Mike Andes (founder of Augusta Lawn Care and landscapebusinesscourse.com) presents practical tips he wishes he'd known before starting his lawn care and landscaping business. He covers marketing (print and digital), simplifying and standardizing services, cash-flow planning for seasonality, focusing on sales to reach initial customers, leadership and hiring to scale past ~$500k revenue, systematizing processes (CRM, sales, collections, estimates), and cultural practices like open-book management and pay-for-performance. Closing includes CTA to Lawn Care Media for marketing materials.
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Hey everyone, I'm Mike Andes landscapingbusinesscourse.com and today I'm going to share with you what I would do differently if I was just getting started my lawn care and landscaping business with Augusta Lawn Care. We now have 40 locations around North America. Trust me, there's a lot of things I learned that I wish I would have known before I got started. Let's jump into them. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's been other lawn care landscape contractors that have gone and done this stuff before and made a bunch of mistakes. You can learn from their podcasts, books and their videos to make sure you don't make the same mistakes. So make sure you invest in a good audible, program a bunch of audiobook and constantly be learning about business, especially when you first get started. But in general, you don't need big flashy equipment or trucks to be successful. What makes a successful business is a profitable business that has good customer service and is the sustainable systems in place. You've got to stay educated about marketing and advertising. Whether that be print media like door hangers and postcards and flyers and every door direct mail or or whether it be digital media like YouTube, Facebook, Google Ads. You've got to stay educated about the constantly changing world of advertising. It's going to be the thing that allows you to grow very fast. Don't suffer from paralysis by analysis. If you're going to get started, don't worry about necessarily what type of insurance you're going to have or if you're going to have an LLC or sole proprietorship. Everyone thinks so much about those things, they don't actually get started. The most important thing is that you go get customers. That's when your business gets started. Simplification of services is underrated. When I first got started, we ended up adding like dump trucks and artificial turf and tree chipping and all the rest of it. I would simplify my services from day one. That doesn't necessarily mean you just can only do mowing and weeding services. But if you're going to do big projects, try to standardize the type of products and materials you're going to use to keep those services simple so you can scale the business and get employees, because employees are a lot harder to train on those more complicated services. Remember, you're a seasonal business. There's a good chance either the winter or summer, certain parts of the year you're going to have a little bit slower of work coming in. So you've got to make sure you have a good cash flow. Make sure you save up money when times are good, so when things slow down a bit, you still have money in the bank. The thing that gets your business started off the ground, your first 50, 100 customers, is going to be your ability to sell. What gets you past that, what I've always said is past 500,000 annual revenue, is going to be your ability to lead. Your ability to find, retain and train really good employees and be a good leader is going to be the thing that allows you to unlock a seven figure business. Building a business requires a lot of patience. If you think in your first year you're going to make six figures in profit, probably not possible, especially if you're growing really fast and investing back into the equipment, the advertising and growing the business. So really think about more in a picture of a third or fifth year being the one that you really start to see the profits. Years one and two. If you're growing quickly, you're probably not going to take a lot out of the business. The more you can keep in the business, the faster you can grow it. Realize that there's got to be a system for everything. There's got to be a system for sales, there's got to be a system for collections. There's got to be a system for your estimate process. If everything is in your head, you have a big, big problem in terms of scaling the business. You need to have a CRM to be able to a software system to actually manage these systems and make sure you're staying on task. As you begin to build a team, make sure you include them in the financials. This is called Open Book Management where you share the numbers of your business as long as you don't have anything to hide. I really believe sharing the numbers is so important to create a great team culture. This goes along with pay for performance, P for P where they get a percentage of the revenue instead of an hourly wage. Those are some of the tips I would have for someone just getting started. But if you have a lawn care and landscape biz share below in the comments, what would be the one tip you would share with someone just getting started? Maybe it's about advertising or about finding employees. What's the one thing that really helps you grow your lawn care and landscape business? I'm Mike Andes landscapebusinesscourse.com We'll see you on the next video.
Hey everyone, Mike Andes here. Thank you so much for watching the video. If you haven't already, click the links below to check out Lawn care media where you can get door hangers just like this for a variety of services for lawn care, landscaping, fertilization, irrigation, fall cleanups, and the list goes on and on and on. You can get all there and customize these and make money mowing lawns, doing landscaping services. We'll see you there.
