What to Do in the Winter!? - Ep.046

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes. You're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast. Decided to come to you guys today. Again, I'm getting a little bit more time on my hands now that things are slowing just a little bit. We kind of coming out of our rush for the fall, but still, you know, obviously still busy, still, you know, still grinding, but getting a little more time here. So I've been able to do a little bit more with your questions via email and things like that. Also, obviously I'm always on top of the course members questions, but I've been able to get back to some of you emailing and things like that. Today we are going to be talking to Joe, who is a member of the course and has a question he sent in. I'm gonna talk about that. Then I'm gonna talk about what everyone on this podcast should be thinking about if you haven't already been thinking about. And that is, what are you gonna do this winter when the grass stops growing and the landscape contracts stop flowing in and the phone stops ringing? Or what are you gonna do to, number one, generate revenue and number two, keep your guys busy? So we're gonna talk about that. Before we get into that, though, several people have had questions about Landscape X. So if you haven't heard about it, it's landscapebusinesscourse.com in the top right, you'll see a link called Landscape X. Landscape X has a couple different options. I'm gonna run over it real quick and answer a couple of the questions that have been popping up recently. So essentially there's been some confusion as to what the difference between Landscape X, like what exactly are the options and what exactly do they include? So there's really three different options. Okay, the cheapest option is going to be if you come and shadow me. It's called Augusta X. Okay, so there's three options. Augusta X, Hometown X and Landscape X. Landscape X is really just a combination of both Augusta and Hometown X. Okay, so Augusta X is where you come and shadow me for an entire day at Augusta Lawn Care Services. It's cheaper during the winter for all three of these experiences and like 50% off. Just basically because your business or my business is gonna be less busy, you're not gonna see as much if you're following me. I'm not gonna be able to see as much if I'm following you. I might not be able to see your staff meetings and as many estimates and things. However, I'm still there with you for the whole day for both Augusta X and Hometown X. You get the five year business playbook. So we talk about what you should be doing for the next five years. We do an in depth financial and marketing review in Hometown X. And so hometown X is when I come to and I paid for all my hotel and my flight and everything, my food, everything. You just essentially can go right to landscapebusinesscourse.com and order it right from there. You can pay with PayPal so it's all secure. And then I will set up a time to come visit you for an entire day and that's the Hometown X. I analyze your business systems. I come travel there for an entire day. I look at how you interact with customers, how you interact with your people, how you can increase your marketing impact. I'll be able to see your actual demographic, your area and give some pointers of like, okay, certain types of houses, you should be able to pivot and market this type of service. So a lot of action there. AugustX is cheaper, a lot cheaper because I don't have to fly anywhere and go anywhere. And so you essentially come to Augusta Lawn Care, shadow me for an entire day. We go out for lunch, we go out for dinner. And in that dinner we do the five year business playbook. You can get a see kind of behind the scenes. I'll take you to both of our shop locations, our Bellingham location, our Blaine location. You'll see see the behind the scenes, all our employees and all of that good stuff. So lots of stuff. And then landscape X is you essentially just get both of those and you get a discounted price. So landscape X is I come to you, you come to me. We do both. And I think that's kind of like the whole package. And so you get like, I think it's like 20% off if you buy Landscape X instead of just buying individual Augusta and home 10x. So that's kind of the three options in a nutshell. And like I said, winter is half off because I'm not doing as much. You're probably not doing as much. So there's less of like being able to see that actual action, which is very valuable. And then also because I'm less busy, it's cheaper as well. So that's all the options there. Like I said, there's only been several people that have asked me about it. And so we created that option. And so if that's of interest to you, check it out. But without any further delay, let's get into today's show. Let's first go to Joe. Joe is a Member of the course and he wrote in a question via email. So I'm gonna go ahead and read that. The title of the email is just First Commercial Account Opportunity. So this is Joe. Here it goes. Hello Mike. Hope all is well. I took your course last winter and it helped me a lot. I recently ran into my first commercial property opportunity which is a very popular hotel and bar in my area. The general manager is looking for a cheaper company to come in and bid on the property. How do I go about pricing on the job with mowing, trimming the shrubs and mulching, I have only dealt with houses which are easy to price because they are very similar. The general manager told me he is paying 55,000 for the contract. They also trim twice a year. I have no clue how to price out mowing for such a high number he gave me. Any help would be great. Thanks, Joe. Alright, so for Joe and for everyone out there, this is kind of a cool place for landscaping business and lawn care business. When you get your first big contract, your first big commercial account, usually it's commercial accounts that are this big and well, we're talking multiple thousands of dollars per month, one contract. So, you know, like Joe said, it's pretty easy to do residential where you're pricing per mo, 50, 60, whatever dollars per mo and you're raking in a couple hundred bucks a month from that individual. But when you start getting a couple thousand, a few thousand, four, five thousand a month and these contracts, it can seem a little daunting. So my first of all, I'm gonna give you kind of a couple different ways to look at a property like this. Obvious I can't give this directly to you, Joe, as far as how I would price this because I can't see the property. And literally something like Hometown X might be a good investment just for this one contract. So that's why Hometown X is kind of was created. However, I can't really give you the specifics because I'm not there. However, Jon, I'm going to give you a few different ways to look at a property like this. And then I am going to tell you what you actually in my opinion, what you should do. So when you're looking at one of these big properties, what I would do is first of all look at, itemize all the services. Okay. What I'm actually gonna do is I'm gonna talk as if you're a course member. Because Joe, you are and other people that are listening, a lot of you are course members. And so I'm Gonna talk as if you kind of know the lingo. So if you guys have the pricing sheet that's in the course that has the three columns with the description, the product that's needed, and the hours, the time that's required. How I would do that is I would go in that far left column the description of the services and write down the things that they want. And so that might be trimming trees, it might be mowing, it might be edging, it might be leaf cleanup, it might be blowing off, it might be spraying a whole host of things. In a. In a contract that size, it's a whole bunch of different things. List them all. And then what I would do is, okay, how many times do you need to Mow? Maybe it's 30 times, maybe it's 50 times. If you go year round, weekly, like, to figure out how many times. Like, for us, I would say, okay, we're going to mow nine months out of the year, and we're going to go weekly or bi weekly, depending on if they have irrigation system, depending on how ritzy or how nice the property is. Like, if they. If it's really nice, they probably want it done every week. And it has irrigation, it's gonna need it. Even during the hot season, it'll still need mowed every week. So I would say, okay, let's do 40 mows per year. So then I'm put 40 next to that line item. Let's say, okay, you already told me, Joe, they want to trim the trees twice a year. So I'm going to multiply that number by two at the end. Let's say blowing off. They need the parking lot blowed off once a month for 12 months out of the year. And so I times whatever that number is going to be by 12. All right, then I got to figure out this is the part that the tricky part is now going through each line item and determining how long each one's going to take. Okay, it's going to take an hour per mo. Okay, one hour. How long is it gonna take for you to trim all the trees? Okay, it's gonna take me an entire day. It's gonna take me, you know, let's say like one for us. I'd say one dump truck, one dump trailer's worth of debris, which is like 10 yards of debris. And so we have priced item ala carte item prices for each of these things. So I would say, okay, it's gonna take 10 hours of man hours, and it's gonna take one dump truck load of debris or dump trailer, load of debris. And then I would put that category there now times that by two. And because I'm doing that twice a year, and then I'm saying, okay, it's going to take an hour and a half to blow off the parking lot. It's really big. And I'm going to have to do that 12 times a year. So I multiply that by 12. And so then what I'm going to do in that far right column, in that time column, is essentially add up all those hours. So at the end of it, it might be like 300, 400 hours, whatever it is. And then you multiply that by your hourly rate. And so this is what it really comes down to, Joe, and you've obviously heard all this about in the course, what your hourly rate is. You really gotta nail that down as you get into these bigger jobs. And that's the number that you will push up and up and up as you grow your business and you build value and you're able to attract more leads and things like that. You can move that number up to increase your profit margin and get more equipment, hire more people, et cetera. And so whatever that number is for you, that's the number then you would multiply out. So we have those three columns, right? You have your description of the services, you, line item, you know, make an item for each one of the column for each one of those. Then your next item is your product. So for this one, it might simply just be debris that you got to haul away, maybe some fertilizers, any product, if they want mulch put down, that would go in the product column. And then the right side, you're just going to take the hours that each of those items would take, Multiply it out by how many times you do it each year, and get a number of hours at the very bottom, Multiply that by your hourly rate, Add that to the product costs, and there you have it. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it that I'm not as much in favor of, it's a little bit less accurate. However, if you're just throwing out, it's easier, and that is break the entire property up into different sections and then essentially just treat it as multiple residential properties. So if it's a mass of properties, split it into six or seven, what we might just call residential property sizes, and then price each one of those and then add them all up together, and then you might want to give them like a 10 or 15, 20% discount just because they're all right next to each other. It'd be like the equivalent of having these six houses or seven houses right next to each other. So you do want to give them a discount because you don't have to drive around or anything like that. And so you could do it that way. And I don't think that's as accurate now. So obviously that first way is the way we teach in the course and is most accurate and the most scalable, and you're gonna get the most consistent profit margin. The second way is really the most amateur way to do it because you really could be all over the place with your numbers when you start splitting it up. You're also gonna be on the higher end of your. If you estimate it out that way, you're gonna be on the higher end because you're using residential numbers and because it's harder to take into account things like efficiency saved with not driving, et cetera. So you're probably gonna be on your higher end. What I would do for you, Joe, this is what I would now do for you. Because, Joe, I know when we talked originally and when you started the course, where you're at, I don't know where exactly your numbers are right now, but I'm assuming you might be making a couple hundred thousand, maybe 3,400,000 by now in your business per year. So adding a $50,000 contract is, you know, a 10 to 15% boost in revenue. Now, this is how I would look at this.

55,000 ways paying. Now, if you could do 50, let's just say 50. So you're gonna cut it by 10%.

And if you think you can do 50. Now let's look at the numbers from this standpoint. If you hired someone full time and you paid them, let's say, 25 to 30,000 in the year over the course of all their wages, you wouldn't pay them a salary, but you just pay them by the hour. But let's say that you pay them $25,000 in.

Salary. I mean, not salary, but like pay in wages over the course of the whole year. Could that one person, if they were working 40 hours a week on that property year round, would they be able to do all the work on the property? If so, if so, I would say just go ahead and get the contract at 50 grand. The reason I'm saying that is because I think right now the experience that you would gain from having a contract this big is. Is far more valuable than trying to get a little bit of money. Out of this deal, even if you broke even. And the reason I say that if you could get, I asked about the 25,000 for one employee and if your answer to that is yes, if you had someone there full time year round working and you could pay them 25 grand over the course of the year and they would be able to upkeep that property, then the reason I asked that is because if 25,000, that's half, that's 50% of the 50 that you're making on the job. So that means that 50% would just have to cover overhead, would have to cover obviously driving all the other things. But as far as product cost, if there are any like fertilizers and things, but 50%, if that is gross profit, you might say outside of the product and things like that. So I think you'd be safe to just get the contract at 50 and know that you have a bit of a cushion and just realize going into it that's more about the experience than it is making the doll. Like if I was you, Joe, I would take the deal for 50 grand. I would just go tell the property, the manager, hey, I'll do it for 50,000. Divide that out by 12 months and give them a monthly rate and spell out what that contract is going to include over the course of the year, what month you're going to be doing each of those items in like trimming the trees and things, how often you'll be blowing things off, how often you will be mowing, how like when you'll be doing fertilizers, things like that and then give them a monthly price. I would do it for 50 grand. And just realize that literally if you a dollar on that deal, you're going to get more experience and you're going to get more knowledge and know how from that one contract. And if you do a great job, you might get that manager might tell all his other general manager friends and business owners in the area and you might get other contracts that you would actually make money on. I have a feeling though that you're actually going there is profit margin in this one based upon what you've you told me. I really do think if one person was there full time year round, they could probably do most of the work. And so when you have 50% of labor costs, if you can keep it under that there's a good chance you'll at least break even. And so that's my $0.02 worth on that one, Joe. So hope that helped and yeah, good luck on that one. So I want to hear back from you, too, Joe, as far as, if you get the contract, how it worked out, and best of luck to that. All right, now we're going to talk about what you can do in the winter. So if you're like me, you've been thinking about this from the very beginning of the year, and in the past three to four weeks, you've been thinking about it basically every waking hour of the day.

And that is, what am I going to do to keep my guys busy during the winter? Not just busy, but actually make money. So the traditional way of a landscaping company making it through the winter is to essentially make enough money during the summer to where you kind of save up, bulk up on cash, and then make it through the winter doing maybe some tiny little leaf cleanup jobs or little odds and ends. And then your guys might, if you have employees, they might go on unemployment or get another job that's like just kind of a side job doing odd jobs. And then you cross your fingers and hope that you have enough money in the spring to get started and all that good stuff. Now, the problem with this whole theory is many fold. The first, really, I think the worst thing is that when you do that, you're burning through cash during the whole winter when you're not making revenue. And then you come to the spring when you know you can expand, you can get new trucks, you have all these leads coming in, but because you don't have any cash, you can't expand the business. Because what happens is you might start mowing March 1, right, but you won't actually get that money until the next, like, halfway through the next month. So March, April, right, the middle of April is when you actually start collecting on that. But by that time, by that time, you've already kind of passed the critical time of when you can scale your business up, spend some money on marketing, get new trucks and things like that, get them out in the field, hire new guys. Like, the ROI gets less and less as you go through the year. And so really, that first month is super critical to scaling up your business. But if you don't have any money because it was all burnt up over the winter and paying off your mortgage and your house and paying for overhead like insurance and car payments and equipment costs over the whole winter, you really miss the opportunity to grow your business simply because you spent all the money on just surviving through the winter. That's the first problem with the traditional theory. The second problem is all your guys going on unemployment. You will get more taxes on Unemployment and that sort of thing will go up in the ensuing years for your business because as more and more people go on unemployment through your business, it does affect the rate that you pay. It depends on. Every state's a little bit different, I think. But in general you don't want people going on unemployment if you can help it. So that's one thing. Another thing that is, if they do go get another job, your employees, during the winter, there's a good chance that if they're good people, that they might go to another type of job that they like or that is gonna pay them more than you can even aff. And then they never even come back in the spring and you lose your good people. So my theory is, if you want good people, you've got it. Like a good worker doesn't want to be off three, four months out of the year and they don't want to be just twiddling their thumbs from December 1st until March 1st. They don't want to just be sitting around. If they're good hard worker go getter, they want to be working year round. And if you want to retain good talent, I think it's in your best interest to make sure they keep them busy their whole year round. So here are few ideas as far as what. And I'm not perfect at this one. I'm still working on this one big time. But here are a few of the ideas that I've played with that we are going to be implementing this year. And this is really my first year that I really have to worry about because we have so many people now like last year, you know, when you have just a few people, it's not as bad. You can get away with some leaf cleanups and a little bit of snow plowing and things like that. But it's a little bit more difficult when you have lots of people. And so there's a few different options. Okay. Number one is simple and that's create new categories that you can do work in. So it might be snow plowing, it might be gutters, it might be pressure washing, it might be something really way off. And that's like cleaning houses or doing upholstery or something inside the house of your customers. If you have a large enough customer base, they might keep you busy doing odds and ends around their house. That said, if you have a bunch of hard working crew members that might not be what they want to be doing all winter, they might rather go out and get a construction job. And that's risky because the construction job Might be able to afford to pay them more, they might like it, et cetera, and then they just stay with them. And so another option is to essentially get another business. And this is what I've been thinking about, is buy a business or start a business. And that is not landscaping completely outside of landscaping. Maybe it can use your equipment, which would be a big plus.

So this kind of is kind of a link between. It's also sort of offering more services. So, for instance, we're thinking really hard right now about installing artificial turf and putting greens. And we probably wouldn't roll it out till next spring, really in full. However, it's something that could be done during the winter, and we could still sell during the winter. Installation of artificial putting greens and artificial grass. It's not something that's taken really up in Washington state yet, because we aren't super, super dry like Arizona or California. However, it's a trend that's starting and definitely is gonna come our way in the next 10 years. And so we'd kind of be ahead of our time. But that's. We're doing that, you know, as we speak, we're getting involved in that. And. But, like, that's kind of offering. And what's nice about that is it's. It works with our brand because we're still lawn care landscaping kind of thing. It works with our equipment, so we don't have to buy anything special. We have all the trucks, we have all the skid steers. We have the dump trucks, the dump trailers. We have the manpower, we have all the tools. It's all the same material that we've ever used before, like limestone. And, you know, we've done all that stuff before in just other forms. So it's a very natural progression. And then this. This other one I've been thinking about a lot, and I was talking with a couple of the course members about, and we're actually kind of looking into right now, and maybe in several weeks, I'll give you more details, but, like, really thinking about actually buying out another company that's in a completely different industry, an industry that is not gonna be out of business basically, for a few months, or that at least I can allocate more of my guys towards during the winter. And so it's an interesting concept. We haven't done it yet, but we're definitely thinking about it. I'll give you guys more updates in the future, but, like, it's a tough one. Landscaping is the hardest thing, in my opinion, is those three to four months where Revenue is hard to come by. Jobs are hard to come by. And the biggest thing about it like this is the thing, I could easily save up enough money to keep myself throughout the winter. I'm not, I don't have a problem with that. I don't live like, I don't have a lot of expenses. I live in a little house like we built it and I live in the apartment part of the house. It's like separate from the house. It's up above the garage. And so it's a small place. And like I don't need anything bigger because I don't really stay here very much besides the sleep. And I don't have a fancy car. I just have the truck, which is one of the company trucks. And so I can write it all off. I don't really spend a lot of money on other things. Whenever I travel, it's all 100% on air miles from the business. Everything I do is basically a write off. Everything from my cell phone to just about everything I do. And even my room, I can write a lot of it off because of the podcast and things like that. So my living expenses are super, super small. So I have no problem saving up money in and of myself during the winter. However, I think the biggest thing is keeping your guys. If you want to scale up a business, you gotta have great people. And I just genuinely believe that. And I believe that to keep those great people, you've gotta have work for them in the winter. It's gotta be work that they want to be doing that keeps them excited, that keeps them motivated. And I think it's really interesting to get into a business that's completely outside the landscaping industry that will keep your guys busy, whether that be like starting some sort of woodworking, like creating, making furniture, something with your hands, like they're gonna be good at it. Your employees making furniture, some sort of building, something you might be able to sell like on Etsy or on Craigslist. That just keeps them busy. But also maybe it turns into another business that you can work on the side during the summer and then really go full time on it during the winter. There's so many opportunities. So I think that's an interesting concept. I haven't heard too many people talking about, heard of people even just building like playground sets during the winter or doing assembly of playground sets and swing sets during the winter. It's just tough because usually even that is during the summer that people think about that, right? So it's tough to find an industry sometimes that'll actually work. But the one guy I was talking to, he actually builds them during the winter, sells them during the summer, that is wooden playground sets. Like, he builds them from scratch. And so obviously a lot of talent involved there, but just, just an interesting concept and something that we've been thinking about. And like I said, I've thought about this right from the very beginning of the year, the spring, when I hire every new person, I'm thinking about how am I going to keep them busy during the spring. I mean, sorry, the winter. And so I've been thinking about all year and especially in the past few weeks, as I know we, we feel fall kind of coming in. We had our first few days of really hard rain, which is kind of the first signal of fall coming in, which is obviously then followed by winter. And so it comes on us pretty fast. Obviously we still have a solid two and a half months of mowing left. And we still have two and a half months of. Everyone will be plenty busy with cleave cleanups and landscaping jobs. And grading will start kind of popping its head back up here in September. So, still busy, but I'm still thinking like, big turn, big time about, okay, December 1st, what happens? Because no, and then November, like Thanksgiving, we stop our mowing and after that I can keep a couple guys busy, maybe, you know, full time. But what about the guys with families and, you know, the office staff with family and things? Like, I want to make sure they have a good job to come back to year round, and they're going to be coming back to us in the spring. So a couple things to think about. You know, some guys have said, you know, to incentivize your guys by saying, hey, you're going to get a raise when you come back in the spring, and then just kind of letting them go during the winter. That's the cool concept. There's a lot of different ideas out there. I'd encourage you to go, you know, look around online, get ideas from other people. But I just wanted to kind of throw the debate out there and see what you guys are doing. And possibly that might have sparked an idea of something that you could be doing during the winter to keep your guys busy. And if you're just one guy, you're by yourself or even you just have one employee and you're like, ah, this doesn't really apply to me. It's not super big deal. I'd encourage you to start working on it now because if you have plans of growing the business to 5, 6, 10, 20 employees, you can start working on it now and get a couple year head start on creating some sort of a separate business or a different niche or a different type of service that you can offer during the winter. Get a leg up on it and then start hiring guys and knowing that you can keep them busy during the winter. It's a huge plus. So I encourage you all to think hard and think really hard about what you're doing this winter, what your strategy is. I hate the fact that landscapers think that during the winter they've got to lose money, that they've just gonna kinda like cross their fingers, you know, hold their breath and just try to get through winter till spring. I think that we can turn that around and if we get creative, really use our heads, we can really begin to create revenue, real business during the winter. Even at the very least like we did last year, it was hardcore biz dev. It was lots and lots of marketing, lots and lots of biz development and networking with property management companies and businesses and really trying to get our foot in the door. And it pays off, it always does. And so just a couple ideas I want to throw at you guys and then as always, thank you to everyone that's signing up for the course. It's been so much fun. Lots of people join, you know, every week there's people that are joining the course and so I love seeing that. If you are interested in what that entails, let me know. But it's pretty straightforward. You get a Lawn Pro software, which a lot of people have asked me, like, is it the best software out there? No, it's not. It has its flaws, it's a little bit slower than I'd like. Its routing feature isn't the very best best. What else is? It doesn't track your employees as far as where they are live. What else? Oh, sometimes it has glitches. Like it'll literally just like not work for a couple hours, sometimes randomly every couple months. So there's definitely issues with it. However, it's a one time fee. You pay for it and then it's done. Right. Like unless you're getting it's like $9 a month for the routing feature on maps, but other than that it's not like you're paying monthly. And so there's definitely better software out there than Lawn Pro. Definitely. Absolutely. We use a program now and we pay hundreds of dollars for one type of software and we have another type of software, we pay hundreds of dollars for that each month. But it's just because we have the Scale now to make it worth it. However, if you're starting the business, you're under half a million, three quarters of a million dollars in revenue. Lawn Pro is the best bang for your buck. Absolutely without shadow of a doubt. It does the recurring billing. It allows you to add people's credit cards and do automatic payments to their car. Like, it's just great software. They are adding new updates like, like I said, the card you can now add to someone's file and profile. It does the recurring billing, generates the invoices automatically for you. So the reason I'm talking about that is because as part of the course, the $247 you pay, you essentially get a free subscription to Lawn Pro, lifetime subscription. And if you went and bought that at Lawn Pro, you can go to lawnprosoftware.com it costs $247. So essentially, when you buy the course, you get Lawn Pro for free. And you get all the course, you get all the videos and the templates that we've used for marketing. And that template that I was talking about, the estimate, like, you get all of that stuff. So. And that. And I'm gonna be adding a lot more stuff during the winter. In fact, we're gonna do a new employee training series. So we have a video training series on there. It's a few hours long, teaching new employees how to mow, how to do landscape, teaching them how to drive trucks with trailers, et cetera, for your new employees. It's what we've used at our company. We're gonna do a whole new series this winter. I'm gonna add a lot as far as what you should be doing your fourth year of business, since that's where what I've been doing this past year, I'm going to be adding content in there about adding new locations because we've added a new location this year. We'll be adding content on going into new markets because when we created our second location, we went into a brand new market and how to break into those and how to get your name out there and get brand awareness. It was really fun this year because with that second location, I was able to basically do SEO right from the get go in the new territory that we kind of broke into. So really had to figure that out. And I'll be sharing all of that, that stuff this winter when I get more time and to put video content up on the course. So all of that will be on the course. You don't pay more for it once. It's just a one time 247 bucks. You get the Lawn Pro software for lifetime and then you get all the course material as I add it. Totally free. It's all part of it. Once you're in, you're in. So check that out. Landscapebusinesscourse.com until next time, guys. Be great. Nothing else.