The Truth About Brian's Lawn Maintenance

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about Brian Fullerton from Brian's lawn maintenance on YouTube. I'm going to be sharing what I my critique of some of the content that he's created and share. Just kind of an overall impression of his content and youtubers in general in this industry. Now, before we get started, let me give a little bit of backstory, and that is that I actually wanted to make a video like this several weeks ago and. And I decided not to. Instead, I made a post on our private Facebook group, landscape business course Facebook group and just shared some of my raw emotion. And I wanted to make sure that when I made this video, I was not acting out of emotion. I was acting out of my true opinions and my logical analysis of what I actually thought about Brian's videos. And I would actually create notes, have some sort of a flow instead of just spouting off my opinion. Okay, so that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Gonna be talking about Brian's lawn care maintenance. And I want to talk about and make it very, very clear at the beginning. And I know for some people, they're not gonna hear any of this next part. They're only gonna hear the part I talk about at the end. But that's fine. I need to make it very, very clear that I'm not bashing Brian. Brian is a standout, incredible individual. I absolutely respect his honesty, his transparency. That's the reason why he is so popular on YouTube. Very transparent, very honest, humble. He can laugh at himself. He can admit that he made mistakes. He's an awesome, awesome guy. I met him at GIE for the first time last year and we didn't have a lot of one on one time, just like a minute, and he was just greeting people. But this is one thing I'll say very, very clearly. He had a very powerful presence about him and a very, very great connection with people. Very good communicator, excellent communicator. And that's why he does so well on YouTube. In fact, you know, maybe this video is partly a celebration of him passing 100,000 subscribers, which is awesome. And Brian deserves all of the positive things that happened to him online recently. He just makes great content for this community. And let me make it very clear that the lawn care community and YouTube is big better because of Brian Fullerton and Brian's lawn maintenance. So let me make that very clear from the get go. And so that Is the most important thing, like just his confidence and the way that he, like I remember his handshake, everything about him was his, his personality on his videos. Just very honest and just shares his weak spots. Shares where areas that he'd be vulnerable in. That's why we love him. That's why we love Brian's Lawn Maintenance. And so I'm not bashing him. What I want to talk about though is how do we as lawn care business owners look at what we want in our business and then what advice do we get and how do those align? What I mean by that is if you're trying to be a solo operator or you're just getting started, Brian's Lawn Maintenance is the best channel for you to watch. One of the best.

Absolutely fantastic. In my opinion though, if your goals for your business is to be out of the day to day operations, where you hire an estimator, you hire an office person, where you hire a project manager, Brian's Lawn Maintenance is not the best place to get your education. It's a great place to get your entertainment. And the reason I'm making this video is because I think a lot of times we Forget that these YouTube videos are entertainment and we start treating them like education when they're out of place. If you want to grow your business to 10, 15, 20 employees and be out of the day to day operations and have an estimate and have an office person, you are not going to want to follow most of the advice that is given on Brian's channel. And that's not to say that what he is saying is negative or bad. It's for a different type of business model and a different type of entrepreneur that has different goals than what Brian has. And one of the things I love about Brian is he's unapologetically figured out what works for him. And that's why we love him. He's like, hey, I'm not gonna grow this massive company. I'm just proud for the people who do. And they figured it out. But it's not for everyone. He knows that he's figured it out. And that's why I think Brian would watch this and agree with what I'm saying. And that is that his content is great for new people getting started in the lawn care landscape industry. Great content, solo operators, great content. One of the things I love about Brian too is his branding is genius. Like the way he has the red truck, the red trailer, the red logo that transpires over into from his lawn care business into the virtual world. Great Great business model, great branding, great marketing. And so I'll listen to someone that literally, you look at their branding like that's good branding. I can hear about what they say have to do with branding, but I'm not going to listen to someone that if I'm trying to grow a 10, 15 person business, the education that's given around business concepts for a solo operator are completely different. You just have to remember that. Again, I want to make it very clear from the very beginning, Brian is an amazing person. I hope I get to spend more time with him and I hope he's watching this and it would agree with some of the things I'm going to say. And that is that he is a incredible YouTuber. I think everyone should subscribe. But what I want you to do is when you subscribe, because everyone should to subscribe, go to the videos page of his channel and filter out by the most watched or most views. And what you're going to see is that most of the views for the videos that he creates, the highest, the best videos are equipment and trucks. They either have in the title or the thumbnail. And right behind that, a close second is mowing lawn grass or some variation thereof. And so.

That'S kind of YouTube for you. But what you have to remember is that it's entertainment and that Those videos on YouTube are created by Brian and other creators to entertain and get views, not necessarily to give you the right education for you to grow and expand your business all the time. And so by showing equipment and emphasizing trucks and all of those things, I think has begun to warp the landscape business community into thinking that's what needs to be done in order to be successful. But you forget that a lot of these influencers on YouTube and et cetera, they're making just as much, if not more. I'm not saying this about Brian necessarily, but most of them are making a substantial amount of money from YouTube. If they've got a lot of followers and they have a lot of online presence and they have promotions and they have brand deals and all the rest of it, they're making more money from that than they are from actually running their business. And you have to remember that. And I'm not saying that about Brian specifically, I know other YouTubers in the lawn care industry that that is the case and they know it. They've been very clear with me that they make more money from their YouTube views and from their brand deals than they do from their lawn care and their landscaping business. So when we take information and knowledge and advice, business advice from those people. You've got to realize that you gotta ask yourself the question, are they at where I want to be? And if they are, then you should definitely listen to them. If you want to be a solo operator, not have to deal with employees and all the headache and just have nice trucks, nice equipment, and be really, really ultra efficient and have your own schedule and not be crazy busy, then you should definitely follow Brian, Keith, other YouTubers that are creating great content for that demographic of lawn care business owners. The thing is, for the majority, a lot of people, they don't want to be working on the field for the next 20 years. They want to have a business operations manager, they want to have an estimator, they want to be able to go on vacation and the business still run without them. And so that's what I've always focused on in terms of focus on systems people and marketing. I feel that that's what actually grows a business. That being said, those things are not as important if you're going to be solo. If you're just going to operate by yourself, you, you don't need to worry about asset utilization and getting spending. Instead of spending $50,000 on one truck, you can go out and get three setups and get three employees. That's not a big concern if you're solo. So if you're not scaling, the information that Brian's lawn maintenance provides is fantastic for solo operators. For small operators, you'll just keep your business small. One, two employees. And really where you are trying to maximize the efficiency efficiency of you, which means you're trying to make sure that the equipment, the trucks, the trailers, everything you have is making sure that you're the most efficient. What that means is three different things that are gonna come into play. Comfort, reliability, and backup. Because if you're mowing all day, if you're doing the landscaping, you're out in the field, you want to make sure you're comfortable and you're gonna make sure you invest in new equipment, new stuff, new clothes, whatever it is consistently to stay comfortable. Cause you know you're gonna be doing this for a while and there's no one else to do it. You wanna stay if you're out in the heat, if you're. You want to make sure you have a really nice AC truck, you want to make sure that you have the brand new squishy seat on your zero turn. To make sure you can do this for a long period of time, you're going to focus a lot on reliability. So you're going to go out and spend 30 or $40,000 on a truck because you don't want it to break down. And so Brian got a 2017 F250 and he got it in 2018, I believe. So it was about a year that it was already on the market. And so it was a year and it was probably 30 to 40,000, I'm just guessing, for that truck. And you want that if you're solo, because you do not want to go and have a breakdown. Because if one truck breaks down when you're solo, your revenue goes to zero. Whereas if you have 20 vehicles, you're okay with having one down because you got 19 other ones and it's not a big deal. You have a lot of redundancy in the economies of scale when you have that many trucks. Whereas when you're solo, you, you better have a very, very reliable truck and equipment, because if that thing goes down, you're down to zero in revenue. There is no other employees to make you revenue. The other thing is backups. When you are solo, you carry more stuff. Sometimes, like you get a second mower, for example, because you do not again want to have a mower, get a flat tire and you're down for the rest of the day. You want to be able to grab the other zero turn and go out and start mowing. And so you'll have more backups. And this is the thing that kills me though, is if you're trying to scale a business, having 40 turns in a big 20 foot trailer is not the right way to scale, in my opinion, very humble opinion. There's people who have proven me wrong, and that's all the best of them. But based upon what I've seen, the amount of people who overleverage and have way too much equipment and struggle when times get a little bit lean or when they can't find. Employees are the ones that get massive trailers, massive trucks, diesel engines. They get debt on all of it. And then they have literally a couple employees pulling this massive trailer with like four $10,000 mowers, and all of a sudden you got $100,000 moving along the road. Like, it just boggles my mind because if you're trying to scale and you're trying to actually make your business where it can grow, you do not want to have to train all your employees on multiple different types of mowers and how to drive with a big trailer and how to drive a big truck and have trailer brakes and all the rest of it. It Adds more and more complexity that eliminates the ability for you to be able to go out, get new low level talent, and quickly get them to becoming profitable. Now, if you're so low, you don't have to worry about that. You know, all the equipment, you know, like the back of your hand, you do all of the maintenance. It's very, very simple to have multiple pieces of equipment. But bigger trucks, bigger trailers, you can make sure that the thin, tiny sheet metal of the enclosed trailers don't get dented up and the brakes are always good and the tires are not bald on those trailers and that the ramp wires that come down on the doors of the enclosed trailers actually stay attached. Those are all things that when you start having employees, it's just very, very difficult to scale that. And so again, I think it's great what Brian is doing, but what you gotta remember is that if your goals don't align with where the person you're listening to is coming from, then you need to make sure you take that through a filter and realize, hey, this is entertainment. This is good. I listen to it, right? Like, I'm not bashing the content. I think it's great, great entertainment, great for me. There's always something you can learn. Regardless if someone's smaller than you, higher than you, more money, whatever. There's always something you can learn from anyone. Regardless of whether or not you think you're better than them or anything like that, you can always learn something. And so I'm mining for that thing, but I'm also realizing that, hey, this is entertainment. This is not going to get me to where I need to go for my business. Me getting $100,000 mowing setup is not gonna allow me to scale, it's not gonna allow me to grow, it's not gonna get me out of the field faster if I'm trying to do that and if that's what is aligning with my goals. Now, what kind of sparked all of this was a video that was a few weeks ago that kind of made me again, a little emotional. And Brian interviewed a young man that I think is phenomenal named Christian. Christian Skolig from CNI Services. Young guy. I'm pretty sure he's like 19 or 20 years old. I want to say maybe he's 18, actually. My apologies. First of all, let me make it very clear again, Christian is an awesome, awesome dude. We need more people like Christian working hard, all the rest of it. But this is the reason I have to make this video is for another 17, 18 year old, that's wanting to get started in this industry. To think that success and to make it in this industry, you need a brand new. What was it, a 2018 F450 4x4 diesel. That you need that in order to be successful. Let me be the one tiny little voice with hardly any subscribers saying, that's not right. You shouldn't start with that. That should not be your first or second truck. I would much rather, if you're trying to. Again, if you're wanting to scale the business, I would say that instead of spending 50, $60,000 on an aluminum bed custom truck like he did, I'd rather you go spend $15,000, buy two trucks, so 30,000, and then spend another 20 or $30,000 on marketing and hiring and, like, building a team and creating a brand and creating a website. Those are the things that really make a business and would allow someone like Christian to grow the business and then one day not have to be there and the business still generate money. Now, now, again, I have to make this very, very clear because people are going to misinterpret what I'm saying. And that is if you're wanting to scale the business. Now, if Christian, he made it very clear one of his goals, he really wanted that truck, he should get it. Like, that should be what he should do. But why I'm making this video is because there's other people that are watching that and be like, oh, in order for me to grow my business, I need a $50,000 truck. No, it's not true. Get a 15 or $20,000 truck. Go get yourself a dump trailer for five or ten grand. And you basically got the same setup, except now you can take the little pickup, throw a mower on it, and you got a mowing set up. And you don't have to take a big dump trailer, dump truck with 450 and diesel all over the place. And so.

Everyone'S like, hey, it was paid with cash. Great. I'm a fan of that. I think it's great. Again, for Christian, that was the right move. But for most people that are watching that, young people thinking that that is the measurement of success or that that is the example that they need to aspire to get the new truck. And, like, it wasn't the business that was focused on in the video. It was the truck. It was the mowers. It was the equipment. And I have to make it very clear, that's not what makes a business. That's not what makes a landscaping business successful. That's not what makes a lawn care business sustainable and be able to get through recessions and get through the hard times. And so I would much rather if someone had $50,000 in cash to go buy a truck, maybe two trucks, do a smaller mowing setup. You don't need the big enclosed trailer with three stand on zero turns. It's much more efficient. Instead of piling five or six guys into that dump truck, get two and split them up onto two different jobs. Your efficiency will dramatically increase if you have two projects for three people to be on each instead of six people on one job. I can guarant it. And so again, I do not want to bash Brian's lawn maintenance. I don't want to bash Christian. By the way, Christian is an awesome dude. We need more people like him. Like I said, young guys getting started in the field. I just want to bring a balance to the fact that showing the truck, showing that trailer, showing those mowers is what brought the views. You know, tens of thousands of views were because of the truck and the trailer. Now if they would have sat down at a desk and went over just numbers like how much revenue did you, what is your profitability? What's your customer acquisition cost? What's the lifetime value of your customer? What's your churn rate? If those things were done, I promise you that video would have done about 10% of the amount of views that it got. Because it's not flashy, it's not cool, it's not new, it's not entertaining. And so you gotta remember, you gotta take that through a filter. You gotta realize that like, there's good information. But if I'm trying to grow and I'm trying to scale and I'm taking that information from someone, that's not where that is where I'm trying to get to. It needs to be brought through a filter of is this the right business move now? Is it the right ego move? Is it the right thing maybe to do for goals like, hey, if you want to get a brand new truck and that's all you've ever wanted, you should go buy the new truck. Like, if Christian, for example, or Brian or whoever wants a nice truck or that is what they want out of their business, then you should go do it. But you can't then also say, oh, I want to have a profitable, efficient business that runs without me, where I can work on the business, have systems like, you can't say that you want that, but then also go and buy these $60,000 trucks and just be over leveraged and all the rest of it. Again, piling six people into a truck is not smart. Split them up, take the truck, divide the asset utilization to two different crews. And again, I know a lot of people are not going to be happy with me even talking about these things. I didn't want to make it out of spite. Absolutely not. All the people I mentioned in this video I have a high level of respect for. I think the world's a better place because of them. But I wanted to bring a balance because there are people that watch those videos think that that's what they need to become successful when they got to realize that their level of people's standards of success are different. If your standard of success is 10, 20 employees, not working in the business, but on the business, really focusing on systems, having a pay for performance model, focusing on marketing, building your website, you should not be taking the business advice from most YouTubers. Most YouTubers, they are in the entertainment business, they spend most of their time creating content. And I know it takes a long time and they deserve all the credit in the world and the money they make because it takes a long time. That's why I had to go hire someone to do it. I don't have the time to make all that content. I don't have the time to go do all the work that they do at night making the podcast. I don't have the time. I've been trying to do it, but as we've grown and scaled, I can't do it. So I gotta give that off to a whole nother person. So kudos to people like Brian who have a podcast and a course and videos and create great quality content. It's a lot of work and they deserve everything that they have earned. And so I don't want to take anything away from that, but only to say, only to put a word of caution for new starting out companies, for people that are just getting started the business, what do you want out of the business? What's the end goal? Is it just being solo operator? Then yes, you should get better equipment, you should focus on more expensive things, Focus on what Brian's doing, Brian's doing it right. High profit margin, weeding out customers, but like you've got. If your goal is to get to 500 customers and 20 employees, you're not going to follow that model. And so I just wanted everyone to realize that trucks and equipment, flashy things, great thumbnails, those do not make a big lawn care business. Great. Okay? Having a great Facebook page does not make your lawn care business great. What makes your business great is people systems, the way you market your services. I know this is a really hot topic. Some people will not like me even talking about it. I hope I said it in a way that was positive because I promise you, I would love to have coffee with Brian when I come through Michigan and in that area. I would love to see him. Great, great guy. I think everyone here should subscribe, but anyways, I'm Mike Andes. You're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast. Comment below. If this is what you like, I can do some reaction videos, show the positives, kind of be the filter for you for a couple videos of like, hey, this is really good information for you to save time. Like there's some great content in Brian's of saving time on little tools and things like that. Great. But there's other things, like, hey, look, this is not the purchase you need. You need to go spend this money on marketing or you need to spend this money on hiring someone else, or you need to not focus on the maintenance. You need to delegate. These are things we can talk about. So anyways, comment below. Let me know your thoughts and maybe I'll take this video down because it's not really in my person to do stuff like this. But anyways, thanks so much. Have a great day.