Unexpected Setback | $300k Business in 30 Days (2)

I'm traveling 3,000 miles across the country to build a $300,000 lawn care business in just 30 days. This Augusta lawn care location needs to be making $1,500 per day before I can hand it off to a general manager and go back home. I'm starting with no employees, no equipment and no customers to prove that systems build great businesses.

Alright, today is day two of the challenge. And the main objective today is to find a dump, a place where we can dump all of our deb. I do not see any lawn care or landscaping debris at all. Find a dealer, ideally one that does right mowers because we're also going to pick up the right mower today. Of course, you buy something from us, that's a priority as well as hire our first employee and give them a job offer.

We're just dropping all the miscellaneous junk off now we gotta go find ourselves a deal and a dump site. Honestly, it's not bad that our storage is a little bit out, not outside of our territory, but like on the very edge. I'd rather be more in the middle. The thing is, there's only two spaces in our entire county to dump and we're only a few minutes away at this public storage to the dump site. So that's a good thing.

I do not see any lawn care or landscaping debris at all.

Oh no. I think it was a lose lose because I didn't see any lawn care like landscaping debris at all. And she's like, oh, this is like you can't just present on a public dump. You have to have an account. She gave me the number to set up an account with someone. So I'll call that person right now and just see if they even take debris from green waste.

For our transfer stations. You do have to set up an account. It's based off your business.

We don't do individual just one time kind of dumps. You have to fill out a credit application. Oh man. So that's kind of expensive. Looking at $85, the minimum to dump, but that's a minimum of 2 tons. So what we'd probably do is just try to load up the dump trailer with as much as possible. However, we charge $99 per pickup load of debris when it comes to estimates and 199 per dump trailer of debris. So we'll cover those costs and overhead recovery in the form of our estimates. And so it's a little higher than I'd like. And it's definitely going to put pressures especially this location grows to 2, 3 4, 5 trucks especially. You're definitely going to want to find space so you can dump and burn because it's just your dump fees get out of control.

Hey, what can we have for. I just want to introduce myself. I'm starting a long care business just in south park there. So we got a right stander and then we got a Honda Pushmore, which I know those are going out to pasture soon. Okay. But yeah, we were just getting started, so I just want to introduce myself and we'll probably use you guys over here, so. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, no, it's been fun in terms of service and things like that. If we came by in terms of just dropping things off is usually like a two day turnaround. Like what's kind of look like it depends. Okay. And you go hear the same thing anywhere you go right now. It's few weeks. Okay. Of course you buy something from us, that's priority. Okay. You don't buy something from us and bring it in and it's a brand that we sell. Yep. It's not as much. Okay. We take care of our, our customers first. Just like, just as you would for sure. But yeah, it just varies. Do you guys service Honda motors at all or not? Do not. Okay. I don't blame you. It's okay. We don't. We're holding on until the to the end.

Good, good. Just saying hello, making the sounds like there'll be a demo day type deal with all their dealers. So I just want to meet the other landscapers in this area. So I'll come to that and just get to know them, make sure they know it's a friendly face. I'm not trying to do anything malicious and I want them to succeed as well.

Hi. How's it working? We're actually just getting a business started up in south park, so I just want to kind of say hello and yeah, just kind of connect. Also was gonna see if you guys know a good spot to do dumping of like debris. You can see how it's written out. And that's the address. River Highway. Perfect. Yep, that's it. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. You'll see more of us, so appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay, so I think that was good news. We're a little tight in time. However, they gave us a spot that's 10, 15 minutes away that does a bunch of dumping of debris. It's like normal, not city dumping. Currently we're gonna be late by two minutes, but went down the wrong lane here. Now I gotta eat humble pie and try to get into this lane next to me it's 11:02. Folks, we're gonna be four minutes late to this meeting.

Alright, hit set up.

No. Okay, so my regional manager just contacted me and said that our business license is expiring today and if that happens, we get kicked out of Google local services. So I'm logging in very quickly gonna update and renew our business license so that doesn't happen. What? In the tarnation of the world? August 31, 2023. But check this out now from my regional manager. Zoom in, zoom in, zoom in. May 31, that's actually on the business license.

What sort of sorcery is this? We have a Google Drive folder for every general manager in every single location that had their passwords, all their metrics, all the rest of it. And I fail to update. When I updated the business license, I failed to update their folder. So my bad.

Okay, so a couple quick updates. First and foremost I was able to find a different dump site. The minimum charge is only $8 and they charge $21 per ton of debris. So much better pricing than what the city was offering. And I don't have to go through the whole creating a commercial account. Also picked up zero turn the 48 inch mower. So this is the first time I've ever actually driven the right. I've driven the stand on for the John Deere which is similar, but this one has two handles that actually move, whereas the John Deere has two bars and then just one set of handles that move. So that's a little bit of difference. I just got another estimate come in as a drive by from command center so I need to head over to get to that. Before that, when you stop at Home Depot, get several things so that we can do door hangers later this afternoon.

One thing that I'm super excited about that I have never mentioned yet on the channel and that is that we've been working over the past several months for Augusta, longer for Command center and that is 24,7 the phone being answered and we're using AI machine learning and a whole bunch of robotics to do it. So we're doing a whole bunch of testing throughout June and I'll be doing that with the development team over the next few weeks and then we're hoping by July, literally every call, regardless of you call at 2 in the morning, morning or Sunday night, it does not matter. The phone will get picked up every single time. You'll never go to voicemail and you will not be able to distinguish between a real person and the AI, I'm very excited about it. It's been a lot of work. It's extremely expensive. And I do believe in three to four years, this technology will become commonplace. But our goal, to get ahead of the curve.

It is 12:39, day two. I'm at home Depot getting pens and cleaning supplies when I should be out doing marketing. Very frustrating. Just everything else is holding me back from actually doing what I need to be doing for the business.

See, and what's frustrating is I literally know exactly what's happening. This is what happens to all business owners when they're first getting started. They get caught in the minutiae of things like cleaning their truck instead of driving the behaviors, they're gonna actually move the business forward. I, like so many owners, when we're first getting started, know exactly what needs to be done, but we usually don't do it because either A, it puts us out of our comfort zone, we're afraid to do it, or B, we just simply fall in love with being a business owner and cleaning out our truck. It is. Yeah, we're just getting started down here in South Park. Wow. I would have. I've never thought that I would be on TV. I've seen you on YouTube. I've always said sales and marketing is the thing that's going to move the business forward and hiring more people. And here I am cleaning out my truck. But ultimately, when it comes to the truck, there's just no way I'm driving a dirty truck.

Also a few minutes late, but contact me, tell me if you're going to be late. However, he literally sent me a screenshot when he was on his way and said he would be a few minutes late. So I'm okay with that. Totally fine. Sorry about that little stuff. Here, come on, sit down.

Wow. Well, I'll let them know at the office, and then if it's a breaker or not, they'll let you know. So. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming in. Really. Do you have a great day. Hey, guys. Sorry for the delayed response. Honestly, when. When recreating a recurring visits or just like editing them, it should just default to today's date. So that way if they want to recreate past events of that recurring series.

Then they can just change the date manually, but it should always just default to today's date. I think that'll solve all the issues. We will not have to add a new button and to recreate events, etc.

Makes the most sense. Yeah. All right. Going to an estimate that. That did not work. Out. Everything was fantastic. I think he's a really hard worker. He doesn't have a driver's license, and we just can't do that. We don't have crews of guys. And typically we start off with one or two guys or two guys in a truck, and it goes to one, and they go solo. And you got to be able to have driver's license. It's just difficult from a scheduling perspective, especially if you only have one or two or three employees, that someone doesn't have a license. So not gonna be able to take him, unfortunately. Great guide. Now we're gonna go do an estimate and make sure we close this deal.

Okay. I'm just trying to wonder how we need five guys to trim this bush. Hi, Viz. But we can see them. We got three standing around, one trimming and one raking the tops of the bushes.

And the date the office.

Hi, Are you Gloria? Yeah. Can I help you? Yeah, you submitted an estimate request form for the lawn care and things. Good to meet you. And you are with Augusta lawn care. So they got your information. Kind of said what you were wanting for in terms of the trees, the aerating, the mowing, things like that.

Yeah.

Let me explain. Yeah, go for it. I don't. I mean, the aerating just is, you know, what, once a year, or if you need it, it's just an optional thing. The guy last two weeks ago, he ran right over the one. One of them, and it. The lawnmower just completely chewed the whole thing up. Got it. And I don't understand. I mean, they're either new people, right? Or I just don't like the damage. Right. You know, I don't. I'm not at all happy with that.

For mowing there, I'm gonna go low. All right, so it takes us about 35 minutes to mow that lawn with one person edging and mowing and blowing off because we got our 48 inch stand on. Let's go.

So we're gonna charge $50 for weekly, $75 for bi weekly. Core aeration gets determined based upon the mowing price. I think it's three times that amount that'll get done in the fall. Now the cleanup for the leaves. I asked another franchisee. Okay, last question. I promise. If I'm doing leaf cleanups, do you guys usually have to do them in October, November, December, or, like, is it more like November, December, January when leaf season is? Because I have no idea. I just look up at these trees. Like, those are a lot of leaves. Is it a thumbnail no, I'm just looking at the leaves for no plain reason. Yep. Just till you get mad at me. All right. It's happening. I have no idea when they fall down. Like, what is fall? Is that September? Is October? Is it November? I have no idea. So I'll probably do, like, a monthly option for we for a leaf cleanup, and it'll probably, like, take four hours. What's cool is we don't have to haul away the debris. She has the debris bags there. We can fill them up, so that'll be great. She has a little bit of unrealistic expectations about the backyard. She wants it to look really nice. Yeah. Down here. I just recommend probably making this gravel in here, honestly, just so shaded. But there's a whole bunch of roots, and she has dogs, and it's super shaded. So we don't do chemicals and we don't do, like, overseeding. I'm hand that off to someone else that we refer people to. We can really just do the aeration, the leaf cleanup, and the mowing. So I'm going to get that estimate set up right now. And I would have done it at her driveway, but I was dying to go to the bathroom. So. This one's for Sean Spencer. Acai bowls. Let's go.