricing? Like if I would go after that as like my first thing is like how can I get the average paycheck to be 25 an hour, not that being the exception, like they're really good. And that would be like pricing a service area service mix. What can I do to make things more efficient, et cetera. Then from a culture perspective, there's a whole different other thing, right? Because like that'll help you retain people. Um, what you don't want to have happen was people make a bunch of money on P4P. That becomes their standard and then they have months where they don't hit, they hit base pay a bunch. So that's why like having a trainer bonus keeps that from happening. Keep having spring rush bone, like incentive where it's higher, motivates them. We also create incentives around like getting five star reviews. They get $50 if they get their name mentioned, a five star review. We have like all these other little things. They do an upsell from the app, they get 10 bucks. Like it's like guys, it takes you three seconds to click a button. You get $10. So you bake it in a little bit there. From a retention perspective, attracting them comes down to you nailing the first part. What I mean by that is we, we have our screen and it just has the, the P4P software up there and we just, it shows the top three earners. Now in your case, it's going to basically show all your team. But what was really cool is you interview right next to that scoreboard and you point up there like, oh yeah. So Bob last week made $27 an hour, Billy made $26 an hour, and Sally made $24 an hour. Yes, it says $19 per hour on that thing. But that's what people.

That becomes your, your applicant, like how to get applicants. And the reason I say is because that's what they're all looking at when they first get started. They're looking at money. That's like a big thing. Then it becomes like, okay, culture, do we have team meetings? Is there accountability, et cetera. But like they're going to look for the money, the dollars and cents the fastest. So it's usually the fastest way to do it. And you know, if you, if they, if you can pay someone 5 to $10 more per hour than the competition, you don't have a hard time finding.

People.

Because everyone in your local area want to work for you.

I'm glad you said that because I'm having trouble selling it to potential high res or whatever. So like I'll mention that. I'll even say something along the lines of what you said, like no one else is paying this much and everyone is still just way more comfortable doing it hourly. I'll get on the phone with someone who has no training and they want to start out at 20 and I'm like, okay. And then I'll have the same type of conversation that has training and they're saying I, I can't leave where I'm at if I'm not getting paid $20 an hour or more. And then I'll go into the selling of the P4P and it's still just hard to get people to even trust it. I guess. I, I don't know.

Yeah, that's why I do it right next to the board because they, I can sell people p until I'm blue in the face, they won't trust me. But if I have pay stubs of people from last week that made $35. An then Bob walks in the office and I hey Bob, what'd you make on your last pay period? And he tells the person, and I have a leaderboard that shares it all there too. So like our owners, a lot of the ones that came to the 3F program and actually have their pay stubs when they heard they keep them and during interviews like, hey, here's what I made here. These are my actual pay stubs. And they can show them like, yeah, I made a thousand dollar bonus here. I made 35, 40 bucks an hour here. And like it's real evidence instead of you just selling it to them. I would also say if they're like, I need $20 an hour. If your base is 1950, can we figure out a way to get above 20? So it looks right in their mind on base pay? And then like, so for example, what's your hourly rate that you're charging customers?

$80 per man hour.

So you hit the 25% rule at 20. Right. 25% rule is, you know, as long as your base pay is less than 25% of what you're charging the customer, then you should have a green light. Now in the perfect world, I like to be charging more like $100 an hour and their base pay is 20 because I know they're going to crush it. They're going to make tons of money on P4P above base pay, which is a retention tool. Right. So the thing is, the challenging part with P4P is you've got to have your base pay high enough to attract new talent, but low enough to make sure you don't eat in their P4P dollars. Once they actually become an employee, that's the balance. So I think you have enough to like even move it up to 21. And then the goal is like, how do I get. The goal becomes how do you get your hourly rate to 90? Right. So you still stay within the 25 rule, but then you incent, you attract Talent with the base pay, you retain talent with the P4P dollars.

Okay. So the last part of that would be, since I just started doing that last November and the two people I had doing it are gone, I don't have much evidence to kind of bring to the table. Yeah, I can show them those pay stubs.

And that's really kind of the only tool I can think of. Should it. Should I do what you've suggested in the past and like the P4B university.

Where.

You just get them on board first, you do it in the background and then after they've been on for a while and I've tracked it all, I show them, hey, like you, you could do the P4P system. This is what you could have made last week if you were on P4P.

Yeah. Like ultimately your base paying P for P, what attracts them? Like that's what they're pacing on because they don't know P4P, they don't believe anything you say. I try to give them evidence. If you don't have evidence, then they're just going to look at the base pay. That's why you're probably going to have to move up to 20, $21 an hour just to attract people. Then you figure out your pricing model so that way they can make 25 or more an hour on P4P, whether it be like improving route density, improving pricing, et cetera. So it's certainly possible. I think for now, I would probably tell you if you're really having a hard time getting people to join, you're probably going to have to get them at 21 bucks an hour, get above that 20, make them feel good, but then get your pricing above 85 so you can beat the 25% rule and get them back on P4P. And whether that be you do that now, like if you already set up for P4P, I would still pitch it. I'd give them the higher base. And even if you told them like, hey, we're raising prices, PvP right now, you're not going to make very much, but we're going to track it, we're going to clock in and out of there. And in the future, when I raise prices, you'll make more money.

Okay, so that last part of the question though, do you. The training systems and interview process, do you have any suggestions for that?

Yeah. So I'd say first off, when you're doing interviews, if you haven't done a lot in the past, I would recommend having a list of questions and working your way through them. The reason I say that is because a lot of times we get nervous just as much as them, and we skip over stuff. We miss things about them because we're just simply nervous. So, like, we have 17 questions that we literally just like, first one, second one, and then they know you're reading it. So they. They just go along with every question. So even though it might be an awkward question, it's like, would be hard just to say to someone because they know you're just literally reading and then writing down the answer. They somehow feel like they're just part of. This is part of the process. And so I would recommend that for anyone that is ahead doesn't have more like 100 or 200 interviews underneath their belt. Like, I don't bring anything to an interview now, but I didn't start that way. Like, when I go to interview now, I literally will sometimes print off their resume, but usually I just go with nothing. But, like, I also have done enough to where. Okay, this is the question I need to ask. These are going to go here and I'm going to like, I've done enough. But if you haven't, I would write every single one down so you don't miss certain steps because otherwise you're nervous. You'll skip over things. You won't ask the right questions, which will pull out the things that you need to know whether or not this is a good hire. So I would. I would be very, very systematic with it until you get really comfortable.

Okay, this is my last part. What are some. Some good questions to ask them? Because I had that. I have a list of questions that I ask, and it hasn't been very successful, and that is probably my fault. But do you have any examples?

So reverse engineer what your outcome that you want? So the outcome is, okay, I want people to show up on time. Like, what are the biggest troubles you're having with employees now?

They don't stick around.

That's probably one of them. That's definitely one of them.

Do you know why they're not sticking around or is that not known?

A couple of them, it was because they're young. They don't want to work that hard. This last person was complaining about his back from mulching, and he's. He. I mean, this is a little.

This is. This is perfect. Brett, so what you do, you work backwards, right? So if someone. Someone stopped working because they. They said their back was hurting. Great interview question. Are there any. Is there any physical things that are. That would prevent you from doing X, Y and Z, or here's the thing, the tasks inside of our job that we do, are you okay with performing those actions on a daily basis for eight to 10 hours out in the field? Right. You can't not hire someone because they had a past ailment. But what you can do is like, here's the requirements of the job. Do you think you can, you can physically do these things and just say it's a question like yes or no. Another thing is like, if they're not showing up and I was like, okay, or they're not sticking around is like, look in the resume, like if they've only been at places three to six months, they're just not going to stay at your place long, right? So then it's a matter. Okay, I'm going to make sure that when I'm looking through resumes, if they haven't been somewhere for at least three to four years, I'm just not taking them. Well, you're going to cut out 80 to 90 of your applicants. But if that's the bottleneck, then that's maybe something we do. And then it's a matter of like, well, if it's their first couple jobs, it's an entry level position, like, okay, great, then I'm really going to dig into their goals. Like, what, why are you coming here to work? Like, so like I'm going to, is this a long term thing? And then the question is like, well, do you have a position that they can actually grow into? So again, if we're going to take full ownership of this, like maybe people are leaving because it's an entry level position, you teach them really good stuff and then they're like, okay, cool, I'm going to bounce. Or are we growing the business? Are we giving more opportunity not just to make more money, but actually move up with the company? That's why, like a larger company is usually easier to retain talent because you can simply move people into higher positions. And so the advantage that you have right now is that you're small. And the disadvantage that you have when it comes to hiring is that you are small. Not having places to move into people like people into means you don't retain talent. But what you can do now is in your interview process, you're selling them on the vision and then you're seeing what they, how they react to the vision. Because if they're reacting to a five year vision, it's like, yeah, I don't know, that's going to be really what I'm looking for get rid of them then instead of you onboarding training them and then two months later they're gone. Okay, so clarity around the vision allowing you to hopefully attract talent that is looking for the longer term and you can be upfront and honestly like people. Hey, there's just FYI we're a smaller business. Here's the cons of that. We don't really have anywhere to like move you up into in terms of estimators or gender, marriage, et cetera. And I, I hate that I'm trying to grow this business. It's going to take me five or 10 years, but my goal is to create it into this thing and when it isn't this thing then I would like to be able to hire the people into those positions that have been with me for a long time. Is that of interest to you? And I don't know like you know, I've only mowed grass. Well then this probably is person who's going to stay entry level forever or they're probably going to stick around for two months and leave. Right. So I'd be trying to find your two or three crew members that are like hey, I'm in it for five to 10 years and I catch the vision. I want to be your estimator, I want to be your general manager, I want to be your mechanic. And you're like hey, I'm not hiring that right now. But that's what I want the business to become. And I'm going to share the numbers with you. I'm going to put it up on a board, we're going to track it together, we're going to have off site meetings about it. And the vision of the company is what retained like that's how I retained all my good people despite having one location. And that's why in the franchising the business is to retain people. Someone can move up from pushing a lawnmower to like a landscape crew, then they can be a landscape lead, then they could potentially be in the office. Then they could be an estimated they could be a general manager. Well once you have enough people that are bottlenecks, top of that either A, you got to pay them more to keep them a stay or B, you got more opportunity to grow and learn. And so you know, by doing the franchise it was like okay, great, I can move people out of the general manager position into sales position for the franchise. I can have owner success manager. Like my leadership team is people that all came through my from mowing grass. And so your regional manager Owner, success manager, salesperson, Liz, operations here at command center. It's all people that started from the date like the very beginning. But, but, but the way you retain those people because I couldn't have retained them if I didn't have the vision at the beginning. So you say, hey, this is where we're going. So if you're in your local market, you're like, hey, we're going to be in the biggest business in this area or we're going to have a $5 million company. And at the $5 million company this is what it's going to look like. And so you got to paint a very vivid vision to them if you have any chance of retaining an all star because they have other options and you likely can't afford to pay a lot. And so the vision is, hey, like you're going to have to trust me on this one. I'll pay you in 5, 10, 15 years. But here's where we're going and if you stick along, I'll make sure you're taken care of. And then the way that you keep them on board is you actually live up to the promises and in a directionally correct towards the vision. Because if you say that and then you like this year we didn't really grow and this year we're not really going to try to expand and this year we're, I'm going to go on vacation for three or four weeks. Like they don't believe you utilize any.

Tools for employee development from a, either you know, sales training or you know, landscaping training even, you know, don't touch those old growth hydrangea type type stuff for some of your crew. I mean is that, is it just mentorship that you know your guys learn from or do you have other like, you know, videos you produce and LMS systems or anything like that?

Yeah, so each role and position is a little different. Right. So when you think about like frontline team members for labor positions, videos, in person training, ride alongs, checklists, we really liked like a two week checklist of everything they're supposed to do in those two weeks. They have a trainer and a trainee. The trainer is compensated and incentivized to ensure that the trainee is done, does all the tasks, they sign off on them, they get compensated, the trainer gets compensated and bonused based upon the first paycheck that that employee is solo. Like those are like very much systems around frontline team members. When it comes to outside of that I'm looking, I would much rather hire talent people that already have they have the hunger to go develop themselves. And if they're not going out and listening to podcasts and watching videos and going to conferences and figuring out stuff themselves, guys don't be around them. And so, you know, I would much rather them be hungry because I can't teach that. I can teach them how to like click around in a software or like, hey, how to sell, even like the skill of selling. Hey, when they say this, don't say this, and when they say this, do say this. Like that's, that's easier. But I can't. If I say that and tell them that and they don't want to learn, then we have a problem. And so the ability for someone to learn at a higher level than the hunger and craving to be, to improve like it's our number one value, is continuous improvement, our constant improvement. And it is that reason, the reason for that is because if you do don't have the desire to improve, you can be given the exact roadmap to success and you'll never be able to succeed. And so at a higher level, I would say it's constant improvement. I'm looking for someone that's hungry to constantly improve. At a lower level, I am creating systems around checklists, trainers and trainees in person, hands on training, and then I'm just tracking every single thing against it.

Awesome.

And that checklist is defined as like, what does good look like? And the same way it's like, well, I want a good employee, so what do I ask them? Application. Application questions. It just needs to go directly like, okay, what's my best employee? What's the best one look like? And then how do I ask questions that make sure that the person I'm talking to is like this? Go ahead, Ben.

This is a little bit personal. If you don't want to do that, you don't have to. But how, how did you. Realizing and being able to spend enough time around somebody to realize that you want to spend the rest of your life with them impact the perspective that you have towards business and where you see this going, because I don't, I don't know very much about her. That's probably a good thing on your end. It's good for you.

But, but I would imagine she's supportive and she, she wants the best for you. But, but where, where, how does that, how does that kind of tug at your vision for where you, where you saw things going?

Yeah, so, so for the context of the question, are you like looking to be able to find somebody? Are you single like, where are you at?

Yeah, so I have a woman. Yeah, we went together. We've been together for about a year and a half, and we met in college. Yeah.

Very cool. Okay, so what's the context of your question for your situation? Do you. Are you just curious or are you want to know?

Well, I'm just wondering, like, I'm just. Because I know that you were kind of like the solo guy for a while. Like, you. You kind of. That was. That was kind of your Persona. I've watched a lot of your stuff, man.

Yeah. Yeah.

We've been on another training, and I've. I feel like I know you pretty well, but.

And it just. I. I kind of didn't see it coming. And I don't know. A lot of people, I don't know if they saw it coming. It's kind of like the CRM. It's just like something switches in your brain, and all of a sudden you're on this road now, and I'm wondering, like, how has that. That shift? Has it. I'm not concerned as far. I'm not asking it out of concern. I'm just generally, I'm very curious as to how. How you've, like, have you gained insight into what you have? Has it, like, deepened your. Your drive to want to. To grow this thing to wherever it is that you want to take it or like, what. What has it done?

Yeah, so that's kind of.

I know that's a. That's a shotgun of a question, but.

Yeah, I think it's a matter of, like, what do you want out of life? And then how do you reverse engineer that? Right. So, like, you know, there's. There's certain aspects of, you know, okay, I want to be healthy. Okay, great. So if I reverse engineer that, what's going to be required is I'm have to work out. I'm gonna have to eat healthy. Okay, great. How do I operationalize that? For me, it's like, I keep it really simple. I eat meat and other heavy things and then. So that's a Kelsey. Okay. It's like, okay, business, great. I want to. I want to become a billionaire so I can do certain things and be able to give back to certain people and see an impact in the industry. So, like, great. What is required for that happen? Well, I'm gonna have to work crazy amounts of hours. I'm gonna have to learn a lot. I'll have to get around people that can connect me to the right people, and I'll have to get. To get in Those rooms, I'll have to have skills that they don't have so that they see value in me.

Reverse engineer, like, the goal to, like, a goal. Do I want to have kids that will take care of me when I'm 80 years old and, like, actually care about me existing? Yes. And so, like, well, in order for that to happen, I've got to reverse engineer this too. Right. And so, as selfish as it sounds, it's a matter of then figuring out, okay, are there other people that have goals that are aligned with that? So, for example, are there coaches that want to teach? Because I will need those. Their information in order to reach the goal of the business. Are there. Are there trainers that can train me how to lift and influencers that can train me how to eat healthy because that will get me close to the goal of health. And then the same thing is true with. In the relationship. Like, if the goal is I'm 80 and I have kids and I have people around me that love and support me outside of just a financial commitment, if it's gonna be, you know, if that's going to happen and I reverse engineer, I'm gonna need to find someone that has goals that align with that and that also have similar goals in relation to all the other things that I want in my life. And so, you know, finding that person was something that I, you know, obviously was not something I was, you know, expecting, like you said. But, yeah, you find the person and you're like, okay, this is.

Yeah, you don't choose it.

There's a long time. Right. So the same thing. The same thing happened, like, with the coaching side. So I'm. I've kind of paralleled it with, like, health and with business. But, like, the same thing happened with coaching. Like, I wasn't expecting to be able to get Dr. Kashi, and, you know, one can now, but, like, it was a function of, you know, timing. And when the price comes up for your coach, you're like, oh, I don't care. Like, this is a function of. I know this is required to hit the goal, so whatever the cost is, whatever. And so the same thing would be true with a relationship, I would say.

Right. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, you got it, man. All right. First question I've ever got about that. Let's go.

In the bag.

I just know that it, like, I know those two things. Business is. I know that copilot, especially with Augusta, of course, is your. Your blood, but copilot seems to be like, your new baby, and those things can kind of get Complicated when it becomes like another person needing certain things from you. And it's sometimes difficult to have all the wires plugged in everywhere you need them plugged in.

So for sure we're still learning. We're still learning.

Go ahead.

Of course. Never thought.

Yeah.

Quick question for you.

All right, changing gears from that. So.

Lawn maintenance, business, light landscaping. Strictly that. Let's say we figure out getting clients and keeping clients happy. And let's even say we figure out hiring employees. What stops me? What's going to be my biggest challenge on the road to a 10 million dollar company?

Yeah. So do you know what the 4L framework is, Jeremiah?

Yes, I've seen your videos on it.

Yeah. So what you basically described here is that you figure out liquidity. You have enough money to go out and advertise, so then you get leads, you have enough customers and then it's like, well then I figure out labor. You assume now we find labors. The next part of the, of the growth engine is leadership. So the skill of training trainers and managing managers is a very different skill than labors. And so the, the thing that most people will fail at when they go from they hit a million and they've, they figured out what you just mentioned and the thing that differentiated them and the 10 million dollar person is many times the last part of the 4L framework, which is leadership. Like can you lead other leaders? There's a very different skill. They, they will turn just as much if you're not a good leader yourself. And so can you have that vivid vision and then get people that otherwise could go build their own thing underneath you to they want to support your visions and goals. Like is your dreams and goals big enough for theirs to fit inside? And so the vast majority of people will just not be able to do that. And then it's like do you optimize at a million, do you go start two or $3 million businesses? But like I would say that's a differentiation assuming what you just mentioned.

So right now our radius is pretty big. We're probably at like a 15 mile. And for like one time jobs, like not like recurring jobs, some of them are even like 20 miles. Obviously there's like no traffic to get there or anything like that. So it's not like you know, 20 miles takes 50 minutes or anything like that. But like the farthest we've gone. Well there's that one that we just estimated on. It's probably like 45 minutes. But they're getting a ton of stuff. You know, in our situation I don't know if you have a franchise or one of your own that's in a similar situation that's, like, pretty rural. I don't know what their mile radius looks like for that. We don't have, like, set lines on it right now.

Yeah. So, like, the. The thing is, if in a really, really rural area, you're gonna have more drive time if you're doing this, all this, you know, huge service area. But if you have your, your budget hours and your hourly rates high enough, it doesn't really matter. Right. So the, the nice thing about being rule is you have very little, little competition, so you can dominate. On SEO and Google ranking, you should be the only one they see in terms of trucks. And so it just comes down to, like, if you went into Pittsburgh, you might be able to charge. I'm just gonna make a number up 80 bucks an hour and win 50% of your jobs. Whereas you might be able to charge 100 or 120 out here because simply, there's no one else to do the work. So is your competition high? Like, do you have a lot of competitors out where you're at or not really?

No. Like, we just did, like, a review campaign, like, this year, and like, before we even did that, we were at like, 18 reviews, and now we're at, like, in the 60s, and that's just far above anybody that would be in our service radius. Once we get to closer to some of the other, like, suburban neighborhoods, then, like, there's people with, like, more reviews that are bigger companies that might have a couple locations. But in our general area, I mean, the only other bigger companies, like, they do tree service, they do excavating. There's one, they do more retail. They do a little bit of infield work, but they do more retail as far as what's closest to us.

But even I would be really focused. I'd be really focused on your website, really focused on SEO. I'd spend every dollar on your website before you spend on marketing. Because if you can just own all traffic in this area, you can charge substantially more. And so, yes, maybe your drive time is an extra 5, 10 minutes on every job, but if you're able to charge 120 an hour instead of 80 an hour when you're on the job site, you're making more money.

Okay.

And don't rule out the possibility if you're 45 minutes away from Pittsburgh that you just do move into Pittsburgh, like you said, your shop space over in Pittsburgh. I'm just saying, like, there's a totally different business model. But. But I'm just saying, like you're doing that is another option.

At what point does it make sense for us to open up that second location? Because ideally it would just be like keeping this location, maximizing the potential. Here. The goal, like last year was 250 in revenue. This year the goal is 500 and then going from there. I mean, who knows what the actual potential, like what the plateau will be for this. You know, as far as like population restraints given our like service area, at what point does it make sense to make that second location?

Yeah, so I would say like as a hard set rule, I would say once you can take a two week vacation in the middle of spring rush and the business continue to grow without you there, that's when you're ready. And when it is so profitable that your tax accountant is trying to figure out ways for you to spend money at the end of the year, despite you having a general manager, then you're ready for a second location.

Okay, that's a great answer.

All right, everyone. Well, thank you for having the goal session. We will do another one of these in a year together. So keep the document once you filled it out. We will go over it in a year. We'll set up the next year. But looking forward to next week, sharing the, the modern estimates, the new version of that. And then very shortly down the road, we'll be getting the new app. So it's gonna be very, very cool. Be much more simple for your crew especially. So look forward to it. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and we'll see you on the mastermind, on the Facebook group and in the copilot universe. Take care, guys. Bye.