Why A Single Contract Could Actually KILL Your Business

There are a million problems in every home service business, but figuring out which problem to solve is many times the hardest part. Every single day you have employee issues, customer issues, jobs are going wrong, equipment is falling apart, but figuring out what are the big dominoes, the big issues that if you were to solve them would allow the business to grow, that's the hard part. Today's video, I'm going to talk with 10 different entrepreneurs and we're going to discuss this whole problem and how to fix it.

Hi, Mike. My husband and I have been watching your videos. We started about 5 years ago because of COVID and my husband was like, why don't we start a lawn care company? So we did. So what happened is I decided to obsessively start to watch you and learn everything I possibly could. And it's been amazing. And so I realized we were undervaluing ourselves and our work. And so this winter, we were pricing a place and I was like, just, that's $150 right there. And he was like, well, usually it's $75. And I'm like, nope, we're just going to go for it. And then it got easier from there. But, and I went out and I got the t-shirts and I threw one on and I just started from like an hour away, driving up to every house and every business. The last person that I talked to and handed out a flyer to, She actually is a property manager and she's going to give me 3 properties right now. And that is a mind-blowing thing right there to try to figure out how to be professional. I'm trying to learn so that maybe we can get certified as a woman-owned business. Yeah, it's all overwhelming. It's really super overwhelming. And so I wondered, my question is, Should I give— she said that she wants it to be known that she's going to add 25% for her upcharge or something when she presents. So we should just know that. And I wondered if somehow maybe because she says she has like 12 other properties, somehow maybe I should like try to, you know, give her a like 5% discount or something.

Yeah. So she's, she's the middleman. She's, she is, she's subbing this work out to you.

Yeah.

I would not recommend taking the work. I think if you put your energy towards other things, you're going to grow the business better. That 25% that she's marking up is your profit. That's what she's going to go charge them. She's going to upcharge and get that work. And it's going to probably revenue-wise, it's going to look good to you. But I can almost guarantee like these, these relationships always end poorly. And the middlemen just burn through to small contractors that are willing to do low, low profit margin work. And so, go ahead.

We kept our prices up. Like we, we made it our new high price.

Okay. Yeah. Then it's just a function of like, do they see the value in what you're doing? Like, I would not overthink whether or not you get this one contract. Like one contract at one customer has never saved me. And every single time I think I get a big one, I'm like, oh, it's going to change everything. And it always doesn't. Right? So like, I would never adjust the business based upon a customer. I would adjust the business based on my goals. And so what I would be very careful of is being overwhelmed by this customer, by all these things that seem overwhelming, like technology, like changing the LLC. These are all things that can be overwhelming or just we just realize like this is part of doing business and being careful about labeling ourselves as not being able to know technology. Even when it comes to like women-owned businesses and things like that, there's no one ever been said that like they labeled themselves a women-owned business and immediately their business took off to the moon. It's do you solve customers' problems and do you then deliver on that service at a high level and do you do it efficiently? That's the only thing that matters. And so I would be very careful about labeling yourself or thinking that doing so is going to lead to success. 'Cause the only thing that leads to success is doing work at a high quality, at a margin, consistently. And so I think the steps you're making now, like even like upgrading the systems, the technology, upping your prices, all very good. Focus on those things because you can control that. You can't control if she accepts the job. You can't control whether or not the labels change, whether or not the LLS— like, it doesn't matter. Just focus on what you can control and then you'll feel more in control because the things that you're actually working on, you can make a meaningful impact on. And so you can learn technology. Like, I always think of— there's one owner inside Augustus, his name's Mike Cooper. He came training, he's like 60 years old. He came, I'm like, there is— I told the leadership team after, I'm like, I'm really concerned from a technology perspective that he's going to be able to pick things up because we use a lot of software, not just HomeWorks. We use Paid for Performance, we use QuickBooks, we have backend stuff for Command Center. We have a whole bunch of different apps. Like, we have a lot of software. That guy now has 2 locations and uses AI probably more than me. That's— yesterday, so all these Christmas lights were taking photos of every single house. Then just telling AI to put a certain type of lights on there and it would send the client the, the text message with a picture. Like he crushed it and he's like more into AI and stuff more than I am. And so I would just know that like technology is a skill that you can learn and if you have the humility to know that you have a deficit, then you should be able to have the self-reflection to also gain that skill. So you can learn technology, you can learn how to change your prices, you can learn how to be professional and to just focus on those skills because that's a binary as to whether or not that's valuable to the business, whether or not it's valuable to have this customer or a label or the LLC being changed. Maybe it'll help, but I don't know that for sure.

Yeah. Well, thank you.

So are you saying— what I hear you saying is focus on things that we can control, that we know will make a difference, and not so much things like that huge bid, because it's taken me like 2 days to put that together. There's 3 different commercial properties. My wife's been like grinding on this woman-owned business and grants and changing LLCs and just looking for an edge.

Yeah, just ask yourself, the people that have got what you want and reached the goals that you aspire to have, if you ask any of them what made you successful, none of them are going to say it's because I got a grant for being a woman-owned business or I changed the LLC structure of my entity. None of them. They will say I I had a great team, I had a great product, I found great customers, and I just focused on what I can control. And the thing that makes this really difficult is there's so many distractions that are out of your control. Politics, economics, go down the list. You can't control any of that. What I can control is get enough customers so I can hit capacity and raise prices. And that's all I think about because I can control that. And the minute that you feel in control, you can actually take action. Because when you feel out of control, you stop taking action and things take 2 days to send an estimate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that sounds much more controllable. What you just said.

I would take everything you're thinking about and all the problems and the things that you're like kind of like juggling. And I would just start asking, can I actually move the needle on this in the next 24 hours? If no, off my plate.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So I guess kind of on another subject and I know we're taking a while and we'll try to hurry, but the reason my wife was looking into the woman-owned business grants is because we need to like add equipment, upgrade a truck, things like that. And our credit situation isn't to where we can just go out and get loans for those things. What would your suggestion be there?

Yeah, like assuming that it's going to take a few years for the credit side of things to repair, that's when I would just take your current amount of equipment that you have, determine what your capacity for number of customers that you can serve or revenue you can produce with those assets are. And maximize that. And when you hit that threshold, raise prices. Okay. So like when I say hit capacity, I need you to go determine what capacity means for you. That could be number of customers, that could be about revenue. Like how many trucks do you have right now, Alan?

One truck, one trailer, one mower, two trailers, two blowers.

That means you could have you and one other person.

Yeah.

And so it's very likely that if you rose to capacity and then raised prices, you could very easily do over $200,000 in annual revenue with that setup. That's what—

so we're raising prices. I do have the ability to add another mower. Our local Toro dealer, they have used mowers and they like do in-house financing. Like, give me a down payment, pay me so much a month.

And, you know, I will say this, you've got to ask yourself, does getting the mower increase capacity?

Yes.

By how much?

My thinking is almost double, if not double. Last year I was turning away mowing customers because I just— there weren't enough hours in the day with just one mower.

I understand. What size of mower do you have currently?

52-inch Grandstand.

And what's the new one going to be?

It's either a 52 or a 60-inch. It's an older one. It's like a Lazer Z Toro.

So is it going to be any faster than your current 52-inch?

Faster as in speed?

Correct.

No, it'll actually be a little slower, but my thinking is I can have another guy mowing and I can do more.

Okay, so right now when you're out mowing and you have one person with you though, are they trimming while you're mowing?

Uh, yeah, but the trimming doesn't take near as long as the mowing. So I'm thinking like when they're done trimming, they hop on a mower.

Do you think 30% of their time is spent waiting for you?

Yes, I think so. It's not always how it is. And that's a customer or that's an employee issue. But I think with improvement there or a different employee, that, that could change where they would be waiting on me. And in that time they could hop on a mower and get to work.

Right. So, so buying the asset in this case is a Band-Aid for the fact that you have, you have a personnel issue.

Okay.

And so I would fix the personnel issue. And then when there is 30 to 40% waste of them literally waiting for you because they don't have a mower, then you go buy the mower. There will always be mowers to buy. The thing that's so great about raising capacity, i.e., buying more trucks and getting more equipment, is you can do it tomorrow. No problem.

Yeah.

And so I would focus much more because— and people do that because it's the easy thing. Like the easy thing to go is buy the mower. The harder thing is to train the right person, get them efficient to the point where they are waiting for you 30% of their day. And then I would say go greenlight getting another mower. 'cause you might increase your actual capacity by maybe 10%. Just be clear, if they were waiting for you by 30% of their day to not, 'cause like you do not have a second mower, you might increase your capacity by 10% by getting another mower. And so again, these are the, these are the distractions we're getting involved with instead of just thinking globally in terms of like, how much revenue can I do if I get an efficient employee with me all day long? 'Cause getting an efficient employee could very well take them, like you, you could increase their efficiency by 40 or 50%, a lot more than a mower and not have to go spend the money or get the debt for a piece of equipment.

Gotcha.

So I would focus on that first, especially cuz you're cash constrained. Like if you're like, hey, I have a bunch of money, I wanna grow, then like sure, raise capacity all we want, hire people, buy more trucks, get more equipment. Woo-hoo. But like when you have, when you're cash constrained, I wanna hit capacity and then raise prices and then optimize product or profit. Profit mode is optimization. And part right now, as I'm hearing, is you will get more efficiency and optimization from getting a better employee or training them better than getting another mower. And so we're de facto going to the easy button, which is buy more trucks and equipment. That always is the case.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

I'm going to move on to the next one, Alan, just for the sake of time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Evan, you're up.

Hey, got a quick question about door hangers for you. So next week I must target a specific area, a new area that I did not service last year. Is there a general rule of thumb as of for testing a certain location of minimum, or what's the general rule of thumb of like, so I know my numbers as a result of how many I put out versus actually getting the client?

Is there—

my question would be, is there a rule of thumb of how many I should test in a certain market and area?

Yeah, in general, we test only no more, no less than 5,000. That being said, what you want to be careful of is if that's going to take you 2 or 3 weeks to put out, just realize that seasonality is a huge part of this, especially if you're doing it going into spring rush. If you have a really warm day and the grass is growing like crazy, you're like, oh my goodness, door hangers are great. And then next day it rains and you get no calls. So just be careful of that. Seasonality plays a big function of it. But as to whether or not we run— when we run tests, we're looking at 5,000 or at least in terms of running that test, especially if you're trying to like split test two different types of door hangers, for example.

Yeah. So I plan to put out just regular door hangers. Then I have the instant quotes as well, which I'll have price for. Should I do all instant quotes for the subdivision I'm going to go try to do, or how should I go about that?

Like, if you really wanted to get most accurate, I would probably do like odd and even numbers. So that way it's like you're putting at the same time, same neighborhood, and they're evenly distributed and you're able to track on the back end all your new customers and just see how many of them are even and how many of them are odd. If you did that, you'd be able to know pretty quickly. Also, you could just evenly distribute, like, just every other one, even if it's not even a nod, because you're going to get instant quotes sent to you via a picture. You're going to get phone calls from the other ones or emails, right? So I think either way, I would filter them throughout. So that way, because if you did like all one day and then all the next day, again, the weather could play a huge German factor, right? So I would probably disperse them. And then because you have a completely different, like, mechanisms for getting to you in terms of instant quotes versus not, you'd be able to tell which one's performing better.

Right on. Perfect answer to the question. Thank you.

Got it. Great question by Evan. One thing I will add to this is you want to use a software like HomeWorks to be able to track where the lead is coming from. And so for every single call that comes to command center, every single estimate request form, every email, every time someone scans a QR code from a door hanger like Evan's putting out, We are tracking where that lead came from so we can track who are our highest value customers and where should we be spending marketing dollars in the future? Because it's not just about how many jobs I get, it's also, do they accept upsells in the future? Do they have a long lifetime value? Do they stick around for a long time and get a whole bunch of other services from me in the future? And so use HomeWorks. And when you get a door hanger, like he's talking about, get accepted, I want you to mark them the lead source as coming from a door hanger. So that way down the road, you can run reports on who are your highest value customers. Not just who accepted a job and how many jobs you got. So go check out HomeWorks, it's awesome. Well, Leah's up, go ahead.

I have a question about adding a second crew. And so you helped me figure out budgeted hours, I got that down and fixed our schedule.

We're 11 hours away from capacity, so, uh, you're starting to see yellow when you book jobs, you see yellow. Good job, let's go.

Very exciting. But so we've been talking about adding a second crew, but my worry is like, how do we transition from 1 to 2 crews? Because obviously crew 2 isn't going to be full, but I don't want crew 1 to be too full. And I don't—

That's when you, that's when you use one-time jobs. So what you're, what I want you to do is, okay, as you go into the spring rush, you know, you're going to be getting new jobs put on the schedule. Let's assume the 11 hours is maybe 20 customers would fill that up. Making up numbers here. All right. We're getting 5 new customers a week. Within 4 weeks, we're going to be at capacity. Within 4 weeks, I need to be hiring someone. Great. Also, I'm not going to have excess capacity because they're going to, they're going to add 30 budget hours of capacity. So I'm going to start 4 weeks from now booking one-time jobs so that when they come on, they are busy full time. And then I'm going to know that I'm also going to be adding 5 more jobs a week continuing, and then I'll be able to bring that number of jobs. That's why on the calendar you see the amount of recurring budget hours and one-time project hours. Because what I want you to do is go above capacity, quote unquote, in 4 weeks from now. But you know, you're adding capacity that week because you hired someone to start that day.

Okay. And would they— that would be like a separate truck and trailer and everything, or would that be—

assuming you're assuming you're at capacity, increase capacity using trucks and the equipment and the employee? Yes. Now, if you're like, hey, we don't have the capital for that, that's when you stay at that. 11, 11 more, like 20 more customers, we're done. We're raising prices. So you're getting to the point now where you're close to capacity and you're going to have this decision to make. And that is, do we raise prices and go into profit mode for the rest of the year, or are we going to get a truck, hire this other person and extend our capacity by 30, 40 hours?

Man, I don't know. Profit mode sounds good because you're making money, but I know, like, we get a lot of leads. That'd be a lot of work we're turning away.

And then, well, or you raise, or you just raise prices, right? So like if you raise prices on all your customers, 'cause all of a sudden you get 20 customers and you're like, we don't wanna go on a, if you raise prices, you might lose 10. Mm-hmm. So then you're gonna give yourself a little bit of breathing room, but you're gonna raise prices to existing customers. Now all of a sudden you're gonna double profits though.

Mm-hmm.

Well, we just did raise our prices and I did the math earlier. We lost 28% of our customers from last year, so, oh, right.

Yeah. You, 'cause you kind of raised it early and everything. Got it. So I, I would raise the capacity and just see how it feels like you can raise prices. In a day, right? You can also go buy a truck in a day and you can also hire an employee within a matter of couple of days. Like, I would not overthink this. See how you're feeling when you're hitting capacity. I'm just happy that now you have a numerical representation of what capacity is. So it's not like you're going to get 40 customers and wonder why your house is burning down.

Yeah, true. I know it blew my mind. I was like, there's no way I've been doing it so wrong this whole time. And then I fixed the schedule and I was like, that's crazy because before we had like 20 hours available and something crazy for both weeks because we do biweekly. So I was like, wow, that's, that's bad. Okay, sorry. Thank you.

You got it. You got it. I think Darcy is next. Go ahead, Darcy.

I've got a question on the P4P and I'm pretty new at this, so I might be— hopefully I'm asking valid questions. But so when you got 2 team members on the same route, how does the P4P work for those 2? If they differ in speed and abilities.

Okay, so they differ in speed and abilities. My question is, do they differ in percentage that you're giving to them on pay for performance?

Well, that's my question. See, I haven't done this before yet, but that's a good question.

You're fine. So let's just assume we'll run some real-world math for you. So let's assume they make— let's just call it $1,200. Oh my word, Michael. $1,200 in a day in terms of revenue. All right. And you're saying, okay, I want to give— let's just call it 30% of revenue to one employee and 33% of labor revenue to another employee. Right. What the, what the software does— are you talking about like the software, just like conceptually?

Well, both.

I mean, okay, okay.

You're not too worried about the, the how this, how this happens.

Cool. So what, what's gonna happen is there's 2 people on a crew. This happens on the backend, but also conceptually, which is, okay, 2 people on crew means each person made $600 of labor revenue. And then from here, I give 30% of $600 to one person and 33% of $600 to another person. Ah, makes sense.

Okay. So you have to, you have to judge that by what, how you feel they're performing.

Well, so I would, I would not do it based on subjective stuff like that. So for example, we, we, we, in our crews, we do everyone at the same percentage and same base rate. However, You can change the base rate or the percentage of different employees. For example, if you have a driver, I want to— I want the driver to have— I would try to tie the difference in percentage if you're going to do that to something tangible, whether it be license, certification, or tenure. So for example, someone's been with you for 2 years, you're like, hey, you're going to go from 28% to 30% on pay for performance. But the math doesn't change because like it's still labor revenue divided by number of crew members equals how much revenue each team member produce. And then I can change the percentage I give of that number individually.

Okay. Um, one other question I had was, so what about all the— the— I love the pay for performance thing, but how do you divvy up— okay, so I need equipment repairs, I need, uh, the shop cleaned up, I need the, you know, all those kinds of things. How do you— can you put those in the P4P too?

Yep. So two things. First off is how it is conceptually done is called a manual adjustment, which means there is no labor revenue being produced, but I need them to do a task. And so I am going to manually adjust their pay for performance because otherwise they're going to hit base pay and I don't want that to happen. And so I'm going to say, okay, if you're, if you're doing hours worth of, of spraying weeds around the shop, I'm going to manually adjust your pay for performance. So how you want to think about it, Darcy, is We got pay for performance being tracked throughout the entire week. Let's just call a week of a pay period a percentage of labor revenue. I'm also tracking their clocked hours and their base pay to make sure I'm at least paying them this, right? I got to make sure I'm always tracking their hours. I'm paying them overtime, etc. I'm always tracking that, but I'm also tracking their P4P. Now, what happens if I have them clocked in doing weeds on the lawn in my shop? What's happening is their base pay is going up, but because there's no earned revenue, this one stalls. And so what I have to do is do a manual adjustment to make sure it doesn't penalize them to be doing that work.

Right. Because that's what I could see is employees say, oh, I'm not going to do that because there's nothing in it for me.

Exactly. So that's when you do a manual adjustment. Now, 2.0 version is we don't— we don't want to do manual adjustments because I don't want anyone to be like, yeah, just come to the shop. You know what we used to do is a whiteboard and they would this bit, they'd be like Mike Andes, but 1.5 hours spraying weeds around the shop. And then what we would do, manual adjust 1.5 hours of P4P. So we'd multiply that by their base pay and add that to P4P. So it'd manually adjust out. Great. The 2.0 version is you never do that. You give them an assigned budget hours to do the task.

No, that's what I like the best.

Yeah.

Yes. So what we do, is on HomeWorks, we're just gonna make a to-do with budgeted hours. Oh yeah. And they're gonna come back to the job site, back to the site after their day, and it's the last to-do of the day. They clock in, they clock out, they track hours versus actual hours versus clocked, everything like a regular job.

That's cool.

And then that forces you, that forces you to figure out how many budget hours does it usually take to change the oil, spray the weeds, sharpen the blades, all these other things that you're doing. But once you nail that, inefficiency just goes completely off the cliff.

Oh, totally, totally. I can see that's absolute.

Yeah.

Thank you. You got it. Hey everyone, inside of the book Copy and Paste Millionaire, I talk about the P4P system being so instrumental to be able to have the business run without you, where your employees are paid based upon how hard they're working. If this is something you're interested in, this is the perfect time of year to figure out the software that makes this possible. Automatically with a matter of a minute per employee per day. You can pay your employees based on how hard they work and not based on how many hours they worked. So go check it out. PPPSoftware.com. The first 30 days are completely free so you can make sure it's working for your business. Set up a call with Lael, our support system here, to be able to make sure it's implemented in your business correctly. Paul, go ahead and get started.

Obviously, you've scaled and grown and expanded and everything else. I mean, any tips or tricks, I guess, on people starting to roll out door-to-door sales or door-to-door sales teams?

Do you knock on doors right now or just door hangers?

Knock on doors. All right.

And what's your average ticket for the sale that they're trying to do upfront?

So we're kind of approaching a layered, layered approach. We got like 4 services that we do. We generally start with our cheapest service because it's the easiest to sell. That's bin cleaning. So we do residential bin cleaning and it's something that we can have proof of need at the door so we can actually check their bins and say, hey, notice your bins are pretty dirty. Is that something you guys get professionally cleaned? It's a niche market, so not many people know about it. So we kind of explain what we do, how we do it, and then get them signed up for like either a low monthly, $30 a month, or they can save some money and pay the year upfront. That type of thing.

Just out of curiosity, what's their hit rate? Like out of 100 doors they knock, how many people do you get?

It depends on the salesperson. And kind of what their confidence level is. But, you know, out of 100, I'd like to see at least 10.

Wow. That's pretty good.

Super low price point.

Right. It's all volume.

Yeah, it's something that they can't deny.

No. Okay. And what's your commission structure look like, Paul? Is it a percentage of gross collected or what do you do?

So trying to run something different. So it is commission-based, fully commission-based role, but we do like what we call residual-based. So we will pay you on your first sale, we'll do 10%, and then the second year renewal of that customer, we'll do 7%, and then the third year we'll do 3%. So you can essentially build a base salary with us.

Very cool. Okay. Yeah, like I think the biggest thing when it comes to door-to-door is taking out the variability of good salesmanship because that skill level is inherently baked in with any applicant or someone you're getting started with and getting them up to an acceptable level is becomes your new business, like your new business becomes building a sales team. And so I think like any skill around sales training, like you just become— you become a sales trainer. And I think the biggest thing I would say when it comes to door knocking that I've seen work is recording it. So whether it be something they have on their hat and it's just as audio or actually I've seen some people do it like where they have a little camera on here, so they're able to just watch and then you just take all the winners everyone who sold and everyone who didn't sell. And you can literally process just the transcript through AI and it'll tell you exactly what to say. Yeah, yeah. So and also it's great for training just in general for new, new team members. Okay, let's break down this call. Why didn't it go off? Why did it go off the rails? Okay, why did they sell? But more importantly, if you did this for, call it 1,000 or 2,000 doors and then processed all that through AI, it will just tell you the differences and it'll give you all of your training based upon that.

Yeah.

Oh, that's good advice. I hadn't thought of that, so I will, uh, yeah, look at starting up.

Great.

Awesome. Great job, Paul. Dakota, you're up next. Go for it.

So right now I'm still, uh, in the really early stages of my business. I'm solo operator right now. What helped you transition from manual systems into automation? Because right now I do a lot of custom-made spreadsheets. And that's how I'm keeping all my stuff organized. And I'm in HomeWorks and I did the thing with Christian and everything's spot on. It's literally exactly what I've been looking for because I've tried other CRMs that aren't industry-based, but none of them really helped me out. And so I'm just wondering what kind of helped you with that transition in the beginning?

Any transition of any system is usually painful at the beginning. It's kind of like wearing a retainer or braces. It always is going to hurt. But over time, the change that is required is the thing that will get you to your goals. And so if you reverse engineer the size of business that you want, that, that's how you determine what kind of systems you should be using. And so for anyone that is a solo operator, a lot of time like, oh, stick with my spreadsheets. It's like, well, but you also are saying you want a million-dollar business. So go talk to every million-dollar business and ask what systems do they have and then reverse engineer what software should I be using, how should I be paying my employees, what comp models should I be using? And so it sounds like you've already made the right decision. It's not like you need convincing, but just realize whenever you switch a system, it will cause pain. But if you want to see— in order to have change, we must change the inputs. Like, if you want to change the outputs, we got to change the inputs. And so you're on the right path.

All right. I appreciate that. All right. I do got another question. So what was it about lawn care that made you want to switch from, because your original career path projection was really strong, you know, and I kind of share a similar thing. My first path was just sales and I generated $1 million in revenue doing direct sales in year 1. And I left that to do lawn care and it's going good, you know, and I know it's kind of a slow, slow growth. Model, but there's a lot of mental things that creep in sometimes during certain moments. Like, for example, I just went through my first winter where we was actually generating revenue through the whole season. And the first couple winters before that, I was like, you know, you're just kind of like freaking out and stuff. And so I'm just wondering, like, what was it? That made you want to make the switch into lawn care? Because for me, it was more of I want to be able to build something that I can either pass on to my kids or sell one day. And that, that's really what drew me into it.

Yeah. So when it comes to choosing an industry, you just want to think of it from the perspective of it's a vehicle and you have to ask yourself, is this vehicle capable of getting me to my goals? And so the vehicle is previously in was go to college, become a doctor, and do that whole gig. And so once I knew that wasn't what I want to do for the next 40 years of my career, doing the same few procedures, it wasn't anything amazing or great as to why I did lawn care. It was like I was poor, I needed to make money, and the only thing I knew how to do was mow grass, right? So, so I was like, I had 30 or 40 customers a year trying to get through college. I should just keep doing that. And then I did my MBA at night. It's kind of like my backup plan. And so it was nothing great or spiritual when it comes to choosing lawn care. What it morphed into, though, is feeling the pain of growth and then feeling care for every other person going through that and then being able to know, like, I could hopefully help those people. And so it's completely morphed. I don't care about lawn care. I don't care about trimming bushes. I don't care about, like, any of that stuff. But I know the pain of growing a business and not making money and then being able to make the switch because of systems. And so then the passion now is just simply a function of trying to prevent the pain for other people.

Right. I love that, man. All right. I appreciate that.

You got it. You got it, brother. Go ahead, Brian.

Okay, so I'm in a much smaller market and I'm very, very familiar with your software. I'm just not— I don't think I'm fully utilizing it to the best of its ability. And I struggled with employees for like the last 3 years now. So I was up to like 80 lawns. Now I'm back down to 30.

Okay.

Um, couple, couple of questions. Would it be problematic to changing my lawn care name? Because it is Two Guys and a Mower, and I get a lot of, um, a lot of snark remarks, a lot of, um, just cheesy stuff, you know what I mean? A lot of people like it, but On the other hand, a lot of people just poke jabs at it.

What's the name of the business? Is it Two Guys and a Mower? Is that the name of the business?

Two Guys and a Mower.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

That's how it's spelled. Okay. So they usually, it's only me though, because I can never, I'm in a much smaller market and it's just hard to keep help. Now I do got some good people this year, but I would really like to take this to the next level. I got a mower, I got a trailer, I got I got all the equipment stacked in the trailer, the green racking, I got all that stuff, a full setup. But by next summer, I would like to be back up to 100 lawns, 150 lawns. And by the following year, I would be optimist to be at 225 lawns with 2 crews. That's the goal. And I got good financial backing. I work for the railroad full-time. That's my biggest bottleneck though, is not having the time to manage the admin side while we're taking on new customers because my job doesn't allow, essentially. So like, for example, right now I'm going into work, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I will not have my cell phone on for the next 12 hours or so. How do I convince or proceed to taking on the lead calls and get her comfortable with setting up estimates, uh, over the phone or via email.

So do you have an admin person already, Brian?

Well, I got a wife, I got a stay-at-home wife that I think she could very well manage it if she saw the benefit in doing so, number one, and had the tools to properly over the phone.

Cool. So there's two things you have to do. First off, you have to make sure that The first part is done, which is she has to see the benefit because if she doesn't want to do it, we need to go hire someone. And if she wants to do it based upon that vision because she sees the value of it and you both agree, etc., which I would not force her to, like if she doesn't see it, don't just go hire someone because then it's no good anyways. Yeah. So assuming, assuming that, then what I want you to do is record everything you do. So when you set up an estimate, when you have a call come in, I want you to record on Loom or record any sort of recording, screen recording, exactly what you're doing inside HomeWorks, exactly how you're sending it out, exactly everything. And then just create a repository or a folder of everything that you do. And so you're going to have a folder that says like, create estimate, address complaint, send email, uh, uh, send email blast, send text blast, uh, reconcile books, all these things that you're doing. You're just going to screen record the whole thing. So she could just at the beginning, watch what you're doing and do it, duplicate it.

Okay.

And then the second thing I would say is like the name of your business is going to become invalid within a year. And so if you're also wondering like, why can't you get good employees? You got to ask yourself too, like, if you were an all-star employee, would you want to work for a company that's called Two Guys and a Mower? No diss on the name. I think it's got where you're at and it'll get you to 100 lawns, but it won't be Two Guys and a Mower when you have 250 lawns.

Okay, now what do you mean by that?

Because when you have 250 lawns, you're going to have more than two guys and you're gonna have more than just one mower.

Right. Okay. Now, would it be a business change at that point, or it just, it just falls into place is what you're saying?

I think it's more a matter of like, if your problem has been finding good talent and keeping them on, you got to ask yourself, can I become the business and the organization that great talent wants to work for?

Okay. So here's what the real problem is. My real problem is giving people opportunities that don't necessarily need them or, or can handle it. So I would say my biggest problem is just I got two good trustworthy people this summer and they helped this summer. I just don't think I expanded enough last summer to keep them on board. My, my full-time job kind of took over my life and I was unable to focus enough on the business in order to prop it all up.

That's the— that's the decision you make, right? Like you're making the decision to keep your 9 to 5 or keep your, your W-2. As a security blanket for the business. And so have you ran the math on like when it makes sense to not have that security blanket and go all in on the business?

Yeah. $325,000 revenue.

In revenue.

Yeah.

So then, then it's going to become okay. There's going to be some very painful time of trying to get from, let's just call it $150,000 or $200,000 to $350,000. That's going to be painful.

Okay.

And so just recognizing that, and then that's part of the conversation you have to have with your wife, like, hey, I think I can take this business to $800,000. But first I've got to get from a financial perspective to support the family. We've got to get to $350,000. I need you to bridge this gap with me on the admin side so we can grow this business by 50 to 60%, get to $350,000. I can leave my job, then I'll be able to release a little pressure off of you. I'll go hire a full-time admin and we can grow this thing.

Okay. And then my other issue is I don't think she sees the vision. I don't think she understands that it is taking that amount of money.

Well, she doesn't care. So like, what?

Right.

So, so you have to, you have to first understand like what her goals are and then reverse engineer it.

Right.

It's like, what does she want? Does she want you working? Does she want you working less or being with the family more?

So it's be less being at home.

Fantastic. So then you take that as the end goal of, hey, when we are able to be able to financially afford this and I can quit my job, Here's what I'm able to do. I need help in the next year or two on the admin side so we can bridge this gap. But once we're here, this is what I'm willing to commit to because she doesn't care about making more money. She cares about seeing you more at the house.

That's right. The railroad job is pretty secure. I clear $170,000 and it's got good benefits. It's got a good pension. It's really hard to justify making up for all that. And then last question for you, smaller markets. So ideal, So like, for example, my hometown is 3,500 people. The town right next to me is 26,000. The town down the street is 11 minutes away, probably another 9— no, not 9, sorry, 5,000 people. And then I got another town that's about 30 minutes away. It's 2 towns in one. You got 10,000 people on one side of the river. The ultimate goal is just to kind of operate along this 30-minute window. With as many lawns as I can get, if that makes sense, because the communities were tight-nitche enough that it's doable. And I was getting close, but I had to pull back because my, my job dictated that I just wasn't available enough.

Yeah. Like, keep in mind, like, we grew, we grew to over a million in Blaine, Washington, which is 6,500 people. And so I think you can absolutely dominate a smaller market. And then when you have confidence and capital to be able to move into the next city over, then have a lot of like firepower to actually make that happen in a good way instead of spreading yourself out, out really thin, doing $300,000 and being unprofitable. Right. So like, don't, don't underestimate the power of boiling the puddle and going after the smaller market because it is powerful. Well, hey, best of luck to you all. All of you, thank you so much for being here. I do have to hop on this next call, but I hope you have a great weekend and I'll see you.