The Perfect Size of Lawn Care Business | Q&A Session

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course. Today we're going to be doing some Q and A. Got a whole bunch of questions that came in via the texting platform. And if you want to ask your question, make sure you just text the word landscaping to 855-575-1267. Just text the word landscaping. You'll be entered into the pool. And I don't bother you a lot. Maybe once a or twice a month, I email or send you a text and basically ask for questions. So that's how you can submit questions like we're going to be answering today. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Make sure you subscribe and check out landscapebusinesscourse.com and become a member there today. Let's go ahead and open up the inbox and start looking at your questions. All right, so we got a whole bunch of questions. Not going to get through all of them today, but let's go ahead and try to get through as many as possible. All right, first question is.

What'S up, Mike? Zach from western Massachusetts. When Augusta lawn care was operating from Blaine, how large was the radius of your service area? Were you traveling to Bellingham or Ferndale? We are currently a two man crew and still getting calls from other nearby cities approximately 15 to 20 miles away. I, I would prefer to stick to a more dense service area as I'm afraid of not being efficient too much travel time, but also don't want to be missing out on opportunities. Is it better idea to put your foot down in the beginning or to slowly shrink your service area back as you grow? All right, so on this case, I really, really recommend that you start in a very specific area and you grow there. I know it's very, very hard to turn away business, especially when there's opportunities outside of your local area and especially in good neighborhoods. And you're like, man, what if I got 20 lawns there? Don't do it. I just highly recommend it. You're unprofitable for a long time. You're going to eventually have to either raise their price or cut them anyways. As you scale and grow, those are always the jobs that seems like where equipment breaks, things happen and stuff messes up. And so I would highly Recommend sticking within 5 miles. Like 5 mile radius is a lot of space. And to answer your question, when we started in Blaine, we only did Blaine. It was only when we moved to Bellingham that we really expanded in Bellingham, did an acquisition in Bellingham and still had so much business in Blaine that it was worth driving 20 minutes, but, you know, 15, 20 miles, I would never do it. Just don't. The reason is because as you make your radius bigger, you have to market to all of those clients, and it gets harder and harder to make your brand have brand awareness. I'd much rather be a big fish in a smaller pond. The reason we were so successful in Blaine is because there's like six or seven thousand people or less living there. And so when we did marketing campaigns, whether it be print or digital, everyone saw them, everybody. We could hit every single person with a postcard on one campaign, and so everyone knew who we were. And so it's a really massive advantage. You do not need a ton of people to build a million dollar business. Or even if you want to just build half a million, you don't need a lot of people. You just gotta realize if you have an average of $2,000 per customer and you get 50 customers, that's 100 grand, right? So you don't need a lot of people, especially if you're doing hardscaping and landscaping. But even with mowing, it's recurring, so it builds on top of itself. I'd focus on small radius and just deep penetration. Don't go wide, go deep and really, really try to get brand awareness where everyone knows who you are in that small market. Next question.

What is the best way for someone who is not a landscaper to get started in the business? Wes Underwood from Pensacola, Florida. I would highly recommend A, joining a franchise like Augusta. B, go work for someone else. Or C, do it on the weekends, in the evenings, and just start figuring it out yourself. Watch YouTube videos, things like that. Listen to the podcast, be great. Next question. Hey, Mike, I'm Grayson from North Carolina. How exactly do you go about customers asking employees to do extra tasks such as trimming shrubs, weeding a bed, et cetera, while they're on a mowing route? To do, the employees need to know how to price those on the spot so they don't have to call me about how to charge the customer. All right, so this is a distinction. When you begin to grow your business, you are going to lose a little bit of that.

Impulsive income that is the customer walks out their door, is like, hey, can you do this for me? And you're like, yeah, it's 40 bucks. You might lose out on that if you start building your business and having systems. But trust me, that's not scalable, it's not recurring. It's one off. And usually that's where mistakes happen. And so I highly recommend you have a system in place where that when someone asks for something extra outside of obviously 30 seconds, usually the employees are gonna do that. But have a system in place where if it's something extra, they has to be submitted through an estimate process. And if you have P4P, your crew will not just wanna just give out freebies to people because it's coming off of their dime. Cause they are not getting any extra performance dollars if they're spending time doing free things. So usually for us, our crew is pretty good about doing little things for the customer to make them happy. They know that they're first. However, if it's gonna take them longer, number one, P4P isn't stepping in because we don't have a job set up for them to clock into. And then secondarily they're basically, you're gonna lose those jobs. You're gonna lose those. Hey, can you do this real quick? Yeah. $20, $30. Do not build your business on that. Have it where when your employees get a customer to do that, you say, no worries, we can take some pictures and we'll get that to the office and they'll get an estimate tooth in 24 hours or tomorrow or whatever. You do have that system in place. And your employees need to know what to say in those situations. And you got to train them exactly what to say and follow that specific system.

Hey, this is Jesse with Sutton Lawn and more. I was wondering how you guys structure your fall cleanups. Do you guys keep doing the weekly mowing but bag and blow out the beds and raise the prices during that time or do you just do one big cleanup at the end? I was also wondering since you guys bag during the year and as we approach fall, if the client doesn't want leaf cleanups but their yard is holding leaves and the grass is still growing, how do you handle that? This is my first year bagging grass and I have been doing just one time cleanups. But it seems like it would be better to do multiple cleanups. That way you would have consistent work. All right, so this is our philosophy on leaf cleanups. And every area I know is different depending on what type of leaves, how many leaves you kind of deal with. And so for us, when it comes to mowing, if a crew shows up and there's just a ton of leaves all over the lawn, they're going to let the office know. The office is gonna get a fall cleanup, a leaf cleanup estimate Sent to the customer. And.

In the short term, when they're on the job site, they're basically gonna get the leaves, like blow the leaves off the lawn and mow the grass. At the end of the day, we are employed and we are contracted to mow the grass, not to bag clippings or bag the leaves and clean out their beds. Like that's not part of it. So what we do, when the crew goes out, they say, hey. They make a note on their app that says, this customer needs a leaf cleanup. The office right away contacts the customer. So that way the customer doesn't be like, hey, they blew off the leaves off the lawn and they didn't take them away and they don't freak out. We try the office trying to beat them to it by saying, hey, look, they mowed the lawn. But all the leaves have to be done on a separate cleanup. We don't do as part of the lawn service. And occasionally you'll lose someone over that. But honestly, if they're going to think that you're going to do five hours worth of cleanup for a 30 minute mow, you don't want that customer. So we just basically try to have the system in place where if the mowing crew shows up, they let the office know they need a fall cleanup. They're going to then remove the leaves from off of the lawn, blow off the lawn basically, and then mow. And if someone has a problem with that, you might lose them. That being said, when it comes to the actual estimate part, what we push with the franchisees is give them a one time cleanup, but then also a monthly or bi weekly, depending on your area, depending on the type of client. If they're really high touch. If they're really, they want a perfect lawn, they might want a bi weekly leaf cleanup, literally. But give them options on a leaf cleanup estimate. Give them a monthly price and give them a one time price and try to get them on the monthly, maybe even bi weekly. If they're really, really high maintenance and they really want everything perfect, you might be able to get that recurring revenue for three months out of the year because they don't want any leaves on their property throughout the fall and into the winter.

All right, next question. How do you handle customers who try to screw you out on a job and not pay your company for the work they have done that you have done? Have a really good collections and automation system and make sure that you do have a collections company or credit company that can actually ding their credit and change their credit score. And send them some not so nice letters that are third party. Just realize you're gonna lose 30% of your revenue to that credit collection agency. If you had to start over, knowing what you do, would you, A, provide few services at the risk of growing slower, or B, provide multiple services and then cut out services later? Oh, that's a good question. It's a good question. All right. So what they're asking is, like, when you're getting started, do you offer just a few services but grow a little bit slower, or do you offer a bunch of services and then weed out services later on? I would highly recommend somewhere in between that. And I would tend to lean more towards A, which is provide few services and grow slower. I would tend, like, I'm 80% in that direction. But I also realize that sometimes you don't know what service is going to take really well in your market. So if you're just getting started, you might want to do a few things. You might want to do property clamps, mowing, a little bit of treatments, some small landscaping jobs, and just see what takes. See what you're really good at and see what takes really well in your market. And you start to get a lot of calls about and gravitate towards those and start focusing and making those your core competencies. And yeah, so I would say, like I would traditionally say now, knowing what I've done in terms of doing B is growing massive amount of services and then having to scale back and make it super profitable. And afterwards, if you really look at the Bellingham model, they did B, they provided a bunch of services and then started cutting out services lately and become very profitable. And you'll see that in the profit numbers. A is very much like Mount Vernon, which is they're growing very slow. We're not trying to make it grow really fast, ultra profitable. Like, we're talking 40, 50% profit.

And they only do mowing and property cleanups. That's like it. That's like it. Like nothing else. And so.

I really like that model. It's a lot less stress. If you really into growth, though, and you're really into getting out of the field, you might do a little bit of some other services, see which ones do well, and then cut a couple of them out later on. Just don't try to do 20 services. Don't try to do, like, a whole bunch of stuff. And that all of those services entail getting big equipment. Right? Like, I'm okay with doing property cleanups and mowing and treatments, because I can literally do get my mowing set up and then for cleanups, I need like a rake and I already have the blower and the things I need for the mowing. And then for treatments, I literally need a spreader. And buying granular. I don't need to go get a spray truck. I don't need to go big like that. If you're gonna try to test out different services when you first get started, focus on minimizing your expenses and your capital expenditures. So I would definitely lean more in the direction of less services and scale. But when you're first getting started, if you're trying to kind of get things going, you might dabble a little bit in some of the smaller aspects of landscaping or treatments and just see what works. But I would highly recommend simple, simple, simple. The sooner you can do that, less stress, you'll keep more of your hair, you won't go gray as fast. Like, trust me, it's much better. All right, next question. How do I stay busy to keep money coming in during the winter? I live in Georgia and after all the leaves fall, their there's not much to do and customers don't want to continue service. Okay, so this is interesting that something we're gonna talk a lot about at Landscape Summit, which you should sign up for, by the way, landscapebusinesscourse.com conference, you should sign up for that. We're gonna be talking quite a bit about this winter services, something that we're doing in our market where we don't have a lot of snow, but we try to keep our mowing customers on task throughout the whole winter. Something that we're really trying to do. Last year we got, I think like 20% of our customer base. We're shooting for like 50% this year. And down in Mount Ver, where they're just getting started, they're going to go for 50% right off the bat, trying to keep the revenue rolling in through the winter. We're going to be talking a lot more about that at the summit. But basically what it is, you're switching from mowing during the growing season into winter services where you're going to offer other services. But you have to be very clear about the fact that you're not going to do a five hour cleanup for the price of, you know, 40 bucks. And so basically we keep the same pricing and the same schedule as they did for mowing throughout the year. And then we just continue throughout the winter doing different services, what we call winter services. Instead of mowing, Mowing. And there's Just you can sell those and you can do that. It's not super hard and a lot of people love it. And so yeah, the thing is, you gotta be very clear about budgeted hours and very clear about the fact that you're not going to show up and do a leaf cleanup for the same price that you used to mow their lawn. Like that won't work. Hi Mike. Annual HOA landscape maintenance contracts are one of the biggest parts of our local landscape market. Just wondering how you apply P4P to an annual HOA Landscape Maintenance Contract with various details that include weekly mowing, weeding, periodic pruning, etc. Great podcast and thanks for everything. Mike from Vancouver, British Columbia. British Columbia, very close to me. Vancouver, awesome. So definitely you will need to check out landscapebusinesscourse.com, go into the course and go to the secondary course that was just added called P4P. Gives you all the training and I actually do a 12 month contract and show you how to break it down. I show you how to use budget hours for each of these things. Like you said, weeding and mowing and periodic pruning, you're going to give the customer monthly price. But every single one of those services and visits need to be broken down by budgeted hours and materials. And so all of that's on the course. You can check it out. I walk you right through an actual estimate. I actually do the estimate for the shopping center that the studio's in. I do it for the whole complex and actually show you the breakdown in the whole nine yards. It take too long to explain it here, but it's about 1520 minute video shows you that breakdown. So check that out on the course. Mike, what's a good way to go about figuring out a P4P system based on budget hours versus actual time completed? Okay, good question. So you need to have software to do this and what this individual is talking about here, I don't have a name, sorry, is asking about how to make a P4P system using budgeted versus actual hours. In other words, what I think the job's gonna take versus how long it actually takes. You need to have a system for tracking that. And yes, you could do paper and be like, okay, I got there at 3:18 and then I left at 4:16. Like you could do that and then manually enter into another document. Highly recommend you don't do that. Use a software that you can clock in and clock out and do time tracking and then run a report and see the variance between actual time versus the budgeted time. And that's how you then can predict, okay, I need to add more budget hours, therefore I need to raise the price. And it's a great way to know which jobs are performing well, which ones are needing to be increased on price. And very, you know, doing your numbers and your price increases from a statistical reports perspective, instead of like, oh, like I need more money, let's raise the prices on everyone. Like, being able to do that is really valuable. You need a good solid year of that data from your software showing punch ins, showing clock outs on every single job and seeing the variance. And trust me, it's not easy sometimes to get your employees to clock in and out of jobs. But when they're on P4P like you're talking about here, they want to make sure that you have accurate data so that you can raise prices. And so therefore they can make more money because they have more budgeted hours on jobs. So we struggled for a long time with just trying to get the crews to punch in and out of jobs. And it got dramatically better when they were told like, look, we want to raise prices on a third of our customers. And in order to do that, we need clean data on punch in and punch out times so we can know the actual time versus the budget time. And we know how much to raise their price and who to raise their price. And so they got a lot better at it. And so that's helped a lot. But make sure you have a software system that can do that for you, save you a lot, a lot of time on time tracking. All right, so that's. I'm gonna wrap it up here. I'm gonna do another episode on the rest of these questions or some more of these. Thank you so much. Again, if you would like to get your questions answered, just text the number 855-575-1267. Text the word landscaping to that number and you'll get inside the group where I can ask for questions in the future. Thanks so much. You've been watching Mike Andes on the landscape business course. Make sure you check out all the links below for all the new content and stuff that we've been posting and I think you'll really enjoy some of those links. Thanks so much. Have a great day.