Tips for SOLO Landscape Entrepreneurs - Ep.60

Hey everyone, it's Mike over@landscape businesscourse.com whether you're listening on the podcast, whether you are watching on Facebook or YouTube, I want a big thank you for joining us today on the show. Today we are going to be talking about two different tips that I have for solo entrepreneurs in the landscaping industry. So we are talking about the guy that doesn't have any employees. You have your truck, your trailer, you might mow lawns. A lot of times that's where you, you start when you're by yourself as a solo entrepreneur. Had this question come in from the YouTube comments. So if you are watching on YouTube or on Facebook, comment below if you have a question that you would like me to answer. This one got asked last month. What tips would you have for a landscaper that is solo, doesn't have employees and is by themselves? So here we go, let's jump into it. I have two different suggestions here. So pardon, if you're listening on the podcast, you can, you'll definitely wanna watch the video of this. I got a whiteboard behind me and the audio might not be as great when I turn my back, but I wanna jump into two different things that you can do as a solo entrepreneur to make sure that your company is ready for growth, number one, and number two, that you can still make money. So number one is scale. So this is something I want you to be thinking about if you're a solopreneur, if you're out there mowing lawns by yourself, first of all, I'm gonna throw away that marker. But number one is gonna be scale. And the question I want you to ask yourself is, does it scale? In other words, does it scale for you to charge the dollars that you are, what you're charging your customers, will that scale out? If you hired someone else to be doing that work, would you still make money? Because if it doesn't scale, you'll always be in the field. What people forget is that you as the business owner is you are worth the most money in your business as it begins to grow. And the problem that people have is they charge 20, 30 bucks an hour to mow lawns as a solo entrepreneur and mowing themselves. And it's fine because their previous job, they made 10 or 12 bucks an hour. They move out to doing their own mowing, they make 20 to 30 bucks an hour. They have some cost, but they still, at the end of the day, make 18 to 25 bucks an hour in their pocket, which is fantastic because they just have a little bit of overhead, a little bit of gas, and it's really basic stuff. And so they think, this is great. I'm making 25 bucks an hour. If I net. If I could just hire my friend and he can come and work for 15, I'll make 10 bucks an hour in profit. This is gonna be great. And so they go down that path. The problem is $30 an hour, in my opinion, doesn't scale.

You're not gonna be able to make money charging 30 bucks an hour. Now, there's other things that you can ask yourself. The question, does it scale? For instance, does it scale the type of services that you do? If your objective is to build a big business, it's gonna be very difficult to scale out very specialized work. It's gonna be very difficult to scale out. If you're trying to do masonry and, like, high, high amounts of quality and detail, it's gonna be very difficult to scale. Scale out that masonry work. Because it's hard to train people. And when you do train them, you gotta make sure you keep them, because they could easily get a job somewhere else, and they're in high demand. And you're gonna pay them 40 bucks an hour to keep them. And if they leave now, you're really in a pickle. Cause you gotta find someone else to hire them and train them and get them back. And in that meantime, your customers are like, whoa, what's going on? And so it's. It's very difficult to scale specialized work. So we've cut out things like irrigation, We've cut out things like retaining walls that are concrete blocks, all in the terms. And all because of this one question, does it scale? And a lot of solo entrepreneurs, a lot of you guys out there mowing lawns by yourself right now, you stop asking this question and you get caught up in the 20, 30 bucks an hour that you're making, not realizing that $30 an hour does not scale. I get this question every single week, and that is, how much should I be charging per hour for mowing? At the end of the day, you're charging for time. Even if you're charging by the cut. If you're charging as far as equating coming up with that estimate, how do you come up with that? It's by labor cost. And so what are you charging? If you're at 30 bucks an hour, you're just going to lose money. You got to be at $40 or higher. In my opinion, even for mowing, we got. You got to charge that for landscaping and other services. You Got to charge more than that. If you're at $30 or less, you are going to not be able to scale and you will eventually lose money. These are the people that were in like 2003, 2004 making really good mowing. And they were had four or five guys now, they had grown their business and they had forgot to ask themselves the one question, does this scale? And so what happened is they got four or five guys, they were making their a couple bucks an hour because their margins were so thin. And all of a sudden 2006, 2007, 2008 came around, economy tanks, all of a sudden the work dries up. And all of a sudden when they have to reduce their prices by a couple dollars to keep their work, all of a sudden they start losing money. And those were the guys that went out of business because they forgot to ask themselves. The question was right from the get go, right from when they were one man band, they forgot to ask themselves the question, does it scale? Because remember.

If you're charging 30 bucks an hour as a solo entrepreneur and someone else comes along and does the work, you can't just assume that they're gonna do the work in the same amount of time as you. You're the owner, you work hard and you work fast because your compensation is tied directly to the bottom line. So you can't expect an employee to come in and do the exact same level of productivity and output as you do. So if you do $30 an hour and that's what you're charging, let's say you come and hire someone to do and you pay them 15 bucks an hour, let's assume it's like 12 bucks an hour plus some work compensation and things like that. So $15 an hour you say, okay, that's great. I pay my expenses for my truck and overhead and things like that. That cost 25 bucks an hour, I'm charging 30, I can now make 5 bucks an hour. I don't have to do a single thing. I don't have to do the work, I don't have to sweat. I don't have to be out in the rain. Okay? The problem with that is there's just one very key problem. And.

You'Re getting paid based upon the cut price. And you extrapolated that based upon a $30 an hour mow when you were mowing. But now when you hire John and He's working at 15 bucks an hour cost to you, he now takes an hour and a half to do a lawn that used to take you an hour. And all of a sudden that $5 is eaten up because people forgot to ask the question, what happens when I don't mow the lawn? So this is how you gotta think about it. Take what you are getting. You are making as a solo entrepreneur. If you're making 40, 50 bucks an hour, whatever it is, take that number, take out wages, and then if you can take another 50% of wages out, then you have a profit. That's how I think about it. So, for instance, if I'm charging 50 bucks an hour and I'm pushing my own mower, I ask myself the question, okay, I'm gonna pay someone 15 bucks an hour. And so then what I do is, I say, okay, then I'm gonna have some overhead. So now I'm down. I'm down to, let's say, 25 bucks an hour. Now, as far as how much, I'm actually making my gross profit margin. Now, what I do now, what I do is I take half, 50% of that, of that salary that I'm paying him, that those wages, and I tack that on. So 750. So I take their pay. So I'm making 50 bucks an hour. That's fantastic. Okay, let's take their payout. So 15 bucks. Now we're at $35 per hour. Now we take out some overhead, another 10 bucks an hour an hour. Down to $25 an hour. Now I take an additional 50% of their wages. So 750. Now we're looking at 18 bucks. 1750. 1750 an hour. That is your profit. Now you have money to work with. What would have happened, what would have happened if we charged $30 an hour instead of $50 an hour? Guess what? You would no longer be making $17.50 an hour. You would be losing $2.50 every hour if your hourly rate had not brought into one consideration. One question, one very important question. And that is, does it scale? If you hired someone that was less efficient than you, that took 150% long, or, sorry, if they took 50% longer than you, would you still be able to make money? That is how you have to answer the scale question. And that's what you gotta think about when you're a solo entrepreneur. Number two, the second thing you gotta be thinking about when you're solo is systems. If you're in the course, you know, this is what I preach and this is what I drill into you, is constantly, constantly be thinking about systems and procedures. And how do you systematize every single aspect of your Business. I want to bring up a couple different aspects of things that you need to systematize. Estimating. You got to have a system for estimating. How do you collect leads, how do you set up estimates, how do you go out and do the estimates? How do you then generate the estimate from a cost perspective and then send the estimate, follow up with the customer, make the sale? Like that's all a process. You gotta have a system for that. You have a how many days does it take before I follow up? How many hours does it take for me to figure out job costing and send an estimate? Can I make a standardizing pricing list like we have in the course so that you can get the estimate out within a few minutes? You gotta figure this stuff out. Systems for estimating. You got systems for scheduling, like about route density. You got scheduling landscaping jobs with lawn care jobs and how this all figured. This is the problem when people are solo. When people are solo, they start thinking, oh, well, it doesn't really matter about scheduling and routing. Like, it's just me. It doesn't really matter if I have a system for estimating because I don't have an estimator and a project manager and crew lead. Like, it's just me. I can figure it out. The problem is if you don't have systems, you can't scale. If you don't have number two, you can't get number one. In order to scale your business, you must have systems. And if you don't want to be a solo entrepreneur the rest of your life, you have to create systems so that your business can scale. All right, what else do we have systems for? We have systems for routing, we have systems for training, so we have routing. What's your route density? Do you need to market to the neighbors of your existing clients to get that density tighter and getting that route tighter? What about training your new employees? Do you have a system for training them? A newbie that comes on, do you have a system for them to get them from point A knowing nothing to some sort of value for the company? We've been working on this in the past couple weeks of creating a checklist for our new hires. They have to do the course of the first two weeks, six months and one year, things that they have to take home and checklist and they will not get their pay raise if they don't make sure those things are checked off and signed off by their project manager. Those are systems that takes time for us to develop that system takes time for them to fill it out. We got to pay them. There's paperwork involved, but we have to keep an employee file and all. There's a system in place though, because if you don't have systems, you can't scale. If I don't know my people, if I can't rely on my system of hiring and training people, I cannot predictably be able to determine how much I can grow my business. Because I can't just say, okay. People will say, okay, I'm gonna scale my business. I'm gonna go from solo, I'm gonna scale it up, okay? And I'm like, that's fantastic. Last year we were making 100,000. Next year we're gonna make 200,000 and we're gonna hire a couple people. I said, that's fantastic. That's great. I love to see a company growing their business. The problem is, do you have a system to hire and train those two new employees? Because guess what? They are no use to you if all they do is get out there and do work. That's pathetic. And your clients are complaining and you have to go back and give the work for free or pay for extra callbacks. They're of no value to you. You gotta take someone that knows nothing about landscaping and longer no experience. Because if you're paying for experience, you're not gonna make any money. If you're paying someone 40, paying someone $40 an hour because they have 20 years of experience. You have no systems in your business. That's a company that doesn't have systems, pays a lot of money because they don't know how to figure out how to make someone that has no experience into someone that can generate profit for the company by creating really good quality work, has great customer service, is professional. You have to have a system to take them from here to here. All right? Another system is invoicing and billing. Invoicing is different than billing. Invoicing is creating the estimate and sending it. Billing is how do you collect the money? How do you have a system for collections after 30 days? What are you doing? You have to automate that whole process of follow up and email and make sure you get the money. If they aren't paying via credit card and you don't have their credit card on file, you can auto pay. Do you have a system for hiring? We've completely made a new system for hiring. We haven't made completely new. We're added onto it from last year. Last year we added the career fair. This year adding something really cool. It's gonna be basically a second day to the career fair where they gotta come out and we're gonna see how they work together as a team and we can be able to watch them, see which people are the leaders, see which people actually get their hands dirty and do the work. And so I'm gonna make a whole episode on that here pretty soon and I'm actually gonna probably film some of the actual day with the group of the career fair people, prospective employees. I'll film some of it and put that film footage for the course members on the course. But I will definitely make an observation and give back to a report you guys on the podcast and YouTube on Facebook. I will report back how it works. But we're changing our system because once you have a system, what's so cool about it, you can start playing with the pieces of the system to get it to work the most efficient route and most product productive and the most profitable way if you have a system that you can play with and kind of fiddle with and see if something else works. So we had a really good success with this career fair thing last year. We're using it again this year and now we're adding this other step to weed out more people and get better qualified leads. We're doing two of those career fairs, by the way, and two of those days, the day after, essentially the career fair, they gotta come show up and see what they will see what they really got in the field. We got systems for what's your day to day operations like your startup? What does your day start? What does it look like when you pull into the shop at 8 or 7 in the morning? How do you get out of the shop? Does it take you 50 minutes to get out of the shop for the time you pull in or is there a way that you can systematize it and make sure that you have all your tools in your truck before the day ends the day before and that all your clippings are already out of your truck and have systems and procedures. So. So when you scale the systems and procedures, the systems and procedures of your business is the foundation in which you scale. That is build the house of your business to make sure you are not solo in that house anymore. So make sure you keep growing your business, make sure you can scale it by having systems in place. So that is obviously the biggest thing we talk about on landscape business course is creating systems so that you can scale your business. And there's nothing wrong with being solo. Some people think that being solo is like the worst thing in the world. Some people think it's not bad. Like if you want to be out mowing and out being in the field all the time, it's not a bad proposition. Don't think you gotta scale your business. Cause I or anybody else said you need to grow your business and that you have to have employees, you have to scale it because you wanna be able to take vacation time and, and have other people working for you. Like that's a good theory. But for some people, being solo is really the best option. They can make 30, $40 an hour net profit. They can make a decent living if they don't wanna deal with people. If you know you're not cut out for managing people and managing money and managing marketing systems and managing websites and all the other things that it takes and creating systems, if you can't confidently say you aren't gonna be able to create those systems and scale up the business correctly, then being solo might be for you. If you like being in the field, if you don't like being, if you don't like being wet in the winter and cold and being out in the hot sun during the summer, if that's not for you, you're gonna have to create systems. You're gonna have to think about how the company's gonna scale. And the problem is so many solo entrepreneurs, they think, well, it's just me, I can do it all. Why do I need to make an operations manual when it's just me? Then they forget about that. They forget systems and procedures and how things work and documenting what they do for the people that come behind them so that they can scale up their business. So think about scalability, think about the systems and procedures that you are making. That's my tips for solo entrepreneurs. And I wanted to say a big thank you. Before we log off on today's show, I want to say a big thank you to everyone that's been joining the course. I'm going to grab here, just the most recent course, the past day or two. We got Clayton, we got Alberto, we got Isaac, Boyd, Allen, Ben. So many people joining. I really appreciate that. It's really helping with the cost of developing the new site, completely revamping it. So I appreciate everyone jumping on. It's been an absolute wild ride in the past four or five months. People joining and the amount of people involved online and just interaction with me, it's just a lot of fun. So if you have questions, I would love to hear from you guys in the comments below on YouTube and Facebook, ask me how can I help you start and grow your business, scale it up. And if you're a solo entrepreneur, I wonder if you can comment below. What is the number one thing that you struggle with as a solo entrepreneur or I want to hear from you if you want to stay solo and you don't want to have to go big. So let me know. Thanks again. This is mike andy, landscapebusinesscourse.com we'll see you next time.