Up-Selling, Contracts, Software Recommendations and More - Ep.30

Hey. Hello, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to episode 30 of the Landscape Business course podcast. Make sure you go over to landscapebusinesscourse.com and you can sign up for your very own 30 minute call and we can go over really anything that you want to go over, whether it be starting your business like Ezekiel the caller today had, or if you are wanting to grow your business, systematize your business, or if you have questions about the course and, and what we offer at Landscape Business Course, you can check it out now actually, without even having to talk to me, you can actually go right on to landscapebusinesscourse.com top right, and you can go ahead and check out everything that's included in the course. And so I did that because I was getting so many calls and just about the course. So now you can actually check out what the course entails and if you have questions and things still, feel free to call me. Fill out the information there on the main page and, and we can set up a call. So today's caller is Ezekiel. Ezekiel is in Fresno, California and he is wanting to start. He's kind of in his second year of business and really making that jump from part time into full time business. So let's tune in. I'm just gonna go ahead and play right away and close it out. I won't do any sort of outro. It's a pretty long episode, over an hour. So hang tight in there. And I think everyone will get something out of this one, whether you're just starting out or you're working your pricing. And we just talked about so many different things, employing people to the process of going from solopreneur to having a crew like all that good stuff. So make sure you listen and you might even want to take some notes. Here we go. And this is ezekiel from Fresno, California.

Yeah. Okay. So I started out in 2013. I was working full time at a local gym, just doing kind of an entry level maintenance there, mainly cleaning minor repairs. But $10 an hour is probably the most I would get out of that place. At the time I was still newly wed and family was on the way, is growing.

So I had to make a decision.

I need to increase my income. So briefly considering going back to school. I got an associate's degree at a junior college. But that was brief because I didn't, you know, I didn't want to get into any debt and I wasn't really sold on what major, you know, I was going to go into. And you know, at the Time it was maybe family marriage therapy or, you know, some kind of counseling, you know, that would require a psychology degree and probably a master's. And after thinking about it, that really wasn't the route that I wanted to go. And so I never really considered entrepreneurship and small business. I kind of didn't. I was never raised that way. And I never really thought that that was my. That was my personality. I thought you were kind of just born with it, you know, kind of type a kind of person. And that really wasn't me at the time, a little more. More passive. But I think now I think you can kind of develop that.

You know. And so after listening to some podcasts that I'll. Some of the podcasts that I'm listening to, they really stress I really push family economics and small business ownership and entrepreneurship. So after listening to that for a while, I kind of planted those seeds. And one of the interviews on that podcast was a.

Was a gentleman. Dave.

He's the owner of Clip Software.

Oh, yeah. Yep, yep, yep.

Dave Tucker, I think.

Yep.

I'm not sure, but.

So he was. He was talking about the book that he came out with, Beautiful Business. And he's kind of going over the. Using the.

Systematizing, Emiss Michael Gerber.

Model to lawn maintenance. And that was kind of the first time I heard. Heard about that and really heard someone being successful in a big way in the lawn service industry. So that kind of really opened that up to me.

So anyways, I kind of thought around, and I knew.

A buddy from my old church that I kept in contact with who had his own lawn service business. So at the time, I was opening at the gym at 4am, getting off at 12:30. So I was like, hey, I think I have enough time after work to really learn, you know, learn a new trade.

You know. So I called him up and said, hey, you know, which, you know, would you mind, you know, teaching me what, you know, you know, teaching me the lawn service business.

So, you know, long story short, got in with him and eventually took two days off away from the gym and started working with him two full days, Thursday and Friday. And then eventually started growing my business on the side, working after the gym on my own account. And eventually I was able to work my way out of the gym. My wife was able to come home to be with the kids. And so now, now actually this month, I'm no longer with my buddy. And so this was. This would actually be. Actually March would be the first month that I'm completely on my own. No Subcontract, you know, from him. And no, no Jim and no wife.

Income. So it's all my soldiers right now.

Awesome. So what are you kind of expecting to do this, like, march in revenue, do you think?

So right now I'm just doing residential lawn service.

I've got about 28 accounts.

And I'm bringing in about.

20.

Let'S say about 2,600.

Okay.

So we're living.

Living pretty modestly right now.

But there's plenty of room for growth. And I know that there's a lot more that I could be doing as far as marketing goes.

You know, so I've got more margin now. I've got a little bit more spare time and margin in the schedule, so I need to really hit it hard this year.

Yeah, definitely. Like, do you know. Did you know that I was working at a gym when I first started?

I didn't.

Yeah, I was working. Yeah, I was working at Anytime Fitness.

Yeah, I was working at Anytime Fitness when I was. That would have been 2012. I was working at Anytime Fitness and working as a gym trainer. So then I did the kind of same thing I did part time, started the business part time, and then within a year, you know, stop. And so that's kind of where you're at right now, like, just switching over. And that's when you'll. That's when the business will really start to grow, is. Cause you go full time into it, and so you'll have more time to dedicate to, you know, marketing and getting your name out there and things. And like, just from, like, just from what you've told me so far, like, I would say, obviously, you know, market really hard in the next month or so to get contracts and stuff, but I would also, just looking at 28 accounts and $2,600 a month, I would say, if I were you, I'd be trying to upsell those 28 people. Because when I look at 28 accounts, I expect to be like, where you're at now, I expect that number to be more on 4 to 5,000. And just because there's so many leaf cleanups, there's tree trimming, property cleanups, putting down mulch, all the little things that you can really double the value of a customer by doing those upsell things. And even if you. Even if you only got to like, say like 35 or 40 accounts this year, I think you could double, easily double your monthly revenue just by making sure you stay in communication with your clients. Because some of them literally, like, I figured this out my first year when I was joined part time and one of my clients literally hired another company to come do their spring cleanup and I was mowing their lawn and I'm like, really? And so like, the main thing is you want to communicate with your customers to make sure they even know that you offer those services. And I think you'd be amazed how much you know, you'll get half of them on spring cleanups and then half of them on leaf cleanup in the fall, half of them to do tree trimming during the winter. Like, I think just your upsell alone, like when I look at 28 accounts, I expect really $4,000 in revenue, especially if they're just residential. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about commercial, like that's a different ballgame. But when I think 20 residential accounts, I am thinking $4,000 in revenue in a month. And so I really think even if you don't grow triple in your accounts this year, I think you can double or triple your revenue just by simply doing the upselling or at least like, you know, making. And the thing is, you don't have to like hard sell people. You just need to make sure that like, if you're going to spend money on sending flyers to people you don't know and people that you've never done their yard before, why not spend, you know, 10 or 20% of that, whether it be talking to them person to person or sending them flyers on some of the services that you do in addition to their mowing. I think you'd be amazed, like, because like a 1 cleanup can be $500, which is the equivalent of half a year's worth of mowing, you know.

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. That is something that I need to do. I think I've really been cutting myself short. I am realizing that I'm doing a lot of work for free.

You know, there's a lot of things like rose pruning, even some fertilizing and.

Minor tree trimming and things like that irrigation stuff. But I'm not really, I'm not charging, you know, too much for, you know, because it's like, oh, they're my regular customers. But you know, I know there's some multi bed replenishing and things like that that I could be, that I could be doing. And I think I'm just.

I'm not.

Actively pushing, you know, charging those extra for those extra services. I think I'm being too nice.

Yeah, like.

There'S definitely a place for doing freebies for your clients because it generates, you know, goodwill and they're gonna stick with you. However, what you don't want to do is start the relationship off with them on a free basis or so where they know that, oh, if I just ask him to do this, he'll do it and I won't get charged. How we always do it is like, after six months of them paying and all of that, and like, if they want us to do their rose bushes and take 10 minutes more, you know, they're gonna, they're, they're gonna expect to see, you know, a $10 charge or whatever. And then though, after, you know, six months, a year of them being committed to our company and, you know, being we know their long term, then, you know, maybe we'll break their beds out for free or do something like that. But you definitely want it to be when you do something for free, like it's a, it's like a gift to them and not. They don't just take it for granted. And definitely, you know, it's easy to give stuff for free when you're just starting out and especially when you're by yourself. But when you start having an employee that is, you know, you're paying 20 bucks an hour, including their taxes and overhead and payroll, all that stuff, like, once you include that, there's, you're going to start losing money. You're not even going to be breaking even. You're going to be losing money when a client asks for five or ten minutes more. Because when it comes down to it, especially the more crews you get and more people you get, you know, the five minutes add up real fast because that's the difference between making money on a job and losing money.

Right, right, right. I definitely get that. So I think that's something that I.

I need to be more confident in.

And even like another problem that I'm having right now is that I know there's a few.

Accounts that, that I need to raise the price. You know, I'm still relatively new and I haven't raised prices yet, especially on people that, that first, you know, that I first picked up.

Yeah.

You know, so it's like. Oh, you know, I think when I first started on first picking up accounts, I'm kind of low balling it. I don't even know it. You know, I'm just trying to, just trying to get as many accounts as I can. But now that I'm, I'm kind of, you know, I'm more aware of the cost, you know, operating cost and I'm trying to get my man hour rate, you know, pinned down.

Yeah.

But I'm more aware of. Okay, I was really low balling when I first started. And some of the new ones, my new accounts, I've raised a, I've raised the price, but some of the early ones, I know that I need to, I'm actually losing a couple of these places, so I need to, I think I need to get some courage, but I think the confidence would come with knowing the numbers really well. And I don't feel like I'm there yet.

So I'll ask you a two part question. Number one, what's the lowest price you do on a lawn right now? Like per cut?

Now is this okay, Just one cut, regardless if it's.

Weekly or bi weekly.

Just like right now, out of your 28 clients, what's the smallest number per cut? Like 15, 20, $30 or more? What's your lowest number?

Okay, this is embarrassing, but one of them is $10 a cut.

Okay.

It's a small, like cookie cutter new development and it's back only. And it's a, It's a really small backyard.

Yep.

And so he was, they were one of the early ones, you know, so I figured, oh, that shouldn't take long, you know, take more than 10 minutes, you know, I said, oh, 40 bucks. But I realize now.

I've had them for, for a couple years now and on average it's taking me 15 to 20 minutes, you know, and so that one's more of per service, you know, so it's like $10 a service. Now I'm going more towards a flat rate. Like I'm not going to do per service. I'm just going to do a flat rate per month.

12 month. A 12 month. Are they, are you giving me a 12 month or a 10 month or nine or what do you think?

So like with our, with our climate, we're able actually to go, you know, year round. So we don't have like a season.

Right. Okay.

Okay. But you know, typically it's about 50, you know, 50 weeks because, you know, I'll take a. You're gonna miss a couple weeks here and there.

Yeah.

You know, so. So typically, you know, when someone, someone hires you, unless you really goof up, you know, goof up if you're doing a good job, you know, they're just gonna keep you, you know, year round.

Yeah. Yeah. So like, so there's things that.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, sorry. Like I was just gonna say. So like, obviously, like I get where you're coming from. When you just start out, it's easy to be, you know, wanting to get the lower ones. And so what I would do if I were you, like, it's good that you realize that you're gonna have to increase prices. And I know also it's like, well, I don't want to lose them necessarily. So this is what I would do is if I was you, I'd say, okay, any job over 30 that you get, like, as soon as you hit 31, you need to go after the first job. Like the lowest job, the one you're losing the most money on, or like, is the worst paying job and up their price. And so what I'll do for you is like, okay, I'm not gonna go under 28. Like you, I don't want you to lose the number of accounts just because in your head that kind of hurts. Right, I get it. But like, but then say, okay, as soon as I hit 31, it means I'm going to either trim off or raise the price on the worst paying job. And when you get to 35, you should address the first five, the lowest five, you know what I'm saying? And be 100% okay with them walking away from you and not doing business with you, but knowing now that you have these five jobs you just got that are in your pocket and are paying good and that are going to grow with the business. Because I promise you, and you know this already, $10 a cut is, you can't grow a business on, no way. Like, by the time you.

For us to come say hello to someone is 20 bucks just because you got, like, if an employee's gonna drive to someone's house, if they have a truck, it's Gonna cost me $15 in time to pay them. Truck, gas, insurance, it all adds up, you know. And so like, for us, our lowest price is $20 per cut. And, and that is literally if it takes us five minutes to mow. And so like, like, like you essentially, if I were you and if I was anyone, like, I would essentially determine what your lowest price is. And then just if it doesn't matter if it takes a minute, five minutes, you know, 10 minutes, whatever it is, like, it doesn't matter until you hit a certain threshold. So for us, it's like it, it's got to be $25 per cut. And if it's, if it's gonna take 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and it doesn't matter then if it's like 30, 40 minutes, now they're paying more. And so.

So your minimum is 20.

Ours is actually 25 now.

25.

But no, we're further down the road. Like, I still remember marketing $19 per mo. So, like, you know, for you, I would say I'd shoot for 20 if I was you. I think you can do it, and people get it. Like, people understand what's hard is that first year when they see it's only you, and. And then.

I think you would actually. It's more in your head than theirs. But it's easy to kind of think about, oh, well, you don't have any employees, you don't have any overhead. But this is the thing, Ezekiel. Like, you're not trying to build this for you to be mowing the rest of your life. You probably want someone else to be doing the work. And so once that's in play, like for me, for instance, it's a lot easier for me to sell that to a customer, saying, hey, by the time my crew gets here with a bunch of truck and equipment and. And I have a crew of two, I gotta charge 25 bucks. And so they understand that for you, it's a little bit harder just explaining that if someone asks, which, by the way, they never really do, but, like, as far as just working out in your head, you've got to just kind of the main thing, the biggest mistake that people make when they go from part time to full time is they go after, you know, they want a bunch of clients because they want to stay busy, because. Cause you're gonna have a little bit of time on your hands now that you're going full time. And so you fill it up, but you fill it up with a bunch of work that doesn't make you money, or it makes you money, but as soon as you hire someone, you'd be in the red. And so that's what then locks people. Cause what'll happen, Ezekiel, is if you continue on this same price trajectory, which I don't think you are. You're above that now, but if you did, what would happen is you would get 60 or 70 clients this year. They'd all be at that kind of low threshold, and you would. Next year, you wouldn't be able to grow because you'd have to hire someone. And if you did that, you would no longer be making money. And so that's what keeps, like, such an incredibly large percentage of landscape business owners in the field and solopreneurs and was working by themselves because their profit margin is so low that they hired someone. They'd start losing money, and that's never where you want to be. You really got to build it, like, right from the get go, as if you're going to be scaling this up to three or 400 clients and not, you know, 100.

Right, right. Well, that's, that's definitely. You know, when I first got in.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to go. Most of the people, most of the competition in my area, Central Valley, California, and to leave into another.

They're just guys that are just. Nothing's branded, you know, just, you know, they don't look professional. You know, a lot of them don't speak English.

You know, they're just in there, you know, pick up, you know, with their, with their stuff. And they might have, you know, to, you know, one, two, three guys.

But it doesn't look like they're real serious and professional. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's easy to set. To set myself apart from those guys. Yeah, I just got a new truck. Well, new to me, but it. But I got a different truck. But my old one was branded. I had the logo and website phone number and things on it. I need to do that to my new one. But that definitely sets my. Gives that perception of professionalism, you know, to people.

But.

Where'S I going with that?

Okay, so we're in the Central Valley. There's, there's, there's plenty of work around here. You know, it seems like we're coming out of a historic drought. We're getting a lot of rain, you know, over here in California, places are flooding.

But some of the other podcasts that I listen to, you know, some of them are saying, oh, you know, a dollar a minute, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, shoot, you know, I wouldn't be able to charge that, you know.

So it's like when I think of, like, cost of living and certain places, like Northern California, Southern California, it's higher. I think you can charge more.

But for Central California, I don't know if that's going to go too much. So I guess I got to figure out, you know, hey, what is the.

I don't know, what is the most permanent that people would be comfortable paying for?

Well, this is the thing. So a lot of times that's the question people ask is, what are people willing to pay? But you kind of got a reverse engineer and like, ask yourself, what do you need to charge in order to make a profit? You know, because, because if you. Because people are gonna, like, you More if you reduce prices. It's just the bottom line. Like, you're getting more business, you're gonna stay busier, whatever, right? Like, but you have to kind of determine, okay, because if you go down the road of, you know, lower cross or even competitive, like, middle of the road kind of cost and build your business that way, the problem is you don't have the. You don't have the.

Margin to make the nice trucks and have the equipment and employ people and set yourself apart from everyone else. And so I really push people to kind of in like that 70 to 80 percentile as far as price. Like, you're not the very highest, but you're not like, in the middle. You are a little bit on the pricier side. And you're not ashamed to tell people that. Like, you're okay with telling someone, hey, you're going to go get a better deal at someone. So if you go out and shop, but if you go with me, you're going to get X, Y and Z that they can't offer. And I can promise you that people that you have a little bit more money and it's valuable to them that they're going to go with you. Especially if, you know, like, just ask someone, do you want to be dealing with someone that can speak English or not? Like, just be blunt. Because, like, a property owner that has a property that's worth 3, $400,000, and they do want to be able to communicate with the contractors on their property, and they do want to be able to make sure that things are going to be done the way they want. And so they're willing to pay an extra $10 a week to go from a $10 mow to $20 mow. And you're like, well, that's double the price. Yes, but in their eyes, that's $40 a month to make sure that the people on their property are reputable, insured, bonded. If something happens wrong, they're not going to be liable. Like, so they. That's important to people. And I think a lot of people discount those values that a lot of homeowners have. And so when you say like when you talk about like a dollar a minute, I know it seems like crazy. And like, even when I, my first year, when I went full time, I was shooting for $40 an hour. So, like, I would always. It was like, what point, six, six.

Dollars per minute or whatever. And so that's what I was always shooting for. And I was usually between 30 and 40 kind of going after that. But this Is the thing as you get employees and you get the value because you're charging a little bit higher price, you have the money then to create those value, add those value. You know, the nice truck, the logo, the website, and invest in those things. Get better people because you have the margin. You can pay them more, get better people, train them better. And once you do that, now, you know, the next year we were charging $50 an hour and then 60. Now we're up to 80. And it's not that even like our area has gotten richer or anything like that. It's just that now we have such a. Obviously we're more efficient too. So that brings into some of it. You have bigger equipment, all that stuff. But on the other hand, the thing is that you've created so much value in. Okay, now we have an actual shop, like a physical location. That's a lot of value to people because they're gonna come talk to our people, ask for help on their landscape. It's like we become the experts. They have an actual physical location. There's no one in my market that can compete with me on that one thing. No one in my market that can compete on. You know that we have the materials aspect and the service aspect. They can come into the retail shop like, so the whole point behind all that is just to say that if you have the extra margin, yes, it's a little harder to scale up and get to, you know, say 50 accounts, but once you're there, you're going to have the margin to get to 500, because you would have created the value to sustain even more bigger increases in your pricing. And so, like, if you would have told me three or four, three years ago that I'd be charging 80 bucks an hour for mowing, like, I would have said, you're crazy. Cause I was like, I couldn't wrap my head around 40 bucks an hour.

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous.

I know. Like, and I told. I still, like, it seems crazy. Like, you know, the small. The fine print, of course, is we have bigger mowers and, you know, all that stuff, but. And more efficient and stuff like that. But the bottom line is that, like, right now you just want to make sure that you're charging enough. This is how you should be thinking about it. Can you pay an employee for what you're doing and still make money? If the answer is no, you gotta raise your prices. Because the last thing you want to be doing is building a business that you're going to be working in the rest of your Life. And you can't start scaling it so past 50 or 60 clients because you physically won't be able to be at all those houses by yourself.

And so this is the one question that if, like, solopreneurs going into your second year, kind of, I always say, people, they got to be asking themselves a question. Can you hire someone and pay their payroll taxes, like, all, like $20 an hour, plus all your overhead, which is, you know, your gas, your insurance, the truck expense, the equipment expense, all those things and still make a profit. And so that's why I tell people to shoot for $40 an hour, is because if you take $20 an hour and give it to someone, like I said, you got taxes and you got to pay L and I. All that stuff, 20 bucks an hour, and then you got $10 worth of gas and equipment costs and all that stuff. Once you incorporate into your overhead, which you have to account for because someone's got to pay that. And then if you charge 40 bucks an hour, you're making a 25% profit margin. And so, like, if you're saying, okay, well, I can hire someone for 10 bucks an hour, and really, you know, I can shave five bucks off of that. Great. You know, maybe you're gonna be shooting for 35, but, like, bottom line is there's a number that you have to hit to cover cost. Anything over that is money that you can put towards creating the brand that you want to make, like, long term. And so it's easy to get in, caught in, like, well, how close can I get it to that zero marker and get more business. On the other hand, like, okay, let me take. Let me spend an extra year building this business, but when the extra year passes, I'll have a 25% margin instead of a 5% margin.

Right, right. Oh, that makes sense.

And the. Sorry, I'll say one more thing, and then. Sorry, this is the problem, is that you're gonna make a 40% margin on the stuff you do this year because you're the only one working. You know, I'm saying. And so that's why most people won't make the jump once they hit 50 or 60 clients. They won't make the jump to hire someone because they're so used to making 40%, which is really amazing, but they're making that on 5,000amonth when they can make 25,000amonth. But if they have the margin in place where they can still make 20%, it. It's. It's just so much, you know, the returns are greater. So sorry to cut you off. What were you gonna say?

Yeah, no, no, that's fine.

Okay. So.

Like.

I don't know if I. Because I'm. I'm just. When I look at, like I told you, the 26.

Like around there.

That'S what I'm getting regularly, regularly for, like just, just the mowing accounts. And like, I don't know if you do contracts or anything. Like, we don't really do contracts. Kind of just, you know, word of oral contract, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, we don't do contracts either. We don't go. We don't do contracts. We do it by the, by the mo. And the reason I do that. I haven't actually said this before in the podcast and we. One of the benefits of doing that is because they get used of things like upselling. Because if they know, okay, $40amow, whatever, whatever. If there comes a slow season and you can say, hey, we don't need to mow your lawn right now, but we can do a leaf cleanup or we can do a tree trimming. That's one part of it. But also it's because they get used to kind of like. Because if I'm charging them by the mow, then they all say 40 bucks a mower. They know then that I have a menu of other items they can choose from. And they're all gonna have a dollar amount attached to it. Like, if they want a leaf cleanup, it's gonna cost X amount. If they want snow plowing, it's cost X amount. And so you can literally send them that. And then they know that as they need service, all they have to do is just tell you. And they already know the price. And so that's kind of. But we don't have contracts, so I wouldn't feel bad about that.

Okay.

And is that why you recommend doing the standardized pricing?

Oh, like, yeah, like. Well, standardized pricing is all around, like on so many levels, something you need to do. But yeah, like, it's part of it. Like, you. If you're gonna be doing per cut mowing, you need a meal to know how long it takes you. And then from that, know your hourly rate and from. From that, no profit margin, all your numbers. But without standardized pricing, you really can't plan a business because you never know what your margin is. You never know what you need to charge for a job to make money. And so that's standardized pricing. That's super important.

Yeah. Okay. I think I need to get the.

Estimating down because someone calls me out to come out and take a look. And it's like, okay, I think it'll take me this long to do that and this, you know, So I give them, you know, an overall monthly rate.

Right.

And that's kind of throughout the whole year. But then, you know, some year in the spring, there's a lot of trimming and things to do. And so, you know, sometimes they'll be there longer and then sometimes in the winter, you know, not much is growing. So I kind of feel bad if I'm only there, you know, to blow sidewalks off or something.

Yeah. And that's when. And that's when they.

I kind of feel guilty.

Right. Well. And that's when they clock out too. Right. Because they're paying you just as much as when you're there for five hours is when you're there for five minutes. And so you'll lose your customers when you're spending five minutes. And so that's why we try to charge by the service because. So this is what I would do if I was you, Ezekiel. And I don't know your market specifically and how everyone else is doing it, but this is what I would do if I were you. When you go to a job, offer them a price for a weekly and a bi weekly price. So if it's going to take, use the. I'm going to your numbers. So let's say we're trying to charge 40 bucks an hour. And so you go to a job and it's like, okay to mow the lawn only to just mow the lawn and edge it and things like that. Let's say it's going to take an hour. You say, okay, that's going to take an hour. So this is what I would do. If I say, okay, it's going to cost you $40 a week or $50 bi weekly. So they can choose which schedule they want to go on. And so they're like, okay, great, we want to do weekly. All right, cool. So $40.

I.

But instead of sending the estimate with just the 40 and 50 for the options, I would also give them a one time trimming price and a leaf cleanup price. Look at their prop. Because you would have walked their property already. So you'd know if they're gonna need a leaf cleanup, if they're going to need their trees trimmed. And so include all those prices and make a small menu. Like what's it gonna charge for a liming treatment? What's gonna charge for aeration or fertilization? Like put all those things in there. And I think you'd be amazed at how 50% of people will say, oh, we want the $40. But then we also want a monthly, I mean, an annual trimming of all our bushes and we need fertilization on our lawn as well. And so I think you'd be amazed in that. And this is the thing too. What's great about that, you're gonna get paid just as much in the winter as in the summer. Per time. As far as your time, like if you're there for five hours, you're gonna get a whole lot more money than. Than if you're there for five minutes. And so it makes more sense. It makes more sense for you because now you don't feel like an idiot going there working for five hours and not making any more extra. And they don't feel like an idiot when you're spending five minutes and they're paying the same amount.

Yeah. So you say when you. $40 an hour. So for that service, say they want weekly service.

Yep.

You're just doing. Are you doing 40 times 4 or 4.3. Like, are you, Are you.

Yeah, yeah. So.

Yeah. So here, let me pull this up here. I'll get an actual. What I'm doing for you here, one second. So essentially what I'm doing is, okay, if it takes an hour, it's going to cost 40 bucks. So like a 30 minute one is going to be 20 bucks and that should be kind of like your minimum. So essentially, you're charging for 30 minutes. Regardless of if it's gonna take you five or 10 minutes, you should be charging the 20 bucks, right? That's what I'd be kind of aiming for. And you know, if it's gonna be a 45 minute lawn, you know you're gonna be charging 30 bucks for the cut. And so what. Let me see here. So let me. I think you're gonna times that by one point. One second. Sorry. You're gonna take how many minutes? You're gonna multiply that by. Don't divide it.

Sorry.

Divided by 1.5. Yeah. So essentially you're gonna take the minutes divided by 1.5, and that's how what your cost per cut is gonna be. If you're charging 40, the 1.5, that's gonna get you to the 40. So if you're trying $40 an hour and it's gonna take you x amount of minutes, divide X by 1.5 and that will give you, you how much you need to charge them to make 40 bucks an hour.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So essentially, if you work 60 minutes, that's an hour. Divide that by 1.5 and that's 40. And so that's what you would be charging them to make 40 bucks an hour.

Okay.

And so use that same. Like if you're going for 40 bucks an hour and you go to cleanup and you're like, okay, that's going to take me like a whole day. That's like a 10 hour job. You should know right off the bat, you know that's going to be 400 bucks. And you know, plus dumping fees. You got to start incorporating some of these other things, right? And so you might. Okay, that's going to be $400 plus $69 for dumping fees, plus tax. You're looking around around 500 bucks. Like that is. And when you start doing this, like just giving stuff away to people for free, that is, it's showing the value you put in your brand. And so I would never suggest someone do stuff for free, especially right off the bat. Right? Like, and especially getting into the, into the customer's head of being a habit. Like, I would definitely know what you're worth right from the get go. Even if you don't think you have a lot of experience, you don't know a lot about horticulture or whatever. Like know what you're worth, your time's worth. And people will respect you for it. People will respect you for it. And if you're charging by the service, they're gonna want you to go quicker. And so they're, they're not gonna be out there japping away with you and they're not gonna be emailing you a bunch and doing stuff like that because they know that, that you're charging by time. And that's really all we do as a service business is we sell time.

No, exactly, exactly. Okay, so software, I know it's important. You know, you talk about the CRM and the accounting and things. I know you're. Is it FreshBooks that you go with?

So FreshBooks is what I suggest for all small businesses outside of lawn care landscaping. Like, have you listened to Business Boot Camp podcast or landscape business course podcast?

A bunch, Both of them.

Okay, so like essentially with the course, like in regardless if you're in the course or not, I said I suggest anyone under a million dollars in lawn care to do to use software called lawnpro software.com.

It'S so fundamental to the growth of our company that like in the course part, like if for the people who get in our course, I actually buy them A lifetime subscription to Lawn Pro because it's that fundamental. And we actually created the course without it. And I was like, there's no way people could do this without this course. And we wanted to make it standardized and actually in the course tell people how to use it correctly. And the reason is two really easy goals. Because Lawn Pro is made for lawn care and is not standardized for every single industry in the world. And so like for instance, FreshBooks is great. However, it doesn't have things like route.

Like creating a really efficient route via map, like putting all your jobs in. It creates you the most efficient route time for your mowing crew. Like it doesn't have that. It doesn't have things like maintenance things and very specific to our industry that we have to have like time tracking for jobs and then like chemical tracking and all the things that lawn care specific owners want is in Lawn Pro. And so as far as bang for your buck, it's incredible. And like Clip for instance, is good for like making estimates and things, but it's expensive. And so I tell people like, until you hit a million bucks and in a year you long Pro is hands down like I've seen all the softwares Lawn Pros the best until you hit a million. And the reason I say a million is because then you can afford 3, $400 a month, which is what you're gonna pay for a really good software package. And then you'll be able to actually see some, you know, kickback for that three or $400 to see, you know, a little bit more powerful estimating software way with some design and 3D imaging stuff and maybe like, but like Lawn Pro has like 98% of what like Clip has. It has like 98% of what like service, autopilot and all these other places have. So like that's why I push Lawn Pro big time. And that's why like I said, like we decided with the course we just buy every single one of our students lifetime subscription because it's just that good.

Okay, so so long Pro is a CRM.

Yeah, it's a CRM, right.

Accounting.

No, no. So, so sorry, sorry, sorry to make that, not make that clear. So FreshBooks is, you know, CRM. It does its own thing. Like it's essentially CRM accounting everything. Lawn Pro is all essentially FreshBooks for lawn care providers. So it has your accounting. It has your accounting, everything you need. You don't need QuickBooks. Like it'll do all of your accounting and expense tracking and reports and tax that. Like it does Everything. The only thing Lawn Pro doesn't do is payroll. So if you have a bookkeeper, they can do it for you. Like, that's what we do. It's, it's easier as far as time and stuff. So like QuickBooks, for instance, will do payroll. However, you're gonna be paying like 70 bucks a month and I might as well pay $70 a month to a bookkeeper and they'll do payroll for me. So like I really, like I said, I think Lawn Pro is the best. It does everything that QuickBooks and FreshBooks and clip 98% of all that stuff at a fraction of the price and is really, really good. Like I said, until you hit about a million bucks a year.

So what are your thoughts on Service Autopilot? Yeah, they seem to be more.

Yeah, so. So, yeah, so I think I mentioned it on one of the podcasts. We're switching over to Service Autopilot right now.

Yeah. And. But it's also because we're hitting that million dollar marker this year. And so like the return is there. Like, but like it's easy to go on Service Autopilot. Like, oh, it's 50 or $70 a month, but you got to look at all the things they tack on because like we're paying $15 per employee for access for them. Then you pay $49 more for the Maps function. Then, then you pay.

$80 if you want the pro version, which you gotta have for time tracking other stuff. Like, we're gonna be paying, I think it's gonna be like almost 250, 280 bucks a month for that serve that product. Whereas, whereas with, with Lawn Pro, you pay the one time thing, it's $9 per month if you want the maps function. And I think that's like it. And so it's like for what you get and what you need it for, it'll do 98. And still honestly, it'll do 98% of what service Autopilot does. It's just that now because we have the volume, that 2% of efficiency it gives us is now worth the $250.

Per month.

It's not like a monthly prescription subscription where you peek on unpaying. You just pay it off and you're good.

Yeah, Lawn Pro is $249 one time. And then if you want to use the routing maps function, it's nine bucks a month. And the reason for that is, is because like it's on all, like Service Autopilot, they all charge for routing because they plug into like MapQuest or Google Maps, and they have to pay per use, so I get that. And so that's the only thing you pay for extra in Long Pro and it's nine bucks a month. But other than that, like, everything else, time tracking expenses, tracking you, your scheduling software, like, all of that's integrated and all part of the initial thing. And so, like, that's why we upped our price for landscape business course, because I wanted to include the $249 so that, like, now when people essentially get the course, they get login credentials for Lawn Pro, and so that I really believe Lawn Pro is the best. That's just me, though.

So right now, just because I didn't have, you know, all the money, you know, for, for everything, I've just been using Yardbook and Wave.

Yep.

They'Re both free, you know, but I still haven't really utilized them right now, like Yardbook, I'm mainly doing like, the invoicing.

Right.

You know, briefly. I've messed around with the lot measurements and, you know, some of those things. But really right now it's just the invoicing and then the wave, you know, just their personal and business. But I still haven't gotten in depth into all that stuff. But would you. I mean, you would still recommend the Long Pro because they're both integrated and you can grow with it. Like, you can scale with it.

Absolutely. Like, I. Like, you got it right there. Like, it's all about scaling and it's built to grow with you. But on the other hand, it's integrated.

So.

So for instance, like, I'm looking at our Lawn Pro right now. Like, when I go into my customers page, I don't have, like, I click on one of these customers and let's see here.

I see all their invoices, I see all their estimates, I see the documents we've attached, their profile. So like, if I can. I see all their notes. So if they have, like make calls and things like that, I can see what they've paid this year. Let's see here, what else? I can see what kind of invoice delivery preference they have. So I can put in right here. If they like it via postal, emailed, or text message, I can text message their invoice or I can email it, or I can click a button here and it sends them in the mail. I don't have to print it off. Like, and all of that's integrated. Right. And the power. That's incredible. Like, literally the one, like this is what I tell people, going from Something like Yardbook and a wave, which I, by the way, have used wave quite a bit for the podcast in way before. Like the one feature. One feature alone in Lawn Pro will save you the time that it cost you. And that is, the one feature is enabling your automatic invoicing. And what that means is, like is at the end of every month, it creates the invoice automatically for your customers, for all your mowing clients. And so what you do is when you set up their recurring MO in your schedule, you put, okay, it's $40aMO every other week. Great. It puts, it puts it into the schedule. You at. You work throughout the whole month. You complete the jobs as you do them. At the end of the month, it knows, okay, Bill, Bob or Ms. Jones got two mo's and she paid. She pays $40 per mo and will automatically create the invoice. All you do is click the send button and it'll already have her pricing in there. And then when she clicks the link. So when, like Lawn Pro, for instance, it sends them a link, they click that link and they got like all their payment history. They got all of their, their. They can update their contact information. Like, it's all integrated, right? And even just the fact, like I can see on here, when I send someone an invoice or an estimate, I can see if they've opened it and if they viewed it and, and all of that. So that way I don't have to guess or wonder or hope someone actually saw the estimate and people can't tell me they didn't see the invoice. And I'm like, actually, yesterday at 2:31, you saw your invoice. And so that's the power of Lawn Pro, in my opinion. And that's just that one feature, though, will save you, because I can guarantee you right now, you spend half a day at the end of the month putting together your invoices, going back, looking at when you did the work, things like that. Especially if you start charging by the job, that takes more time. But with the automatic invoicing, it's just that alone saves you an incredible amount of time.

Okay, quick questions.

Go for it.

Right now I'm doing.

My edging with the line trimmer. Yep, the string trimmer. But that doesn't seem scalable to me. And that doesn't seem like a new guy just coming on board would be able to do it as good as I'm doing it now. Do you, do you use a stick edger? Do you use a power edger? What do you guys use?

We still. So every market's a little different. It depends, too, upon the type of grass that you have in your area. However, we still use line trimmers for our edging, and then we have stick edgers on all of our trailers, because sometimes if people have, like, wood chips, we don't want to be blowing those all over the place, and so we'll use those. But I'd say 90% of our edging is still done with line trimmers. I think you'd be amazed, if you train people correctly, how fast they'll get to it. So, like, really, when it comes down to it, like, I know. I like how you're thinking, like, oh, is this gonna be easy to scale with employees? Like, that's a good way to start thinking. However, I think if you have the training systems in place when a new person comes on board and you train them, whether it be videos and all of that.

You know, it's funny. I just got out before I came on your call. We just finished our new employee orientation. So essentially, what they do, like, today I'm in there, there was five of them, and all we did was watch videos. And it's just our employee training videos that they watch, and it teaches them how to edge and mow and sharpen blades and how to do mulch stuff like calculations and fertilization and tree trimming and all of that stuff.

And.

And so they learned all of that today. And I think if you train people, you'd be amazed. You had a system for that and how to train them and exactly what you wanted, how you wanted them to do it. I think you'd be amazed at how quickly they could actually pick it up. If you teach them the tricks and tips that you know.

Okay, do you use a disc? Do you have that disc on it, or is it just the regular line trimmer?

Oh, we just use the regular. I know what you're talking about. The Edge Pro things. Those are cool. I've seen those, and those are cool. The thing is, I don't want to have to take them off for when we do regular weed whacking. I want that weed whacker to be as, like, versatile as possible. And, like, the downtime of taking that thing off on and off throughout the day is brutal. So we don't even have the guides on there, like, the Edge pros. We just do it without, like, just straight with just a line.

Okay.

But there's no right or wrong on the ways. I bet the Edge Pro would probably make our edges look nicer. But there's gotta be eventually a give and take. Like if you're by yourself, using an edge pro is fine because you spending three or four minutes just means you have three or four minutes less at home with your family. Whereas when you start spending three or four minutes extra per job with employees, that's starting to take money out of your pocket. And so it's easy to be like, oh, I don't mind not spending a little extra time with my family tonight. That's okay for you right now. And you can work 12 and 15, 30 hour days if you want. But like when you start hiring people, that's money out of your pocket, right? And so every single minute starts to count. You have to do, eventually you have to make the trade offs of quality or like the things that you like to do or think that make the job look the best. Trade offs with that versus efficiency. And what's gonna make the bottom line beef up enough. And some people are like, oh, well, you gotta focus on quality first. Well, the thing is I can make my quality better if I have margin to work with so I can train my people, pay them more and make a real business, you know, and so that's not selfish. It's not selfish to be like, oh, okay, we're gonna have to cut. Like I know that we're gonna have some complaints and things like that because we're growing so fast and things like that. I get it, right. But I'm also well aware that I need the deal flow and I need the growth if we're gonna create the business I want to. Right? And so there's a trade off. There's a trade off because if I wanted to maintain quality to the utmost, I'd be at every single job. I'd be doing the walkthroughs with every single client. And so like my biggest challenge right now is training guys how to do those things. Do the client walkthroughs, how to do estimates, how do you like, talk with the client? Because I can't be at every job, you know. And so I think if people figured that out and started building their business like that from year one, they'd see scale like much faster and much more profitable.

Yeah, yeah. Because I guess that's the struggle that I'm having too, is maintaining, you know, the quality. But yet, hey, if I start slipping on the quality, I'm not gonna be able to raise my prices, you know, or charge the premium, you know, price. If I'm slipping on the quality, you know, but then having a new guy come out and he comes out and scalps the lawn, you know, or something. But I heard on your recent podcast, you guys don't even step onto the. Your customers lawns and until they've had some training, like in a park or at a different location. So that's actually. That's a good idea.

Yeah, yeah. Like, like, so, like, for instance, like, like what they watch today, that's all video training. And then over the course of next week, they get all their training out in the field. I'm with them for one day, and then they're with the manager for a day. We do training all together, essentially, like, so tomorrow, if this snow doesn't stick around, we're going to all be together and essentially go over everything we saw in the videos. And so that's a big key point is like, you know, the day after to go over everything in real life. And so like those video training things we put on the course just for people to get an idea of how we do it. Like, some of it, you could actually some of the students use it for their employees. But I really say, hey, make, you know, get this as a template and then make your own videos or like, at least customize some of them to your market and like, kind of your type of trees and your type of grass that we talk about and your type of fertilizers that you use a lot. But the main thing is that you do it right. And so I made it really just for, like, people like, okay, this is how I do it. And maybe they, a lot of them still use it, which I kind of wish some of them would be more like, oh, this is a template. I need to make it my own. But it's just a. It's a must. It is a must. And it's part of, like, you've probably heard about me raving about the hiring system. And it's just another part of the hiring system. You know, when they do application, then you have a job fair, then you have interviews, and then you hire them and train them. And having that system in place will just save you so much headache.

Right, right. Okay. Well, another thing that I'm.

Considering. Well, because people ask for landscape type services, hey, do you put in sod or do you, you know, kind of different, kind of smaller installations that you don't need a.

License for?

Right, Yep.

You know, valves or whatever.

I'm like, man, that, you know, because I don't have the experience, I'm still trying to master the, the maintenance and the business aspect of it, you know, I feel that opportunity cost worth, like, is it, is this really going to benefit me in the long run to take the time and energy to learn these, to learn how to thin a sprinkler system, you know, or sod or these other things?

Or don't, don't try to master.

Just focus on the business and subcontract that stuff out.

I wouldn't worry about mastering, you know, anything. If you focus too much on mastering one specific task, whether it be mowing a lawn or edging or whatever, if you focus too much on the mastering part, you'll never get anything done. You'll never want to hire anyone else because they'll never be a master like you. And so there's a trade off. And you've probably heard me talk about subcontracting and stuff like that. However, for things like sod, watch a couple YouTube videos, spend 30, 40 minutes on YouTube on how to lay sod and some of like, the specifics of like, you'll learn that fast and you'll know more than 98% of homeowners. You know tree trimming, same thing. Like, yes. There's gonna be 1% of the population that wants, you know, every single tree name and know the horticulture and know what type of nutrients they need and know the pruning technique for every type of plant. Yes. But 99% of the population just wants their trees trimmed so that they don't look bad. Right. And so I think, I think you don't want to overthink it and you don't want to be the master of any one thing. You want to know how to do a lot of these things, like. Yes, like irrigation. I don't go into irrigation. We stop going to irrigation. We stop doing ponds, we stop doing fences and decks. But like sod, Absolutely. Mulch install. Absolutely. Driveways with gravel. Absolutely. Tree like planting, like all that stuff, that's money in the bank and that's like, that's the gravy on the maintenance. Right. The maintenance pays the bills and is that steady source of income every month? But all that other stuff is like, that's where the money's at.

But is that the, is that stuff that you personally learn how to do and do yourself before you hire guys, or is that stuff that you eventually started hiring the guys to do that?

So are we talking like sod and like, things like that? Yeah, like, honestly, like, like I said, like, I think you'd be amazed at how easy some of that stuff is. Is to learn, like things like sod, laying in sod, even hydro seeding and seeding. Like, literally go on YouTube and watch an hour's worth of videos, the first page of YouTube on how to install lawns or put in mulch and why you use certain types of mulches versus others and types of gravel. Like, what's the difference between three quarter minus versus three quarter clear and like, figure that stuff out, get the lingo down so you're a little more confident when you go into those situations with the clients. What's the difference between drain rock and, you know, you know, pit run or whatever? When you start talking about these, these larger landscaping jobs. And I think, I think a lot of those things are very much more labor intensive and less.

Experience, depending as you might think. Like laying sod, trimming trees, putting in mulch, like, those are mostly just laborers. And you can teach that to anyone. I can teach anyone how to sod within an hour. I can teach anyone. And whether that be through a video or if I have to show them for 20 minutes, like, it can be taught, right? Like irrigation, you get a little more complicated. I don't even want to go down that route. Fencing things like that really take some hard skills and a lot of a little more liability. Like how much liable, how liable can you be for installing gravel and mulch? You know, and even sod, like, as long as it's flat and in straight lines and cut correctly, like, there's not much you can do wrong. And so like, we've cut out a lot of those bigger items that take a lot of skill because it's harder to find people that will stick around for a long time and that are cheap enough for us to scale our business. So we have pared down. But I think you're still in that stage where I'd be focusing on, you know, getting acquainted with the laying sod, putting in mulch, putting in driveways with gravel, like all that stuff, learn drain rock and cobbles and learn some basic design just by looking on images on Google even of like some typical landscapes that use certain types of products. And so when you look at an area, you can, it pops in your head, know what to talk about with the customer and kind of put that visual image into their mind and know what you're talking about. And literally, whether that be like we have that sort of thing in our employee training manual, but then like, literally that YouTube for a couple hours, you know, and that's where the money is at, man. Like with, even with like I said that's what I'm talking about. With, like, with 28 accounts, you're leaving 1,400 bucks a month, I believe, on the table right now in upselling them on mulch and tree trimming and putting in some extra sod or seeding of an area that is bare. Cause their dog is running, like, whatever it is. That's where the money's at. That's where it is.

Okay, now when you say tree trimming, is it like you need harnesses and you need.

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. No, I mean trimming. What. Anything you can do from the ground, like doing people's hedges, doing their shrubs. Sorry, I should. I should say like, shrub trimming. Yeah, my bad. No, I don't mean like tree service. I mean. Yeah, anything hazardous we don't touch. Anything over 20ft, we don't touch. It's around power lines, we don't touch it. No, yeah, definitely.

No, I'm talking, like, that's kind of liability.

No, no, no, I get, you know, like, yeah, if we did. If we aren't doing anything over 20ft, our insurance would quadruple as far as our insurance costs. And so we stick to shrub. But this is the thing. Everyone needs their shrubs done. Like, especially in our area, we have. People have shrubs. Everyone has shrubs around their house. Like, down there, it might be a little bit different. Like, you know your market, right? And so you just gotta. Gotta figure out what's like, for us, we have, you know, lawn care is kind of like one of the pillars of our business outside of, like, our retail aspect where we deliver stuff. But, like.

Lawn care is the pillar. Right? But then, like, right behind that is winter and fall cleanups. Right behind that, like, leaf cleanups. Behind that's like mulch installs. Right. Like. And so I know the rhythm and the pattern of how I need to upsell someone. First thing is I want to get them on a fall and winter cleanup, our fall and spring cleanup. To trim all their trees, clean out all their beds, weed their weed, everything. And that's the first thing I'm going after. Then I'm going to try to get them on. On getting a mulch install in the spring so everything looks nice and keeps the weeds down. And then fertilization, it just goes down and down, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I guess that's the thing about. I guess itemizing it is everyone expects, like, I guess everyone already expects you to pick up the leaves in the fall.

Mm.

But you. But if you're just charging for the basic.

Yep.

Mo edge, blow.

Yep.

And then all the other stuff is kind of just a la carte.

Exactly.

Okay, okay.

And then what's cool about that, too, is you can be like, oh, Mrs. Jones, your driveway needs pressure washed. It will cost you 1. 99. And then they can say yes or no instead of them calling you, like, why aren't you doing my driveway? You know, and so you want it to. That's why I like a la carte so much, is you can recognize things they need before they even approach you. Because, like, right now, if they're paying 100 bucks a month and you notice something, you don't tell them because you don't know if they might be like, oh, yeah, great idea. Take care of it, and I'm not gonna pay you anymore. Right. And so you won't even point out those things. Whereas when you're doing new growth on the shrubs there.

Hey, how come you haven't trimmed the subject?

Right. Exactly.

Trimming them like four or five times a year.

Exactly. Whereas they might think, oh, maybe I don't need it four times a year. Maybe I need it once a year. But now you're gonna get paid, you know, and so you want them to be on the same page as you. And that is they. They want efficiency. Like they want a, you know, good deal. Da, da, da. But in doing so, they're gonna be trying to rip you off if you're. If you are charging a base, a flat fee. Right. And so unless you're big and you can incorporate that rip off or that time that, you know, they're gonna have you trim the trees four times that are twice a year. Like, you can incorporate that in your business. And there's business models that have done it. But, like, that. You've got to be charging a lot of money for that extra cushion. And.

Okay, so if. How do I go from where I'm at with a flat rate.

Yep.

I mean, is that something that has to be gradual? Is that something I can just.

I would do it for all your needs. Right, right. I would do it for all your customers. Like, I'll give you kind of steps here for first things first. I would say going forward, new clients have to be a la carte for mowing, and then you give them a menu of items. Right. Going forward, then what I'd be saying is once you hit 30 clients, every single one that you go over, you're going to approach that bottom feeder, the first client, second, third client, that is the worst paying, and you're going to tell them that you got to up their price. Then if they let you go, great. Who cares? You aren't making money on them anyways. Don't lose a night's sleep. And you have 30 plus clients now, so who cares? Okay. No better off. And so do that. And then once you get about 40 clients, that's when I'd start going back to those initial 25, 20, whatever you have left from this past year and start approaching them and saying, okay, I just want to be really clear as far as our pricing. This is what you're getting charged for mowing. And that's what we're gonna do every week or every two weeks. And you're gonna build every month just like usual. But now it's just based upon mowing. And then if you want any of these other items, just let me know and I can do them anytime. This is what the thing is. If right now you're charging $50 to show up at someone's property because you're doing their leaf cleanup and their tree trimming and everything's included, and you come to them and say, okay, it's gonna be $30 a week now, they're gonna be like, oh, that's great, but that's just for mowing, right? And so. But now the thing is, when you go back for leaf cleanup and you go back for other things, you're gonna get paid more. Like, you're gonna get paid more by the time you might end up making just the same amount of money, but you'll spend less time there because now they know they're paying you by the job, and so they aren't gonna have you do it the four time a year. Trimming, like, that's out of hand, right? And so. And then, like I said, you can upsell them on so many more things because now you're incentivized to look after their property and. And be like, hey, there's moss on your roof. Maybe come fall when, by the way, you might be a little bit slower, you can go up there and get moss off the roof or put moss out or clean out their gutters, you'll notice those things and you'll be incentivized, and they will like it more because now you're approaching them and being proactive. But the bottom line is you're gonna make more money now, whereas now you don't, you know.

Right, Right. Okay. Okay.

Appreciate your time.

No, man, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna hold you to it, man. Like, come in a Few months I'm gonna expect an email back from you saying, yeah, I did that and that and that and now and then I want to be hearing you're like, like at least 45 customers. I think you can get to 50 this year if you really kind of like I'm gonna say that you're gonna have to cut some of the ones you got now. I don't mean cut them as much as you're gonna say. You're going to say you're going to double their price and they're going to leave and you ought to be okay with that. But I seriously think when you go to full time is when you see the kick, right? Like my first year I did 30,000 in revenue. The year that's when I was part time at Working Anytime Fitness, I went full time. Next year we made 200,000.

That's not just on mowing and things.

Just on mowing. We weren't doing the retail, we weren't doing any of that. It was 200,000. But it's so possible, like incredibly possible. And if you would have told me that. I know, but like, listen, like if, if in my first year, so my first year we did 30,000. My best month, I think I hit six grand a month and I was working by myself, kind of part time with the gym. But if you would have told me the next year my goal was 100 grand and we made it to 200 and the difference was going full time. And I think what you're gonna notice, you're gonna notice first of all, first of all, you're gonna notice how possible it is. So secondly, you're gonna notice how small that really is. And you're like, what do you mean by that? Cause once you hit 100, you gotta start hiring people and your margin's gonna go down. But now you're scalable, right? There's that line there. You're gonna have to cross next year when you gonna have to hire someone and take a cut in your actual take home pay because you're focusing on scaling the business and not creating a job for yourself, right?

And that's what I want to do, right?

Because if I would have made. Because this is the thing, listen, this 200,000, I had one employee, I probably brought home 100k into my pocket right now. There's two ways I could have gone there. I could have been like, great, I'm gonna make 100k, you know, 19 years old. This is great. I'm gonna live on this the rest of my life. I could have done that, or I could put the money back into the business, employed more people, and the next year made less money, but we scaled it up to 550 grand. Yeah, so. So, like, the whole thing is, first of all, you got to go really clear on what you want out of the business. Like, if you just want a job and you just want to work by yourself, great. You know, Maz will talk to you, and you can go work five or six days a week, probably bring home, you know, you can easily, easily do 120, 130 grand gross revenue and bring home 50 or 60k. Like, you can easily do that if you create a brand. And then if you just want to stay at that, that's fine. Because all you do is raise your prices. And as you get new clients, you raise your prices more, and you get more clients, you raise your prices and just cut off all the bottom feeders. And you make great margins. Great. Fantastic. But what happens when you're 50 or if you get hurt or you want to go on a vacation, you know, and so. And you'll never get over the 120, 150,000 market. Like, if you want to get a million, like now, if I put the brakes on my growth right now, and I said, okay, I'm not gonna invest money back in the business. I'm not gonna focus on making another location. I'm stopped hiring people. I'm just gonna stay at the 10 people we got. If we just stay here, yeah, I could take a big paycheck home, but I'm still where I want the business to go in five years is way, much, much bigger. But this is the thing. You don't have to be that. You don't have to have 20 people or 50 people or whatever. You can be okay with one by yourself. You can be okay with a couple guys. And the big thing I tell people is like, get really clear on what you want out of the business. And that will dictate what your pricing is. It'll dictate how many trucks you buy. If you employ people, how many people you do employ. Like, it'll dictate all of that if you get really clear on what you want out of the business, or else it'll start throwing you around and your customers will throw you around. But if you're like, you know what? I want this. This is what I want out of my business, you'll put your foot down on clients that aren't paying you enough and are giving you a hassle because you'll you've probably know this already. The ones that pay the least are the ones that give you the most hassle. So like, you'll stand up to that because you know what you want out of the business and you're not serving the business, the business is serving you.

Right. Right. Well, that's when I first started off, I didn't, I didn't even see that as a possibility. I thought, okay, like, you know, there's a little bit more room for growth, you know, more income here, some freedom and you know, all that, all that jazz, you know, self employed and everything. I didn't, I didn't really realize what I was getting into. But, you know, I'm glad I took that step. But now, you know, from listening to your podcast and some other, some other podcasts, I see.

The sky's the limit. You know, it's just as much as know how much work and effort am I going to want to, you know, put into it and you know, living beneath, you know, below my mean, you know, I read, I read your book.

Oh, you did?

Really appreciate it.

I was good. I was just about to offer to send you a free copy, man.

What's that?

I was just about to offer to send you a free copy of my book and you're already ready.

Or you can sign it too, because I got the PDF.

Oh, okay. Oh, you do? Okay. Hey, Kate, what's your, what's your physical address?

Perfect.

All right, yeah, I'll get them the mail for you tomorrow.

Thanks, man. Yeah, no, but you know, so I really appreciate, you know, the book and you know, living, you know, beneath the means, cutting the expenses. I think there's still some, some expenses like cut. But I think, you know, we're kind of, we're kind of pushing it. You know, I really, I really like how you're, you're getting into the real estate, investing, you know, multifamily complexes and things. So I went through the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace and I think that's been really good personally, my own budget and things. But now, you know, I'm starting to read Robert Kiyosaki and the Rich Dad, Poor dad. And I'm kind of seeing some, some differences of philosophy and debt and things like that. So I'm like, oh man, you know, which way should I go here? But I think I'm kind of seeing a blend, you know, between the two where Dave Ramsey is kind of a good foundation and you know, really getting the self control and discipline and things. But then I see the, the Rich dad, poor dad. And that investing and things like that.

Is kind of more advanced, you know, more for. So. But I kind of see that in your book, you know, so, you know, I was going to ask you.

Dave Ramsey or Robert Kiyosaki. Yeah, yeah.

Well, like, yeah, like my, my, my philosophy is like, okay, so like, if you take a profit and loss statement or like a financial statement of any sort from a business.

90% of it is what you. I guess you would call Dave Ramsey. And that's budgeting, right? Like, what did you spend? Where did you spend it? What I'm focused on is the top 1 inch of that statement that tells me how much money I made. Gross. Right? Because everyone can get really freaked out about the next 20 pages of where the money was spent. But if that first line item isn't big, the rest of it doesn't matter. It doesn't get you excited, out of bed, right? So I really focus on sales and driving the revenue up. And then you then start worrying about how to spend the money. Right? But I think people get so wrapped up in, like, budgeting sometimes that they, I'm gonna save every penny. I'm not gonna go, you know, finance my equipment or like. But guess what? If you would have financed that equipment, you could have growed your business by double last year and now you'd be making, you know, twice as much. Right? It's like, I think there's a trade off there. I see both sides of the story. I think there's. If you're investing, I mean, if you're investing in their business and, you know, the return on, you know, for instance, for lawn, lawn equipment, most the time you get 0% down. And so the advantage of that is you can get a great piece of equipment that cuts your efficiency, like, increases your efficiency incredibly. And with no money down and zero percent interest. Right. Like, say. Well, if it's zero percent interest, they're building that into the price, obviously. Duh. Like, they're not stupid. However, you get to immediately get the benefits of a piece of equipment that's going to double your efficiency. Like, that's incredible. And so if you use that piece.

Of equipment, how long would it have taken you to spend to save that?

Exactly right. Because, like, if you use that piece of equipment for 300 hours over the course of a year and you make, say, 40 bucks an hour mowing lawns, and now you can double your efficiency, you're essentially increasing $40 an hour times that by 300. Like, there's not even. There's not even Metrics to describe your return on investment. Right. And so think there's a trade off. I think there's a balance. I don't like the people who lease and rent and have a huge, like we're 10, 20% of their or 20 plus percent of their revenues are going to like financing equipment and trucks and land and all that. Like, I'm not into that. I don't believe in that. I don't think it's a lean model that is. Can get through hard times. Like 2007, 2008, a lot of companies went down because they were on that kind of financed model. And so when the big contracts fell away, they couldn't do anything. However, I also think there's no. I know for a fact there's no way I could go from 30,000 to 200,000 to 550,000 to a million just using my bootstrapped money. Like there would have been no way. So I think there's a balance.

Yeah. That leverage.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so.

When do I need to start thinking of hiring someone? And when I do, is it part time, full time? Like, do I want my first employer to be full time or do I go with someone part time?

Yeah, so that's kind of like in our course we break it down in three years. So you're kind of really in year two and that's when you're starting to think about employees. For instance, by the way, my first year I had 28 accounts. Exactly. And so you're kind of going into year two. And so year two is when I hired my first guy. He was part time at first, within a couple months because now he was able to do a lot of the work. I was able to focus on sales. Once you get that part time guy and he can work a couple days a week and allow you to get in the field and start doing some sales, you're gonna get him full time pretty fast. And so obviously you want a good guy for that first one because if you have a bad experience, it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth and, and isn't good for the business, obviously. But like, I think it's important there to get that first guy good so that you can build the foundation on that. But I would definitely say get him part time. Do it where a couple days a week you're able to focus more on sales or even if he just works with you in the truck so that you can get the jobs done faster and that allows you to have a couple days extra in the field doing Sales, you're gonna get the pipeline of sales coming in so much that, that eventually you'll get them on full time. And so people think about that one a lot, but I think it's actually more natural than you might think. Once you get someone on part time, it gives you more time. Even if you work with them in the truck, you're getting the jobs done faster and give you more time to go, get more jobs, get more work, get some of these upsell, go to clients and talk to them about stuff they need at their property. You're going to get that. And so then the next step is you get one or two full time guys. And now like where I'm at Now, it's is 100% now sales and marketing. Right. And that's incredible leverage as far as your time and the return on that is incredible. And so those are the jumps you're kind of experiencing. Your first jumps is your two, and that's when you, when you go full time. Your next jump is when you get a full time employee. And then you're gonna see a jump when you go full time sales. Only when you're not working out in the field anymore. Yeah.

Okay. So right now I've got like one of everything. I've got some backup on, you know, a few pieces of equipment, but you know, it's just one truck, one trailer, one, you know, mower, you know what not. So if I get a guy part.

Time, throw him in your truck, more.

Realistic that he's gonna be with me in the truck and I'm still gonna be out, you know, training him and teaching him like on the, on the, on the go.

Yep, absolutely. I wouldn't buy another truck and stuff until he's full time.

So he's full time?

Yeah. Once he's full time, then I would invest in buying another truck so that you can go do other estimates or even other landscaping jobs that don't require the trailer. Like you can throw molts in the back of your truck, stuff like that. Then you can do estimates and like let him go take up the trailer. But when he's part time, I would put him in your truck so you don't have to buy another one yet because you don't want to buy a whole other truck and trailer and all that for a couple of days, a week of worth of work. But when he goes full time, like you're all in now and I'd get another truck then.

Okay, and now when he's full time, is he the only one on the route.

He could be like you, you could still hop in with them. Obviously now he's full time. You've committed to make sure he has 40 hours a week as far as work time. So that's fine. That's great because now you might have 20 hours where you can go dedicate to talk to, you know, the 40, 50 clients you have about ways to upsell them. And that's gonna keep his next week busy. And then like this is the thing, when you have people that are full time and you're committed to make sure that they stay busy, it really pushes you as a salesperson to go out and get more jobs and go out. And whether it be upselling people or getting new work or going out knocking on doors or going to property management, you get creative when you got to fill someone's schedule. And so.

In a way it's really a commitment your end to the business. When you, when you hire someone full.

Time, they're dependent on you. You're. You're responsible for them.

Exactly. Hey. Well. Hey Ezekiel. I actually got a run here about five, 10 minutes. But if there's something else I can answer, let me know. No problem.

Okay, last one. Even if someone's going part time, what, what do I need for them to be legit? As far as you know, the insurance and things like that.

Yep. So your insurance is based. Okay, I like this is for Washington state. It's for most places in the US but especially in California, like check, check up on this. I'm just telling you what we do. So like for us, our insurance is based upon our payroll. And so it's not much like literally because if you don't have any claims on your insurance, you're going to start off at like 20, 30 bucks a month. It's going to be nothing for liability. And I'm talking like a million dollars in liability. Once you start making claims, your payroll goes like you get more people, it'll start going up. But like liability insurance is not very expensive. Get it and then bond yourself. It's like 200 bucks a year to bond with the state. Get bonding just to tell someone and put on your website that you're licensed and bonded is super important. As far as other steps. Obviously the most important thing in my opinion is the hiring system. Making sure they hot. We have on the thing like with employee contracts, what they should be signing, making sure they have a non compete in their contract, having all their wages and their pay schedule for raises in the future, all of that, who they're responsible to what standards are going to be held to. That should be all in their contract. That's the most important, in my opinion, is what standards and training you give them up front. That's more important to me than the steps of legally getting them set up. Like, I promise you, you just got to talk to a bookkeeper. They will set you up. They will do payroll for you. They will send the IRS wants their money, and they're gonna make sure you log your hours and they get their payroll taxes. And so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I'd be worried, more worried about training your people, getting the right people by having a system in place to attract talent and making sure, focusing on that. And like, the employee contract is super big and something that I tell everyone they just gotta have in writing. It's good for the employee, it's good for you. It covers them. It covers you for, like, things like you hear all these crazy stories about, you know, the employee going after all your work and taking your work. All of that can be prevented. Every. All those horror stories can be prevented if it's done correctly. And so that's what I would focus on and more like systems and procedures to get the right talent and then train them to. To become like the people you want.

Okay. Okay. All right, man. Hey, I appreciate it.

Hey, no problem. Yep, go for it.

Public school, private schooled, homeschooled me.

Yeah, I did all. I did all of those. I did private till I was in grade 8, and I did kindergarten twice and then skipped grade 7, and then I did grade 9 and 10 at home. @ home school. And I played a whole bunch of golf while I was doing that. And then that's when we started our lawn care business. My brother and I pushing our mower around to pay for college, which I started when I was 13, and I did grade 11 and 12 while I was doing my first two years of college.

And then I got out of college and did my MBA while I started the business. So. But yeah, I did kind of it all. I did. I did the public thing, did the golf through the public school system, and then I did the private and then homeschooling. So all sorts of fun stuff.

What's that?

Sorry.

Give me a book.

Reco. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. Here goes. It's relentless by tim.

Grover.

Sam.