Why 2022-2025 Will Wipe Out Small Business... and Create Massive WEALTH!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. Hope you're having a great Saturday. Today. We're doing a call in. Show the call. You just call the number below here, 361-733-3333. And we'll go ahead and get started with some Q and A. But before we do that, I wanted to do kind of preface today with a little bit of information about what I feel is going to be a great reset in the next three years of small businesses. And there's a whole bunch of financial and economic indicators I think kind of lead to this, and I don't really talk a whole lot about them. But whether it be inflation rising, the way the labor market is, etc, there's a lot of things that are telling me that we're going into a recession. I've talked about this since October of last year when I talked about how I was selling my stocks. And I've expected 2022 to be pretty choppy. Obviously, I didn't expect like the war in Ukraine to massively impact inflation and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, it's played out even more so than I thought because of things like that, you know, China shutting back down because of COVID and all the rest of it. So let's talk though, about why I think 2022, 2025 is going to be a great reset for small businesses. When you look at the labor statistics from the bls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the United States, which is a good indicator of Canada too, honestly, and a lot of other countries, because a lot of the economies of the world are actually trending in the same directions because everyone kind of got a massive kick in the butt from COVID And so economic stimulus was pumped into almost every economy. Inflation is in every economy. And because we're so globalized when, when it comes to trade, a lot of the things are felt all over the world, but the BLS is for the United States. And what I'm seeing right now is a massive loss of jobs in the small business sector, while at the same time politicians and headlines are talking about the massive amounts of jobs that are being created. So if you look at last month, for example, everyone's bragging about 400,000 new jobs created in America. And if you look at the actual data and the breakdown of which businesses got those jobs and started and created new places of employment, it's literally all of those gains are for big corporations and slightly medium corporations, which is like 500 employees or above. But then for the small, oh, sorry, 50 and above. But for small businesses under 50 employees, there's a negative number of jobs being created right now. There's a loss of a hundred thousand jobs last month to small businesses. So we're seeing this shift from small businesses to large businesses. And I feel like that's because when you start going into a recession, small businesses are going to be impacted first because they don't have the access to capital that a publicly traded company does. Because a publicly traded company, if they need cash, because wages go up, if they need cash, because they need to deploy into a new sector of the market, want to start a new product, they simply can dilute their shareholders if they want to by just creating new shares of their stock. We can't do that. Small business owners, we don't have the access to that kind of capital. We don't have access to the type of corporate bonds that Apple and Google and all these other companies have. And that's why they take on lots of debts, because they can get it like 1, 2%. We, as small business owners, especially in this environment, are not going to be able to get that. And so that's why small business owners will feel the impact of the economy, of a recession prior to the actual large companies, S&P 500, these publicly traded companies. But the past week or two, again, I talked about this at conference, like, this is, this is the trend that's going to happen. We're going to like, see this happen. And on the small business front, then we're going to start seeing, on the large business front, then we're going to start seeing the housing market, then we're going to see a crash. Like this is, it's all pretty predictable. And so the timing of it, you can never get it perfectly, but you can see macro what's happening. And so small business owners hurting massively right now. We can't hire people. All those jobs are being sucked up to medium and large corporations that can afford to get cheap debt, dilute their shareholders and grab market share. And so small business owners are going to hurt really, really bad in the next three years when we crash, when the real estate market crashes, home improvement businesses are going to really, really get hurt. And so you say, well, why are you saying that? Like, obviously a large part of my wealth, a large part of Augusta Nation, we're very tied to the economy, doing well, because at the end of the day, most of our services are discretionary. When it comes to landscaping, lawn care, not so much, but landscaping and any home improvement business, a lot of your Revenue is discretionary. People don't have to build a deck, they don't have to build a fence, they don't have to paint their house. Like a lot of that's discretionary. And so when you go into recession, a small business owner feels it first. We don't have the access to capital like a large corporation does. But this is why I feel the next three years can be really hard. And then whoever can stay through it will absolutely Crush it from 2025 to 2030. I truly believe this. And I said middle of last year, 2021, I told all of my managers, hey, right, right now everything's going really well with the economy. We need to prepare the businesses for basically economic collapse. And here's what needs to happen. And if we can just get through the next few years just breaking even or just barely losing money, if we can just stay the course, we will crush the following five years. And I truly believe the same thing for every small business owner. If right now in this market you can just hold on, there's so many small businesses going out of business and just wait until that number starts going from a hundred thousand dollars of job loss in small business sector a month to 300,000. Just wait till that happens because it will happen. When that happens, the amount of small businesses that are going to go out of business in America will be staggering. And there's going to be a massive opportunity to take the labors from these small businesses that over the past 12, 24 months have been extremely hard to find, meaning very expensive. And it's going to be whoever can hold on for the next three years, the following five years are going to absolutely crush it because they're going to have access to cheaper capital as interest rates come back down. Because they will, you can just see interest rates over the course of time when they spike and then they come down, they spike and they come down. So when those access capital become better access to employees and labor, which is the absolute number one limiting factor for most small businesses right now, is is going to get better. And it's going to come from the businesses that currently right now have low margins, no systems, and have businesses that are just, are not stable through a recessionary time. They're very, very dependent on discretionary income instead of recurring based income. And I truly believe the great reset will take a lot of small businesses out, especially middle, middle of the size businesses. Right. I don't think Chuck in a truck is gonna get hurt a whole lot. I don't think that massive companies are gonna get hurt. It's everyone in between. When I say everyone in between, I mean everyone from like one or two employees to like 15 or 20. And the reason for that is because at that level you're very, very vulnerable to labor market and you're very vulnerable to not having systems in the business to run. And so I feel like what's gonna happen, a lot of those middle of the road companies will get wiped out over the next three, three years because with inflation, margins are getting compressed because of the labor market. We can't find employees. And so people either shrinking down to one or two employees or they are basically just going out of business. They're realizing that this is just way too stressful. I can't find employees, this is so horrible. I can't even find a manager that wants to show up and do their job. And they're just going to go out of business. The middle ones will go out of business or they'll retreat back to being one or two, two employees or no employees whatsoever. And all of those other, that middle ground is going to be a massive opportunity. I just, I just believe it. I'm just putting it on record. And that's what I'm planning for in all of my businesses. The next three years to be very, very difficult and the following five to ever can survive it is going to crush. Because over the past 12 to 13 years the economy has been so frothy and great and good. Like 12, 13, really 14 years. And a lot of business owners don't know what it's like to go through a recession. I have spent the past three to four years studying recessions and studying how businesses got through it. Because there, there's one thing that's for sure. You're always going to have a recession eventually. And it's the companies that figure out how to operate within those 12 to 24 months that massively outperform the market and take massive market share. And I've been talking since 2019 about the next recession, trying to get everyone to plan for it. And I've been operating my business the same way. It's like, look, we're going to get ready for this and take massive market share at the end of this when everyone else has been wiped out because everyone's gotten fat and happy for the past 12 to 14 months. We're used to massive projects. We're used to leads coming in the door for projects all the time and work just coming through our ears or we're used to finding employees relatively easily. All of that's changing, all that's going to change and it's going to wipe out all the people who don't actually have business chops. The people who don't know what they're doing, don't have systems in place, don't have actual marketing methods, don't have a system in place to actually generate leads. And it's going to leave a massive opportunity. And so I'm looking forward to 20, 25 and beyond. Like, that's a long ways away. Yeah, it is. That's the game of business. But the people who, the 80% of people who will give up in the next three years because it's going to be very, very difficult.

They'Re going to miss out on a massive opportunity. I really believe, like everyone always says, like, man, I wish I would have bought real estate in like 2005, 2006, 2007. We're going through that in the next three years. In the small business community, what we saw in the recession of 2005-2006-2007-2008 in the housing market, everyone's like, man, if I would have just bought that house down the road, it was a hundred thousand and now it's worth 400,000. That's literally what's happening right now in the small business market. We're going, we're like literally entering into 2006, 2007 right now in the small business. And that is, it's very hard to remember how bad a recession is and it's gonna get worse. Next three years are gonna be brutal. But the people who can stay in the game and actually raise their prices, create some profit, get employees, create brand awareness when there's, you know, right now 40 people on your, in your local market, on Google for your service and all of a sudden that becomes 15 over the next three years. The 15 that will remain will crush it as the economy turns around. So just my opinion, I'm planning for it 100%. So.

Okay, someone is very, very dark in here. Of course the name is Dark Moon. Yeah. Let's go through some of these comments. Feel free to call in. Let's see here. Hello, K. Lawn Care monster Phelps hero. See here. Sadly, many younger people are super lazy and entitled attitudes. I wish you luck on finding people who are willing to work for their wages and do a great job thanks to our mainstream media etc. You know, like this may be true, it probably is, but you have to play within the confines the rules the game that's been outset complaining about propaganda, complaining against the mainstream media. Although it may be true. You can't change it. Right? It'd be like trying to change the rules of a game that you're playing. It's like you can't change the rules. You can't argue with the referee and win the game. You got to figure out how to win inside the confines of the game and realize that the second, the third quarter might be really, really tough. I. E. The next three years of business are going to be really, really tough for small businesses. And I don't try to. I try my best not to make this channel like everyone should go into their own business and do their own thing because it's not easy. The next three years are going to be hell for small business owners. The people who can stay through it and take market share during that time are gonna crush, just absolutely crush, obliterate. So.

When you chew crashes, you've got nothing to do money. I still love my smoke. Okay, Dark Moon. I truly believe that's not true. Okay. Man, you are so much rubbish. You honestly do not what you're talking. Okay, you don't have to watch me. You know, it's a Saturday. You could just go do something else. Go, go for a jog, go look at some scenery outside, relax. Go watch CNN or Fox News if you want. They might give you some better, more entertaining value. So.

When will you have a look at websites from user again? I'll try to do that occasionally. I only usually do a few times a year. There's a video a few weeks ago. Feel free to check that one out. Okay. Dark Moon just is going off. That's fine. Okay, let's see here. Some other questions are coming in but I'm going to go to callers. So today is going to be callers. I've done the questions before. Let's go ahead and go to the first caller. I'm just going to give the first three numbers of the phone number because I've. I've tried to give names or where someone's coming from but it's a joke. So we're getting a call from 913 call. It says it's from Kansas but it's probably wrong. How's it going?

Hello. Hi, how's it going? What's your name?

So.

I'm erin.

Cool.

I'm 13 years old and I'm looking to make like 15 to 20k this year.

Cool. Doing lawns or what's your business?

It's Aaron Lawn here. So I'm a lawn ring cleanup, leaf removal and snow removal.

Very cool. What's your question.

So I was wondering, so when I can drive, how would you go about finding employees while I'm in school?

Yeah. So you know, there's two ways to do it, right. One way is you get employees and they work while you're in school. The second is to not do that and just get people to help you on the weekend. And it really comes down to, you know, what you, how big you want to grow the business. But ultimately it's very difficult to find employees that can work effectively and efficiently when you're not around. And especially if they're part time, it's very difficult. And to find someone wants to work full time, it's going to say be 20 or 25 or 30 that wants to work for you while you're still in high school is sometimes difficult. So like what I would do first, Aaron, before you start trying to figure out a full time employee while you're in school, because that's going to cost a lot right now if you're only 15, 20,000 in annual revenue, what I would focus on is try to get some of your friends to help you on the weekend so you can get more jobs done. That's probably where your best bang for your bucks. And then you can help, you can manage them. Right. You be on the job site and actually, you know, help them make sure they're staying on task. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Cool. All right, brother, you have a good one. Best of luck to you.

All right, thank you.

Yep, bye.

All right. All right, we're going to go to the next caller and I might sometimes cut you off, but it's not because I want to be rude. It's just because we got to keep moving through the calls. So let's go ahead to the next one. And it is coming from a area code of 717. It says Pennsylvania, probably wrong. How's it going?

It's going all right. How you doing, Mike?

Good, good. What's your name?

My name is Jose. I am from Pennsylvania.

Cool. What's your question?

I've watched you for what, for about.

Two years now And I think this topic is got a disturbing question. So you're telling us small business starters and that in this year, within the first year of us this year and 2025 will probably crush. How would you motivate us to not do that?

That's the question.

To not quit, you mean during the next few years?

Yeah. What would you tell us to make sure that we can in this specific topic, that we don't crush and we don't give up totally.

First and foremost is to know the long game, right? And so if someone's in it for the next two to three years and they want to make a bunch of money, they're probably going to quit regardless. Because there's always going to be something wrong in the business, even in a good economy. And so I would say to someone that is like, man, I'm really discouraged. The next couple years are going to be really brutal. But I'm like, you got to stay focused on the long term game. And when I, when I started business, I will never want to think about the next two to three years. I want to think about like if it's, it's only worth starting if I'm thinking about 10 plus years. And so when I say that next couple of years can be brutal, what it should do is say, okay, what do I do to position myself in a way that after two or three years I'm going to be able to crush it? Because everyone's going to crush it after two, three years. Who is going to is the people that over the next couple of years build their business in a way that prepares for economic, you know, a really good economic time being able to hire people because there's unemployment that is higher. And so the person that has onboarding system to get those employees, the person that has a great website so that when goes from 40 providers in their market to 15, they're at the top of the 15, that's the person who will win. So I'd look at the next two to three years, hey, I'm just building the foundation. Nothing's gonna be like, nothing's glamorous about foundation. No one like celebrates or sends pictures of their foundation, of their house on Instagram. No one loves building the foundation. But if you look at the next two to three years as building a very solid foundation when there's a really good opportunity when it comes to economic growth and employment, that's when you start building a really, really cool building and a really cool business that has higher margins. But it's a matter of over the next couple years, how do I get my website to rank? How do I make sure I have the systems for my employees, how do I have a good employee handbook, how do I implement something like pay for performance so that when I hire people they can make more money without me managing? That's all the stuff that I would be doing over the next two to three years.

So that's what if I'm understanding right what you're giving us as an advice is do not focus on, you know, that six year.

Making a lot of money like becoming a millionaire and a real entrepreneur that is projected in the social media right now. You know, you got to be balling to be a successful person. So what you're telling us is yes, it is a recession. Yes, you still can make it, go in the game and enjoy it, enjoy the process, prepare yourself and do not worry about how much you're making right now. Because yes, there is a recession and people are looking into ways of saving money, not spending it.

Exactly. And again, every single fortune is usually made during recession. So if you look at the real estate market of 2005, 2006, 2007 and then crash in 2008, 2008, everyone's freaking out who you could literally be blind and buy whatever you wanted during 2007, 2008, 2009 and literally have tripled over the past decade. And so the same thing is going to happen. It's just psychology. And that is right now, people are willing to quit small businesses because they can't find employees. They're tired of customers going after Chuck and A trucks. And what they failed to realize is that we're going into the next two to three years of very difficult times. And whoever can buy up real estate, I. E. Get more employees, take your market share, grow their business, create systems, have a better website, have a better marketplace online. Whoever does that is going to be the real estate tycoons of what today is. That was created in 2008. Right. Every single market crash creates massive opportunity to make massive money. And most people don't do that because the psychological pain of staying in the market when everything is going down from a stock perspective or from a. A real estate project, there were people who sold their house in 2008 and 2009 at the very bottom of the market because they're like, I just can't take it anymore. If they would have held on for just several more years, it would have turned out to be a great investment. And that's what's going to happen. The small business communities, people are going to give up because it's so hard to find employees. No one has money, all the rest of it. But the people who stay through that time actually build their business and take market share. They'll be the ones that to create generational wealth towards the end of this decade.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you, man.

You got brother. Take care. All right, next caller is from. It says Nashville, Tennessee. It's a 629 number. You're on the show. Welcome.

Hi.

Hi. How's it going? What's your name?

My name is Parker. I'm from Tennessee.

Cool, cool. What's your question?

So right now I started my business in February of this year just doing lawn maintenance and smaller landscape work. My question is I feel like I'm getting to the point of where I might need somebody to help me out with perhaps a little more experience than I have, because I feel like I don't.

No. Kind of always just feel like I know what I'm doing. But.

I guess I just wondering if I should hire somebody with more experience than I have or just try and stick it out on my own for the time being.

And how many, how many employees do you have right now?

None, it's just me.

Okay, cool. How long you been in business?

Since February of this year.

Got it. So why do you feel like you don't know what you're doing when you're saying that? Is it like from the business side or from like doing the work side in terms of experience, what are you looking to plug in terms of, you know, gaps?

Yeah, I guess doing the work. Just sometimes I. With like maybe a landscape job or something like that.

Okay. And then so you're thinking, like, I need to go hire someone with more experience in the field. Right.

Right.

So that's gonna be really hard to find and expensive right now. Right. Especially if it's like landscape, hardscape, projects, etc. Like, are you crazy busy? Like, is it like out of your mind? Just crazy busy right now?

It is really hard to keep up by myself right now. And I work a second job on the weekend as well.

And then I could sometimes have one person help me out, but it's not really like an employee at this point.

Yeah. Like, I would probably recommend trying to first look at what services you're offering and seeing if you can cut out the ones that you're incompetent in. Right. And trying to figure out, you know, what services make me nervous. What services do I lose my shirt on because I don't really know what I'm doing or I feel incompetent. Like, realize that as a new business owner, you're going be un. You're not gonna have confidence in most of the things you're doing. Like it's your first time doing this, I'm assuming, or at least you're starting new to this industry or this business, whatever. Like you're constantly second guessing yourself. That's. That's what business is. And so.

You know, don't feel bad about that. But what I would say from a, from a strategic standpoint is instead of trying to go hire someone that's going to cost you more money, that's going to be really hard to find and be expensive and probably have a lot more demands on what when they work and how they work and all the rest of it, especially your second employee. I wouldn't recommend that. Recommend trying to get someone low level skill that is able to just basically take commands and orders from you on the job to be able to increase your efficiency and increase your revenue. And to do that though, you're going to want to just take jobs and projects that you're, you are confident in getting done. And so especially if you're really, really busy right now, this is a matter of like the time to start shedding those services that you're just not confident in, not profitable in. You feel like you're making mistakes on things like that.

Okay.

Sounds good, thank you.

You got it, brother. Have a great day. All right, the next caller is coming from. It says Huntington, New York, but it's 631 number which I do believe is Long Island. So go ahead six three, one.

Yep. What's up Mike? My name is Anthony.

So I am born and bred. My dad was in the landscaping business prior to me. So pretty much all I know he, about three years ago he, you know, retired. We worked out a deal where I took this company over which was about 65 accounts. So I was cutting, you know, maintaining those lawns, me and one employee, obviously not too much overhead and expenses.

Last year, at the beginning of last year I purchased another company bumping me up to around 215 accounts. So now I have five employees.

And my question to you and obviously a lot of overhead and expenses that I didn't previously have and I sort of did go 0 to 100. So it's been, you know, a struggle. But it's, you know, what I do and what I know. So I'm definitely not complaining. But my question to you is, do you have any advice on cash flow? Because I, I use Aspire for my route sheets and I'm collecting a lot of data. Obviously I use QuickBooks as well, so I'm collecting data there also. And my numbers are all pretty good. My profit margins are, are nice and I'm happy with the amount of money that we're generating. It's just getting the money in that seems to be my biggest hurdle.

Okay, so a couple things. So you're saying getting more money in is the problem right now, or is it when you say money no like revenue or you mean profit?

No, just cash flow. I just need cash flow. Like everything. The profit margins are there, the revenues there. It's just keeping up with the, you know, customers that are not paying, holding out on payments. And obviously I have, you know, a decent sized nut to come up with every month for payroll. So that's, that's my biggest struggle right now as far as operations where, you know, we crush it. You know, we really do. We have a great team here, but it's just getting the money in. I'm always owed so much money, you know, out on the street.

So a couple things. It's very common this time of year to be in this situation because we're kind of going like most money in home improvement, almost all of it in terms of profit is made in the second half of the year. So this is usually like the kind of the, the, the, the bottom trough of profitability or cash flow, right. The next six months, we kind of collecting on people that were overdue and all the rest of it. So here's what I'd say. Here's the really easy one that most people do, and it's something that's simple, is get a line of credit, right? That if you know, you're profitable and just a cash flow issue, getting a credit line of credit will help this problem, and then you'll pay it off in the second half of the year. That, that's like the simple, easy answer. Another. And if you have good tax returns, you're gonna be able to get a line of credit pretty easily, right. If you can show good balance sheet in your business, et cetera. Go ahead.

No, I was agreeing. Okay.

Yeah. And so that's like the easy thing. Then you got to look at further beyond that. It's like, okay, what actually operationally can I change to improve the cash flows? Like, okay, do I make sure I have a credit card on file? So that way someone cannot go to collection? Like, they don't. It cannot not pay me. Can I require them to have a card on file? Can I, you know, invoice them, you know, every week or every day instead of every month? Those are the more operationally things that you'd have to change your response to those. What's that?

So, okay, line of credit? Yeah, I, you know, obviously I thought of that. Now what I was afraid to do is actually require people to.

You know, give me a credit card or have some type of car Payment on file. And obviously reason being is just, you know, that my expenses are so high if I get paid pushback or they don't want to, I, you know, I'm just nervous to, to try to, you know, back them into a corner like that. And then they, they say, oh no, I'm gonna go to the other guy that I can string out for another two months. And you know, that's, that's pretty much my theory.

Let me ask you a question. This question could backfire on me. Out of all of your bills, let's say you have hundred bills, how many of them do you write a check every single month for versus having a credit card on file or bank? Like ach.

I understand. I. Dude, I know. But it's also, this is the business and it comes down to, it's like a supply and demand thing. There's so many, everybody in their brother's a landscaper. So you know, I'm easily, I do provide an amazing service. We show up on time every week. Nobody ever has to worry. But in the same breath there's a guy out there that will do it cheaper and you know, that will put up with, with not getting paid and stuff like that. But I'm at a point where I'm realizing fast because my second year doing it with this amount of employees that I can't, you know, I can't keep doing it the same way. It's not working. So.

So why would someone, I choose you over him? Why would someone choose your business over him? Because, because he's obviously cheaper. They don't have to pay him occasionally. Why would they choose you?

Well, I would say quality and reliability. That's what's going to be the separation right there.

And so what you're going to do is require your car. Having a credit card file is going to flush out 5 to 10% of your customer base. All the ones that give you the most headache and always the ones that give you the most problems about your pricing and you showing up at the right time. And they are the ones who are 30, 60, 90 days behind. So, so putting little occasional like price increases or acquiring things like credit card file allows you to get rid of those customers and then you're going to have way more time to go focus on getting new customers that are actually willing to pay a price. And furthermore, we always think of like require a credit card as like a bad thing. Keep in mind, personally, all of us like to do it. Secondly, you're actually paying for their convenience. They're going to get their extra 1% back or their air miles or whatever. And most people actually want that. And so either a, I would like say if you're hesitant about it, make your onboarding process of a new customer much more pushing them towards that by really talking about how your customers love it. It's a great auto pay and it's like the next step of the process of getting set up as a customer. And then if you like, literally, if you do that correctly, 90% of your customers will use it because they want to. And then if you want to, if you still need the cash flow, require the next 10%, put a car on file. And guess what? Those are the 10% that are causing all the cash flow issues. And so they left. You shouldn't really worry. So I think first of all, you got to spin it. First of all, it's actually a positive thing for them. Most of them want it. Most of them want the air miles and the cash back. If you're hesitant about making a requirement, make it much better in the onboarding of the new customer as an email, that's like, hey, the next step here is to set up autopay and all our customers love it. Click here and then just go right.

Into the form right now. I don't know how much time you have with me, but to even push, push the envelope a little further. What do you think about more? Because, like, look, everything's subscription based. And I think that's the name of the game in landscaping. Almost like alter it to be like a subscription, like Netflix. Like, you pay for Netflix the month before you use the service. Do you think that is something that's feasible in the landscape industry? Basically like saying, hey, if Your lawn costs $160 a month, you know, we chart, we build the cards out before we do the work.

If you do services year round, I'm a big fan of this. I would do this in a heartbeat.

Okay.

If I, if I was able to mow your lawn year round, and that is charged at the beginning of the year, we have a couple of our franchisees August along here that do this and they, they have the best cash flow in the world. But the problem is if you don't mow someone's lawn for three or four months or maybe do it once during the winter just to kind of keep up with it. It's very difficult to, to convince people that they're paying for something prior to it happening, and then you don't see them for three months. Right? So.

Well, Mike, Mike, I was saying during like our cut season. During like our, our window of cut season. Just as far as you know, let's say I do ask all my clients to get a card on file and then instead of saying, hey look, we're going to bill you out after the four cuts are done for the month. We're going to bill you before the four cut. If it rains and we don't come, you'll get a credit for the next month. I think that's like, I think that's like the best way to stop that cash flow problem totally. But I just don't know if.

No, I, I agree 100%. There's a few things why we never done it. And the number one positive thing is cash flow. I'm all on board with doing level billing even for like say eight or nine months, doing it prior to the month starting. There's a few things that, that throw a little bit of a glitch in this. Number one, you're going to have months where there's five services, right. So you can't just multiply it by four. You're going to have to bake in like 4.3. Right. So then they start running the math against the guy down the street that's giving it per cut price and they're like, well, you're like $10 per cut. It's like, well no, I'm baking the fact that there's going to be five cuts on three of those months. And so you know, you're starting to game like explaining things. But I'm, I, I like it. I like having upfront card on file. You charge it at the beginning of the month. And the reason.

Honestly, it's an admin side. Right. So say for example, someone cancels on the 15th of the month. Well now they want 50 of their that month refunded to them. Right. What happens if someone, you know now it's a matter of like if they got long grass. You're still going to do a per cut price to get them up to spec, but before they can go on to that. So you're just adding more friction to the beginning of the sales process.

Right. More variable, more variables can arise from.

But, but you do solve myself cash flow, you solve that problem for sure.

Right, but I'm also locking myself into a set price. There's no room to adjust is what you're saying.

Yeah, but you can raise, you can raise prices like, like a subscription, right? You can absolutely do that. It's just that um, I've seen it harder to upsell customers too. It works really well. What you're talking about works really well for full service and 12 months. Right. So when I say full service, I mean you're doing their weeding, their bush trimming. You do everything. When you show up with a property, I've seen it work really well for that. And for 12, if people mow year round, it's a little bit harder. When you are trying to upsell, for example, mulch now you're gonna bill for that after the fact. Right. It's just more explaining to a customer and I'm not opposed to that. It's just you're adding friction to the upfront of the relationship and if you're not trying to grow, that's probably fine. And so I'm a big believer once someone stops wanting to grow their business and if you're at that point.

This would be a good move and that is you're gonna start adding some more friction to the sales process by requiring, hey, I need, by the way, if you wanna do mowing service with this, I'm going to take a card right now and I'm going to charge you $250. Like that's more friction to yeah, we'll be there tomorrow and we'll bill you at the end of the month. Which can all be automated. Right. So you're just adding more friction. But I think, you know, based upon what you've said, I think that's a good move for you. I really do. You're going to add more friction. You don't need to grow. You're not in that stage where like I need to grow, grow, grow. You can change that policy down the road if you need to. Go ahead.

But in the same breath, I am 29 years old and you know, I'm fortunate enough to rent for my parents. So basically it's like, you know.

All hands on deck for this business. So I, that was my next question for you is I'm at that 202/15 mark. I have five employees, three on one truck, which is my big bench route, and then two on my other truck, which is more, you know, spread out. How do I get, how do I break through from that like $400,000 revenue mark to like let's say a million or you know, obviously I know there's levels in between, but how do I, how do I push it?

It all depends on how fast you want to do it. Right? If you want to do it fast, you're probably not going to do 12 month billing card on file. Payment prior to service. That's going to be a more friction up front of the sales process. If you want to sell over the phone, get them on the schedule and bill later and you have a card then, then you're probably gonna be able to scale faster. Now that's. This is the thing. If you want to build a million dollar business over the next 10 to 12 years, I would do the more cautious approach, better cash flow approach that we've talked about. If you're like, I've got to get there in the next three years or I just want to quit, that's when it's like, okay, well, then you're going to have to. You're going to have to sell over the phone. You have to reduce friction of the sale. You're not going to be trying to do all these other services and you just want to focus on selling and that, that again, just. Just a matter of close ratio.

All right.

Yeah. I'm trying to think what else I could ask you. Because honestly, dude, you put out such good content. I appreciate, I appreciate the time.

My pleasure, brother. We'll stay in touch. Have a great weekend.

Hey, be well.

All right, next caller is coming from what says Locust, North Carolina. The area code is 704. Go ahead.

Hello, can you hear me?

I can hear you. Is this Philip?

This is Phil. Yes, sir.

Goodness. Caller ID thing never works. Go ahead. What's your question?

So I had an estimate today, and how I do it is normally go to the job site and after I do the estimate, have them, I send an email.

And they're normally like, fine with that. They're like, okay, and just like send estimate over email. But today I had someone ask, why can't I do it? Like, right there?

Yeah, good question.

Just out of, like, quick response. I said.

Like, it's part of the process, but I didn't think that was a good answer. Do you have a better. Like something better I can say.

So there's two things. There's what you should say and there is why. From a business standpoint, right. So from a business standpoint, why I would still send estimates and why we do Augusta is because if I'm going to try to sell in person, that means the person has to be home. That means that I have to meet them at a specific time usually. And it means that I'm going to have to do a proposal and then come back to their door and sell. And if it's going to take me an hour to do that, I'd rather go get four drive by estimates done or better yet, 10 over the phone estimates done in that same time. Because just a numbers game, right? So from a business standpoint, that's the first thing. Second thing from a business standpoint is they start realizing that you're the owner when you start coming with the pricing or selling in person. And they're also much more inclined to negotiate with you because you're, they know you're the decision maker. I like to put that back on the office. So I, as the owner am not kind of showing my cards and negotiation drops to basically nothing. Right? So that's. From a business standpoint. Those are the two things. From a, what should I tell the customer standpoint, it's like, you know, I'm not going to, I don't, I don't want to come up with the numbers right now. I'm going to take a video and I send that to the office and they are going to send you the estimate. It was an exact quote instead of me just giving you a ballpark. Because a lot of times they're just asking for a ballpark. That's what they ask for. And if they ask me for a ballpark, it's like, look, I don't want to give you a number. I'm not really here for that. I'm here to take a video, send it to the office. The office is giving you exact number. And then. And they like, literally, I've never had anyone be like, oh, but can't you just give me another. Like, they don't push after that. Cause they really like, oh, this is not the decision maker. This is not the person coming up with the numbers. And so they'll stop asking, pushing for it. But then if they're actually asking, like, why wouldn't you just sell me now if they're asking that, it'd just be a matter of again, deflecting the fact. Because if you do that, you, you're basically showing you're the owner. They know that you're not a part of a massive corporation. So whoever's in front of them, giving them pricing, they're now you're stuck with them. They're going to be able to text you, they're going to be able to call. If anything goes wrong on that job, they're going to contact you. Now if you're really small, like if you're by yourself, you're probably going to have a higher close ratio. If you're good at selling in person, if you have a good personality, good face, clean yourself up, you're probably actually going to sell more in person. But it becomes a numbers game. If you're getting two estimates a week, probably a good thing to stay on the property and sell the job. If you're getting 20 leads a day, you do not have the time to sell in person because you will not be able to get to maybe eight or 10 of them. Just from a time perspective, I'd rather get the 20 and sell 50% of them than get, you know, to eight or nine of them and get a 70% close ratio. Like it's just a numbers game. Does it make sense?

Right. It's fair.

Cool.

Yeah. I'm in the. I'm solo operator. Really small.

So how many leads a week do you get?

Thank you.

How many leads do you usually get a week?

What'd you say?

How many leads?

Right now it's about two or three.

Yeah. So, you know, like, I would say if you. Is it for mowing or for property clips or like for landscaping? What are you doing?

Just as. As of right now, Lawn care.

Cool.

So I would recommend mowing is man.

Yep. So I would. I would say if you're getting one or two a week, that's when you'd probably want to print like a form and then have fill it out and what the pricing is going to be.

Yep. I. I had.

I had yours from the landscape business course.

Perfect. To use that. And then literally just have a thing that they sign. They sign it that you take a picture of it, hand it to them, and then you get them on the schedule. Because you're not. You're not. You're not trying to pretend like you're a larger company. Now. What's going to happen is in a year or two, when you start getting employees, you will not want that because they're going to know you're the owner and they're going to really be disappointed. When employees start mowing their property, they're going to be disappointed in how the service has deteriorated over the past year because you're no longer the property. Like, this is what drags small business owners into staying small is the fact they go down these routes, which make more sense in the short term. And then what happens as they grow? They have to change. The system will not scale. So what will happen if you do this, which is fine in the short term, you'll sell more this year. But what will happen when you get a second and third employee? What's going to happen is you no longer will be on the property and you will get a bunch of.