UNDERCOVER BOSS confronts Lowest Revenue Location!

Hey, everyone, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 150 locations around the world. But today I'm going to be taking a coaching call that I had with one of our franchisees in Michigan. So right now, like this year, what do you think is kind of holding you back? This is from earlier this year. I went out and flew to his location and the entire turnaround is posted on my main channel. But today I'm gonna take the uncut version and talk about what he can do to grow his business.

I'm in such a mental emotional slump right now.

He seems to be distracted with other ventures in his business. He's trying to invent a new product. People have built million dollar businesses without the invention. Many home service business owners, we get distracted with real estate or flipping houses or selling cars or other ventures. And it actually keeps us away from the core business, which is making the vast majority of our money. There's usually only one thing that we should be focused on. So let's go ahead and jump into this conversation with Ken and see if I can't convince him that that focusing on his main lawn care business is gonna prove a lot more worthwhile than trying to invent this new product that has no evidence of success or evidence of demand in the market.

Yeah, I don't know. It's pretty simple. This is P1. I had this thing for like seven or eight years.

Okay.

And then this was actually my personal truck that I got new bed and doors on and whatnot.

Okay.

And it will be P2 once it's painted.

Okay.

And that's the prototype Railgate that I was telling you about.

Okay. Very cool. And then do you do some snow plowing then?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I got two snow plows back here.

Okay. How long you been in Fenton?

Since joining.

Really? This is just a few years.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Yep. So technically.

When. When I joined.

Was it then or the next year? I can't remember.

You were moving in that?

Yeah, I was in the process. Yeah. So I hadn't signed on yet because I remember having the last zoom call that we had right in the backyard here.

I remember.

Yeah, we just moved. Yeah. The train came by, I was like, hang on.

But, yeah, moving, no advertising, no nothing. The SEO was up in two months, something like that. So the very next year I was ranking two or three. Right. And that was just with my friends and old customers saying, this company's good.

So basically, year one, based on the numbers I saw, you did about 60,000 revenue.

Yeah.

Year two, which was last year, did about 95, 96,000 revenue. So this year, what do you think projecting to kind of do?

I don't know. Winter was so bad. I'm in such a mental emotional slump right now. I was really planning on doubling my revenue last year so that I didn't have to do any snow plowing this year. I had to use my personal truck with the yellow plow, and that didn't work. And then P1 had starter issues. The truck is a die hard. Yeah. Like I said, I've had it eight years and I've never had a major problem with it. Only in the winter, only when it's cold, only when you're moving heavy things, and only when it's wet. And so the problem is that right when you need it to plow, that's when it breaks down. Luckily enough, when it broke down, it was in there a lot.

Got it. So how much longer till you start spring rush? Like start mowing and things like that? Like in a couple weeks.

Couple weeks.

Okay. Cool. All right. So then we got two very nice mowers.

This was Nick's.

Really?

Yep. This is the one I bought from Nick.

Oh, the one he got for free? He won. Gie. That's crazy.

Yep. I've actually got a soft meeting with this company to help brand. Help with their branding and selling.

That's pretty cool.

I'm gonna try to convince them to paint everything that's red yellow.

That's cool.

We'll see.

And this is the John Deere.

Yeah, I'm just gonna. I'm selling that one.

Got it.

Yep.

Cool. But your plan is to kind of run with that.

Yep.

On P1 when I.

When I sell that, I can get a smaller mower. So I had to turn down too many people. There's some people in that direction.

Right.

That are the cookie cutter.

Right.

Neighborhoods. And half of those neighborhoods have. Or half of the. The residents of those neighborhoods have gated, fenced in yards.

Got it. So gotta get smaller mowers.

Oh, yes. Well, I mean, hey, I got the. A push mower, an electric push mower.

Got it.

Just for just in case type of thing.

Yeah.

And when I would run the numbers, I'd be like, okay, it's $50. And they're like, everyone else is charging 35, 40. And I'm like, yeah, technically I would.

Right, Right.

On something like this or, you know, that.

Got it. Cool. And then this big bad boy.

So I bought that.

The last year, year before, something like That I had. I had quite a few customers that were paying.

Gee, that thing is beast.

Yeah. That was paying, like, $240 per cut.

Wow.

So I would. I would sell them on the whole. The whole season.

Yeah.

Like, hey, you know, $5,400 or whatever. And I'd be like, sure. And they'd stroke a check and just give it to me.

Right.

And that would. That would at least start me off for the season. So, like, on Wednesdays, is. Is everything south, which is really rural.

Right.

So you're not finding anyone with less than an acre.

Right, right.

And so it was taking me two hours on the green one. And I'm just like, you know, my mentality is if I get the tool to do the job, it will fix the problem. It ain't fixing it. And remember, I told you that in the beginning. I told you, hey, when I get big enough, I would like to do a sub show on Augusta Naysha called Equipment Corner with Ken.

Yeah.

And I tell you what to buy and what not to buy. And then eventually, I got to the point where I would eventually be telling people exactly what you're telling them. It doesn't matter.

Yeah. Well, ultimately, like, yes, there are. There are going to be lawns that need this.

Yeah.

But the bottom line is there's thousands that don't.

Yep.

And so it's a matter of, can we take what we actually have and still build the business around that? Like, I happen to believe there's more than $100,000 worth of revenue that this mower is not required.

Nope.

And so, like, is this operational right now?

Yeah, it works.

Okay. How many hours on this? 1200.

Yeah, but it's got a new engine, so. Got 200 hours on the engine.

Got it. So are you thinking of keeping this with the red one?

Nope. So the red ones, I'm. I'm keeping. She's got three hours on it.

Yeah. It's brand new.

Yeah. And it's better than the green one.

Right.

It just has some better features. It's built like a tank. It's. I'll probably have that for quite a few years before I. I upgrade. Or I should say buy another one, Right? No, I'm going to sell both these, and I'm. My plan. And I could not need. It was by a Bradley 36. So that. Because I had a 36 and a 52 in the back of P1 for, like, a year. Two years.

Yeah.

And the. The. Any job that I could fit the 52 on, I just got the 52 off. And did the whole thing.

Right.

And I was done in five minutes. Ten. Some of them were like a ten minute job. And I was done. I was gone.

Right.

And if I had to get the, the smaller one off, I, I take that off one time, the 52 broke. Different 52. Yeah, it broke. And I had to do all my lawns for a week and a half. With the 36. I was still meeting budgeted hours. Yeah. I, I did the math. Okay. So Mike says this. All right. So I, I, I did the math and it came out to be if I'm here for 30 minutes or less, I'm making budgeted hours. I was there for like 28 minutes on a 36 inch mower.

Yeah.

So I'm like, so if I got the faster mower going on the, on the smaller property, it was fine. Like, I can fit the 52 in here.

Right, Right.

There's nothing restricting me from getting a big mower in here. I can mow it with that. Not gonna be able to turn it around.

Yeah.

No, but the idea would be I, I had too many people out in that area with the smaller neighborhoods.

Yeah.

And the fences.

Yeah.

The math came out too high because I had to figure in the, the, the push mower. Right.

For the backyard. So they, I got my, my close ratio was zero.

Got it. So the plan is sell this thing. Sell the John deere, get a 36.

Inch to have them both on the, on the truck.

Got it. Okay.

Because they both fit.

Got it.

Got it.

And this is the, the electric push mower.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Yeah. Milwaukee.

Dude. This is pretty cool though.

Yeah. That's my fuel station. Normally they're like 400. I found that for 50 bucks.

That's pretty cool.

So I'll be hooking that on to.

Onto the headache rack of the truck.

Got it.

And then I'll be able to fuel up everything from there.

From there. That's cool.

Yep. Especially when fuel's low.

Yeah. So right now, like this year, what do you think is kind of holding you back? Because I know, like you told the team, it's more like mental stuff that's blocking. Like, why is that? Like, what is keeping you? Because you got two more weeks. You got spring rush coming up. Like, what's the plan for the next couple weeks?

Oh, just door hangers. SEO is working fine. I'm have plenty of people requesting estimates. Most of them are spring cleanups. I've got one guy from church that I can hire that is all about the, the extra Work so he'll be good for summertime. It's like May 1st. Those is when he can start.

Right.

I can do simple cleanups with the blowers and the mower. Usually I do the mulch method. Just mulch it all up and customers like that. I got that loader there, but I'd have to convert one of the trucks into a debris thing, which I did last year, and it worked great. But then the whole conversion, you know what I mean, it doesn't, it's not like a five minute deal. So if I had, if I, if I switched focus for this week and then the weather changed and then I had to switch focus to something else and then switch it, you know what I mean? It's causing logistical issues, but in terms.

Of getting new customers, like right now you probably have what, 30, 40 mowing customers?

40, 40 to 50.

Okay. And so what are we doing right now over the next couple weeks to get more?

I'll just be doing door hangers and then I'll be doing one click estimates for people that didn't sign up. So all my customers that I currently have will get the email too.

Right.

And somebody already texted me today and said, do I need to have you give me another estimate? I told her, no, you're good. But yeah, everyone else, hopefully they'll. Yeah, I'll take another estimate.

And so how many door hangers are we doing currently? Like per.

Like, do you have a. I'll be starting this week.

Got it.

Okay. So I mean, I got a ton in the truck.

Yeah. All right. That for the mowing. Really? Just pitching the mowing.

Yeah, yeah, I'm just pitching the mowing because that's what I'm geared towards.

Yeah.

When I first started business and, and actually got an LLC and all that, it was. I did everything. I did like 10 different things. Power washing, brick pavers. What?

Got it.

So.

Here is the new one.

Cool.

I got the QR code on there and then. Oh, no, that's the old one. And then the new one.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Built in business card. So I can still use this.

So this, where does this go to your site? Got it. And then do you have the instant.

Quote that's like you guys built me.

Do you have the instant quote set up?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm probably going to lower the numbers.

Okay.

As well. And then if they don't want this or they're like, yeah, I'll just take the card, can actually cut this off. I got the, you know, the little flag markers, little Plastic ones for chemicals and that sort of thing.

Yeah.

I'm going to order some of those.

Got it.

Stick that right in the yard. And if it goes bad by the next week, you know, the rain or whatever, take this off, keep the flag, wait a week.

Right.

And then when I mow it again, put another one.

Yeah.

These two.

A little bit bigger one. So that was actually the door. The door mailer.

Yeah.

That didn't, that didn't do as well as I thought it was going to do.

Right.

Last year I still got customers from it.

Right.

You know, so I'd had to send out 10,000 of them, and I didn't. I think I spent $5,000.

Okay.

Total. And that was including print.

Got it.

And I got. And I can't remember how many customers I got from it, but it was enough to, to, to see me through.

Right.

I was, I was fine. Not quite capacity, but it was comfortable.

Right.

Like I was mowing Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.

Right.

And anytime it rained or I had a project, it was Tuesdays and Thursdays. So that was fine. But that's still not capacity.

Right. So how many, how many mowing customers do you think you could take on right now in terms of capacity?

60 to 80. Okay. If they're close enough to be 60 to 80. If they're out in those rural areas where it should be a $90 or $120 cut, some of them are like, okay. I mean, most of those people have their own. They'd rather spend $3,000 on a brand new residential zero turn and do it themselves than to pay me. Because I. When I tell them, hey, yeah, your bill's gonna be $3,300, I had like two customers go, great, here's a check. And the other ones were like, I'll get back to you.

Right.

And I tell them, hey, you know, I'm saving you 5% because of the credit card processing fees.

Yeah.

So if you just want to pay monthly, cancel anytime. But it's, you know, $160 per week versus, you know, whatever.

Right.

So my sales technique is fine.

Higher than normal, I would say close ratio when I'm actually speaking to them on the phone.

Right.

I'm trying to get away from that. I can have good customer relations with most people. They give me a call. The only thing that's stopping them is either the price or, I don't want to say economy, But a lot of people think it's the economy. You're fine. You're still eating out.

Yeah.

You know, you're not eating PB&J every day.

Yeah.

So yeah, you're okay.

Yeah.

But they don't see it that way. They think, oh, well, everyone else is the economy. So I thought the same thing for a while.

Yeah.

I'm just like, well, I just don't know how many customers. Not this year. But, you know, years past. I don't know how. I don't covet. Oh, no. I actually did the most money I've ever did during 2020.

Right.

And that was right before I signed up.

Got it. So did you move then to Fenton?

Yeah. Yep. I was 30 miles away.

Got it.

That in that direction.

Got it. And so how many customers did you have there before you moved?

60.

Okay, got it. Got it. And how long were you doing it over there?

And I've been doing this since like 2014 or something like that. But it's, it's always, I'm throwing everything at the wall, seeing what's going to stick.

Right.

And my problem has, has always been, oh, I'll, I'll get this piece of equipment.

Right.

Oh, this, this thing's really cheap. Then like I told you, the fuel station.

Right, right.

It's not going to speed anything up. It's just going to keep me from going to the gas station multiple times a week.

Yeah.

How much time is that going to save you? Enough to, you know, not be annoying. That'd be great.

Yeah.

I actually had a 14 gallon fuel station on my truck for years. I loved it. I only had to fuel up once a week. But my route density with 60 customers was much closer and I was doing 90 something thousand in revenue. And of course my profit margin because I'm solo was like 75%.

So what do you think is the cause of that being the default go to like, I need more equipment or like, cause like right, right now I just feel like you keep hitting like 90, 100,000 in annual revenue. And my concern is not a matter of like, can we get more leads? It's a matter of can you like your personal capacity, is it above 100,000.

And like, like leadership wise?

I don't know, like, what do you feel is like kind of like that cap? Because if you've been doing it for 10 years. Yeah, 15 years, whatever it is, like, what do you feel? Is that, is it a matter of like you default to equipment all the time? Like what the distraction, do you think?

Oh, no, I don't spend a lot on equipment because I'm always finding some sort of deal or whatever. Like I said, that was 50 bucks. That's not gonna break the bank. Anyone's bank. I don't care if you don't have any money.

It's probably the people that I've hired in the past trying to get to that point where I'm like, okay, can you go out on your own? Well, then I never got enough customers to facilitate. All right, you take P2, right? You know, do I have enough money to paint P2? She ain't P2 right now, you know, it's the blue and white truck. Do I have enough money to paint it? And then decal, which, you know, paint's like a thousand bucks here, and then decals about 500. So 1500 bucks is not gonna break anyone's bank either. Not even mine. Yeah, why would I need it? I can do everything on my own. Last year, I hired a kid part time.

And he helped me trim on the days that I needed it. Two days a week.

Right, right.

The rest of it was all by myself, and it didn't matter. I was still home in time for dinner. Right, right. So that's when I was like, I can fit more in. Other people in Augusta Nation that are doing better than me. They're doing $20,000 in revenue per month are going, man, I'm getting home at like 6, 7 o'. Clock. It's been a rough day, but it's good, you know, I'm growing. I'm going to be able to afford this, you know, later. I'm like, yeah. And then somebody else is going, yeah, I got all the equipment I need, but I'm going to be putting more into advertising, so. And then all of a sudden, I read their feeds later on, and it'll say something like, hey, we just added another 50 customers or something like. Like, 50 customers, another truck.

Right, right.

You know, I'm like, I'm not doing that. I don't know. I don't know.

So do you not want the 50 customers? Like, what? What do you want from the business? Because, like, right now we have, like, say, 40, 50 customers. Do you want to have a second truck with an employee?

Yeah. Yeah. My goal is to max out and then hit capacity and then raise the prices so that either new customers don't sign on or when they do, it's more profitable. And then raise the prices on everyone that signed up in the beginning just a little bit, or at least the ones that I don't mind losing if they say no, and then lose some of them so that it equals out. And that would. I'm guessing that would be around 60 customers in this area per. Per. Per trot.

Got. So you 20.

20 a day, three days a week.

120 mowing customers is sort of the goal.

Yeah.

So you, so do you want to get the extra 50 or not? Like, do you want the other employee and like growing to that size?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Cuz I want to be able to duplicate each truck individually. You know, one to two mowers on each truck and they have their own route and I just feel that person's schedule.

Right.

And then do another truck and another one and another one. Got it. Just keep, just keep doing that each time. My issue. Well, I don't exactly know what it is, but I haven't filled the capacity of the one to then facilitate another.

And so for the. What has been the bottleneck? Has it been getting like enough customers? Has it been getting the employee? What has it been?

It'd probably be the customers. It'd probably be enough customer because once I got to.

Enough customers where I'm like, I can't do any more today, I would just put them on Tuesday.

Right.

And then one I couldn't. And when I filled up Tuesday, you know, my Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, if I filled up my Tuesday, I just fill up my Thursday.

Got it.

Until. Until I said, okay, I don't want to do that anymore. I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut all these in half. And this one gets half and then that one gets half.

Right. So over the next six weeks we have, we have spring rush. Right. The goal is like, can we get fit 50 customers in that time frame, which is essentially one per day.

Yeah.

If you get one new customer per day for the next six weeks, we'll essentially be at that capacity for two trucks.

Yeah.

Okay. And then what are we doing right now? Like the door hangers. Great. How many of those do we have? And like how many are we doing?

Pretty much you've seen them all.

Okay.

Yeah, that's what I keep in the truck.

Got it. And so how many do you have for spring rush though? Just what's in there?

Yeah, that was left over from last year.

Okay.

So I could order some more.

So what sort of other advertising are doing to get the customers? Nothing.

SEO. I like how the SEO works.

Well, it's ranked number one. Like that was what I was first looking at because you got the 30 Google reviews. You have 4.8 stars. When I put Fenton Michigan Lawn Care, we show up first natively, it's on Google Maps, et cetera. So it really comes down to what are we doing to drive leads. I think going into the spring rush, have an instant quote.

You.

You might hit that just organically in terms of the number of customers. But more importantly, it's like, what are we doing with our time now? Cause right now we don't have a lot of work.

No.

So, like, what are we filling our time with now?

To get the work?

Yeah.

Nothing.

Okay, so what are we doing on a daily basis?

Waiting for spring to hit.

That's like the recurring theme I'm hearing. Like, waiting.

Yep.

Like, waiting is a horrible strategy.

Oh, it is. I mean, I'm going nuts. Like, I've been. I owe. In my area. I went out three times to plow last year in the winter. That was it.

Yeah. And so, like, what do you think? Okay. If waiting, it gets us no customers, what's one level above that?

Doing something.

And what is that?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, because. Because my old strategy was just physically actually going to do something, going out to the. To the houses. And there are some areas that I know I could hit and probably. Probably do really good. But you have to have a permit to solicit in that neighborhood. And the problem is because all those residents know you're not allowed to solicit. First thing, if they don't want your business, first thing they're gonna say is, you're not allowed to do that. It's illegal. I've done it before.

And I'm like, you don't even have to knock. Like, you just canvas put the door hanger on. It's not soliciting unless you knock on the door.

I know.

So it's just a matter of what's keeping us from doing something. Cause waiting is literally, we're waiting on the sun to come up for spring, and. And in two weeks, that's going to happen. And I think, I do believe you're going to get a lot of customers just going into the spring rush with instant quotes, et cetera. But if we're doing absolutely nothing and waiting, like, it's a horrible strategy.

It is. Look at where I'm at.

Okay, let's say whatever we're doing is illegal. Right. Which it's not. It's not soliciting. It's canvassing. If you're doing door hangers only. But let's assume it is illegal. The alternative to being someone yelling at you and calling you doing something illegal is that we do nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't. You can't not do nothing because you're afraid that something bad might happen.

Anytime you do any sort of action and push, push anyways, you're going to have pushback. Right? Like, whether it be from customers, the market, the economy, like there's going to be adversity. But like, why are we not taking those steps? Is it like, hey, I don't really need the money, I don't really need to grow the business, or is it a matter of like just inaction? Like, why, why is it that we aren't doing anything?

It'd probably be just the inaction because. Because in the past, my best work has always been in spring and summer. And then once I get to that point, I'm like, oh, I'm comfortable right here. And before I joined Augusta, that, that's the way, the way that it was. And I was happy with that. And it just, it just happened naturally. I mean, I still had plenty of snow customers. I've been plowing this thing the whole time. But that's probably why she keeps breaking down.

It's just.

The comfortable spot, I guess.

Yeah.

I've heard the saying that people are like water. They always sink to their lowest point, if not under pressure, but under pressure, water can cut steel. So if you're put under pressure, you're gonna do great things.

So what does creating pressure for you look like? Is it a matter we need less money to feel the discomfort?

Oh, I've got less money right now. I'm good.

Right. So like, what, What? Define that. So like, what's right now? Are we from like a balance sheet perspective? How much money is in the bank?

Oh, about four in the business account and three in the personal account.

Got it. And I assume that that's relatively similar to what current past springs have been.

Yeah, yeah, that's nothing. That's nothing unusual. So that hasn't, I mean, a month ago that scared me. So I, under pressure, went out to those bigger customers that I had last year, said, hey, can save you that 5% credit card processing fee if you write a one time check. A lot of them said, that sounds great. That's hundreds of dollars worth of savings. I'll take it. Here's a check. And I went ahead and just put that into the account. Technically, I haven't done the work yet that's mowing all year. Right.

I don't know if you want to say for free, but you know, when I was doing my math for how much I was making last year and the year before, it was like around 8 to 10. And I'm like that doesn't sound right. Well then I did the math for all the customers that prepaid all those other seasons as well. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm doing about 12, 12,000amonth.

Got it for a month.

Yeah, solo.

Got it.

So I'm just like, oh yeah, that's fine. And of course my profit margin still over 50%. So I'm just like, yeah, I ain't got no overhead. It's fine. No employees.

Is there enough pain for you to actually get another 50 customers and get the second truck up and running? Yeah, because like, just like we've done it for 10 or 15 years this way and like we'll just keep doing it this way.

No, I don't like that because the pain is my kids are growing up. I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old and a 22 year old, but he, he lives on his own somewhere over there. Yeah, no, I have little kids and I want more little kids and I don't want them to rent this house.

Right.

And, and it's pretty cheap and that's not gonna last forever.

Right.

And I'm gonna have to grow at some point.

Our ultimate goal was to buy some property and start a homestead and then raise our children in a homesteading farming environment. On the light side, where you're not selling anything to make any money. You're just, you're eating the food, you want bread, you gotta grow the wheat, know that sort of thing.

So that they can learn those lessons.

Right.

I'd be able to teach them biblical lessons on top of it. Bread, milk, honey, grapes, all of it. I'd be able to teach them that. Literally. This is, this is, here are the sheep. This is, this is what the Bible's talking about. They'd actually learn it firsthand. That was actually the main goal.

Right.

And then if the economy ever did super, super tank, it didn't matter. I still had food, electricity, all that stuff.

So what size does the business have to be to get to that point? Do you need to do about double like 200,000 in revenue?

No, that would be way more than that.

Okay, so what do you need to make for revenue wise for the business.

To be able to buy a house and start a homestead? Probably the 500 plus mark.

So four or five employees, three or four trucks.

Correct, got it.

Okay.

That's why I was like, well, if I know how to do one truck, if I can learn how to do one truck, then number two truck isn't going to be a problem because I'LL just do the exact same thing over and over, just a copy and paste.

Right.

Until I get to the point where I'm dealing with too many people. Then I hire somebody to deal with the people.

Right. But what are we waiting on? Like, it's not gonna just fall in our laps. No, like, what is? Like, and this is a rhetorical question, like, what are we doing to make that happen? Because right now, sitting at home just waiting, we are not gonna build a $500,000 business. Like natural entropy to the universe is against us. Is gonna take a force of will to build something.

Right.

A house doesn't just appear. We have to build the thing. You gotta build it. We gotta get the materials. We gotta put effort and labor into it. And so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that what you've been filling your time with instead of going on getting more customers to do that has been that project with the ramp we're at.

How did you know?

I'm just gonna go out on a limb.

That's my baby.

So walk me to your baby. I have a feeling this baby is preventing other babies from being born.

I birthed it over the winter.

I know, but like, you know. So walk me through this. Like, what. What is this all about?

All right. So this is called the real the rail gate.

The rail gate.

Yep.

Okay.

It's four common sections, has rails inside. Eventually I'll have a rail that goes along the side as well.

Okay.

This thing turns into five different things.

Okay.

So it's not just a dovetail ramp.

Okay.

It could be a double dovetail ramp, which means you can fit a 60 inch mower on it. Okay.

It is a truck bed extension. So a two foot extension.

Okay.

It's a tailgate and then it is with adapters. It'll be. It'll have a car, a cargo carrier, Whether it be a 2 foot one here. Because they're 24 inches by 60 inches.

Right. And so you weld all this up to yourself?

No, I had somebody else weld all this up.

Okay. So what's the difference between this and the EasyGo Mow system thing?

Yeah, the mow and go.

Yeah, mow and go.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's the ramp rack.

Right.

A. It's going to be cheaper.

Okay.

This is going to be about the same price as the mountain go. It's that it turns into different things and it's one person operable. So you can take this apart.

So show me how this thing works. I want to see this baby okay. So this pin has to come out.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. That pin.

Okay.

I'm probably gonna have to use the hammer because it's like I said, it's still a work in progress.

So she is not ready for market yet.

So the pin's got to come out.

Yep.

Once you get that.

Yeah.

This is. This is temporary.

Okay. So take the pins out on the side.

Yep.

Very cool.

Cool. And so what's the difference between this and then the ramp rack? It's just cheaper.

Really. It's going to be less expensive. And then it's like I said, one man operable. So one person can take out these pins and grab this piece. It's only about £80, and then move it off to the side and then do the next piece.

Why would you do that?

I had such a hard time. Most of my inventions, I got like five to eight of them, depending on what type of invention you're talking about.

Yeah.

It has always been, I'm solo. How do I create a product, find a product, or create a product that is. I don't have to rely on somebody else.

But why would you need to take off that bottom rack, that bottom piece?

This piece, it wouldn't necessarily need to take apart that. It was so that it was universal. And you can have five pieces if you wanted.

I see. It's like.

So right now it's in dovetail mode, but if you raise that up, it's now in truck bed extension mode.

Okay.

And then there'll be hinges in there.

Oh, I see. And then you could connect to the end.

Yeah, it'll connect on here and there'll be a full rail and this will all hold together. So now you have a ten foot bed. If you wanted a cargo carrier, you could do a four foot cargo carrier. You could actually put a whole mower on this. 4 foot or. Yeah. 4 foot long cargo carrier here.

Okay. So what's the status of this? This is like prototype, just prototype.

It's not even done yet. It hasn't had all its welds and it's going to get galvanized.

Okay.

And all that stuff.

And so what's it going to cost to get this to market?

About 3,000 per thing.

But what's it going to cost to develop it? Oh, manufacture.

I got it done. Welding. I already had a meeting with. Are you familiar with U mount the blowers?

Yeah.

So I had a meeting with Jerry. Jerry has a partner in Holland and he has. This guy has three warehouses with robotic welders and everything. He's got the money, he said it's going to cost about 300 per piece. So about 1500 dollars together with the sides and everything, he'd be able to get that to me. So plus shipping and all that stuff, I'm guessing about 3,000 bucks. He said that he's already got it done if I wanted to go with him.

But like, what's it going to cost to manufacture? Because you got to create.

That's it, 1500 bucks per year.

So I could go, I could order one of these tomorrow for fifteen hundred dollars.

No, that's going to cost him. I had to pay him $1,500 plus. Plus paint or galvanized. That's about 500 bucks, plus shipping and then plus profit for me.

So 1500. What's the cost of this, like, to build it? Like, what would be your wholesale price? You get it for that?

I would get it for, yeah, it'd be about $1,500.

And then what would you sell it for?

3,000.

So ramp rack is 32, 3500 or whatever it is.

Oh, it is.

Well, depending.

It's 5,000.

Well, I guess we get a discount, but like. So let's call it 4200. Whatever it is. Like, this is my question. Is this Gonna make you $500,000 a year?

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know.

I hope so. I really see this as a solution to a lot of problems that people in our industry are having.

So what problem will this solve? That ramp rack does not.

You can take this off and you can turn it into something different. If you don't want a dovetail ramp, it doesn't matter. You don't have to put it in dovetail ramp mode. You can put it into something else. If you. If you live in an apartment or you live in a trailer park that doesn't allow you to have trailers, you don't have to have one because that was part of my problem when I first started. That's why I had to get a Moengo. Ramp rack was too expensive. And I love their product. It's. It's a. It's a heavy duty product. But it was too expensive. I couldn't afford it. So I found Mongo and half the price. I bought that. And that's what allowed me to get past the hump. Because once we. Once me and my wife got married, I brought my trailer to the mobile home park and they said, nope. I said, what am I supposed to do? This is how I pay my rent. You want me to pay my lot rent, you gotta let me do my job. And they're like, you gotta park it somewhere else. That wasn't gonna happen. So when I found the Moengo system, I put that on 2,100 bucks at the time, which it's a lot more now. I put that on and it actually catapulted my business because then I was able to do more in less time.

Okay. So my question though is like, is this distraction preventing us from building a $500,000 business?

Yeah.

And the likelihood of this succeeding versus getting more mowing customers. I know the GR grow.

Yes.

I know that customers need it cut. I'm not so certain that this has enough differentiation.

Yeah, you're right.

To be able to get over the hump, because it's not $3,000 to get this off the ground. The marketing, the branding, the. The patents, the. All the trademarks are required for this. The infrastructure. You're not going to be able to buy one of these from Holland and have it shipped here.

No.

You don't have a price of these things.

I think you said 10 units total. And he could store it and then ship it from there. So we do cause extra. Extra 30%.

Right. So if it's going to cost an extra 30% for 10% for 10 of these.

Yeah.

You're already higher cost at wholesale than the cost of a ramp rack. If it's 30% more.

Well, just to store it and ship it, it was 30% over 1500.

Right. So 30% more than that. We're looking at almost $2,000.

Yeah.

And then if we're going to sell these for how much?

I was shooting for the $3,000 mark.

Okay. So we have $1,000 in gross profit. Now, it doesn't include website advertising, all this other stuff, the storage, all these other things that are going to go into this.

Yeah.

We have $1,000 in gross profit. We would need to sell 500 of these per year, which is more than one per day, to be able to get enough gross revenue to equal what the business could do with two or three trucks.

Agreed.

And so my question is, is this a distraction or is it. Or is it a distraction that's simply keeping you busy during the winter when we could be focused on getting the more customers.

Yeah. Because I, the, the. My fabricator was curious when we were going to finish it up, when I was going to pay him for this, and blah, blah. And I said, I think I'm good now. It works. Yeah, I want to finish it up. There's Got to be some more welding. And like I said, paint or galvanizing, but I knew spring was coming up and it actually works. I get my mower on it, not a problem. And that can go on that truck. And I can do it one person. The way that I designed it and the way that it's built, I don't need help.

Right.

I don't like the other systems that I've had.

Yeah. But my thing is with this is like, I understand getting on and off is a one man job.

Yeah.

The thing is, 95% of people don't take on and off these ramp racks.

Right.

They leave them on the truck. And so because of that, if they need help to get it on or off, they ask a friend to come over for a day.

Yeah.

And they put it on or they.

Have an employee and that's. And that's fine. Hey, today your job is to remove this so we can turn the truck into something else.

Right.

And I get that. I don't think that everyone is going to go, yeah, this solves my problem. I'm going to buy your product instead of something else. And I get that. But there's, I believe that there's going to be enough. I've, I've heard it a thousand times. People are like, I'm not going trailerless because. And they give an answer that isn't a sufficient answer.

But is your differentiation enough to be able to convince them to go trailerless?

Yes.

What is that?

That you can still run a 60. A lot of guys are like, well, I don't run anything less than 60.

You still put a 60, so why could you not put a 60 onto a ramp rack?

You can, I've seen them. I've seen, I can't remember who.

So you're really. Your differentiation is price, price.

And, and it converts, it converts into other things. So it doesn't have to be a, a dovetail ramp.

But what percentage of people convert their ramp rack or want to convert their.

None. Because there isn't. It doesn't exist yet.

That might be a reason why there might be.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of my ideas, I go and search image search, YouTube, search whatever it is, product search. I look for products, whatever. And if it doesn't exist, I start to think two things. One, well, then that's something that can be invented. And two, well, then why hasn't it been invented yet? I mean, when I, when I, when I first found, Right. When I first found the, the ramp rack and the railgate, you got to remember that's how I found you is I was like, who else is doing this? I mean, these ramp racks are expensive.

What am I. Why have. Why aren't more people using them? And so when I started searching it on YouTube, see who was going trailerless and what the advantages are, because I knew the advantages. I found this guy saying that I'm putting ramp racks on all seven of my trucks. And then I found out he doesn't have seven trucks. He's got 10 or 12 or something like that. You know, I'm like, oh, well, this guy knows what he's talking about. And I started and I stopped. I, to some degree, stopped paying attention to some of the other guys because some of their advice was good advice, but not for me. There was a guy that said, don't do bi weekly. It's going to ruin your business. So I told a bunch of people, I'm not doing bi weekly. And I lost business. I did that at the wrong time. I was listening to the wrong person at the wrong time. And so I stopped listening to that person and started listening to the person said, you could do bi weekly but charge 50% more. I said, oh, there you go. Not only is it going to be higher profit, but it's also going to be a little bit of a punishment where they're going to go, yeah, that ain't worth it. Just go ahead and do weekly. There you go. You're encouraging them to do that. So I found you that way. It solved a problem, it helped catapult. And like I said, it's not always the case because that's. That's part of my blockage in my brain is, oh, well, if I just find a product that will solve this problem, if I just get a different mower, if I get a bigger mower, if I get a smaller mower, right? If I get a way to not have a trailer, all these things are like, okay. And then more than half the time when I've actually either made the product or just bought something, it actually did solve a problem. And instead of going, all right, well, where's my next problem? I'm going to solve it. Or, you know, oh, now I need more customers, better advertising, because I'm horrible. I didn't do that. I just went, well, awesome. I'm going to run all year with the one problem that I solved. I solved one problem. Now I'm just going to run that all year, all year round, right?

I plateaued and then went, oh, now what do I do? And then my default was, since I'M good at the physical stuff, at actually making something, coming up with the physics that actually make this thing work. That's just what I keep going to when that isn't the solution.

Well, there's three ways to grow a business, right. You got, you can do things more, more of what you're doing, you can do what you're doing better or you can do something new and everyone defaults to new. The problem with new is that you have a very low chance of actually being successful. Whereas if you keep just doing more and better of what you're currently doing, you usually make a lot more money.

Yeah. And, and just there's a lot of.

Problems in the world to solve and a lot of inventions that could be made.

Yeah.

But doing more and better is a, has a much greater likelihood of making profit than doing things that are new.

Yeah, it's, it's gonna work. It's gonna be a what A higher percentage that it's actually going to work.

Yeah. Have money. Profit.

Yeah. And, and just so you know, although I, I, I like that I invented something. I like that it's going to help. I like that. Ultimately I was like, hey, I just want to invent it for myself. If nobody else buys it, I don't care. I have one that works.

I, I don't mind tinkering, I don't mind building, like scratching your itch and making a solution, but when it's distracting you from building the main thing. Yeah, that's where you want to cut it.

Yeah.

And like, like the fact that if we're spending a bunch of time looking at patents, who's going to manufacture? Where is it going to be stored? How can I sell?

Oh, I drove all the way out to Holland.

You drove to Holland within that truck? Oh, in Holland.

Holland, Michigan.

Oh, Michigan. I kept thinking Holland, like on the other side of the. I was like, dude.

Yeah, it's amphibious.

How did you drive to Holland?

Yeah, I drove to Holland, Michigan.

Okay.

Met up with Nick, got, I had to make sure that thing actually worked. Got that mower loaded up and then drove to do the presentation with the guy. He said he loved it. It's like a three hour long presentation. He showed me his whole. It was, it was basically very encouraging.

Yeah.

And I wanted to sell it for 2,500 bucks. Well, they were like, well, the problem with that is that's like your manufacturer. You're not making any profit with that. And the reason why Ramp Rack is selling them for $5,000 because they're making a profit Off. I was like, okay, I get it. I'd rather, you know, just build these, have somebody build them and just sell them to the people that I know.

And make no money.

20 profit, whatever it is, instead of having that guy.

You know, if you sold a hundred of those and you made 500 bucks a piece, that's 50 grand.

So I think I did the revenue thing, and I think this is probably where I got distracted. So let's say it was 3,000.

Okay. Revenue, you're gonna sell them for 30 grand revenue, which, again, just for the sake of being critical, is about $1,000 less than a ramp rack. But they have rails. So we're comparing.

It would come with rails.

Okay. Okay. With rails, we're looking at three grand.

Yeah. So the version it's in right now, it has the sides and would have rails.

Got it.

And that would be the 3,000.

Okay, you're selling it for 3,000.

Yeah. But if you didn't want the. You can bi fold that and have it just be a ramp. Doesn't have to be a dovetail. So therefore, you don't need the sides.

Okay.

So with the sides, you can actually have it. A truck bed extension.

Okay. So that's three grand. We're selling it for three grand.

If I sold 200 of them, that's 600,000 in revenue.

Well, I know half of that's going out the door to just manufacturing.

Yeah.

So 300,000, you're gross.

Yeah.

So you're doing 300,000 and then you have expenses of man of advertising, licensing, insurance.

Like. Yeah, hey, I didn't think about all that.

It's like saying, I'm going to build a $500,000 business. Saying I'm making $500,000 in profit. It's not.

Yeah, you're not making $500,000 profit.

Right. And so I figured.

I figured it was going to be about 25%. Again, I haven't done it. So again, that's part of. I'm like, hey, I got a great idea. I would buy one of these. Yeah, I bet you other people would buy them, too. I had quite a few people that I know on Augusta alone, and then people that I met at Equip Expo, and when I told them about this, they were like, tell me. I'll buy one. Now. If 3,000 is not going to be enough, you know, they might not buy mine.

Okay, great. Give me $3,000 and I will build you one. And I think the number of people that will be interested becomes far less like the difference between that's a good idea versus I will give you $3,000. Very different.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I'm not confident people are going to give you $3,000. Well, I am confident is people will give you 50 to go mow their craft.

To go mow their lawn. Yeah.

And that can scale. Like, this is a distraction that's going to keep you at 100,000 per year in revenue on the mowing business.

Because I'm trying to do something else.

And I like, there's not enough differentiation between this and the next product. It's another me too product minus your rev. You're like, oh, it's cheaper. Great. It's cheaper because you're leaving all the money on the table. Like all that extra profit. Like, they're manufacturing theirs for 1500 and they're selling it for the 4000, and they make a profit. And I know them, and I know those are skinny margins they're running on. And so when you start with manufacturing heavy equipment and all the metal and the fabrication and the storage and the warranties and the insurance, like, there's so many other factors that go into that. It is distracting you from doing the thing that we know it has a customer, we know we can grow.

Do you have grass?

And so cut it. If we're. If we're. If we're. If we're waiting for spring and that is preoccupied preoccupying our time. Kick the thing to the curb, scratch your itch, let you use it. Let's go. And if you grow this business, I happen to think if you have 10 trucks rolling around with those and you're like, crushing it, people will suddenly be very interested. And I know it's like, it's your baby.

Well, it's because I had a good idea. I actually, it was a very. I've got eight rolling around in my brain right now. A lot of them are going to be super expensive. Like I said, I have soft meetings with Bradley Mowers, and I had one with umount, and I'm supposed to have another one with mega attachments about, hey, I got an idea. I'm going to present you this idea. Let me tell you.

Do you know how many of those they get every year? Yeah, probably hundreds.

And because mega attachments, he was like, yeah, I'll listen. That was all he said. Yeah.

Like, it's not worth your time or attention.

Okay.

I can guarantee you, I have no doubt whatsoever that that will have less opportunity than growing this business.

Yeah. And here's the thing. I do Agree with that. I don't think that I'm going to stop doing this to do that.

I don't think by doing both, neither will succeed.

Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Because I. I thought I could. Hey, I just. I got a fabricator. I don't. I know how to fabricate that. I'm not. That I'm not as good as the guy that I hired. And he's got all the equipment. So he just went ahead and during the winter, he put that together for me.

Right.

And I'm like, yes, I finally got it and I needed it for this year anyway. So once that was done, I sold my old one.

But you're having the manufacturing, the fabrication done by someone else. You are the middleman. You're the salesperson. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

And so they already have a markup. Right. Someone like ramp rat goes from their warehouse to the customer. They don't have a middleman.

Okay.

And so you are essentially the salesperson. And what I haven't heard you talk about is like, how am I going to sell this? The brand, the marketing strategy. That's actually the business you are in, not building it.

Yeah. Everyone that I've talked to already say, so you're part of Augusta. I said, yeah. They're like, you sell it to them. I was like, well, I can put it on the. On the site. Sure. And. And yeah, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to go, hey, that's a great idea. I want to buy one. And I said, that's fine. But that's still only 150. 170 locations.

Well, still, it's just a matter of.

Like, what, Pass it. I gotta do more than that.

Well, even. Even this, like, during spring rush, let's assume you sell 200 of these to just Augusta Nation.

Yeah. Okay.

During spring rush, when they're being used the most, guess what's gonna happen. This thing broke. I need a new spring. How do I do this? This fell off the truck. This bracket came loose.

Yeah.

And guess when that's gonna happen. During spring rush.

Right. When I'm busy.

When you're trying to do this. So by doing that, it's gonna take away from this, and then by doing this, which you need to be doing during spring rush, it's gonna be taking away from that.

Yeah.

Why not just focus on one of them? And I happen to believe that 100% of people need their grass cut. And exactly 0% of people have bought those right now.

Yeah.

If we make this successful and it's like, it's not a problem during the winter, financially and things, then we go scratch the itch of creating, innovating, and being an inventor, which. That's fine if that's what you love to do.

Yeah.

And it's one thing to be a passion project or a hobby. It's another for it to distract from what puts food on the table.

Yep.

And what's keeping us from ultimately the goal of having the homestead, being able to do that, and building the $500,000 revenue business.

Yes. Yeah.

If the past these next two weeks, three weeks, we are still just waiting. That's going to be the difference between this year doing 120 and this year doing 200.

You're right.

And so if right now, if what I saw in there is all we're doing for door hangers is like a hundred door hangers, we should be doing 100 a day.

Yeah, you're right.

And that only costs like. Like $80.

Yeah.

In marketing spend.

Yeah.

If right now we were okay, we're gonna do a hundred per day minimum. Like, the rule of 100 it is. We do a hundred door hangers per day. You're like, well, they don't want soliciting. Fantastic. We won't knock on the door. Just do 100 of them.

Right.

I happen to think if you do 100 per day, you'll probably get almost a customer a day. And if you get a customer per day, over the next six weeks, we'll have 50 new customers.

Yes.

And we have 50 new customers. We'll fill both of these trucks.

Correct.

And so what I don't want to see is a distraction.

Keep us with railgates on both.

Fantastic. I could care less what we put in the back. I just care about the customers.

Right. Yeah.

Because having the railgate, having the ramp rack, I don't care. The fact is, if I got a ramp rack, it costs an extra thousand dollars. I don't really care about the money. I care about the distraction of weeks and months spent on doing something other than what's producing revenue.

Yeah. Okay. Well, what would your advice then be? In the winter, when there was nothing to do, I had. I was. I was only surviving on the money that I made from the previous year.

Yeah.

I knew that's what was gonna happen because that's what's happened every year since then. As soon as I went full time.

Yeah.

That's what happened, is I made enough money. All right, so I'm gonna snow plowing And I would sell snow plowing to all, you know, most of my customers, right. I'd have 20 to anywhere between 20 and 60 customers that needed snowplowing. Right. So I would go out and do that. And that was anywhere between 8 and 12 pushes per year. Per season.

Yeah.

I mean, if you think about. It's about. That's about one a week, Right. You know, for winter.

Right.

So you go out once a week and you absolutely kill yourself, and you come back, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. This year I only did three.

Right.

And. And I did not sell a lot of customers.

Right.

So all the customers that I had, they're all like, yeah, we'll let you know.

Right.

And none of them actually had it done. You know, the ones that I did had it done. I actually got new customers that have never heard of me before actually sign up for, but still only three.

I have a feeling, though, that the distraction of things like that, though, keep us from going out and, like, pushing against the market. Like, talking to every single customer in person is something that can be done. And asking them for the snow. Like, getting the snow contract in. Right.

Like doing, like, door hangers for snow rule.

Sure.

Okay.

Like, around here, on average, this is more like five to ten times a year. It should be happening.

It should be.

We can do it. The thing is, alternatively, let's assume we don't do mowing. We could do Christmas lights. We could do a lot of different things. We could do fall cleanups.

Yeah, I did fall cleanups.

It's a matter of, like, that spending so much time. Like, how many, like, right now, if we're. Because we're doing nothing right now.

Yeah.

There's no jobs. We don't have any snow plowing. What are we doing throughout the day? Like, what. What is, like, the day in the life of Ken? Look, like just.

Just family stuff. Okay. Just family stuff.

Yeah. Which is valuable.

Yeah. No, and. And it is. And I enjoy it. And it's not like I'm like, man, I don't want to go to work. It's more like, all right, well, when I get to work, I'm going to soak up this time, because when I get to work, I'm going to be spending less time with my kids.

If I really. If I really boil it down and examine what happens. What happened in the previous years, I was still only working three days a week, and that was considered, you know, full time.

Right.

You know, and I would do. I would do other things on those. On those off days when it came to work, but ultimately it was just three. Three days of budgeted hours and that's it. And I was making my nut and everything was fine. So I still had time to spend with my kids, is my point.

Yeah.

Some guys are working five, six days a week, eight to ten hours a day.

Right.

And then get home and spend time with their kids and they're like, yeah, I can't wait for vacation. All this other stuff. Right.

Yeah.

I was having Tuesdays and Thursdays off and Saturdays as well. With Sundays, you know, I'm working only three days a week. So ultimately, three days is. Is actually time off.

Right, Right.

So three days on, three days off.

Well, even. Let's assume. Let's assume that we don't do snow a lot, right?

Yeah.

Let's look at like three months of.

The year we actually wanted to get out of snow.

We look at vacation almost.

Yeah.

All right. But then the other nine months of the year, we go hard on actually getting customers.

So that was my idea.

Yeah.

And I didn't have enough money to really to push that. At least that's what I thought that was my block. Just, oh, I don't have enough money to advertise. I could be wrong on that. But my plan was to go to do double revenue for the six to. Six to eight months of non snow that when it actually. When there was no leaves to clean up, there was no mulch to install and there was no grass to be cut, and the only thing that was left was waiting for the snow to fly. It didn't matter. I was gone. Right. We. We'd go on vacation, get a vrbo. We wanted to get a van camper and then just drive that somewhere and just do that a couple weeks and then come back for a week or two and then do it again. Oh, it's about the snow. We're gone.

Right.

And just, Just live on that. Because if I did double revenue in. In the busy times, mowing and that sort of thing, I wouldn't need to do any of that other stuff.

It was. It was painful. Not, not just financially, but mentally.

Right. When you need your truck to work, that's when it broke down. You know, the starter went out. The. The battery, there was a battery connection issue. You know, just dumb things that got fixed quite easily. But it needed to be towed to get it fixed. So I had to tell customers, I'm not plowing today, I'm sorry. And they go, oh, what happened? Oh, it's okay. It's going to melt because the The. The temperature here in Michigan was like 50 degrees the next day.

Right.

So it would snow and It'd be like 4, 30, something, 40 degrees. And the next day it'd be 50. So they would all go, oh, that's okay. It's going to melt tomorrow anyway. So I didn't. I didn't tick anyone off. I didn't upset anyone like I did previous. Previous years when. When my trucks would break down and I couldn't plow, I'd get a lot of people going. You know what? Just cancel. I'll call somebody that can't.

So how much in revenue do you think this year we did in snow?

Oh, in snow. A couple thousand. Yeah.

So it's such a small percentage. Like, assume you want to cut it out.

Yeah, I do. I'd prefer to. Yeah.

And it's just a matter of, like, depresses me. Here's the thing. We don't have money. We don't need money to advertise. We don't need money to get more customers.

Okay.

We just don't like the fallacy of, like, I will just, like, throw money at this money at this marketing machine, and customers will be printed on the other side.

Kind of what I was thinking, like.

We don't need money to get customers. We need the will to. Because right now we could literally be knocking on doors. We could be doing door hangers. We could be in Facebook groups. We could be on nextdoor. We could be talking to people we know. We could send them one click, estimate emails.

Okay. So I only know how to do two of those, and that's part of my problem.

Which two?

I know how to knock on doors and door hangers, and I know how to one click ask them.

Okay, well, Facebook groups, locally, I don't. Your own Facebook groups for lawn care guys. I guess there's a ton of Facebook groups for the local area. All right, Fenton.

Okay.

There is, you know, you know, people at church. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I've got a couple customers.

We can get more Google reviews. We can get referrals. None of these things cost money.

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Like, the idea to wait is simply a matter of inaction or distraction.

Mostly inaction, not distraction, because like I said, I'm. I'm kind of done with that. I was just hoping that it was gonna grow organically, and if it didn't. Oh, well, right. But no, it's more in action because I'm just like, yeah, can't wait till it starts. Starts growing again. You know, that sort of thing. So it Was more like at some point, a couple weeks before the season starts, I'll be doing door hangers. And when I count and when I looked at the amount of door hangers, I'm like, it's not enough. I knew I was gonna have to order more, but that was like my go to and SEO. I already know that that works a lot. I've already got two or three customers that just, hey, that number looks good. I never even called them. I never even met these people. It just works.

It works better though, if they see another thing like a truck, a door hanger, a yard sign. Right. And a lot of these things don't take money.

Right.

You can send more. One click custom emails, you can send text blasts out. Like, you can ask people on Facebook if they need a quote. And the next like two weeks will determine whether or not we double the business this year or not.

Yeah.

And if we doubled the business this year, you probably wouldn't need to do snow.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that would be the goal.

So, like, I don't, I don't blame anyone for the results. I blame people when they, when they don't take any sort of progress towards the result.

Okay.

And so I don't, I don't blame someone for like, hey, my business didn't grow, but I was every door out there every day doing door hangers. I was putting out. I was. Got more Google reviews, I got referrals. I was doing free work and asking them, hey, I will do this job for free to fill my schedule, but I want a referral and I want a Google review. Like, people can pay you outside of just cash. Say, hey, look, if you give me two or three referrals in this neighborhood and if you give me a Google review, I'll do this little cleanup for free. Like, it's better than nothing.

Yep. Yeah, I've done that, but not a lot. But yeah.

When I think the last, not the last, but quite a few coaching calls ago, Lee had said, you gotta get those 30 reviews. You're at like 20 something.

Sometimes it's helpful to have a coach. And if you're like Ken, you feel like you're stuck in a certain aspect of the business to have a coach or a mentor or even just another peer that can help walk you through from a third party's perspective what your business is looking like. This is why it's so important to have a community, have people that you can rely on. And I know it's difficult in home services because your competitors always feel like they can't share with you and you don't want to share with them and you're worried about them taking your customers. And when you're doing really good, you don't want to share because then they think you're bragging and then you don't want to post online that you're doing bad because then people rag on you and say you're a horrible person. So I understand it's difficult and that's why we create the community At Blue Collar Summit. I'd like to invite you to. This conference is a three day event. It's going to be a phenomenal time to be able to bring your manager, your spouse, get on the same page and make sure that 2025, you don't have roadblocks, hurdles or obstacles that could otherwise just be completely removed if you had someone else's perspective looking at your business. Bring your numbers, because on Friday of the conference, we're gonna be doing an entire day workshop. And if you have your numbers, it's gonna be super, super helpful. Let's make 2025 your best year yet and go to bluecolarsummit.com and book your tickets today. Yeah, I saw you exactly at 30.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, you passed that test.

Yeah. And so I went to some of my old customers and said, hey, can I, I just asked them, can I get a Google route? And some of them just said, yeah, yeah, you did great. And they give me Google review. And the other people, they're like, yeah. And they didn't do it. So I, instead of going, hey, can you just go ahead and do that like I asked, which is just rude. Don't do that. I said, hey, I'm really trying to, you know, X, Y and Z. Is there any yard work that you would like done? And I would like to do it for free. And they go, oh, for free? I'm like, well, not exactly. You gotta give me a Google review. Oh, I was supposed to do that. Hey, don't worry about it. I'm gonna go ahead and give that to you, that, that work to you for free. And you just give me that Google review. And now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then they almost, they felt bad. Yeah, they said they were gonna do it, didn't do it. I went and just did some, you know, little job that took me an hour or two or something like that. They gave me the review.

I happen to think that if you put that locally that you're gonna do free jobs for an hour or two, you'd get a Lot of people.

Yeah.

But instead, like, it's still better than nothing. Like, progress is better than perfection. And right now we're asking for, like, this perfect advertising method is going to print customers for us.

Yeah.

When that will never happen.

You got to remember, that's why one of the reasons why I joined Augusta as well, I'm like, hey, they know how to do stuff that I don't know how to do.

And having the. Having the manual doesn't make it get done.

Yes. Right.

It's like you still. There's action that must be taken towards the thing.

So should one of my actions be to get with somebody in Augusta that knows how to do what I don't know how to do?

What do you not know how to do?

I don't know how to do any of the technical advertising things. I don't know how to do any of that.

But we don't even have the money to put behind those.

Okay. Like right now, talking about the free stuff.

Yeah.

I already know how to do that.

The done for you ads will walk you through how to make the Facebook ad or make the Google Ad, but we don't have the money for those.

Part of my problem, and this is nobody else's problem but my own, is I went through those and it just went in one ear. I don't.

But it's not even an option right now. It's not even an option because we don't have the money to go spend on it.

Okay.

So it's like, what can we do with no money?

Right.

And that is like, we can do the door. We can do door hangers, for example.

I'm not doing anything.

We can knock on doors. We can ask for referrals. We can ask for Google reviews. And we can ask every single existing customer. Like, let's say we have 50 of them. Let's say in the past we've done work for 100 people or 150. We can go to every single one of those people, knock on their door and say, hey, we can do X, Y and Z. Here's a complimentary quote. And go way low on price. I just want action towards the goal.

Thinking about Facebook or Google Ads isn't the fix. Cause we don't have the money to spend on it.

Okay. So even though I don't know how to do it, and I could ask somebody, hey, how do I do this?

And even if you figured it out.

I still don't have the money to.

Do it anyway, there's no point figuring it out.

So I'm focusing on the wrong thing.

So work with what tools we currently have.

Part of the reason why of my inaction is I'm discouraged by the fact that I see and read and hear all this stuff on the Facebook. Our Facebook group destination. 200, 300 people on it only. And they're all saying, yeah, hey, what do I do about this? How do I make this automated? This. How do I do this in copilot? And I'm just going. Most of the time, I just scroll right through because I don't get it. I'm not at the point where. Where I need to do an automated copilot. Flippity flop. I have no clue what you're talking about. I barely know how to send out an estimate in copilot. And I default to, you know what? They gave their name, their address, and their phone number. And that's all I'm gonna need because I'm gonna give them a call, tell them who I am, and I'm gonna go to their house and I'm gonna talk to them and mention their name. Cause I know how to sell.

And the beautiful thing is that's all you need in business.

Okay.

All the other stuff is fluffy. All the other stuff is important once you scale.

Yeah. KPI. I'm like, what? I can't remember what KPI stands for half the time, Right?

No, and that's fine. The thing is, all you need for business is a product to sell and a customer willing to pay you. Yeah, that's it. As long as I can send them an estimate and collect on the invoice, we're in business.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then what happens is, as you begin to nail that, you'll then have time to figure out the other 5, 10% of things. Okay, how do I automate this? How do I do the ads, all this other fancy stuff.

So in other words, they're past the point where they've got the customers that I want. They're at the point where they need to know how to operate, optimize. Optimize in the CRM to then be better at the customers they already have.

Right now you are the CRM, Right. You know where everything is here. You know where every truck goes, you know every single customer.

Yes, I do.

So there's really no point in trying to optimize and save 5% or 10% here. When you start scaling, it does make a lot of sense to do that right now. The method is get more customers. How do I do that? I don't have money. Okay. What can we do to get more customers?

If I don't have money, I got time.

And that's the part that right now is being sucked up into things like that. And the other thing I would say is that's probably not serving you well is the social media side of things, like time spent doing that and even feeling inadequate when you see those things, which, like, kudos to you for recognizing the fact you feel that way and you feel inadequate. That's awesome. Like, the fact that you even just acknowledge it. I agree with that.

Okay.

The thing is this. You don't need those skills to be successful.

Okay.

You don't. If you go get 300 customers tomorrow to just kick butt and knocking on doors and just taking action after action after action, there's other people that can figure out Google Ads for you. There's other people that can do Facebook ads. There's other people that can walk you through all the copilot stuff.

Yeah. Last year, somebody from my church, it used to be a landscaper, and he said he was thinking about getting into it again. And I was heavily considering, I will go into, you know, I will. I will hire you if you can double my. My revenue. I'm making this much. If you can help me double it, I'll give you that much, you know, or the amount that would equal what it would be to quit your job.

And the things that he would do, you can currently do now.

Yeah, well, that. Well, my problem there was. I was like, there are. There was all these things that I don't know how to do, and all these locations in Augusta are successful, and that's what they're worried about. They're worried about.

X, Y, and Z.

But the problems you're going to have when you have 10 trucks and doing 150,000amonth in revenue, very different than we're currently at now.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm starting to realize is what you're saying, like.

If your goal this year is get 50 more customers, we do not need to figure out any of that other stuff.

I would love to max out this truck, but if I can max out the one, I need to max out the other two.

And to do that, to get 50 customers, you don't need any of that other stuff. You simply need to figure out doing one action, one channel of marketing over and over and over and over again, and nothing else matters. Racks, painting trucks, copilot Facebook ads. There's a million things we can be doing in the business. There's usually only one Thing that we should be focused on. And right now it's getting more customers without spending money on ads. Right.

Okay.

So therefore it's like, what channel is that going to be? If door hangers, we know we can get like half a percent of people. That means that I need to put out 200 door hangers to get one customer. Great. I'm going to do 200 door hangers per day.

Okay.

Yeah, if that is the number. I happen to believe if you do 100 per day, you'll probably get a.

New customer every single day, especially in the spring.

And so it's like, great. Right now that is the only thing to focus on. And I see the amount of time spent on social media, whether it be Facebook or YouTube or whatever, trying to learn.

And that's why I'm there. I mean, some of it's I'm bored.

Other times the only reason to learn is cause you don't know what the next step is. Yeah, I'm telling you what the next step is. To get 50 customers and do door hangers and door hangers only and then.

Ignore the other stuff.

You can do email, you know how to do emails and text messaging. Co putt, great. Use that to wazoo and do door hangers. Everything else is a distraction. And I think the idea that we need to watch YouTube or go into Facebook groups and talk to people to learn is fine and all. And that's like a cop out for. I know what the next step is, but I'm not doing it.

Yeah, if I did that and still did the next step, that's fine. But if I'm.

Well, if doing all those other things and being on social media prevents us from taking the next step, which we now know, that's when it's a distraction. And I would just can it completely. Like if it's distracting you from doing the thing that you know needs to be done in the business, I just can it.

Okay.

Like I would can that and I would can social media.

Okay.

Like outside of the mastermind, just to stay abreast and like learn from there and you can ask questions in there, whatever. Every other thing, I would just scrape it out of life.

Okay. So I don't need to be paying attention to any of the issues that are going on with Copilot or Augusta Nation in general.

No, I like for your business, we know it must be done. Take out Copilot, take out other Facebook groups. I know you're involved in a lot of those. Those other circles and that's fun. And that Is stimulating and great, but it's not going to build the business.

I actually left some of the ones that had nothing to do with Augusta. There was just blonde landscaping in general, too. Way too toxic. Too many people complaining and starting fights and stuff like that. And. And I would get into it. I mean, we're talking, you know, month, two to three months ago, you know, whatever. It really brought me down. And now all of a sudden I realized this is. I'd rather just be around people from Augusta. That was it. So I deleted myself from all those others. They weren't helping anyway.

Like, any time not spent on doing the next step in your business is a waste of time. It's pontificating. It's scratching the mental itch of what I'm going to do when I have a million dollar business. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

I'm dreaming about what I can do when I have this much money. You don't have that much money.

$600,000. Ramp. Ramp. Like. Like it's not the next step.

No, it's not.

Right.

No. And I. I'm not. I haven't fooled myself to the point where I think that that's my ticket to whatever it is that I'm trying to accomplish that solves a problem. And for me, and then couldn't possibly solve a problem for other people as well. But no, I agree with you.

As long as we label as a hobby, it is.

I love fabricating. I love that stuff.

Great.

I love inviting.

But when that hobby for three or four months is the distraction for us building the business, then I have a problem with it.

Yeah. Because I wasn't doing anything. I was basically waiting the winter out.

Like anything is better than nothing. Doing free work for Google review or doing free work for. Hey, if I do this free work, will you give me two or three of your neighbor's contacts so I can talk? Like anything.

Yep.

Is better than nothing.

I get those for free. I do free work, but they're like, I'll tell everyone about you.

Better than nothing.

Yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah, I gotcha. Okay. All right.

I got it.

Do more of what I knew was working to begin with more instead of.

Plateauing more and better, not new.

Okay.

We constantly are looking for the new marketing channel, the new business, the new something more better. So if there's ever a problem in the business, like what can we do more of? Or do better instead of what can I do that's new.

Yeah. Yeah. Because.

This worked and then I plateaued.

High likelihood it will work again.

Then I would. Because I plateaued. I was looking for something new to get to the next step. It's not the new thing. It's more of the thing that already.

Worked more and better. So, for example, instead of maybe I. Well, I can't do more door hangers. Great. Can I do it better? Can I knock on the door? Can I put the price on there with a marker instead of printing them? Like, you can always do more and better without spending any more money on marketing.

Yeah.

Without spending any more money in general. New cost money and cost time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Yes. Or something different.

Yeah.

Yeah. One of the reasons why, like I said, when I first started, I was doing brick pavers, I was doing power washing. I was doing all kinds of stuff like that. And then people were like, hey, do you mow lawn? So I'm like, no, But I got. I could buy a mower, and then I'd just go buy a mower. And then I. There was somebody that needed a tree chop down, and I was like, I could rent a chainsaw or I could buy a chainsaw. You know, it was all this stuff, and I was. I was trying to throw everything at the wall, see what it would stick.

Yeah.

Once I joined Augusta, I knew that I had to reduce what I offered. And. And at this point, I'm like, I only want to offer mowing. In fact, at one point, I was. I was like, if I had every type of mower, you know, remember, I'm thinking equipment, right. The tool makes the job easier, so therefore, I can get more jobs. Right. So, hey, if I get every type of mower there is, I will only do mowing. I'll tell everyone in my area and this area and every other area. It doesn't matter what size lawn you got. I'm gonna cut it.

Yeah.

And then. Then you're still dealing with the. But you still have to have more equipment.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. So. So to have the one truck wonder, right, where you wonder how you're gonna do everything with just one truck, to have the tools that you can afford in that one truck and not go overboard and to be able to do what it can do. That truck was my. My leaf box, and it plowed snow, and it carries my mowers, and then it has my wheelbarrows in it when I go and install mulch. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, that's. And I completely agree with you on that, because, like I said, I don't remember how long ago it was it was after I joined, I realized that I. Yeah, I was. I was expanding too much to see what would stick. And it was distracting from the things that were actually really, really simple.

Yeah.

I often think when we constantly say in Augusta, we constantly say mowing grass. Why is it that? It's because it's the simplest thing there is. I mean, it takes kind of an expensive tool. Sometimes really small yards only takes push mower, and that's pretty cheap. But some of these other yards, you know, it's thousands of dollars worth of a machine. But other than that, that's it. That's your overhead for equipment. That's it. You don't have to have a skid steer and.

A sprayer and a spreader and all that. You don't have to have all that stuff.

Yeah. Like the. Usually when I come and do these turnouts, I kind of try to leave someone with like, hey, what do you do next? Right. And like, on the last one, I had like eight different steps they needed to get done. I have one step, one thing. Like, what's gonna unlock doubling the business this year is one thing. And that is the rule of 100.

Okay.

And that you're. The plan is so specific. One thing 100 times every single day. Whether that be calling people, emailing people, or doing door hangers.

Okay, so reach 100 people per day. It doesn't have to be 100 door hangers. It has to be 100 people reached.

Well, directly one on one. So it's not just like, oh, I put a Facebook post up for the day and I'm done.

Now I'm gonna sit around.

No, it is. I'm either doing a door hanger, I am calling, or I am directly emailing one person 100 times per day.

I gotcha.

So a bulk email doesn't count? No, bulk text doesn't count.

You gotta use their name. Hey. Hey, John, this is Ken.

Ideally it is, okay, I am going to order 5,000 door hangers.

Yeah.

And that I am going to do that. And every single day, 100 times, ideally. And then. And then I'm going to spend five minutes emailing 500 people. I'm going to spend five minutes going on to five different local Fenton, Michigan groups and I'm going to post about my services. Like, that doesn't take a long time. That last part, what I want you to commit to is the much more less scalable part. Everyone's like, oh, it doesn't scale. Usually the reason people say that they don't want to do the work. And doing 100 door hangers is not fun. Calling 100 customers a day, not fun. But if you do that for the next six weeks, I can guarantee you, you will double the business.

So roll 100. For six weeks.

For six weeks. I can guarantee you in six weeks, if you actually did 100 door hangers a day for six weeks and then on top of that, spent something in the evening of five to ten minutes doing something that's more scalable, like email, text, Facebook, group, etc.

Yeah.

I can guarantee you get 50 more customers.

Okay, so then my next problem would just be, you know, hiring somebody to help me with all the work.

I don't care about that problem. We have fix the first one 100%. Let's only focus on this.

Okay. Right.

Because if we start saying, okay, hiring, then what about the hot. We gotta paint the truck. Oh, we gotta get a second.

That's not gonna be expensive.

We'll have to get another mower.

Yeah, but all of those. Don't sell that one.

Don't even. Don't even worry about those things.

Yeah, I gotcha.

I don't care about the equipment. I don't care about the rack. I don't care about painting the truck. I just need 50 more customers.

That was one of the principles that I learned from you, too, is a lot of people go out and get a loan to get equipment, get a truck trailer, and a mower, and they're like, all right, now I got to go get customers.

I'm like, you did it backwards. They have no business. What makes the business is the customers. Yeah, right. It doesn't matter about the truck. It doesn't matter with the equipment. Anyone can go buy a truck and equipment today.

Yeah.

But no one can produce 300 mowing customers today. So that's the challenge. That's the hard thing to do. And so we all get distracted with buying the truck and the equipment, thinking we are busy building a business when it has no implication as to actually hitting the goal of building a real business.

Yeah.

So when they follow up with you in six weeks, they're gonna ask one question.

Oh, yeah.

Was the rule of 100 applied? And if right now we're at 40 to 50 mowing customers, I believe we can get 80 to 100.

Right.

Simply by doing that one thing. And if we do that, we will need to then figure out the next bottleneck, which is that truck, and get enough equipment for a second employee, and then making sure that person's full time and rocking and rolling.

Well, the Math comes out that I could be able to afford it.

Fantastic.

I already know that.

And it so happens that we will need a second truck if we're going to hit the eventual goal of 500,000. And there will be five to 10 other issues that we will face from here till then. But right now the only one to focus on is the one today.

Yeah.

And that's the rule of 100. I would tell this to anyone that has their website ranking at the very top of Google, has Google reviews. They can do the work. It's simply a matter of are you taking action towards building the business?

Yeah.

And we, we hide behind the guise of a hobby, we hide behind the guise of on social media and get staying busy work. Those things will not grow the business. And I just want you to be able to eventually get to the point where you can have the homestead, you can't have the kids. I know that means a lot to you.

It does.

And that doesn't happen by scratching itches that will never be profitable. Like the end goal is not to have a product for you. It is to have the homestead, is to have the kids out there and be able to do what you love.

I like the idea of helping, of helping somebody. And since I am good, my brain does work in the mode of I figured something out that would solve you at that problem. And of course it is something physical. It's not going out and getting more customers. It's hey, if you put this tool together and it's only gonna cost you this much, that's gonna solve that problem.

I happen to think that if you have a business that's 500,000 annual revenue.

I'd be able to make all those.

And $150k in yearly profit. Yeah, you'd be able to help a lot of people with that tool. But trying to make that into a business right now will distract you from ever building the $500,000.

I don't know how committed I was to that. Like I said, it is my baby because it's my very first invention that actually had built.

Yeah.

But I spoke to that person in Holland because he's got money and he's got a facility that he could pump out 10 units at a time.

My next goal would be, hey, do you want, you want a piece of this? How much do you have to charge? You know, that sort of thing. And then, and then basically it was just going to be my idea and it was them going to be manufacturing it. And I throwable for. I was literally thinking I'll throw up a free website. I'll just post that to people I know. And if you want one, just go in and click and order it. And there you go. And then when it ran around on people's trucks and they're like, yeah, it's cheaper to do it this way than it is to that way. I heard too many people start a location. You know, we're talking on social media here, or WhatsApp. They would join the group that I'm in or whatever, and they would say, I gotta bite the bullet. I gotta buy the flippity flop, you know, whatever. And I would say, why? Like, because that's what everyone has. Just because everyone has that particular brand or that type doesn't mean you have to do that. Oh, I had to have a nicer truck. I paid $4,000 for each one of those trucks. Like I said, that one's. That one breaks down only when I need to plow. But all other times, both trucks are solid. I've had a thing for eight years, and I've had that one for two or three. And that's just my personal truck. But I still kind of do work stuff with it. I just don't go mo with it. I'm all with that one. And I hear all these people say, well, I have to bite the bullet and pay this much to do. No, you don't. My argument is, no, you don't. So I still. My brain is still defaulting to equipment. You're telling me you have to spend x amount of money on the equipment. And Mike has already said, no, you don't. You don't have to have a zero turn that costs thousands of dollars. You can do it with a push mode.

But the difference between your rack and ramp rack. Let's say someone's 1,000 dol bucks. Okay.

Yeah, about. Yep.

Let's just say that. Is that going to make or break their business? The answer is no. No, it's whether or not they get customers.

Yeah.

And so the same issue of you knowing that you go default to equipment. I would say to anyone else, like, is $1,000 going to make or break your business? No.

They'd have to be honest and say, no, it's not going to make a business.

Flip a coin and get started getting customers.

Yep.

Right. And so unless you have customers for that rack that literally have paid you money, I would be defaulting to what is currently paying customers.

Yeah, they're all my friends, and they're all like, man, I want to buy one of those instead. I'M like, great. When I got.

Give me $3,000 and I will make you one.

Yeah, well, I would love. Part of my homestead thing is a barn for the animals and a shop for me. And the shop was going to be for all my tinkering.

Right. So then it's just a matter of.

Like, they'll do one.

There's stages. You're trying to do what you can do in 10 years.

Yeah. It ain't going to be now.

The step in front of us right now is get 100 customers. And we're going to do that by rule of 100. The next step will be hiring a full time employee. The next step will be how do I get a second truck to be looking like my first truck?

Yes.

And then you just keep going on until all of a sudden you wake up and you have the $500,000 business. You can afford the homestead and you can afford the shop to go tinker.

Let me ask you this. Step one, two and three. Can I do that again or is it step five, six and seven? Can I go back and go, now it's another truck or now it's another 50 customer? 50 to 60 customers?

Yeah. 100%.

60 to 80 customers. About.

Well, now you figure out. Okay, the rule of 100, I don't have to. Six weeks, I got 50 customers. I filled one new truck. Great. Copy and paste.

Okay, I like this. How about if I go to hire somebody wants a job, I can hire you, but you have to go get these many customers. I'm going to help you. Here's, here's material to do that.

No, if they could do that, they'd go start their own business.

Yeah. Most of the people that I talk to, don't they want a job. Right.

Because if they go get 50 customers for you, guess what? They do go get 50 customers for themselves.

That. Well, that's okay. That's true. I was literally thinking, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you use my equipment, my truck, my, my mower. That's, you know, I'd put the green one on that truck. You know, whatever. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. You're gonna have a wee whip, a blower, a mower and a truck. And I'm gonna help you and I'm gonna show you how to go get the 50 customers.

That's what a business owner does. Like you should be one doing, going and getting the 50 new customers. If you know how to do it, why wait for them to go do it? Let them go do the Work and you'll get more customers.

I'm not saying as stage one, I'm still going to do that.

I agree. I know.

I meant what I get when I go to fill the second truck.

You're going to hire a second employee and you're going to keep doing the rule of 100.

Okay, I'm going to have that. That's what I'm asking.

In the next six weeks, you get 50 new customers. Guess what you're going to do? Go get another 50 customers and do it for another six weeks.

Gotcha.

That's 12 weeks total. That's a total of three months. That's the spring rush. You could absolutely do that. Both trucks have an employee in both.

Right?

You could absolutely do that. It comes down to whether or not you go get the customers.

So it's 1, 2, and 3 and then do it again. 1, 2, and 3.

It's just one. Oh, it's the only thing I want you focused on.

Just one. I can't do number two until I've.

Done number one, 100%. And we can't tinker and create a homestead until we've done 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10.

Okay.

Right. It's.

We're trying the same thing over and over again.

Just do the same thing. It's not new. It's more and better. More and better. More and better. And then one day, Moro's doing something new. Great. Now you'll have the money to do it.

Well, I'll have a shop to tinker.

Exactly.

And then. And then that will be my fun. I'll do that in the winter. I'll just heat it 100%.

And then I'll be like, ken, you can make all the racks world. You can tinker with it. You can make one off projects.

That's only one. That's only one invention of the eight that I've got.

Build a big business. And you can tinker with all eight of them.

You know, when we're done, I'll tell you about the other one.

No, no, those are off the table.

No, I know. They're just fun.

They're just fun. Yes, I agree. But fun has its time, right? Like right now, build the business so you can have fun.

Like, I. I gotta tell somebody about it. I told my dad and he was like, okay. And then I told my son. He was like, I, I told. I said, hey, I got an idea that I'm gonna do with the, with the new mower. And he goes, okay. And I said, He's 22.

Right.

And I said, do you not want to hear about my idea? And I'm joking with him. Right. You want to hear about it? Right? And he goes, are you gonna give me, like, the two minute version or.

The two hour version? I agree.

And he was being all annoying. I was like, I'm not going to feed you today if you.

All right, fine, go ahead. And I told him about it, and he was like, okay, cool. He basically just didn't care. The point is, like, the solutions to the problems that I think I have are always new. Yeah. Either new, it's an invention. It's a physical invention. I came up with an idea to solve one of your problems. I'm sure obviously you're fine with whatever, but the point is, instead of throwing the grass in the back of the truck, it was like a dumper thing and blah, blah. I'm like, I got this idea. Got this idea. I'll tell Mike about it. It doesn't matter, man. It doesn't.

Like, people have built million dollar businesses without the invention. Therefore, they do not need the invention to build the million dollar business.

That's funny.

Remember in one of the masterminds a couple days ago, I said, hey, can you watch this video?

Oh, no.

Yeah, I'm not gonna watch it. I knew you weren't gonna watch it right then. I just meant, like, hey, later on when you got time, just critique the video. One of my issues is I like the person who made the video, but I don't always agree with that person. Yeah, he has a tunnel vision based on how he does things, and he probably knows that, but he's got enough subscribers that, you know, he. He does his shmeal every time. He. He started the. The video by saying, I'm going to be really honest with you guys because no one else is going to be. And I said, well, that's not true. There's a lot of people that are. There's a lot of people that just want to sell you something. There's other people that want to be honest with you, but go ahead. He gives five different ways of making money in the industry. And without even watching it, you knew what he said. So I said, you know, the first one was the low end was making grass short is the worst way to make money in the business. And I said, everything else you're going to say is wrong. Immediately I knew. I knew it. And the last thing was to invent something new. I knew that I invented something new. And I knew. I know this can be successful. And that sort of thing, but it's all I. And I agree with you. It's going to be a distraction. So I. I get that. That's mine, and I'm gonna finish it, and I'm gonna use it. And if somebody else wants to buy one, I'll go, hey, this is. I'll probably just have a cad made up and just. Here, here's the cat. Go make it. Go call local fabricator.

He'll make you one. You go get distracted on something.

Yeah. But anyways, he. In the middle. It was. It was hardscaping stuff. It was like ponds. And I remember you said, yeah, like, if you build a pond or something like that, you're gonna. Your profit margins are gonna be. That was number two on his list. So, you know, without even watching the video, you already knew what he was gonna say. And he. He was basically saying, you know, low end because it's a race to the grass. It's a race to the bottom. You're always fighting the guy that is the 20 guy that's always. That's gonna under bid you every time. And then it was. It was just other hardscaping things. I don't remember what they were. I just remember ponds was one of them. It was painting walls or something. Whatever. The problem is that he didn't sit there and explain that those. All those other things require more equipment. Diversification. You're not focused. You have to. You got to. You got to switch gears all the time. And I knew I was getting out of that because I knew you were right all those years ago. Don't do that. Don't get distracted with those things.

And I wanted. I can't remember who I was speaking with. I don't remember if it was in Augusta or if it was just somebody else that does landscaping, mowing his grass. But he goes, yeah, Stan's right. I said, no, he's not the person that you're going to lose. The customer that you're going to lose to the. To the Chuck in a truck, the $20 guy. You didn't want them anyways. It was actually. They did you a service because of whatever. Whatever your CAC was on getting that customer.

If they're gone, if they're like, oh, well, somebody else is gonna do it for cheaper, so I'm just gonna hire them. They were going to be a problem to begin with. That's a big red flag. Anyone that's just willing to let you go after like a month or two or something like that, because if somebody else is doing it cheaper you didn't want them anyways, so they're actually doing you a service.

Somebody needs to say it. The $20 truck in a truck, guy that doesn't have insurance, he's probably on something. That's probably why he does it for cash or the good guy. The good truck in a truck. Who? Man, I just. I just don't want to work for so and so anymore. I just want to build my own thing, and I just want 60 customers, and I don't care, you know? And he's. He's a good guy. He has a family, whatever. If he's going to undercut you. And all the customers that he gets went with him because he's cheaper than the current. Than the current company that they're with, you want them to go, it's okay. It's okay to let them go because you. They fire themselves. It's okay. Most of my customers that come to the Augusta website and talk to me on the phone, I always. I don't always qualify them, but I listen for red flags because I've been doing this long enough that I know what's going to happen if they say something. Well, the last company, this. Okay, what? You know, there's my flag. Okay, so now that's going to prompt me to ask them, what did they do that you didn't like? They actually gave me a legitimate reason. There's quite a few big companies around here that just give really low ball prices. For the size company they have, they got like 20 trucks. You know, they have, you know, close to 50 employees or whatever it is. You know, they have huge crews that go out.

The people that come to me from them.

They usually say, oh, well, they just. They just zip through everything and they didn't do a good job, you know, whatever. And I'll. What did they not do? And I can see it. That's not a red flag anymore. That was a legitimate reason why they left. Everyone else are like, yeah, I've been doing it myself. And, you know, great. The point is the story that this person on the YouTube said.

He didn't point out those things because he doesn't mow grass. He does videos. He gets free. And you said he gets so much free equipment that it's. It's his default. So he actually started by railing against YouTubers that are just there for views and don't have your interests in mind. And I do have your interests in mind. And this is. This is my advice. And I felt like saying, I don't think I'm gonna listen to you anymore. Even if you're a great guy, I don't think I'm gonna listen to you anymore. Because you just described yourself and then said that the people that do what you do are the bad guys. That's exactly what you're doing. You're not actually out there performing the way that you're saying that. All these. Does that make sense?

100%. The bottom line is, whenever I'm on social media, I'm asking myself, how is this going to make my business better? And I think that all of these voices, whether it be on social media idea that you have in terms of mentions, it's all distraction. I wouldn't listen to anyone. I wouldn't listen to my YouTube videos. Like, if you're not executing against what you're, you know, needs to be done in the business, all of that stuff just gets kicked out the door.