The Problem with Landscape YouTubers... (something I have never shared)
Mike Andes explains why landscape YouTubers optimize for views over real business advice. He shares his own metrics and why equipment videos get clicks while systems-building content doesn't, then walks through how he balances both to reach people actually trying to scale.
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Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes here. Landscape business course I'm recording on my GoPro today. Wanted to make kind of a raw video here at the studio. And today, if you watch the end of the video, I'm going to be showing you what is inside this door. Something I've never shown before on camera. But before we do that, I want to talk about something that I feel is pretty important for the lawn care and the landscaping community. And that is I want to talk to you really just kind of heart to heart and seriously about YouTubers and the lawn care landscaping industry. I have created some content in the past reacting to different landscapers on YouTube and talking about their videos and what I agree or disagree about in their videos and just trying to create context and help more and more of you in the lawn care landscape community. And I want to show kind of behind the scenes of the day in terms of why landscapers will do certain things on YouTube. I'm going to show you how much money I make from YouTube. I'm going to show you what videos do really well on YouTube using my own data, my own videos. And just so you can have a better understanding when you're listening to a YouTuber that is doing lawn care landscaping videos and they are making a business out of selling information or just making ads on getting ad revenue from YouTube. I'm not against any of these people. I'm not gonna mention anyone's name today. I'm not against these people at all. I watch all their videos. Like, if you go to my subscriptions, I have my, my thing here. If you go to my subscriptions on my YouTube, like, I got, let's see here. It's who I have got. I got Tigran, I have BNB Lawn Care. Got Keith Kalfus. I got Florida Turf Pros. Got Blades of Grass, Johnny SG Ninja. I got Stanley Genedik. I got Spencer Lawn Care. Got Brian's Lawn Maintenance. Got Copper Creek Lawn Care. A whole bunch of them, Whole bunch of them. And I watch all of them. I love them. I wish nothing but the best for them. Oh, my thing goes off. I have to change that after two minutes. My screen goes blank on the front here. I love watching all of them. So this video is not to bash them in any way. It is to create context for those of you out there watching that are listening to them for business advice. Okay? And I made this point time and time again and I'm doing it again because I talked to someone yesterday and again they took advice from a YouTuber that was not in context with their business was their goals were they were trying to build a million dollar business. Taking advice from someone who is running a one person, two person operation and running the business that they say you should, you're not going to. Your goals of creating a million dollar business is not going to happen. Okay? If you're trying to build a million dollar business, a business that runs without you on a daily operational level, you're not going to follow a lot of their advice. And that's not to bash them. That is to say that if you're not doing that and you are trying to build a business that is solo, is one or two people and is more just one person, you mowing out in the field for the rest of the business's duration. Great place for YouTube. And this is the big reason why I went ahead and invested in Josh. Following me around all the time in this past year is because I wanted to be a landscaper that could, could share, have time. The reason that they, they can't run a big business because it takes so much time to create videos and YouTube content and they don't have time to create a really well run system oriented business with employees and all the rest. They don't usually have time. Okay. So I decided this year is to invest in having Josh do full time video. So that way I, as someone who does have a larger business can try to create as much content as possible for the landscapers that have listened to all the other guys got started, but they really want to take their business to the next level and they want to actually build a business that runs without them, has 10, 15 employees, they have management in place, they do P4P. They have profit sharing, they have open book management, they have systems in place to run the business without them being there. That's who I make my content for. Okay? Now the reason I'm making this video is to just be a warning to everyone out there that is in the landscaping community that's looking to start their business and is taking advice from myself or anyone on YouTube. This goes for me too. Oh, by the way, this is the light here. If you ever do a zoom video with me, you'll see this behind me. I have different screens that I can put behind me just to make it somewhat enjoyable when you're on zoom with me. But.
This is just a warning. This is just, I'm not bashing anybody. But you gotta keep in context that when you're watching someone on YouTube and they're giving business advice, they have different goals than you. They have a different lifestyle than you. They have different ambitions, they have different circumstances. I personally, I don't have family, I don't have family dependents or children. I should say. Like, I don't have to worry about making sure I am home during the evening to spend time with them. So trying to work as many hours as me is not the right thing for you. And same thing goes for. If someone has one or two employees, they're gonna run their business very, very differently. They're gonna focus on having really good equipment, really ultra efficient equipment that is top of the line. So they minimize downtime. When you're trying to scale a 15, 20 people, like we've talked about in our videos before, you're gonna run it completely differently. You're gonna get different equipment, you're going to look at systems differently, you're gonna look at your role in the business in terms of should you be doing estimates, should. What is your role in the business is gonna completely change. And I talked to someone the other day that for five years has been locked in this place of growth. And when it traced back to it was ideology that they had taken from listening and learning from people that were on YouTube. And they had to realize, look, that won't work if you're trying to grow and scale the business. Okay? So I'm going to show you on the back end of YouTube, on my channel, what I make, how the videos work. So that way you can understand why YouTubers will make certain videos, why they do certain things. Okay. And keep in mind, ad revenue is only one part of creating an online business. Right. So for example, I have, you know, YouTube where I'm going to show you today. Then we have course revenue and all these things I share on my monthly revenue reports. Then we have course revenue, you know, lawn care, web design, other products and things that I sell. Right. But I'm going to show you focusing on YouTube because I'm going to show you different types of videos make the creator more money or less money, depending on what's inside of them. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn the camera around here.
And I'm gonna show you. This is exactly here. Let me try to brighten up. Here we go. This is the YouTube backend studio. So this video I just posted this morning, or I should say Josh posted it, bless his heart. And this is kind of how it works in the back end of YouTube. So we have several different metrics here. First of all, ranking by views out of the past 10 videos this was the number one ranked video. You can see one out of 10. You can see at the top. Now what's really, really interesting here is to see. Okay, so in the first 12 hours and 20 minutes, this video made 3500, has 3500 views. Hopefully you can actually. It focuses and you can see what I'm showing here. Seems like it's a little blurry. Anyways, here's 3500 views. The next one is a video we made about ramp racks in that same 12 hour window it had 3,000 views. Okay. Then I made a video reacting to Brian's Lawn Maintenance 1.2 et cetera. Then add cars 1.1. So 1100 views in the first 12 hours, et cetera. This is what's so interesting about YouTube is equipment makes money on YouTube, it gets views. Okay. And so what I am determined to do with my channel, regardless of how much views and subscribers we can get, is focusing at least half of my content on really in depth video content around business. Alright, because if you look at this chart here. Sorry, I gotta flip this around. If you look at this chart here, this video right.
This one right Here, the number 10, the worst ranked video out of my last 10 videos only got 368 views in the first 12 hours. That one right there, I actually feel like that has the most value out of all of these when it comes to growing and scaling your business. Because literally this one in that coaching call, it's like an hour long, super in depth zoom call that I had with an owner. And literally in the call, it's an hour long. Not easy watching, not something you sit down and just watch over while you're driving. It's in depth stuff. But in that call, people could learn so much about business and scaling their business and changing their business model and making it more efficient and running it without them having to be there every day. But it doesn't get views. And so what happens with the lawn care and landscaping community is obviously they're running a business, I'm running a business. We want to get more views because we make more money, we get more subscribers. More subscribers and more views leads to bigger business opportunities, getting partners on board, getting advertisers, people that are going to give discount codes to our community, things like that. So I'm not bashing them, I'm just trying to make a point. And that is that the videos that you're watching that are on equipment that are around. So let me flip this around again. So if you look here, number one, Write offs about equipment we purchased. This is like year end tax write offs, what we spent equipment on or what equipment we bought. Number two, buying ramp racks, literally again equipment. Third one is a reaction video, Brian's Lawn Maintenance. Number four, three cars, again, equipment, trucks, etc. Literally number five is about how to pay zero dollars on your taxes. It got 742 views, which is literally not even 25% of what this video made up here about equipment write offs and what equipment we purchased. Like that is the insanity of YouTube. Because.
The most valuable content isn't the videos that people will watch. It's not the ones that will get recommended, it's not the ones that get shared the most. And so when it comes to YouTubers that are making lawn care and landscaping content, I love that. I'm so happy that people are more and more getting involved in it because you're allowed to see different business models in different climates, different stages of business. But you got to realize is that the person you're taking your information from and your business advice from, you want that person to be at or above the place you want to be at. So if your goal is to have 10, 15 trucks, you should not be taking business advice from someone that's never had more than an employee or two or their business has had to scale back to being at one or two people when they did try to grow and scale it up. Now, should you not watch their videos? No, you should watch their videos, you should subscribe to them all, you should support them all, but watch them for entertainment value only. Don't listen to business advice from someone that's not at or above where you want to be at in business. I don't take my business advice from someone that only has one or two or three stores now. Now with Augusta that we're franchising, I have to like really sometimes I have to pay money just to get information from the people I want money I want information from because they're harder to get to. They're at a certain level that I to get to. And I'm not going to take advice from someone that is either. Even where I'm at currently. I want to, if I'm going to listen to people who are at where I'm at currently or below, it's for entertainment, it's for getting good ideas. Occasionally there's great tips that they can give you in terms of equipment, things like that. But when it comes to business advice, I would just add a lot of caution, alright? And I don't want to Call anybody out. I don't want to be mean about this, but I literally hear at least two or three times a month from people that have been stalling out in their business or failing because they're implementing systems from someone that's running a solo operation and giving business advice. And the person that's taking that business advice in is trying to scale their business to seven figures or beyond or make systems to where they don't have to be there on a daily operational level, they don't have to be at the office, they don't have to go out and do estimates, they don't have to be out on the projects. And that is a completely different business. Listening to someone who's solo and getting business advice and how they're running their business is not what you should be following. Just because someone is popular does not mean they are right. Just because someone has a hundred thousand subscribers or a million subscribers does not mean that they are going to have sound business advice. It means that they're a personality. They have a great personality. They're very entertaining. They know how to create videos, they know how to market. That's not what creates a great lawn care landscaping business. Creating great videos and being able to make shiny equipment videos. Okay, so let me go ahead and dive a little bit deeper into this and I'm gonna show you something like I promised at the beginning of the video that I haven't shown before. So again, equipment videos dominate on YouTube. That is where I get my subscribers and I create this content only to get subscribers because I want to be able to push this content at the bottom, which is much more important. Coaching calls, how to go from part time to full time landscaper, not paying taxes and how to do tax write offs. How you can get your employees to think this is probably the most important video for anyone trying to scale their business. And literally it has gotten less than 1/6 of this video about write offs and equipment that we got. Like it's incredible. So let's go ahead and dive into this top video is really recent. So I'm not gonna take the number one video, I'm taking the second one because it's been around for a few days. I'm gonna have some information to be able to share with you. Alright, so this video has gotten 7,886 views since it was published. Views you can see there 7.9 thousand watch time, 560 hours. This video has garnished 32 new subscribers to the channel and they ranked that basically by, you know, you can see here people that have subscribed after viewing this video and then my revenue there, $42. Trust me, it's not, I'm not paying the bills with YouTube revenue. But anyways, you can see here, this is the video, you can see the reach here and it kind of shows like the whole impressions and how many people actually clicked on it. It's pretty cool. This is all the stuff that you can see on the back end. Unique visitors, these are the unique people. And so yeah, impressions to click through, ratio, all sorts of really cool stuff. When I go to revenue here you can see I am making 11.78 cpm which is lower than most of my other videos. Again, this is for the, the ramp rack video and you can see where I make the video and skippable ads, display ads, et cetera. So yeah, there you go. You can see it's kind of pretty consistent. It's going to be slowly growing over time. Traditionally most of you come in the first 24 to 48 hours and that's why your thumbnail, your title and if you're talking about equipment, people stay around a lot longer. All right, so we go back to overview here. What I was going to show you was now let's go back to a different video. Let's go back to the one that I really feel is probably the best on this whole thing is this coaching call here at the bottom. It's probably a throw up between that and then how you can get your employees to think like owners. But let's go ahead and do the coaching call one because I really like this one. Alright, so now on this video you can see here again not attracting new audience. So that's why no one's gonna create this type of content. I got one subscriber versus like what was it, 40 some odd. From the one video I made a couple days ago, I only made $9 in ad revenue. Pretty stagnant in terms of views. There's only 713. You know, you go to revenue here, the breakdown, CPM's a lot higher because it's very niche and it's very, very detailed business. So this is the amount of money that is made from ads and this is the amount of money I actually make from it. Right. So this is what YouTube charges cost per thousand to the advertiser. Then they take their 45% cut and then I'm left with $13.86 per thousand views. And so usually the more niche and depending on the type of video you're making, that number Will change. But again you can see this video took me an hour to create very, very in detail high level business concepts made me $9 versus this one that is only a couple days old versus the other one which is like a week and a half old. It's already made me $42. Literally it's made me four times as much money. Why would I create really in detailed high level business content if all I was trying to do is maximize views, maximize subscribers and maximize revenue? All right, so just keep the only reason I'm showing this to keep this in mind and that is the videos that are being made for the YouTube community on lawn care and landscaping. I love them all. But keep this in mind. They are optimizing it many times for ad revenue, they're optimizing it for subscribers, likes, et cetera. And I'm not against that. Half of my content is going to to be geared towards that to bring in the subscribers and then I'm going to try to inundate with them with the actual content that I want them to watch, which is the long form content, which is the coaching calls, the podcast. How to actually improve your business, how to do marketing. Those are the things that are actually going to change your business. Getting better equipment, not going to move the needle. Promise. I will never attribute my success to the trucks I've bought, the equipment I've purchased. None of that. I will attribute it to the marketing I've done and the incredible team that's around me. Those are the two things that will move your business forward. Alright, so that is kind of. I don't want to call people out. I don't even think there's anything to call out or anything that's negative about these youtubers. I watch them for entertainment, I watch them to get some ideas. But I do not take business advice from them if my goals and my business do not align with what their goals in their business are. All right, so I just want to kind of put that out there. I get frustrated because I do like I said, two to three times a month I get someone emailing me, contact me in a coaching call, something like that, and they have listened and they specifically will name someone that they have either purchased equipment because of, they have created some sort of a system around their estimating process that's completely flawed if you want to scale the business or they are micromanaging every element of the company when their goal is to let things go and build a business that has a team and an estimator and an office person. But yet they have these mindsets that's been molded by influencers. Right? And so just I wanted to make this video in raw form, not behind a microphone, and just share why the community goes this way in terms of YouTube and why they're trying to. And I'm not putting any blame on them. They should be trying to make their. Optimize their business, make their thumbnails better, make it about equipment. There's a reason why equipment manufacturers will give them equipment and they will make a video. They know that by making that video, they're gonna get high view counts because the equipment videos do a lot better. They know that. And the brand ambassador, the company, they want their product shown, so they're gonna give it to them for free. It's not like they're gonna buy that equipment necessarily. So just keep this in mind. This is not anything negative. This is all about just trying to give some perspective to the community. And if you're looking for business advice, look to someone who is where you're at and where you want to be at. If you want to grow a solo operation, if you want to have one or two employees, my channel is probably not the place you want to be at, because I'm talking about systems and creating things that are going to take time and effort to invest to create those systems. Whereas if you're doing solo, one or two employees listen to other people that are running those businesses successfully and have really great margins doing what they're doing. I also make the video here. And for those of you who have not already just, like, clicked the dislike button and called me a hater that are still watching.
The other reason I make this video is because I have talked to these other community, these other people in the community, other landscapers that are making YouTube content. And I know that for some of them, not the majority of them, but for some of them, they're struggling in their actual lawn care business, and their business is the entertainment, the YouTube content creation and selling business advice. And in my mind, I'm just. It makes me very unhappy that someone would sell content and give advice and make someone else pay for that advice when they have not been able to take that advice and build a successful lawn care business themselves.
Like, and then there's no wonder. There's nothing that it's not a surprise when the people who use those business strategies don't do well. And the person who's creating the YouTube content, they will still make money with YouTube ads, with course content, and they'll still be able to keep running Their business and using their business as content creation and an opportunity to make more content. But reality, the lawn care, the landscaping business side of things, not being run very efficiently, not being run very profitably. Definitely not sustainable for the person who does not have a supplementary income flow coming from YouTube. All right, so all of that being said, I watch all of the YouTubers, right? So I don't wanna bash people. I don't like saying negative things. I know some people think that I try to do that, but half of my content is exactly the way that they do content. And that is making equipment videos, making thumbnails and titles that are gonna be catchy, making my reaction videos to other YouTubers. That's what gets views and gets people onto the channel and subscribing. And then my goal is that over time, they start to watch some of content that I actually believe is going to move the needle for their business. I do not believe equipment's gonna move the needle. Do not believe that trucks will. If you notice, when I make my equipment in my truck videos, I have no idea what I'm talking about. People ask about like, well, how many liters is the engine and what type of transmission? Like, I have no idea. All I care about is the numbers. All I care about is the people, the team, and the marketing. Those are the things that move the business forward. If it's a 4.3, a 4.6 truck, or it's a V8 versus a V6, that's not gonna completely change. Business is not going to be the thing that I look back and like, oh my goodness, this certain type of engine is what made my business successful. No, it's the team, it's the marketing, it's the advertising that you do, the systems that you have in place to make that business run efficiently. If you're trying to make a business that is scalable and is growing and is larger, Right? So first off though, before I show you the last thing I wanted, I kind of told you I was gonna show you today, I have to say a big shout out to everyone that has been subscribing to the channel. You can see here, we're now up to 8,666 7 subscribers. It's more than doubled over the past couple months. 687 more subscribers have been added in the past 28 days. So really, really appreciate all of you. And again, my goal is to create the content that gets views, gets subscribers, and gets a lot of engagement for 50% of my content. The other 50% will continue probably to have 20 to 25% of the views. Much less engagement, less clicks, less subscribers. But it's the stuff that actually will move your business forward. Okay, so I told you at the beginning of the video because I wanted you to watch the whole thing. I told you I would show you something I hadn't showed you before. Because if you've seen my other videos, you've seen the studio before. This is also where we do franchisee training for Augusta Lawn Care. So we have 30, I think 33, actually. Just today up in Vancouver, BC, we have a new franchisee, Ally and Sarah. Welcome to them to Augusta Nation. But this is where we do franchisee training. We take those chairs and the tables and everything and set them all up in here and have franchisee training with the whiteboard and all that. Over here is where I do recording for the course, MBA course, landscape business course, and other training videos here. You've probably seen some of the podcasts there. And then here is where I actually shoot most of the. The podcast material here. See the lights and all that good stuff. Yeah, that's where I usually sit and do the recordings. You've probably seen most of that before. This back here is where I create lecture material. So I have books and my other computer here. Or I can create lectures for the MBA course, landscape.
