this took my business from $30K to $200K in ONE YEAR!

Today I'm going to be walking through exactly what I did to take my lawn care business from making less than $30,000 in annual revenue to the very next year making almost $200,000 in annual revenue.

At the end of the day, most landscapers and lawn care professionals actually do this part time to get started. And it's a matter of when that, that gig, that side gig on the side hustle is actually making more money than their real full time job. That's when they make the jump. And I was no different at the time. I was a personal trainer at Anytime Fitness. I would go on to later on buy that gym. By the time I was just a personal trainer, I was working part time there and then working, going, doing a few lawns before I'd get started with work in the morning. So I had $30,000 in annual revenue, about 35 customers that I was mowing on a weekly or bi weekly basis. And I was really just doing mowing that first part time season. Now that second year, I'm going to go through the five things that I changed and really allowed me unlock a massive growth from 30,000 to over $200,000 in revenue. The first thing is I went full time. And this can't be understated. When you go from a part time doing your lawn care business to full time, it immediately unlocks a lot of opportunities because now you have the time to follow up on jobs, you have the ability to contact your customers a lot faster and you have to wait to get off of work. It also allows you to be able to go on the offensive and go on the aggressive and go get more jobs instead of just being like, man, I have already too many jobs on Friday. So no, I don't want to go any clients in that neighborhood because I just can't service that area on Fridays I'm full. Right? So when you are able to have full time, it almost pushes you from this mechanism of like, I need more work to like, if you're filled and you're part time and you don't have any more space, you literally might cap out at 20, 30 lawns and not be able to get any done anymore. Done because your weekends, your evenings, everything's filled up. As soon as you go to full time, it's almost like it changes your paradigm. Oh my goodness, like I need work. And you start actually trying to get more jobs. Whether it be upselling existing customers, whether it be talking to their friends and family, whether it be doing some door knocking or door hangers, you Start getting scrappy. You start, okay, if I'm going to be aggressive, I'm going to have a website. I've got to do some marketing, I've got to make sure my branding is on point. So it really pushes you just by being full time because it unlocks a lot of time that you can now get more customers. The second thing that I did to become legitimate was start a business license that has a business name other than my own. So if you're out there, you know, don't do Mike's Lawn Care. Because then every single time a customer has a problem, as you continue to grow, the business is they're going to look for Mike. And there's obviously something to be said about having a homegrown small town business that people want to support. That's fantastic. But it doesn't need to be named after you. And you can separate the business from you because down the road, if the business continues to grow, you're not going to want every single customer wanting to have direct contact with you or asking for you every single time something goes wrong. You're going to want an office manager or you're going to want your employees to be able to take care of things and them not constantly be asking for the owner. So when I went to full time, I switched from Andy's Lawn Care, which was my last name, into Augusta Lawn Care, allowing me to really grow the business independently of my name. So as I begin to scale, someone else could answer the phone, someone else could sell jobs, someone else could do the work, and I didn't have to be there all the time because the customer didn't associate my name with the business. So get a legitimate business license, go to your department of licensing and then your state name or, or your province and you'll be able to figure out very quickly how to start a business. The third thing that you should do and that I did to become a legitimate business and actually go full time is stop accepting cash. People putting a little bit of cash in an envelope underneath their front mat or sending you Venmo or through the Cash app. Obviously a lot of people will do this because they think they're going to get a better deal. But most the time, the premium customers, the customers you really want, they're willing to pay an extra 5, 10, 15% if you can just invoice them on a monthly basis or charge their credit card or at least send that invoice so that they can send a check back to you in the mail. Most premium customers don't have the time every single week to put cash in an envelope and stick it underneath their mat. Furthermore, when you have employees think down the road a little bit, you're not going to want your employees picking up checks and cash underneath the front mat of all your customers. You're going to want that kept separately so they don't have a big pile of cash in their truck that could easily be lost, stolen or just disregarded and potentially lost throughout the day. So use a CRM, use a software to send your invoices to send your estimates and keep track of notes from that customer and what they want on their property so you can stay organized and stop doing all the cash under the table saw. I understand there's cost of doing taxes when you do things legitimately through a credit card statement or through a bank statement can be tracked by the irs. I understand that. But if you're going to really grow and scale, you're going to have to do things legitimately anyways. And at the end of the day, if you're willing to invest money down the road in real estate or take out business lines of credit, you're going to need proof of income. And you can't do that if it's all been cash. Venmo and these apps are just trying. Get around the IRS and eventually it'll catch up with you. The same thing goes for the fourth step that I would recommend if you want to make your business legitimate and take it to the next level is get insurance, pay your taxes again, it's going to catch up with you. These are all short term strategies to save money in the short term. Maybe when you're doing a side hustle or side gig, doing it on the weekend, that's fine. You know, you take your standard deduction, anything under $12,000, you're probably not spending any taxes in terms of income taxes of the federal government anyways. However, just pay your taxes. You just get insurance from day one. It will eventually catch up with you. I've never talked to anyone that did this for the long term and built a really successful business without insurance and without paying taxes. If you look at any multimillion dollar business in your area, they might be doing some shady things with employees and people will point fingers at what they do with their trucks not being upkeep or something like that. But the vast majority of successful businesses that lead to a company that operates without the owner and running on systems, all of them, all of them pay their taxes, have insurance on their trucks, have general liability insurance. So just go Ahead and get started insurance, literally when you're first getting started and cause like 50, 60, $70 a month to get general liability insurance for basic services like mowing, trimming bushes, installing molts, those are really basic services. They're going to cost a very, very small amount for general liability. And if you're going to get a truck, you got to get insurance anyways. You might as well get commercial insurance. So that way if you get in an accident and you're doing it for work, that you're still be covered. The fifth and final thing that you can do and that I did to go from $30,000 to 200,000 do dollars by becoming legitimate by going full time is ask customers to do more work for them before you go out and do marketing. The first inclination when you go full time or when you want to become legit, you want to start the business and really scale it up is what I've got to do. Advertising. And that's a great point. You can absolutely spend marketing. Absolutely. That's fantastic. But before you do that, before you spend $1 on marketing, I want you to talk to all of your existing customers that you might have done part time or on the side or on the weekends before and ask them for other services that you can do for them that are still simple. Or for example, if you were mowing their lawn, ask them if you can install their mulch, ask if they can have a property cleanup, ask if you can do core aeration. These are all simple services, but you can literally take the annual value of a mowing customer that might be $1,1200 and easily make that 2000 or $2,500 simply by selling them a couple property cleanups or some mulch installations. And those are absolutely going to add up. You can literally take the same exact number of customers you have now being part time and double that revenue without adding a single customer through advertising, simply by trying to upsell your existing. And I'd recommend before you send one penny on marketing and advertising, go at door hangers and you know, lawn caremedia.com is a great place. Lawn care web design great place. You can check those out, those are great resources. But before you spend one single dollar, make sure you talk to your customers, make sure they understand what services you offer. And then that way you can take the extra profit from upselling those customers and then maybe invest it in marketing. It would be a great idea to go to lawncaremedia.com, get some door hangers, get some flyers if you really want to take the business to the next level and go above a quarter million in annual revenue. Probably a really good idea to have a good website so you can check out lawn careweb design.com if you want more tips on how to get past the $250,000 marker. And it's very simple, very basic. Watch this video right here. It's going to walk you exactly through the steps you need. They're very basic. It's something that people a lot of times miss. But watch this video. 250 grand, you can easily surpass that in your.

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