WARNING.... the lawn care industry falls in this TRAP every year!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today is the Mike Andes Live show. And I'm looking forward to it. I haven't done one of these since Christmas Day. And so it's been almost a month and a half. And so I want to jump on here, do some live calls. So if you have a question, call this number here. I'm going to go ahead and talk a little bit, though, first while we get ready for. While we have some people queuing for calls. I want to talk about one of the biggest risks that I see for. For most landscape businesses and something I see happen every single year in our community. And that is we know what we need to do for the spring rush. We know what we need to do in order to grow in 2022 in this coming year. And yet for some reason, some reason, we delay and we think, oh, well, we still have till March, we still have till April, and because of our procrastination, we literally never get it done. And then all of a sudden, we're so busy with work. But because we haven't had this, we don't have the systems in place because we don't have the employees that are required, because we don't have our marketing plan ready to go, we literally lose out. And do not take advantage of one of the best times of year to grow your business, which is the spring rush, when your customer acquisition cost is low and you can absolutely dominate your market. If you have put a plan in place, if you have actually committed to writing things down and actually executing on them prior to this, you're not gonna have time to implement certain systems once spring rush starts. And if you anticipate that you should be doing them now, we're in February, right? We're no longer Christmas. We're not talking about Thanksgiving. This is no longer the holidays. It's time to put our boots on and work. And that might not be actually putting on your physical, hard, you know, toe shoes and get out there and working. It might mean sitting behind a computer and figuring out a software. It might be the figuring out how to do your training and opening up a Google document and creating your marketing plan, actually then creating a very, very focused and detailed budget for what you're going to spend. So I have a very detailed video on the steps you need to follow this coming weekend, coming out for what you need to do for the spring rush. But if you, if you are procrastinating right now, you're going to be caught with your pants down. This spring rush will be the craziest one we've ever had because we are going to have an unmatched demand for our services with an unmatched lack of supply when it comes to labor, as well as an unmatched lack of supply when it comes to getting your supplies, your equipment, etc. So I think this is going to be an awesome opportunity. I talked a lot about at the conference, but let's go ahead and jump into things. If you have a question, feel free to call in and I will answer that question live here on the show. And you'll be able to talk to me just from your cell phone. So call the number below. It's 361-733-3333. I'm gonna go through some of these questions that are popping in the chat, but then I would like to have a couple callers. So feel free to hop on in there if you have a question. Michael says, how do you have only 32K? Oh, thank you. I appreciate Michael. At the end of the day though, the market is the market. They will decide whether or not I'm. I'm worth having a million subs.

Okay, thank you all. I appreciate that. Morning, Lee. Is that tomorrow? Cool. All right, so I got lots of questions coming here again, if you have any sort of question, you'd like to hop on the phone with me directly, I'm promised it's not fake. Just call this number and I'll pick up the phone. All right, let's see here. Always. One second. Let me see here. Do you guys use any training videos for field guys or even for managers? We find it pretty helpful for office and administration as well as estimators, but not so much for the fuel crew. Most fuel crew does not want to sit behind a computer and watch videos. So we have pretty extensive video training for people in the office and even the estimators, but not so much for the fuel crew. We tried it. We did try and it did not work very well. Most of the guys, the first day of work, when you're like, hey, by the way, you're going to be sitting in this room and watching videos for the next six to eight hours. Most hard working field employees do not want to do that. So. Awesome.

Love the book. Thank you, Dustin. Justin, I appreciate it.

How do you set up systems and procedures that so you can grow. Hey, hey, hey. I see your comment. That's not very nice. It is a burner phone, but hey.

Actually it's not a burner phone. This is actually for the show. It's an actual dedicated line for the show. Anyways, how do you set up systems and procedures so you can grow? You honestly, you look for the constraint in the business and then you attack that. So for example, if your constraint is you don't have enough employees, then you need to figure out a system for onboarding. You have a system for attracting good talent, that is marketing and you need to have a system for training. And so what is the constraint in your business if you can't find any customers? You need to have a system for marketing. You have a system for, for creating estimates and really focus on that. So focus on the constraint and attack that. That's the part where you want to start.

What do you feel the unfair advantages will be for Augusta over other companies? Longer term, it's something that I share more directly with the franchisees, but it really will come down to technology. And I've said pretty clearly on the show in the past, and that is the company that will win the technology game will have scale. So that's what we're trying to go for.

Oh, cool. Justin, any advice on obtaining a health insurance for a solo operator? Yeah. So obviously as you get group and you get more people and more employees on a plan, the cost will go down. But definitely talk to a health insurance rep. They're going to help you. There's open enrollment usually only a few months at the end of the year. However, if there's an event, quote, unquote, a life event, including being hired, you can typically get insurance. So I talk to health insurance rep, they'll be to help you. But typically Groot group health is where you're gonna get the best rates. So there's still no one in the call room. It's always, it's always the same. This is what's gonna happen. We're gonna start the call show and then people will start calling in and there's gonna be a whole group of people in there and I'm gonna stop the show because no one wants to call first, no one wants to call second. They all wait till the end. And I don't have an hour and a half today, so we're not gonna be able to be that long.

All right. Your business is building. My website should be launching in a few weeks. How much benefit do you feel having a customer portal helps in the overall customer experience? So I've gone back and forth on this. I actually don't feel like customers like portals. And the reason is because there was some new research that came out on how many people actually utilize portals.

And how they would much rather prefer, typically, direct links to things when action is required. So client portals are fine for the customer that wants to go back and see every single payment they've ever made, et cetera. But typically most customers just want to have a credit card on file or they want to pay when the invoice comes in and they want a direct link from the invoice to that payment portal. They want a direct link to their estimate. They don't want to go into a portal, log in, have security questions, forget their password, all that garbage. And so like think about when was the last time you logged into Comcast, when was the last time you logged into your Verizon account? You don't, you put a card in file and you leave it until something goes wrong and you typically are contacting support. So you'd rather, typically customers would rather just have a link directly to whatever action is required. And that's the way we really leaned, whether it be text or email or whatever it is, instead of having a portal, it's like, hey, if you want to see your estimate, go log in and have questions and security and forgetting your password. Like people forget their password all the time. All the time. We get calls at command center all day long of people forgetting their password. It's ridiculous. And in the day that's money that it cost you. So. Oh, we got a caller. Okay, let's jump in here from Palo Alto, California. Give me once. Oh, we got two callers. Okay, we got callers coming in. Give me one second. We're, let's go ahead and welcome in from Palo Alto, California. Make sure this thing is working. Can you hear me?

Yeah, hi, Mike.

Hey, how's it going? I see on your caller ID catabay, is that correct?

Actually it's Cupertino. I'm actually working right now, but I saw your video pop up, so I might as well call in to ask one of my questions. This is Jesuit from Bay Area.

Sweet. Yeah. What's up, brother?

Hey. Yeah, so I had a question. So with, with projects and pricing out projects, if we're gonna. I put my, my question in the comments where it's like, Basically I'm gonna charge 75 per man hour for a one day job, three guys, so that's 24 hours. How do you get over the feeling that it's going to be priced a little too high and then is that what you do? Do you charge equally for each person $75 per hour?

Yeah. Like at the end of the day there's two things. One Is the actual question of, do I charge a diminishing rate as more employees get on the job? And I'm not a big believer in that because an hour is an hour, right? And so I'm selling time, and I'd rather stick to one unit of measurement. This is what gets a lot of people into a lot of hot water when they start getting a massive commercial contracts, is like, well, if I'm going to have three guys there all day long, I can bring my hourly rate down. You can, but you're just diminishing your, your profit margin. So why would you want the job? Like, it takes away all of the, the shine, all of the desire to even have that kind of project if I'm reducing my, my margins. So I, I believe in keeping it the same. Like, if you're gonna have three guys in the job, still charge eight hours per person, still charge the same hourly rate. The second part of that question is you getting over the feeling that the price is too high. And this is something we talked about. Conference. I know. And that is you are not your target customer, right? Like, your target customer probably has multiple homes, is retired or super busy, and, you know, like, and they do not have the time or the desire to go out and mow their lawn or do work. And if they do have the desire, they might not have the physical capability because they are older. And so keep that in mind. Because you being, you know, I knowing you, you being your 20s, you're young, healthy, you can go out and mow lawns. You're like, oh, well, I would Never pay someone $3,000 to do this project. And you wouldn't. But you're not the target customer. So if we really got to walk a mile in the shoes of the customer, which is they have, they have a very limited and finite measure of time. In your 20s, we don't think about limited time. We think about how do we make money. They, on the other hand, have money and realize they have a finite number of days left on their life, or they're a working professional with a family, and they realize they have a finite number of minutes and hours in a week, and they need to spend that time with their family as well. So just keep in mind that you are not the target customer. The target customer has, is wealthy, and they're typically going to have very time constraint kind of schedule. And you are worth a lot more than $75 an hour because that hour to them is worth $500. That hour to them is worth being able to go pay Play golf on the weekend. Like that is what we are worth, right? So does that kind of help a little bit?

Yeah, that helps a lot.

Cool. I appreciate you hopping on, brother. You have a great day.

Love you. So take care.

Take care. Bye.

All right, next caller, let's see here. Drop that one. Drop it again. Cool. See you got a little technical now. Okay, cool. So we got Colin is from Justin from Charlotte. Justin, can you hear me?

I can hear you, Mike.

What's up, brother? How you doing?

Doing well, brother. Doing well, doing well. It's actually a pleasure to talk to you, man, in the summit this year. Great, great event.

Cool. Thanks, brother.

Yeah, man. Hey, so quick, Quick question. I've got two questions. So just posted my. Just posted to my first Google Local services ad or a. I just posted a Google services ad and a Facebook ad. I just realized of course there's more to this than, there's more to this than just posting an ad. At least if you want to do it the right way. And of course I don't want to let good be the enemy of great. But and this is a two part question because I definitely do, you know, want to do marketing the right way. Would you recommend or is there a right way to do Google Local service ads and would you recommend a, you know, hiring a digital marketing firm to offload that.

Task? That's the first question. And then the second question is because.

I have the attention span of a squirrel. Because I have the attention span of a squirrel. Let me address the first question or so I'll forget it.

Yeah. So first and foremost, when it comes to Google services, there is no creative, so there is no ad. There is no ad product. Like in terms of pictures, video, there's no text, don't have any banners, headers. Google Local Services doesn't. Now are you talking more about Google Ads when you say that?

Google Ads.

Okay, okay, got it. Okay. And then, then you're comparing against Facebook and wondering, hey, should I hire an agency basically to do this? What's your marketing budget on average right now, per month or even annually? Just average.

So, so we just started. So you know, we just, you know, I, I just got my first three estimates like this week.

Let's go.

So we are literally just brand new.

And then what do you spend? What do you plan to anticipate to spend in marketing? Let's just say in 2022.

So right now it's just going to be the two of us. @ least until this is a whole new industry for me, but at least for the first, you know, for this first next nine months, this season, it's going to just kind of keep it solo for, for myself and my partner. And then naturally our goal is to go, you know, start hiring next year. Now that could change based on the market demands and, and cash flow. But I would anticipate spending about 15 to 20 this.

Year. Well, you shouldn't need to spend 15 to $20,000 in marketing if you're just trying to fill your couple employees schedule. And you won't need to if you have a decent website, you do Google local services ads, you will absolutely not. Like you do not. That would be really bad. And you're not going to need to because the demand is going to be so high. Like people are going to need contractors so bad this spring rush. It's going to be nuts. Like mark my words, right? So I don't feel like you're gonna even need marketing honestly beyond you know, several thousand dollars max. And I would put that more in the form of like, I would not do Facebook ads. It's too broad, it's too big. You don't want to be having you and one employee driving five, ten miles away. You want to be literally focused on door hangers, door knocking, maybe some next door ads, run some Google local services, but get very concentrated Like a one mile race. Like what are the, what are the 2,000 homes? What are the few neighborhoods then penetrate those because you'll fill the schedule so quickly for you and one employee doing that versus trying to boil the ocean. And now you guys are drive all over the place. You're not going to make any money this year and hire an agency. They will typically push you to spend more and which is because they want to see better results. But I would not be spending that kind of money on an ad agent right now. I'd be focused on direct marketing and trying to go for the jugular on very specific neighborhoods. And you do not need a firm for.

That.

Thanks for brother. All right, one more question. And this is going to actually. Yeah, one more question. You're the EC process, right? I know you got, I know the EC certain CRM don't allow like one time fees without like you know, creating a separate invoice. And you walk through the EC process and how it's added in as an overhead recovery item in your estimate or in, in in the estimate process, if you don't.

Mind. Yeah, totally. So it, it, it's not an additional item. It's not seen outside of the, the estimate. It's rolled into the line item price that the customer sees. So it's not broken down separately. We don't say hey, we charge $40 for us to come see your property. It's rolled into the dollar amount as overhead recovery. And people think, oh, you're scamming people because you say it's a free estimate. No, no, no. The same way that you mark up mulch and material is what we're doing. We're marking up labor because it costs us money from an office administrative and estimator standpoint to get that estimate done. And we're only doing that on project based work. We're not doing it on recurring base work. Right. So yeah, basically you should not have to do another line item or a different cost expense inside of your CRM depending on which one you have some of them, obviously you build out the quote and you could put an E fee inside of the line item, but the customer never sees that dollar.

Amount.

Can you answer one more question.

From a maintenance perspective, from a one, you know, from a reoccurring job, you know, mowing job, that's reoccurring. How does that, is that easy? A one time fee on that first invoice or is that spread out among the customer's lifetime.

Journey? Yeah, the latter. Right. So if it's recurring, that's always our goal is to build up the recurring base of work and so we kind of take the initial hit, you might say, by just getting them on board. Because if someone's doing a $30 mo, let's say 30, $40 mo, me charging a 50, 60, $70e fee on that first visit is probably prohibitive of them even joining. So I'd rather just get them on board and hopefully keep them for five or 10 years and, and make up for that, you know, little hit that I take. But any project based work, the reason for that too is because project based work takes, takes way more admin the estimate, the office work, change orders, invoicing, scheduling, getting materials, all that extra effort for project based work is why I need the efi. If all of my work was recurring and assuming that wasn't getting more customers, I'd have like so little admin work, very few customer complaints or calls. It's when it's when you start adding in customers for recurring that you kind of take that hit. But project based work, regardless, like just to sustain the same level of revenue, you always still have need new customers. That's why you have to charge the E fee to, to basically recover that overhead.

Makes.

Sense. Awesome, awesome. I appreciate that, Mike. Thanks.

Man. You got.

Justin. I'm gonna schedule a call with you.

Soon. Cool. All right, thanks, brother. Take care. Bye. Bye. All right, next call is from Rob, it looks like from Spokane, Washington, just not too far away from here. Can you hear me, Rob or.

Robbie's? I can, I can. How are.

You? Good, good. Sorry. The caller D is always messed up. Is the name actually.

Rob?

It is, yeah, it is, it is.

Rob. Cool, cool. What's your.

Question?

Yeah, so I, I just have a question on when you're just starting out and there's already a big, like, lawnscape or, you know, player in the area. I'm sure you had to start or you had something like this when you were starting, or maybe you encounter it now even still. But you're moving into a new area and there's already a company that, that's got a lot of the customer base locked down. How do you diversify and, and, you know, make yourself unique to where you can get customers? Or do you just say, hey, you know, this area is already locked down. Let's find another market. I'm just sort of confused on, on where I would go in that.

Circumstance. Yeah, like, you got to figure out what they, they can't do that you can. Right. And this is why people are like, so worried, like, man, Augusta Longer is going to take over and I'm never going to be able to have a business outside of Augusta. And the truth is, yes, we are going to take over. Two is there will always be things we can't do that other people can. And every single day we refer customers of Augusta Lawn Care to other providers because we are not going to be the best fit for everybody. So because we are going to focus on scale and these companies that have taken over your market, they absolutely are not going to be able to do certain things that you can as a solo operator or as a small business that might be knowing your customers on a first name basis, that might mean every single property you're on, the property, like the small guy will always have the advantage of being more personal. And so as a business scales and that the company that you're talking about has taken over the market, there's things they cannot do that you as a small business owner can. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that what's tough is when you start trying to get into that, that middle ground where you're like, hey, well, now I'm not going to be on every property. I'm not going to be personalized. Then You've got to figure out value proposition that is still better than them while you grow and scale. And that usually comes in the form of having a more communicative office staff, having a better website and all those other things we talk about. But they're going to, they're going to already be entrenched in those ways. Typically if they've taken the market like you said, talking.

About.

Perfect. Is there a follow up to that though? Is there a follow up, Is there a follow up to that? Like you're just getting started, there's already an entrenched provider. Does that help a little bit though? Like what, what are you going to focus on to be different than.

Them?

It really does. I think that's largely what I had planned for myself is, is a lot of the things that you said, you know, focusing on that personalization of the customers. I come from a long customer service background and so that was, was sort of what I was thinking on and, and that's where my target was going to be. And so, yeah, just the fact that, that you could sort of shed some more light on that really helps, man. So I am truly.

Appreciative. You got it, bro. Thanks so much. And to keep in mind, I think it's important that when you start talking about competition and things is if you are, if you have the ambition to grow and scale, you're going to be competing with them from day one. Because this is the problem when you, what a lot of people will do in Rob State is they will be like, okay, great, I'm going to focus on personalization and all the employee, all the customers are going to have my, my personal cell phone number and I'm going to take Venmo. And however, when someone wants to pay, like, I'll accept it. And you're just very, you say yes to everything. You say yes to all services, you say yes to all customers. And the problem with that is then you have this massive roadblock when that no longer is possible. It's not physically possible. And that's where a lot of people will stop growing their business. So if you know you're going to grow your scale, your business, do not do what I just said to Rob from day one because like, you should not be giving. Like we deal with this a lot of times with our initial franchisees because like they're used of communicating with every single customer. They're used of having a lot more control when it comes to client interaction. And giving that up is a very difficult thing. And the thing is, if you don't, you're not going to be able to scale past a certain point. So from the beginning, you know, your ambitions are to scale build the business in a way where your differentiation between that competitor is not personalization, it is more around professionalism. And you're going to dominate them on technology, website communication. Your win will not be personalization in the long run if you're trying to grow a larger lawn care and landscaping company. All right, next question. Okay, we got callers rolling in, let's go. This question, I don't know where it's coming from. I think I want to say Missouri, Montana, something like that. Cape something. Go.

Ahead.

Hey Mike, I got a question. I recently have started watching your videos and see the. I'm going to be purchasing the, you know, landscape or on your website and I've been watching a of ton of your videos. I'm a huge fan, mad respect for you. But hey, my question is you recommend Law Pro for the software and these are older videos but here recently you've been in person. Jobber. I was wondering if I'm like just not up to date on the software or if you like one over the.

Other. Totally. I think honestly.

In like a year I'm gonna make a very complicated, very detailed, probably three hour video on this whole topic. But honestly, I think for most people when they're at the stage of starting, they should flip a coin and to choose whatever software. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I've seen consistently now these, all these softwares are copying each other in terms of what they're doing, their features. They all have the exact same stuff. 90 of it's the same. And so what you're really looking at is what's the support I would be recommending. And so when it comes to Lawn Pro and why I have it as part of the course still is because inside the course, when I talk about my very first year like just starting out brand new, that's the software I used and it's extremely simple right now that's you don't have to get Lawn Pro with the course and most people don't. But I do that because if someone's brand new just starting out, it's a good software to get started on. And then kind of intermediate jobberry it's a little more complicated but has a lot more features and it's a lot more developed software. And then as you grow in scale, you know, service output, real green. You know, if you're going multi million dollars and you need Autom, things like that, there's definitely options out there. So I would say for someone getting started, if you have ambition to scale past half a million, probably just go ahead and start with Jobber. Eat the extra cost because it's significantly more expensive than Lawn Pro or Yard Book. But if you say, I'm going to grow this to 100, 200,000 revenue, or I'm going to grow it bigger, but over the course of a longer period of time, not a bad, bad idea to start with Yardbook or Lawn Pro. Like, they're. They're simple to use, and that's kind of why I have them in the program for brand newbies. Does that make.

Sense?

Yeah, I'm not really a newbie. I was in the business five years and then I shut down, and now I'm getting back into it because I miss working up a sweat and dealing with people. But what I. I will be subscribing to you, and I will also be purchasing the long course and the landscape course. And I appreciate your time, man. Thank.

You. You got it, brother. You have a great day. Best of luck.

All right, next caller. I don't have a caller ID but it's from a area code of 4, 6, 9. Welcome to the.

Show.

Hello. Yeah, how's it going? You're.

On.

Hey, this is Caleb. So I got two questions. Just want to know if you can give me some suggestions on scheduling and invoicing. Well, like, so to start off with the scheduling, like, I'm in my first year, I kind of gave up. I kind of, like, cut off my customers just because I got burnt out. But I'm deciding to come back in the spring, and I've got a good idea of what to do. But the thing that I had an issue with was scheduling. Do you have any tips? Maybe for someone that's a beginner for.

Scheduling? When did you close down Last year.

Caleb?

I want to say around.

August. Okay. And then did you basically just give away your existing customer.

Base?

I still have all the contacts. I have it in the Lawn.

Pro. Cool. All right, and how many contacts was that? Just out of.

Curiosity?

Probably two or 300.

Honestly. Okay. And so when you're trying to get revamped, going again here, when it came to why you quit, was it around scheduling and just kind of being overwhelmed with all of.

That?

Yeah, it was really just getting overwhelming and distressed and I don't know, I. I couldn't take it at the time. But now getting back to where, you know, free coming in and just getting back to the, to where I want to be at. I've realized that I want to do this and I want to do, you know, the reoccurring, mowing, whatnot. But I want to know how I can schedule the reoccurring mowing.

Basically. Yeah. So typically you're going to choose which day of the week you're going to service each area of your territory. Right. And so let's just say, you know, you're trying to serve two, two miles north of you, two miles south of you. You want to say, okay, maybe Monday I start on the north side, Wednesday I'm going to do the middle of my market. And then the people on the south side I'll do on Friday, for example. And then as you get more mowing customers, you'll have to fill in some on Tuesday, you have to fill in some on Thursday. But what I would recommend is give your customers say, hey, look, I'm going to come on Wednesday plus or negative one day based on scheduling and rain scheduling and weather. Right. That gives you basically Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to be able to do service on that property. So the more flexibility you can give yourself on scheduling, the less stress you're going to have. Because trust me, I had to learn this the hard way. And that is when you're trying to get jobs done, you're way booked behind guys then don't show up. And all of a sudden you are just running a scheduling nightmare. And a lot of times that's because we've promised over promise to the customer in terms of timeframe. And this is why I will like I'm giving a three day window when I'm gonna come and some people are literally giving our windows of when they're gonna show up to do mowing. And I'm like, that's not going to scale. You can't tell a customer I'm gonna show up after 2pm on Wednesdays, like it's eventually going to break. Or you're going to break because you're trying to run around trying to make it work. And that will not scale. So especially that number of, of contacts. And if you're going to get, you know, 50, 60, 70 customers, you will not be able to accommodate people's schedule. You've got to stick to what your schedule is and then you're going to realize that some customers will leave. Right. And so does that make.

Sense?

Yeah, that.

Does. Cool. Well, best of luck, man. I hope it works out for you better. And just keep in mind that, yeah, you've got to have you got to create your schedule and figure out what works for you. And then customers either take it or leave it, because what happened last.

Year. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I did have one more question as.

Well. Go for.

It. Yeah. So it's about the invoicing. So what I what I did was at the end of the day, after working, you know, getting all the loans, then I would send the invoices that day. Should I do it at the end of the month or maybe at the end of the week? I'm not sure how I should be doing.

That. If you've been doing it by the day, not a bad idea. It's great for cash flow. There's multiple reasons why we don't do it on a daily basis. In terms of admin time, in terms of over communicating with the customer, and therefore, our sales.