THIS Revenue Number SCARES Me ➜ Warning to Landscape Business Owners!

All right. Good morning, everybody. We are. Well, it's almost afternoon. Been a bunch of meetings this morning. Today, we're just gonna kind of do a whole bunch of cuts from a bunch of meetings. That's most of what I do. Probably 70, 80% of what I do is just meetings. So this morning, had a meeting with the Bellingham location, all the crew over there. Then I had a meeting with my accountant. Then we had a media team meeting. So all the guys here, we talk every Monday morning. We go over everything on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all different platforms, where we're at and where we're making money, things like that. And then now I'm going on a sales call, and these sales calls happen a few times a day. I hate when people don't show up to them because I spend quite a bit of time getting ready for these calls in the form of looking at their territory, making sure that it's gonna be viable for an Augusta lawn care location, seeing where they live, kind of gain demographics, all that good stuff. So I have several of those today. Got a couple calls with franchisees. We have one of our franchisees is actually selling his location to one of his employees. And so lots of fun stuff today. More fun. It's just meetings, but that's most of what I do. So we try to make it as interesting as possible. But this first one is a sales call with a potential franchisee. See how it goes.

Everyone always asks me why I wear my boots into the office. Here's why. Is because usually that means that the day where I had team meetings in the morning at the local shop, and you'll probably see it, like on our travel vlogs and stuff like that. One thing I always try to do is make sure that if I'm going to be on a job site or even around the guys who are working in the front lines, that I wear my boots and I wear my working pants. I think it's a. Something I learned a couple years ago when I was out traveling to another landscaping company, and I saw a big disconnect between the owners and the frontline employees. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that the owners would not get out of the truck. They would not. They would. They would wear different uniforms, different pants, different shoes, and they would not get dirty when they got on a job site. So when I, like, especially I'm going on a job site, but even when I'm going to the local shop and around gravel and stuff, I like to be able to look like they do, dress like they do, and not have that delineation between, like, owners and management versus frontline employees. I don't like that kind of dynamic, so that's why I do it. People have always asked me, why are you wearing boots? Inside, indoors? You don't need them. You're right, 100%. But usually it means I've been on the job site, so that's why. And that's, that's the model that we really like the most. That is one general manager, eight to 10 employees underneath them, $1 million in revenue, 20% margin. That's. That's the model. Right. Like, even if someone started growing beyond that, I would start thinking about second location. Because as soon as you start getting bigger than that, you need middle level management, you need a project manager. Oh, and I need a mowing manager. And in my opinion, that's just wasted. They are, they are overhead, they're an expense. They're not being. You want as many people out in the field as possible compared to the person. The amount of people, like running around in a truck all day doing quality control, like, that's what kills businesses as they get bigger. And so that's really. Our metric is exactly what you said, and that's how we come with the numbers, is like one general manager and they don't need an office. They don't need a fancy place to work out of. They can be out in their truck all day long. Command center can be handling everything else. You got eight to 10 employees out in the field working, and, you know, you're doing like exactly what you said, you know, a million in revenue for that year. And we want 20% margin once we hit that. No, it's good. Usually through all your questions, I kind of get a good understanding of everything I need to know. But kind of in general, I'd say, like, you know, what is sort of your end goal? Like, I know obviously, you know, eventually you said kind of replacing your current income and going full time into it. But what's kind of like 5, 10, like even beyond Augusta? What's kind of that yesterday? Take care. Bye. Okay, so this is Brian. He just started like several weeks ago. It takes quite a long time for them to learn how to get on the phone. So this is first phone call. So we always celebrate their first phone call because it means, like, they've learned a lot about estimates, contact forms, and a lot of different scenarios. So he's on his first call right now. It looks like they're doing a work change order on a big landscaping job. So when he gets off, we'll kind of make a big deal about it.

So this is an estimate from Ontario, one of our franchisees. It was over a month ago, and he wants it put on the schedule for tomorrow. So we basically have to resell the job on the phone to the customer because they almost forgot what it's all about. So it's a tough one, actually.

So the first thing. So just to just touch, go through it chronologically. The first thing we saw was they were supposed to remove the leaves and they were supposed to.

Cut back the bush. And it sounds like they got the leaves, but they didn't get the bush.

As we go forward, we're thinking about. And that is really trying to as. As we get more people here getting more like teams instead of having to, like, answer phones and do stuff for, you know, 40 locations, you'd have, you know, 10 or 15 that you're kind of governed. And you have a team of full service people and frontline estimate, basic service, you know, call people taking the phones. And we have like, teams of people, like five to eight people that would be teams for specific locations. Because that way right now, like, even with phone calls, there's. Even though it's not full service, there's a level of, like, knowing what services they're offering and all we now know what happens to March 1st, and we can really hire up for it this time and train them, everyone, throughout the winter. So I think even for those of you here now that have the next, you know, seven, eight months left of this year, you will probably, probably become the ones that train two or three other people before next spring. And so, you know, obviously we're training new people now, but, like, this core group is probably the ones who will be the trainers next winter for three times as many people. Right. Because now we know what's coming and we're not going to do what we did this year where it's like, no, we tried this year. We thought we were out hiring enough, but it wasn't enough. So we did a slight overcorrection. Overcorrection because the. The year before we didn't have enough work to do. Yeah, that was definitely our. Our over correction. We'll blame it on Lonnie. You can blame it on me. So thank you for kind of taking that off of her. Well, we're getting there. Trying to get. That's the goal. So awesome. Thank you, everyone. Have a fantastic rest of your day. All right, so we need to talk because last night I did a YouTube survey poll and it is about what your gross revenue is per field employee. We'll pop it up over here so you can see what the results are.

Over half of those of you that responded responded less than $5,000 per month per employee. Now maybe some of you were thinking like part time employees and stuff like that too, but that number is really, really low. Let me run the numbers for you. Let's say someone works full time and by the time you include the cost, like payroll tax and all the rest of it, it's like $20 per hour. You know, even if you charge them, it's 16. But like by having payroll tax and all the rest of it, $20 an hour, let's assume that's what their cost is for labor. If you take that and you multiply it over the course of a full time job, that's $800. So 40 hours a week, that's $800 a week. Times it by four, that's $3200 a month. If I'm only generating $5000 in revenue and, and I'm paying $3200 in wages, that 64% of my total revenue is going to just field labor. You'll never be able to scale your business if that's the number you're at. Never. We want that under 40%. 40% is like still high. We want that lower than 40%. And again, I'm only talking about field labors. Not like this does not include everyone in your office, all the rest of it. But I asked, what is your gross revenue per field employee? If you have full time employees, try to track this number once a year, see where you're at. You might need to raise your prices or massive inefficiencies of people just like sitting at job sites and not doing anything. So it's a little bit worrisome. You know, we shoot for 10,000 or more, so keep this in mind. I know some of these might be part timers, might be that you're smaller, but a little bit disturbing on that one.

Jonathan from Florida Turf Pros, we'll go ahead and get this thing started. Jonathan, welcome to the show. So you kind of alluded to there.

A little bit earlier and that is.

Just the amount of pressure right now with being booked out, having a schedule that's booked, having employees that you know are inconsistent, all of that pressure. A lot of people are booked out. A lot of people are struggling with employees. What has been your recipe? Or maybe even Jamie wants to chime in here but what, what has been your sort of methodology behind making sure you don't burn out during this time and you're actually more consistent throughout the rest of the year instead of just, you know, laying it out on the field and then, you know, petering out because you're so exhausted in June, July.

For, for me, I have to, I have to slow down on the weekends. I have to. If I don't slow down on the weekends. And again, we could keep doing estimates on the weekends. I could work through the weekend to caught up on work. But we just kind of have this thing. We're like, look, on Saturday and Sundays we're not, we're not answering the phone, we're not doing anything on, on email. Like we're not doing anything after 6 o'.

Clock.

You know, we're just we' and I can't for my mental health can do it.

Before we wrap it up. Jonathan, what would you share with someone that was just getting started in the industry this year?

I feel like this is big thing.

I've been thinking about and you know, obviously with our friends we always are start. I always feel like I'm just starting, right, because as they open up, I feel like I'm trying to get them in the groove. What would you share with someone just starting now in 2021, with the labor market the way it is, with the housing economy the way it is, what would you share with person? As an overall, just from a landscaping.

Universe world, I would say that this year you need to focus on keeping things simple. And in this particular market, it's going to be a grind with the employees and the staffing and you're going to have to stick it out. I think this is going to be a tough year. You're going to have to put your head down. Like that's it. You got to put your head down and just do the hard stuff. I'm not talking about working until you're killing yourself, but you just have to go in this with the expectation. Especially like if you're starting out, like, man, there is a you. You've got to pay some dues in the beginning and there's no other way around it. There is no. We're gonna start, start the ground running. And if it's gonna be peaches and cream, like it's not, man, it's hard work in the beginning. But don't let that keep you because after that first or second year, like it gets easier. Like every year it gets easier. It really does.

Just a big thank you.

You inspired me when I was 17, 18, trying to look on the Internet.

Trying to find people talking about business.

And not just mowers. And so I want to say a big thank you to you as well.

Yeah, I. I was. I was not expecting you to say that. I did not know that at all. And that's. That's really, really cool. Really, really humbling to hear you say that because I looked at your videos, thought, man, this guy just has it all together, you know, like, that's. He's got to figure it out, you know? And one more thing. A video you had posted the other day about some of the struggles that you had had during your landscaping this year in particular. It's been very, very tough, I gotta tell you. That for me, was a very.

Just to hear, like, okay, even Mike Andy's, you know, who has multiple businesses running on all cylinders. It was just refreshing to hear somebody say, and sometimes it sucks. Like, sometimes it's really, really hard, you know, and it just. It just came at a really, really good time. And I appreciate you. You sharing that type of content.

Hey, it's Mike here. Quick note.

I just want to say a big thank you for watching this video supporting the channel. Whether you're watching another video you subscribe or like to not, I just want to say thank you.

That's it.