Watch This BEFORE Starting a Lawn Care Business!

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the landscape business course podcast today. I'm talking about getting started. I'm talking about the process when you are a solo operator out in the field doing lawns yourself. And I wanted to talk about this because I got a few questions and I realized that a lot of my content has to do with what would be culture or hiring or management of crews. Really want someone has established several employees and, and they're trying to get out of day to day operations and they're really trying to scale the business. But everyone has to start somewhere. And everyone usually starts working by themselves out in the field, doing the lawns themselves, doing the landscaping themselves and really getting started. And so I began to reminisce and I figured, you know, this might be valuable content to someone out there that might be in that position now and realize that like someone like myself, I didn't start off not working out in the field. It wasn't like, you know, I just showed up and one day had a great team and I don't have to be out in the field and I'm working on the marketing and the strategic aspects of the business. Like it didn't start that way. And I want to kind of think about and look back to some of the moments when I was by myself mowing lawns and like the struggles that I went through and just talk about some of those and it might help some of you just getting started that are going through those things. And I don't want it to seem unobtainable to get to the place where you, you can have employees and you can have crews that do the jobs and you can have an estimator and you can have office staff that are taking care of the administrative side of the business because it's not impossible. But you gotta go through a lot of adversity and it's not easy to get there. And I wanna talk about some of the stories and things that I went through when I was first starting Augusta Lawn Care, way back when. So I remember the days that I would work, like I get more sleep now than I did back then. That's hands down, because it was harder back then. Maybe not. But like, I'm talking about in terms of like hard being hard on my body because I would wake up early, I would go in, mow lawns for 10 hours and then I would need to do estimates, billing, answer the voicemails that I missed throughout the day, answer emails, all that good stuff. Then I'd go To school at from 6pm till 10pm, doing my MBA, my master's in business. And then after that I would have need to catch up on homework and then finalize billing. So usually by 12, 1 o' clock, I'd finalize the billing. So the day after the work was done, I would send out billing if it was the end of the month. I still Remember waiting till 12 o' clock at night and having all the invoices ready. And at the time I was using a CRM that didn't allow you to charge cards for from the CRM you actually had. So what I did is I had Amazon payments, which now no longer exists. They had a really good processing rate. It was like 2.39. And then eventually they went out of business. So I started using Square. And I would use Square, literally type in the person's credit card information every single time and then mark the invoice paid and then type the credit card information in and click pay on the CRM. And I would do that and I'd wait till 12 o' clock midnight. Cause I just love doing that. Even though I had maybe 30, 40 customers, 50 customers, like over the course of those three hours, I felt like I made so much money and could use this, you know, immediately make money from the Square app. And I remember those days and they weren't easy. You know, waking up, going throughout the whole day, working really hard. 10, 12 hours, usually about 10 because I had school and most of the places where I was mowing, I started up in Blaine. Blaine has a population of like 8,000 people. And we ended up growing Augusta Lawn care to 1.2 million in revenue before moving from that location. But when we were just getting started, Blaine has a lot of gated communities, and a lot of those gated communities have CC and RS that don't allow you to start mowing lawns before 8 o'. Clock. And so I would usually get up and running by 6, 6 30, 7, 30, getting. Let's go back a bit. So I had a 6 by 12 enclosed trailer that I parked at a storage facility. And then I had the truck that I would drive for my personal vehicle and I would come pick up the trailer. It would just sit out in the middle of a field, basically at a storage facility. It was 40 bucks a month to park it there. And at the time I thought that was so much money. And so I would pick that up, I would go work, usually about 10 hours because I need to come back, drop the trailer and then head to school and so estimates were always, like, scattered throughout the day, because if I could fit them in between routes or. Or if I could fit them in between ending my route and school or when I had to meet the customers or drive by a property, and then I'd try to send the estimates out after school was done, after 11, 12 o' clock at night. And so I did that for the first couple years. I started my mba, I started Business Bootcamp Podcast, and I started Augusta Lawn Care all at the same time. And so if you go back on Business Bootcamp Podcast, the very, very beginning, you can hear me starting out Augusta Lawn Care and just starting out my MBA program. And so during those days, one thing I haven't talked a lot about, and I don't talk a lot about those days just because I guess it's kind of in the past and I've moved on. But, like, one thing that's a fun fact is I'm allergic pretty hardcore to grass in terms, especially during pollen season. But in general, I get stuffed up. But there's about two to three weeks in the spring, and then about a week or two in the fall when the pollen is falling. Oh, my goodness, it's super bad. So I still remember what I would do is I would have three shirts. I'd wear one shirt, and I'd have two other shirts. One shirt would be like my snot rag, basically, and then the other shirt I would switch out halfway through the day because I'd start to get rashes all in my chest from the allergies. So of course my nose is all blocked up. My eyes are always running. They're super itchy. My eyes were always itchy for those few weeks, and I'd get rashes all in my chest. So what I would do is once I'm getting sweaty and it starts getting really irritated, I would switch out shirts. And then that shirt that I just took off would become my snot rag, because the first one would have been completely soaked and gross by then. And so I know that's super gross, but that was what I did. And I did that when I was younger, too. Going from, you know, starting 11, 12, 13 years old, starting a mowing on the side to pay my way through college. But even once I went full time, it got worse because, like, no longer was there someone to, like, mow the lawn with me or, like, have an employee, like I was. I had to do the work. And so I would end up. What I ended up doing is strategically planning my route to get as many of my Jobs done early morning that were not inside gated communities. So that way my. The reaction, my allergies would not flare up as much and it would usually continue into like, June, July, a little bit more mild. But in the first middle part of June, like, it was just very, very, very bad. And there were times, like, where I literally have to stop my route at around like 12, 1 o' clock in the afternoon. And because I physically, like, my throat would constrict and I couldn't breathe very well and my eyes are so itchy and like water and I could hardly see. And I remember, like, pulling over and having to like, literally just like, wash my eyes out with my water bottle just to like, cool them down and get the swelling down. And like, that was real. That was the real deal getting started. And then you do that. It drains your body because your allergies and everything, you're snot and all this else. And then you got to go to school, go to university for four hours and sit in a class and try to learn and then finish homework and then go back home and do your estimate, send those out, get the billing done. It's like, I know what it's like to be in that, in that position and be grinding and literally working 16 to 18 hours a day on your business, seven days a week. And every single minute having to squeeze in those estimates, squeeze in the emails, and the emails are coming to your cell phone, so you're getting distracted and you're getting reactive. And so, man, I remember those times. And they're not easy. They're not times. I look back, I'm like, yeah, I really wish I could be doing that again. But that being said, that level of work ethic is what's required if you're going to get past it. Like, you have to be able to do those, those. Do your time. Like, you have to put in the hours, you have to put in the time. And really, you know, I did every single aspect of the business as I grew it, like, in terms of, you know, mowing lawns and then doing landscaping and then doing estimates and then doing an. Being like an office manager and then doing, like, all of the stages of the business. I had to work my way through those. And like, every single one was difficult. Every single transition was hard. And there's still transitions and things that I'm handing off or delegating. And it's not easy. It's not like a cakewalk. You know, it just becomes different problems, like, more strategic, more mental straining than, like, physically and there's days that even now I'm like, man, I just wish I could go out and mow lawns. Like you can kind of like tune things out. You can put your headphones in, listen to an audiobook. It seems really nice. Cause the strategic and the mental pressure is more when you're dealing with like the employees and them providing for their family and like the strategic where the business is going. And then all the franchisees and now you have all of them having issues and problems that you're trying to help them with. So it becomes more of a mental thing, you know, I remember, I remember like going through the winter and having no revenue because we weren't big enough to do any projects. I was by myself. Once mowing stopped, like I didn't really know what to do. It was my first year full time. I didn't have another job for that on the second year. And so I had stopped being a part time trainer. And like all of a sudden revenue's down to zero. And you gotta get creative. And it's not like you have money to go spend on Google and Facebook ads. Like, like, you gotta get scrappy. You go door to door, you do door hangers, you start knocking on people's doors, you start figuring things out. You go to property management companies, cold call, you cold email, literally looking in the phone book and cold calling people in the white pages. I did that to get business. And we still, you know, it's funny, we still have customers today that whatever it was five, six, seven years ago called them from the white pages, set up an estimate that day, sold them on mowing and like they're still customers today and you know, made a lot of mistakes trying to figure things out. I remember using a sprayer, so a hand pump sprayer for spraying weeds. Just spot spraying, like in gravel, things like that. Well, one day one of my customers asked like, hey, I would could you fertilize like a spray on my trees and my plants? I'm like, oh yeah, no problem. I think I charged like $150. I got like a $15 little canister of fertilizer. Fertilizer, all purpose spray stuff concentrate from the store. Put that into my sprayer, put my water in, like, I'm good to go. You know, did the whole thing in like 15, 20 minutes. Sprayed all their bushes down like maybe 30, 40 bushes. Well, guess what? I didn't rinse out the bot, the whole bottle and the container, the sprayer. And so literally there was enough roundup inside of there to Kill those trees. All of them got diseased and I literally had to pay for, I paid for an entire year's worth of spraying and treatments from Trugreen, a competitor. I had them come and spray every single month for the whole year. I replaced some of the trees. I did free mowing service for that customer, another customer. You know, it's crazy. The same day I did those, I did two customers with that sprayer, with that same bottle. And both things, both of them happened, I had to do for both houses. I put out shell out of money. Well, three or four thousand dollars in paying your competitor Trugreen to spray on all the trees, to kind of get them to come back to life on two of your customers houses is not a small thing to do when you're small. But even when I was small, I still remember thinking like, okay, this is a massive hit in the short term, but I have to keep the reputation of the business. Know that my local reputation is that I stand by my word. If I make a mistake, I fix it. And so I still remember that I, I can point you directly to the houses where they're at, where I made those mistakes. And I just remember going through those times and it being very, very difficult. And I'd like to say it gets easier, but it doesn't. It just gets different. The mental pressure of having to make sure work is there for your staff becomes a big pressure. When you start getting into projects and you're behind budgeted hours and you're way behind and you're losing your shirt on a job, that becomes pressure. When you are in the office and you're getting complaints because your crew's out working. That's pressure. It's just different levels of pressure as you scale the business. So two things. I don't want the people who are just starting out to have like this flowery, like image of what it's going to be when you don't have to do any work and your crew just working out there in the field and it's just like nothing you have to do and the money's just rolling in. Guess what? It's probably not going to happen. It's definitely not going to happen long term. It takes a lot of work to foster a team, train a team, keep that culture going to consistently be marketing, improving the business, making it more efficient. Because a business that isn't growing and changing is dying. And so long term, you're not going to be able to sit back and just take it easy. Like that does not happen. It's just different levels of stress, different roles and responsibilities that you as the owner, will have to take over. But I remember back in the days when it was by myself and it was lonely and it was like, physically I could not do the work. Like, physically. There was days I had to stop because the allergies would get so bad and there's only so many snot rags you can go through. And I remember literally thinking, I physically cannot keep doing this myself. I have to hire people. It's not like an option right now. It's not like I'm going out this limb and I'm growing my business. I have to get someone to do the lawns. And because, like, I'm physically not capable of doing this for the entire day without, like, literally just draining my brain of everything. So, like, I remember those days. If you're going through that, you can get through those times. But I also want to bring the realization that lawn care business is a hard business in terms of. There's a lot of things that are hard about in terms of the labor and the marketing. Like, we're going through this whole coronavirus thing. Like, you gotta get creative and scrappy. And like, the. Those days of me having to be scrappy with marketing is what's helping us now. When you can't go knock on doors and you can't go and go into property management companies and just walk in, you can't do that right now. You gotta get scrappy, you gotta get creative. And so those times when it is hard, when you do feel overwhelmed, like, you feel like you're doing everything in the business, you're juggling every single thing and there's no one to help you. Those are the times that is going to give you the character and the ability to get scrappy down the road. I was talking with the franchisees the other day and. And I said it's like when you're lifting a weight, like if this is like a dumbbell, right? And right now, as you lift that dumbbell and there's weight to.

Begins to hurt. It's hard and it's not easy, but that's what grows the muscle. That's what gives you the strength. And right now we're going through a contraction in the marketplace, an economic contraction. And the same way that a muscle, when you're lifting something, has to contract, right now we're going through an economic contraction and it's not easy. It hurts. Like, over time, it hurts, it's going to hurt. But that contraction is what actually leads to the Growth of the muscle and this economic contraction that we're going through right now is going to lead to the growth of a lot of businesses that actually look at this as a strength building exercise. Is it time to get lean? Is it time to get creative? This is time to get scrappy. And it all goes back to the time many times when you just got started. How did you react? Did you get defeated? Did you get down on yourself? Did you give up or. Or did you press through? Did you put in the time? Did you work harder to get through those moments, get through those times of adversity and come through it stronger than before? And so I just wanted to encourage everyone just starting out. Maybe you're just by yourself, maybe you have one employee. Maybe you just feel like you're kind of doing everything in the business and it feels like your brain is going 100 different directions. I'd recommend listening to these training videos. Lots and lots of stuff on YouTube that I've put out to try to help you make systems that run the business instead of you having to do it all yourself. Learn from my mistakes of being that guy that was doing everything in the business and took years to figure out the systems and the procedures and how things should be done so that it runs on systems instead of personality and you always doing everything. So that'd be my recommendation. And I just wanted to give you a source of encouragement that like everyone that you see, whether by myself or anyone else, that you admire their businesses or their landscaping company, they had to go through what you're going through right now. So stay positive and stay aware that you can build this business. And regardless of the adversity, regardless of the struggle, regardless of how overwhelmed and anxious you feel, you will persevere. You've been listening to Mike Andes on the Landscape Business course podcast. Until next time, be great, because nothing else pays.