The KEY to Growing Your Lawn Care Business - The Formula of Success!

Are we live? Hey, everyone. Mike Ennis here and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today I'm going to be doing something a little bit differently. I'm actually doing this as a live YouTube stream. So I'm going to test this out and see what happens when I do a podcast and I actually run it live and then I'm able to open up for Q and A afterwards. So I'm going to talk for the next like, 10 or 12 minutes. If you're in the chat, drop a comment below and then I can actually address questions about the podcast episode. Today we're going to be talking about what I feel the very, very important equation when it comes to your business, and that is momentum equals velocity times mass or mass times velocity. We're going to get into it in just a second, but before we do a big thing, today's sponsor, which is Gusto, if you haven't already, go to gusto.com/bootcamp, try out their software completely free for 90 days. There's a mobile app for your employees to clock in and out of. There's a really cool feature where they can actually take money out before the end of their paycheck, and then you don't have to get that money taken out of your account until the end of the pay period. To check it out today, go to gusto.combootcamp. alright, so for all of these of you that are joining, I'm doing this kind of a new thing. I'm doing the podcast. I'm going to record it here for about 10, 12 minutes, and then I'm gonna be able to address your questions right at the end. So we're gonna see if we like this or not. If you do drop a comment here, hit the like button, and here we go. So we're talking about this thought process of momentum, and I cannot overemphasize the importance of momentum. When you're first getting your lawn care business started, okay, it's not about profitability. It's not about how many trucks you buy and equipment, you guys know where I stand on those things. But it's also not about profitability. At the beginning, you need momentum. And when you look at the actual, like, science of, you know, in physics, of equating and coming up to a numerical amount of momentum, it's mass times velocity. And when I look at momentum in your business and actually starting to get traction in the marketplace, what I'm looking at is you need two things, one of two things, or a combination of both. And that is you either need mass, which is gonna be a large amount of advertising and marketing dollars that are gonna be spent on Facebook and YouTube and Google and nextdoor and door hangers and all. Every door, direct mail, a bunch of mass. That's mass, okay? And you can create momentum by using mass and just doing a lot of advertising. And then the other alternative way of doing that is velocity. Or I should say another part of the equation is velocity. And I think the speed at which.

Here I have a usb, okay? This thing's probably just a few grams. It's very, very light. But if this thing was going at 500 miles an hour and hit someone in the head, it could kill them. Whoops. It could kill them. All right? Why? Not much mass, but a lot of velocity. Okay, Then I take something a little bit bigger, like maybe, let's see here, this charging block for my cell phone, okay, probably weighs, I don't know, maybe half a pound. Now this thing would only need to go maybe 15 or 20 miles an hour, hit someone in the head and could probably really inj them because it has more mass. And so a lot of times when people get started with lawn care, they do not have a lot of mass. They don't have a lot of size, they don't have a lot of marketing dollars to spend on advertising, to spend on going out and getting a bunch of ads and doing every door direct mail to 10,000 houses and spending on Facebook ads and doing three different types of Facebook ads and running them against their pixel. Like, you don't have the money for that. You don't have the mass for that. So what you need is velocity. That's what I want to talk about today. I'm giving permission to those of you who are just getting started, are small right now, or you're in a funk going into the spring season because you feel like you're not getting much traction, you don't got a lot of customers coming in. And I'm giving you permission to put profit on the sidelines right now and focus on momentum, okay? And when I talk about momentum, I'm talking about speed. Because you're probably, if you're going through that kind of funk in the spring, you're just getting started. You just quit your full time job and now you're doing this lawn care thing full time. There's a really good chance you don't have a lot of mass, you don't have a lot of marketing dollars to go out and spend right now on trying to create leads. So what you need to focus on is velocity. How can you become the USB but go 500 miles an hour and actually make an impact and create momentum for your business? When I talk about momentum, I mean, like, it's like a flywheel, which is, with a flywheel, it takes a lot of effort and momentum to get it started. But once you get it going, it just keeps going and going and going, and it's hard to stop it. That comes in the form of lots of leads, like the phone ringing off the hook, lots of people calling your business, asking to do business with you. That is the flywheel of momentum we're trying to get started here. And to do that, I'm okay with you sidelining profits. Okay? So I'm going to give you direct strategies today in today's podcast of what you can do to actually get the flywheel of momentum going. But you have to remember before you start thinking about profitability and charging a higher rate and increasing your prices and trying to add an estimate fee and dump fees and, you know, I've heard of all sorts of kind of fees that people add, admin fees and chemical fees. Before you add all of those things and start thinking about creating a lot of profit in your business, you've got to create momentum. And I don't mean momentum like one or two calls a week or a new customer week. I'm talking about where the phone's ringing off the hook. You literally have to go hire people, get more equipment out of necessity just to stay up with that flywheel of momentum. At that point is when you can make a decision to raise your prices, add more fees, become more profitable if you don't want to grow as quickly. But you've got to go get the momentum started. Okay? So here's a direct strategy for you to use if you're in the position of getting the spring rush, you're just getting started. You just started your lawn care business and you need momentum. You don't have a lot of mass, you don't have a lot of marketing dollars to go spend right now. But you need to get customers, you need to get leads coming in right now. You've got to remember that during the winter, if you're spending money on ads, there's very, very low demand. And I've talked to us in a previous video, Just search supply demand. Mike, Andy's into YouTube. You're going to see me explain on a whiteboard about the supply and demand curve. Okay? When the supply. When the demand is low, people are not willing to pay a High price. Okay? So when demand is low and supply, that is landscaper sitting around doing nothing, willing to do work, the price of that work is gonna be lower and it's gonna be much more difficult to go get those customers. It's gonna cost a lot more to attract them because there's less demand, there's less customers out there. Therefore it's gonna cost a lot more to get them. Your customer acquisition cost during the winter, if you have a slow season, is usually gonna be double what it is during the spring rush. That's why I always say if you're going to spend money on marketing dollars, the most efficient marketing dollars are spent during the spring rush because your customer acquisition cost is the lowest. So if you've been running ads for the past month and you just had snow get dumped in your local market, do not expect the demand to be high. People are not thinking about mowing. They're not thinking about property claims. They're not thinking about anything to do with landscaping because they're literally thinking about keeping the power on, building snowmen. And you know, they can't Dr. They're not thinking about lawn care landscape. Nothing's growing. There's no pain. You've got to figure out as we go into the season, how can you create pain for your customers? Because traditionally, what creates a spring rush is the pain of growing grass bushes that are overgrown and a lawn that starts to look pretty shabby and the edges are overgrown. That's the pain of the customer that create this massive amount of demand that we get a cash in on in spring rush. The question is, how do you create the demand? Because you don't have the money when you're getting started to spend a bunch of money and spend $300 on customer acquisition costs or $200 on the customer acquisition cost. We're just pouring money into ads. That's the mass strategy. Just throwing a massive amount of marketing dollars. The alternative to that needs to be velocity. So what is that? What is my strategy? I'm going to share today. It is literally door knocking. Okay? And I did a long form video a few weeks ago about this on a zoom call, the coaching call. And you go watch it. Just do door knocking. Mike Andes. It'll come up. But the bottom line is this. When you go and do this door knocking, you're not trying to be super salesy. It's very difficult, especially if you're an introvert, to do that. It's much more annoying for the customer if you're trying to sell. This is the strategy that you're going to use, okay, you're going to be going door to door with door hangers. But instead of just doing door hangers, you're going to actually knock on each door, you're going to introduce yourself, you're going to talk to the person because your close ratio is much higher, you can create much more demand pain for the customer if you actually talk to them. Alright, so what you're going to do is you're going to go down, you're going to get 500 door hangers, literally you're, you know, pay 10 or 12 cents a pop. This is low cost, okay? This is not the mass, this is the velocity strategy. You're going to go knock on doors, you're going to put door hangers on. You're only going to put the door hanger on the doorknob if the customer doesn't answer the door. Now if they do answer the door, this is what you're going to say. Hi, my name is Mike, I just got started Augusta Lawn Care. Just got my business started in your local market. As we head into the spring season, if you need anything in your lawn, done, your yard mowing, anything, just let me know. And as you're saying that you're giving them the door hanger, you're putting it in their face. So you have a few seconds to kind of like they're already like listening. They're not going to shut the door in your face. You just introduce yourself, you're saying, I'm brand new, I'm just getting started. Maybe you're not just getting started. You can say, hey, local landscaper, I've been in business for a few years, just wanted to introduce myself. This is not like sailing, this is not selling. You just annoyed them by knocking on the front door. You're going to come across with a story, your personality, you're just introducing yourself. And if you're just getting started, if you're young, just embrace that. That's your unique selling proposition that you've got to embrace. But when you're just introducing yourself and then this is what's going to happen, one out of 100 people are going to say, oh really cool. Well, do you guys do bush trimming? Do you all? You know what? I just have, I have a project in the backyard me and get to, would you be able to give me an estimate on it sometime? Like there is going to be that small 1%, 2% of people that actually open the door and have a need and have some sort of problem that you can fix for them. Now, what you're going to be doing is trying to identify those problems when you're walking up to the front door. So you're not just going to be going door to door, just like, you know, trying to get as many door hangers as possible. When you're walking up the driveway, you're asking yourself, where is the pain of this property? What pain points? What problems can I solve for this customer? Okay, There's a bush growing onto the siding of the house. Okay. There's a limb overhanging on the roof. Okay. The grass is starting to get overgrown. The edges look horrible. They haven't used a stick edge on this property in three years. There's probably six inches worth of grass overhanging the sidewalk. That is a pain point. Now, you're not going to go up to the door and try to sell them on that. What you're going to do is introduce yourself. And like I said, there's going to be a small, tiny percentage of people that when you, after you're done introducing yourself, they're going to ask about, what do you do? Like, okay, well, I have this project. Or, okay, well, what services do you offer? That's your foot in the door. That's your opportunity to say, oh, well, actually, I noticed that there is, you know, the trees overgrown in the top of your house. Like, we could do that. You know, I noticed the edges are overgrown. I could get you an estimate to my. By tomorrow. I can get that in your inbox. That is your opportunity. That's velocity. All right? That's the USB going 500 miles an hour and getting some momentum and actually making an impact in the marketplace because of the speed, going out and knocking doors is not easy going and knocking on 500 doors, 400 of them are home. 100 of them answer, and 90 of them are just like, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. They take the door hanger and leave. But there's going to be that 10. There's going to be that small, tiny percentage of people that actually need your services, and there is pain in their current place. Like, when you knock on the door, that's the person you want. That's how you're going to get velocity. And that's what you're going to have to do if you want to grow your business. And you don't have a lot of marketing dollars. You don't have that mass, that massive amount of weight to really impact and make momentum. All right, so that was today's show. We have done this you know, time and time again before where I record this and put it up, but now it's live. So if you're watching this, make sure you hit the like button. By the way, there's only, there's 41 people watching right now and seven people hit the like button. So let's ramp up the likes and then let's go ahead and jump into the Q and A and we can answer some questions for you all. So I'm going to hop over into the Q and A and if you guys like this form of where instead of just recording from the mic, I will record here and then actually be able to answer some live Q and A.

We can do that. So welcome all of you that are in the chat. Can I get some advice on how you motivate yourself when you're least motivated? Yes. Like this, this, this whole premise of momentum comes from this. I've talked to a couple of our franchisees this past week. They just got started in their lawn care business and they kind of went through a funk of, you know, the spring rush, they just had snow, there's no leads coming in. They're putting, they kind of have some Facebook ads out but like they don't have any database right now to tap into, which that's when most of your leads in the slow seasons are gonna come from your current database, your existing customers. Alright. You only get that though once you're established. So if you're just getting started and you need momentum, it's not the mass, it's not the 5,000 contacts you have in your database that you can tap into. David, all of this gave me a dollar 99 cents. Let's go. Okay, so in terms of how do you motivate yourself? You've got to create that accountability to get out of bed to go out and knock on those doors. Because right now, like I said, you've in the past worked at a job, your boss keeps you accountable to come to work, your employees, your co workers, they are depending on you. When you start your own business and you're going full time, all of a sudden, that disappears. Now you have to be self motivated. All right? So I would be really, really trying to look for someone to keep you accountable, whether it be a spouse, another business person, whether it be, you know, someone that you can connect with on landscape business course, make someone you can be accountable to and really make sure that they're like, hey, how many doors you knock on the day? How many door hangers did you put out? How many estimates did you get out of those estimates. How many did you close? Because I don't care if you go out and get five estimates knocking on doors, I don't want you to be focused on profits. I want you to be focused on closing deals and getting things on the schedule, because that creates momentum. Because when you start creating momentum, you get, you know, four or five estimates over the course of a couple days of door knocking, and you get three of those on the schedule. And now you're booked for two days because you got a couple big cleanups. Now your truck is parked out next to the road, and all of the neighbors see you for eight hours working on that property. And then you go talk to all of those neighbors after you're done working at that property. Guess what? Now you're gonna two or three of them, and they're gonna get on a schedule. That's momentum. That's the flywheel. All right? Now they go talk to people. They actually have word of mouth, and you start getting referrals. That's the flywheel. You need to focus on not trying to charge 50, 60, $70 an hour. Go out and get the work. All right? When you have lots of leads coming in and you're overwhelmed with lead, that's when you can raise prices. That's when you can focus on close ratio and, you know, be at 30, 40, 50% and have high prices. Right now, you need to close everything, okay? Get that momentum going. David Hernandez. There's tons of new contractors in my area. How do I land those clients in those subdivisions? There's tons of new construction. Oh, there's tons of new construction in my era. How do I land those clients in those subdivisions? All right, so think about it from the customer's point of view, which in this case, the customer is not the homeowner, it's the contractor. All right? So you got to think about, from the contractor's point of view, their use of subcontractors, where they create relationships with electricians, plumbers, H Vac people, framers, all the rest of it. They also, by the way, have relationship with landscapers. You've got to become that person. It's going to be a longer sales process to become that person for them. But once you're locked in with them and you develop that relationship, there's a good chance they're just going to give you all of their work. So you've got to figure out, okay, do I need to show up on their properties? Do I need to give them a free quote on your project? Do I need to create three different templates of, you know, a 5,000, a 10,000, a $15,000 landscape install that I can present to them. And it'd be very, very simple for them to show to their clients which is the actual homeowner. But typically for new construction, your, your customer, your person you're in contact with is going to be the contractor. That's your target market, not the actual homeowner. You've got to get, you know, in relationship with them and then they will then refer you to their homeowner that they're selling to.

Watch you a lot. And I'm 13 years old. What is one thing that can put my business out there and be able to get customers? Amy, congratulations. 13 years old. Do exactly what I said today and embrace the fact that you're 13. That is your USP, your unique selling proposition. Because everyone else that they get a door hanger from, everyone else they get a flyer from is trying to look super professional, look like they've been in business for a thousand years, look like they have all the big trucks and all the rest of it. You're 13. That's your differentiator. Knock on the door. Guess what? The 10 people, the 10 people who answer the door and nine of them say thank you and just take my door hanger. One person says, ask me about my services. For someone who's 13, five people are going to ask about your services. So just double down on the thing that makes you unique. All right? And if that's because you're 13, just go for that. ABC Lawnworks, the mass strategy work. Just got a new phone system set up to support the surge.

Oh, thank you, Victor. I appreciate the 299.

All right. Hey, Mike, how can I find good worker? They always tend to leave during the winter season, so be really open and honest. If you got to lay off people during the winter, I'd make sure you're very honest with them when you're hiring them at the beginning and say, hey, look, we do not guarantee hours during these months, but during these months you're going to get like full time overtime, etc. If you're open and honest during the hiring phase and during the application phase, we see that most people, they plan for it and then they actually make plans to have another job or a part time job or go on vacation during those months. Because at the beginning I always thought like, oh, I had to provide work year round no matter what. And we'd be like the stupidest stuff to keep them busy during the winter and Be super unprofitable where now we can have profitable months during the winter because we actually scale back our workforce to become efficient even during the winter months.

Chad Allen. Okay, your take on one man cutting crew versus two. By the way, I live in Cordova, Tennessee and saw your video when you came to South Mississippi and Cordova, Tennessee. Your videos. Cool. Very awesome. How do you find your. How do you find your close ratio, junior? So basically close ratio is going to how many estimates did I send out versus how many did I close? All right. How many I actually get accepted? If you have multiple line items on an estimate I and they accept one, I'd still consider that a sale. Like I'm looking at how many estimates I go out for, how many. How many jobs I get on the schedule. Hit the like button, everybody. We're. We're growing in how many people are watching but not how many likes, which is a shame. Hi, I would like your input. I have a couple options. There is a local company for sale for $80,000. They do 190k in revenue, but it comes with a few trucks and a bunch of equipment. Thoughts? Is that too much or. I currently work for a company that does 800,000 revenue and they will bring me on as a third owner for 20K. All right, Cody, great question. Everyone here needs to watch the one video that I feel like I have actually created that is like super underrated. No one watches because long it's boring. It's a webinar. But it's very, very important. If you're think acquisitions, selling valuation of your company. You just need to type in acquisitions. Mike Andy's. There's like a tour. I think it's a 12 hour webinar or whatever on there goes to the different ways to value a company. How to set up your company if you're wanting to sell it, how to look at potential buying opportunities and which places are gonna be like the hidden kind of gems if you're looking to acquire other companies. So I'll just defer you to that one, Cody. But in terms of the $80,000 for 190,000 revenue, I would say that is. It could be a great deal or could be a bad deal. If they have $70,000 worth of equipment, you're only paying $10,000 in goodwill for the contacts, the website, the phone number, all the rest of it. Not a bad deal. However, I'd be willing to pay $200,000 for that same business if it came with equipment and it had solid contracts in place. And had 3,000 contacts in the database that they've been emailing. Like, it just. Your valuation is dependent on so many different things. So watch that video. David Hernandez. I live in Northern Virginia, which is right in Washington, D.C. we have the richest counties in all the U.S. how do I land these clients? So, David, you're going to make sure, again, you got to think about your customer first. What are they looking for? If they have a lot of money, they're not going to be valuing certain things. So, for example, for everyone out there that is bragging about prices and giving freebies like buy one, get one free, get your first mowing customer, first lawn care cut of the year free. That's not attracting someone whose net worth is $3 million. They're looking for someone they can trust to be in their property, that's insured, that's not going to try to sue them if someone gets hurt. Those are the things they're looking for. So make sure in your marketing, on your website, your level of professionalism is matching what they're expecting. If you are cheap and you are unprofessional and you show up to an estimate, sweaty, dirty, you know, you don't have any uniform, you have your cutoff shirt, shorts, smoking, like, they're not going to think about this person being on my property. And that's what they want. They're willing to pay a higher price. Make sure you tell them and your actions merit that higher price. Buy your professionalism and the perceived value from that customer.

Derek Barber, Springtime is about being available to make it happen quick. Price is usually not a factor. Gibbs Lawn Care, any software you recommend you to help keep track of working clients. Awesome. Best way. Okay, cool. I'm gonna go ahead and cut it off here. Are you still doing consulting calls? Yes, Junior, I am. Below on the YouTube there's a link you can book a consulting call. I'm gonna go ahead and cut it off here. I just wanted to hop on here tonight and do this live. I think it was a lot of fun. I'll try to do these more where I do the podcast and then you guys can ask questions live and I can answer them right away. So I really appreciate you all. Thank you all for your support. Have a great rest of your week.