What Truck Should You Buy? - Ep.40

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andy listening to the Landscape Business course podcast and today we're going to talk about some questions that came in via email from one of the course members. We're going to clarify some things that the course is all about. A whole bunch of questions been rolling in since we made it free and just a whole bunch of stuff I'm going to jump into today. Update of where we're at with our company and more. So I'm going to assume that most of you listen to Business Bootcamp podcast and have been hearing a lot of updates of where we are in our company and things we've been changing. You might have even listened to to our off site dinner meeting that we have with our company, talking about the future of where the company's going and that live conversation. So if you haven't, make sure you do catch up there on Business Bootcamp podcast and catch up, especially in the last like four to five episodes to get to understand a little bit more where I'm at with the company right now, decisions we have coming up, even the next few days. And it's gonna be a lot of fun. So for the day, let's talk first, the question that came in from Colton, who is one of the actually members of the course that we have@landscapebusinesscourse.com and if you haven't listened to the last episode, you would like to probably know that the course is now free. All I make you pay for is the course. I mean, sorry, the software. So that's LawnPro software is what you use. And just one of the questions that have been coming in is like, I don't have any affiliation with LawnPro whatsoever. It's just the software that we use throughout the video tutorials for accounting, for route management, for like everything, everything from your cr, everything that is done is through Lawn Pro in the videos. And so I want to make sure everyone's starting like there's no exception. You have to get the Lawn Pro through landscape business course. And so you just pay, that's 247. And you get all the videos, the modules for free. You get all the templates for your marketing, for your hiring. You get to see how we did our career fair and actually watch me give the presentation to all the new guys that were there. There was like 10 or 12 of them new ones that were there. And so watching the career fair and how we presented, you get access to all of our documents, our contracts and templates. And they're all templates that you can just download as documents and our word docs and put your numbers and your logo and your name in there and use it just free and clear. So that's all part of the course. It's all part of it. The employee training guide that we use, three hours worth of video that we have our employees watch the first day that they are on the job to kind of get them up to speed where the company is at, what's expected to how to mow, how to trim trees, all like the technical aspect and it's a template that you can use to make your own or just use ours. So all of that's part of the course. It's all free. You just gotta get the course through landscapebusinesscourse.com and get the Lawn Pro subscription. And so that's 247. It's lifetime. Okay. I'm going to do backwards, I guess. So a lot of the questions have been coming in since we made it free is like, do you have to pay for Lawn Pro every year? No, you don't. It's 247. It's lifetime access. The only thing like you get. All your users are free. So whether you have 50 users out in the field, you can make new users and they all can use it. It's no more extra cost. And that's why I really suggest this one for people in year one, two and three, when you get to year four, like where my company's at now, yes, you can afford a more powerful software system and we have switched this in the past few months. But we pay 3,$400 a month to use that software. That's just not feasible. It's not even numerically correct wise them to do fiduciary. So when you're young and you're only making 10, 15, 30 grand a month, so this is why we use LawnPro. It's not perfect. It's definitely the best bang for your buck. Absolutely no question about it. Everything from the estimating tools to take credit card payments, all of that very specific for lawn care. It's definitely the best stuff out there. And that's why we make it mandatory that people buy it through Lawn Pro or through Landscape business course and get that Lawn Pro. But we don't have any affiliation with them. But yes, 247 is one time you don't have to pay anything else. The only thing you'll have to pay for in addition is a couple of the things you can add on. One is like nine bucks a month and that's for route optimization and Then if you want to use stamps where you send the estimates with a click of a button via mail, it's like a dollar per or $1.40 I think per stamp and that they'll like put it in, print it off, put an envelope, stamp it, take it, send it to your client within a day and they do that per stamp so you don't have to do that. But the only one that I'd suggest you actually Getting is the $9 a month for the Route Optim. You have two crews so that's that. But other than that it's 2:47 one time. Excuse me. I just finished a two hour run and it's pretty late here and two hour run because I'm training for a tough mudder this Saturday and we. So we put on these backpacks that were ranging between 20 and 80 pounds and went running for two hours up a steep hill. So that's what I've been doing. So sorry, I'm a little bit winded. But anyways, I want to jump right into a question that came in from Colton who is one of the members of the course. I'm read through his whole email. It'll take me about three to four minutes. Excuse me. And then we'll jump right into.

Jump into the answers here. So I've already answered Colton. This came in several weeks ago but I thought it had some. It had a lot of the questions I get as far as trucks and then some marketing stuff in there. And so I just wanted to read this from Colton. Colton says hi, Mike, this is Colton. I spoke with you back during the winter about my lawn care business. I believe at that time you were under the impression I was in high school. So he essentially Colton is not in high school. He's actually taking night classes and he stopped going early last year. So he is not in high school but he's actually in his second season and is in college a little bit. Anyways, I purchased the course shortly after he is a course member. I purchased the course shortly after I spoke with you and watched the videos up to the point of where my business should be at at the end of the summer which is 200 to 250,000 gross. First off, I would like to say the course you created is very helpful. What I have seeing it 100% applied to my business how I can price out jobs and marketing. To give you an idea of where I was at with me my business, we did just under $100,000 last year with me and one other guy here in Tennessee. Leaf removal is huge. So we work mid to end of January this year. We have been with one truck, two guys full time which is me plus one other guy. We are doing average of $15,000 a month. I'm trying to switch to two crews but I'm having a real problem finding another truck right now. We are using one of my guys TR as the second truck but I am very uneasy about it and want to stop using it asap. I am using the MVP or minimum viable product model. So I am selling my personal diesel truck and looking for two three quarter ton pickups, Chevy or GMC single cab, gas burner 08 or newer and around 60 to 80,000 miles. Same as what you use I believe. My first question is how do you use, how do you find your trucks and what do you spend on them? If you don't mind me asking. My second question which is most important is marketing. I've got a website, victorylawnservice.com and I've been using Facebook ads. What I did was I created four or five ads, half focusing on lawn care and the other on landscape maintenance. I have spent a couple hundred dollars and have over 100 link clicks but not one call. So my question is how should I turn these ads back on? So my question is should I turn these ads back on and just wait longer or do you think something else is going on? How many clicks does it take for you to get one call? If you could get any advice it would be greatly appreciated. We are staying booked up but I know I will need more work coming up in the slow part of the summer. We'll be approaching soon. So sorry, excuse me. Colton, first of all, thanks for joining the course. It's been fun. It's been great. I think I remember talking to you and I think you actually your call was on the podcast. So VictoryLawnService.com is your website. Feel free to check that out. Everyone out there listening. Anyways, so first of all your question about the trucks. So it's a little bit different for me because we live right next to the Canadian border and with the Canadian dollar the way it is and NAFTA which allows for us to bring trucks across without having to pay any duty. Because of that I'm able to get trucks up in Canada essentially like a 25 to 30% discount depending on where the dollar is at. So I've gotten all my trucks up in Canada. It takes a little bit of PA and if you're a course member, let me know if you're close to the border and you want to use this strategy, but there's certain things you gotta do. It doesn't take very long. You call the manufacturer, get a compliance letter, go into the border, do some paperwork, and it's a few hours and you got yourself a truck.

And so I can save 25 to 30% by doing that. So I kind of have a really big advantage, to be honest with you, to get 25 to 30% off all my trucks. So for instance, just yesterday, actually, as I'm recording this, yesterday, I bought a 2008 Ford F250 super duty crew cab. Eight foot bed, so pretty long truck. And it had 150,000 kilometers on it, which is about 90,000 miles. And in Canadian dollars, I spent $11,600, which turns out to be $8,600 U.S. which is a steal of a deal. And no new brakes. It was an older gentleman that took really good care of it. It's super, super nice. It's gonna be my truck, actually, for what I used for estimates, because it has ac. The truck I've had for the last three years, my estimate truck, it didn't have ac. It had leather seats, which means you sweat a ton. And it was not comfortable. So I finally have upgraded. I got AC in my truck and it works pretty good. So. But yeah, so I kind of had a bit of an advantage as far as where I live. And if you live close to Canada and you need advice on how to use that program and get trucks in Canada, let me know. It's not super difficult, but if you're not, if you're not, if you're not in that position where you can go up to Canada, which is most of you, probably I would suggest obviously using Craigslist. And I'm not super mechanical, so I really can't look at under hood of a truck and like poke around and figure out if the engine's good and the transmission's good. Like I can drive it. And I've drove trucks a lot, so I can kind of get a feel of, you know, if the transmission good is the brakes good, is the steering good, things like that, obviously just by driving things a lot. But like, I'm not mechanically super inclined, so I have to go off a lot based upon what the person is like, if I trust them. So I personally, this is just, you know, me stereotyping. I look for an older gentleman that has the truck and preferably is the first or second owner of the truck and has had it for a long Long time and has service records. That's a really big plus. But the reason I look for an older gentleman, like I'm talking 50, 60, is they usually take really good care of it. They're not gonna go take it mudding. They're not gonna go do towing massive equipment. They're probably just gonna tow their trailer around their camping trailer. They might just drive it because they always drove trucks. So they're retired now like a retiree is per.

That's who I'd be looking for. I look at the person big time. If it's a company truck, I want to make sure it's like what type of is a roofing company where minimum wage guys are going to take it and go out and destroy the truck and rev it up and use the brakes like crazy? Or is it a company that's more professional that's going to take really good care of it, have service records, change the oil every 3,000 miles, make sure that the tires are always really good, the brakes are really good. If there's anything wrong, they're fixing it right away at the dealership. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the people, like if I trust them. And I, I can tell that literally within the first few minutes. And yes, I have looked at trucks and not bought them simply because I couldn't trust the people or I didn't have enough records of the service on the vehicle or the oil change was like 8,000 miles ago and they haven't done anything about it. Or the tread on. Even the tread on the tires is really, really low. It just tells me that they haven't been consciously maintaining the truck. If the brakes are squeaking when I show up, if the truck, even things the truck's not clean, these are all just signs to me and those are the things I have to go off of. Yes, you can fake all of those things. You can't fake being old. You can't fake having really good service records. You can't fake a good car facts report. So there are things that you can do and that's what I would suggest doing. Obviously Colton is part of the course. He knows that I don't like trucks that are more than 10 years old. I don't like trucks that have more than 150,000 miles on them. I'm looking for trucks that are three quarter tons so they can pull a bigger enclosed trailer and also like a dump trailer with material inside of.

Needs to be at least a V8. So if you are going to go with a 1500 or 150, it needs to be a V8, 4x4 just so it can pull those bigger trailers and even, even have soil in the back of the bed, things like that. And you know that from looking at the, at the course, Colton knows that I prefer the gas vehicles simply because they're easier to. They're not easier to fix, but they're cheaper to. And I don't like spending a lot of money on my vehicles. I've never spent more than. Never spent more than $9,000 on a work truck besides the dump truck, which is like 30 grand. But like as far as the work trucks, like 9,000 I think is the highest. I'm pretty sure. I'm just thinking here you have five, five of those and then the dump truck. So yeah, I don't think I've ever spent more than $9,000. I know that actually, I just. Yep. Actually this truck that I just bought the other day is the most expensive 8,600. So I've never spen that on a truck. The reason for that is because after four or five years of a landscaping truck being used every single day, being around materials, being around equipment, being around a lot of workers, you know it's going to get dented up. Things are going to happen. So to buy a $30,000 brand new one ton pickup dually diesel is not super smart in my opinion. Totally my opinion. I don't have anything against duallys. We want to get a Dually. I don't have anything against diesel. I want to get a dump truck diesel. So like, I don't have anything against those things. And yes, I know deals, diesels last forever. And yes, they're super reliable. But I've also on those older diesels, if like the starter goes out, you're out 500 bucks. Whereas with the gas one, you might be out 150. So the brakes, even the change in the oil and the maintenance, like it's, it's a lot more expensive than those diesels. The bigger the truck, you know, usually the more maintenance. And so that's just, that's just my opinion. And you know, on the course that's how I roll. I tell you exact what I've done. I don't tell you what is necessarily the best. What everyone's opinion on the matter is I just tell you what I've done. So I look for those three quarter tons, I look for gas operated vehicles that are going to pump me out a good solid six to eight years of use. And that by doing so I need them around 100,000 miles, preferably less. And I want that eight foot bed, I want it to be white so I can put my logo on. Like there's certain things I've just done all the time. So as far as trucks, that's what I look for. And I don't want to spend a lot of money on, I don't want to spend more than $10,000 on the truck because all it takes is an accidental sliding of a zero turn down a slippery slope into the truck to make it a dented truck. And if you didn't spend, if you only spent five or six grand on it, you're not going to shed a tear over if you spent 30 grand, you're going to start to not, you're going to regret it. And so. And the value, you're going to depreciate the value of the truck huge just by making that dent. I wanted to get a truck that's fully depreciated and especially if you have a standard cab, a single cab.

You can get those is pretty good deals. And so that's my 2 cents on the trucks. As far as the Facebook ads, I reply back to Colton with a little bit more context what I'm about to say here.

Yes, it takes a little bit of tweaking with the ads to find out what works, what creative, what words. When I say creative, I mean like what picture or video. And Facebook gives you a pretty good number. It gives you a relevant score, which out of 10 gives you a relevant score of how relevant your ad is to your demographic. And they base that on like shared likes, how long people are watching the video, if you have a video, if people are actually engaging with your post. And so that's a great way to kind of determine as you test these. And yes, it does take a while. Yes, I probably went through five, six iterations of ads before they started to actually make any sort of traction. What's difficult and what I don't like about Facebook ads, the one thing is it's tough to track calls. And especially in our business, when people pick up the phone, that's great. The reason it's tough to track calls is it's easier to track like contact pages, which we can do. You can track if people go on your website, but then how, you know, if they email you then. So for me, yes, the ads get them to pick up the phone and do business. It's also a way of creating social recognition. So for instance, we recently had a job it went really, really good. Two days, we turn it around. It's like a $5,000 job. Completely changed the landscape, made a wall out of boulders and then change this completely gross looking like hillside into a beautiful cascading waterfall. Quick job, mostly material cost. We were just bang it out. It looks super nice. So what we did is I knew the guy was on Facebook, the owner, and so we tagged him in the post. We put the before and after picture and made that a post and then boosted it, made it into an ad for our local area and that really took. Off you go, you get 10 of his friends liking it and saying, looks great, Steve and tagging him and then him going on there and actually making a shout out to us because he sees it in his feed. So like that's virality, that's word of mouth, you know, that's scalable. That is what's gonna. That is what. So the power of social media is. And that's why you want to use the ads. Things like that will stick more than just a picture of you with your mower saying, I mow lawns for $29 a cut or give us a call, need your mow. You know, got mowing service like those other getting creat and how you tag people, how you use your customers and your past jobs. That's important. Doing things like what we do. Every two weeks I make a video of all our jobs, which by the way, you should check out Augusta Lawn care services on YouTube or on our Facebook page. You see that? Every two weeks I make like a vlog style video of all the jobs we're doing kind of show behind the scenes. And in the ad all I put is get the behind the scenes of Augusta Lawn Care Services. And I target that to the people within 4 mile radius of our shop. So they've probably seen our trucks, probably drove by our, our, our location, our office and everything. So they've seen the brand name. Now they're. Now the text says get the behind the scenes. So they like, oh, that's cool. So you get a click on that. See how we operate, see what happens when we return back to jobs, see how we think through things. And I give some advice on like landscaping stuff. I give some funny things, like some cool shots and things like that before and after. They like those a lot. So that's virality. And because those people that are in that video, they're gonna like and share that because they're proud of their landscaping.

And so yeah, that's how you use ads. I Don't think just throwing up an ad that says we do mowing and throwing up randomly to everyone in your area is gonna do any good. Making sure you target area, make sure you target audience as far as age, demographic, net worth if they're home. We did another ad just recently to people that are potentially going to be selling their house and seeing if they can get a cleanup to try to improve the curb appeal, thus the value of their home before they sell it. So those are things all very important when you're thinking about creating those ads. So, Colton, I went a little bit deeper into that with you, but I hope that helps everyone out there. And last thing I would say, I know a lot of you have been. We've had a whole bunch of people sign up for the course since we made it free and just paying for the software I like. And it's funny, people, it's something because people need like permission sometimes to just go do it. And so I've gotten literally multiple emails just today asking, you know, is this course for me and is it going to be like, helpful? Helpful? And I know in the last episode I kind of clarified who this was for, but I just can't. I can't say enough just how much it's going to help you. Like, every single person has been a course member and now we're over 100.

Has there's actually not been one single complaint. No one has said this is a ripoff. Like, the stuff you're saying is wrong or I tried. It doesn't work. Like, I haven't any. Maybe there's someone out there just isn't saying anything and that's fine. But like everyone, it's been a lot of really positive feedback. People that are saying, hey, I've had, you know, 40, 50% growth this year. I know I've gone from 5,000 to 15 and 20,000. I'm looking to try to get to 20 then this year. And the course, all the course members have. No one's been on it for an entire year yet because we started selling it, I think in December of last 2016. And so just even in the past six, seven months, a lot of. Lot of the course members are seeing a massive amount of growth. So I definitely, I just really encourage you if you're in your first, second, third year business or if you're doing under about $50,000 in revenue, highly suggest you get it. It works. It just, it's not rocket science what we do here. Lawn care law, landscaping services. Like, it's not rocket Science, but just one or two tweaks in your business that can make it more profitable, more efficient, scale it out more, get more leads, get more to close clients. It's just one or two things. And so I'd encourage everyone out there to go get it. Like I said, I made it free. You're just paying the 247. Once you buy the course. I send you those credentials within a day. It's just worth it. I promise you. Even if you don't like Lawn Pro, after a year or two and you kind of outgrow it, I promise you it'll set you up for how you should be thinking about your jobs, how you should be doing your accounting. It's just a solid software system and that's what why I implemented it. So I just encourage you. Like, I don't mind everyone emailing me before they buy it and say, you know, is this for me? I'm kind of here. It's just funny, if I align them all up, they basically say the same thing in two paragraphs. You know, this is where I'm at. I'm just wondering if this course would be good for me. And I just. And they know, they're just asking for permission to do it, right? But yes, it will help, I promise. Like, there's six modules that you kind of work through on the course, and then there's additional, like the employee training guides for the videos. Then you got a seminar that I went to and I videoed that. You got.

The career fair that we did. You guys see me, what exactly I said in video form to them, that's like 45 minutes. The presentation I made to like 10 or 12 people. And like, you see all that, how I handled that? You see our shop, you see how we do our materials, how we load people, and how we think about my business ethos over the course of, I don't know, 15, 20 hours worth of content. I don't know, maybe it's 12, 15 hours of content broken up over all the modules and everything. That's what the course is. If you think anything in the podcast over the past six months has helped you, I promise you, I promise you that the course is going to help you. Check it out, landscapebusinesscourse.com and once you sign up, I'll get you your login credentials for LawnPro as soon as I possibly can, usually within 24 hours. And you can go ahead and get started right away on the videos. So until next time, guys, be great. Landscapebusinesscourse.com, check it out and as always you can feel free to email me. I have a couple different emails and feel free to use whatever, but right now you can use mikelandscapebusinesscourse.com even landscapebusinesscoursemail.com works. So just email me if you have any questions or if you have more questions about the course. I'd love to get as many people on it as possible and see just how much it can help your business.

Sam.